DDT: Week 103 – While the Media Focused on the Horrific Shutdown ….

The big news today is that the FBI opened an investigation into Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) after he fired former FBI Director James Comey and bragged about it to the Russians, calling Comey “a real nut job.” The FBI was concerned that DDT was a threat to national security while working against the U.S. on behalf of the Russians and that the firing was an obstruction to justice. While Comey openly pursued Hillary Clinton’s emails, he was suspicious of DDT’s ties to Russia.

DDT claims “no collusion,” but the White House has just hired 17 new lawyers to protect DDT from Robert Mueller’s investigation through executive privilege.

Michael Cohen, DDT’s former fixer, will testify on February 7 about all things DDT.

A sloppy lawyer allowed the public to discover information about Paul Manafort’s sharing poling data during DDT’s campaign with Russian Konstantin Kilimnik, but DDT says he hasn’t heard anything about it.

Ed Burke, another DDT associate who worked for the Trump Organization, has been charged with attempted extortion. DDT has no involvement in the criminal complaint—unless Burke flips on DDT.

Dictator Donald Trump (DDT claims that he likes an “acting” government—no confirmed people for the chief of staff (acting Mick Mulvaney), DOJ (acting Matt Whitaker), Interior (acting David Bernhardt), Defense Secretary (Patrick Shanahan), EPA (Andrew Wheeler), and Medicaid (Chris Traylor).  Many more acting appointments are just dropping the term “acting” from their titles. DDT claims to like the “flexibility,” but Jon Kyle and Ret. Gen. Jack Keane already turned him down for Defense. Six of 24 Cabinet positions have only acting personnel, and over one-third of vacancies requiring Senate approval are vacant. The next Cabinet disappearance may be Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was annoyed with the Democrats questioning him at a hearing about his decision to remove sanctions on Oleg Deripaska’s companies, but Democrats were even more irritated with his wasting time through his refusal to answer questions. Even Republicans in Congress, that can pass a law to thwart Mnuchin’s plans, have a history of sanctioning Russians. Deripaska is a former business associate of Paul Manafort.

DOJ AG nominee Bill Barr, headed for committee hearings this coming week, refused to meet with several Democratic senators by claiming the shutdown restricted his time until they went public. Democrats were told that they could meet with Barr after the rushed hearings. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) met with Barr and assured everyone that he wouldn’t stop Robert Mueller’s investigation. New Chair of the Judiciary Committee, Graham wouldn’t release Barr’s public financial disclosure report and ethics agreement. Barr has been questioned about his sending DDT a memo opposing Mueller’s investigation and his position that the president is above the law. He was AG for George H.W. Bush in 1992 when H.W. pardoned everyone in the Iran-Contra scandal to get H.W. out of legal difficulties. Graham doesn’t even pretend to be “fair and balanced”: he tweeted, “The confirmation of conservative judges will be one of my top priorities as Chairman.” Imagine the outrage if a Democrat said his goal was to confirm liberal judges.

State Department Secretary Mike Pompeo is spreading U.S. policy throughout the Middle East. He praised Saudi Arabia with no mention of their torturing and dismembering U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, promoted alliances with autocrats, and promised that the Kurds will be protected from Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan attacks on them while the U.S. withdraws which it may not do. Missing from all Pompeo’s speeches was any reference to human rights.

DDT supporters in Johnson County (Indiana) are losing faith in their leader because of toxic chemicals underground from an old industrial site are contaminating their homes. Children are falling ill with cancer, including brain tumors, lymphocytic leukemia, and a rare bone cancer. DDT stopped President Obama’s attempts to ban the use of these chemicals as a stain remover and degreaser, leaving 178,000 workers exposed. Farmers, traditionally DDT supporters, are also becoming disillusioned after losing farm loans and disaster relief from the shutdown. Farmers can’t buy seed, chemicals and diesel without this assistance, and they’re resorting to getting food from food pantries. On Monday, DDT is scheduled to speak at the American Farm Bureau’s annual convention.

After almost 100 years of support for lynching, the Senate unanimously passed a bill declaring it a hate crime. Now the Liberty Counsel, lawyers trying to make the United States a Christian theocracy, opposes the anti-lynching bill recently passed after 100 years of attempts because it would make lynching of LGBTQ people illegal. The organization is lobbying to keep the bill from passing the House.

Six months after the tents started going up at Tornillo (TX), a small town of under 2,000, the government has torn them down, and the last of 6,200 migrant children separated from their parents have been sent to other ICE-operated facilities. The building cost ran into the hundreds of millions, and the cost of incarceration was $775 per night for each child classified as “unaccompanied alien children” after ICE took them from their parents. Almost $500,000 was taken from medical research and other HHS programs for 2018 unbudgeted expenditures. Some of the children have been sent to the Homestead facility where staff are not required to go through FBI fingerprint checks because Florida state law prevents outside companies from accessing that background database.

Kevin Dinnin, the CEO of the contractor that ran the tents, said the government closed down the facility because he refused to detain more youths. He said that children came but never left.

Coal plants closed at the highest rate in history during DDT’s first full year in the Oval Office after he ridiculed Clinton for not protecting coal jobs. Huge companies such as Duke Energy are switching to renewable energy. Scottish Power completely left fossil fuels and said that they are using “the cheapest forms of energy.”

When the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from ExxonMobil, the company was forced to give documents about its knowledge of climate change to Massachusetts AG’s climate change investigation. Exxon faces far more lawsuits through the United States about its lying and dangers to the nation. In desperation, the corporation claimed that it doesn’t sell gasoline because service stations are franchises but may face the same problems in eight other states that have laws similar to those in Massachusetts.

A GoFundMe that collected $20 million to “Build the Wall” must return all of it because it didn’t meet its $1 billion goal unless donors are willing to redirect its money to a non-profit called “We Build the Wall, Inc.”

Stock markets ended the year with the biggest annual decline since George W. Bush’s recession in 2008: Dow Jones down 5.6 percent; S&P 500 down 6.2 percent; and Nasdaq down 4 percent. Problems arose from the government shutdown, Brexit, the China slowdown, DDT’s tariffs, increased interest rates, criticism of the Fed, and general uncertainty from market volatility. FAANG stocks—Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet—suffered drastic drops in the past three months ending in the worst Christmas Eve market drop in history. Markets perked up this year with DDT’s promise that he’ll solve the Chinese tariff issue and the Fed’s promise that it won’t raise interest rates as often, but today, the Dow eased downward.

DDT has become increasing vicious after the Democrats won’t give him his wall. Some of his comments to the press yesterday before he left for his photo op on the Mexico border that he claims was pointless:

“I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Crying Chuck and Nancy. I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.” [Basically, he’s failing with both.]

“The Democrats, which I’ve been saying all along, they don’t give a damn about crime. They don’t care about gang members coming in and stabbing people and cutting people up. They’ve been taken over by a group of young people, who frankly, in some cases, I’ve been watching, I actually think they’re crazy. They have been taken over by a group of people that don’t care about gangs, they don’t care about human trafficking and drugs—they don’t care about anything.”

“Look, you can [in the media] all play cute, and I’d say 80 percent of you are possibly in cooperation with the opposition party I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous.” He described NBC as “maybe the most dishonest reporters of all time.”

“We have to get a win or I’ll have to go national security. We could compromise, or I will declare a national emergency.”

The man who campaigned on the slogan that “I alone can fix it” said, “The buck stops with everybody.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)  hasn’t responded to questions about DDT’s tweets to withhold federal disaster relief money from the thousands of Northern California families looking to rebuild after devastating “forrest [sic]” wildfires in McCarthy’s home state. He did, however, defend DDT’s position.

Much has been written about Democratic presidential candidates for 2020, but Republicans are getting anxious about the GOP primaries if a high profile Republican decides to run. And there are a few of them out there, helped by the shutdown.

DDT: Week 102 – Shutdown Stalemates, Idiocy Continues

Day 15 of government shutdown: Not much progress was made in shutdown talks between White House officials and congressional aides today although acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney suggested that Democrats would not view a steel wall as a wall. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that the House will start with bills to open departments, beginning with the Treasury so that people can get IRS tax refunds. A meeting is scheduled for tomorrow.

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, gone this week in a cloud of ethics investigations, transferred public records to a political appointee who had advised the Koch brothers and proposed limiting new Freedom of Information requests by refusing these if they are “burdensome.” He also shortened the public opinion to 30 days, in spite of the shutdown. In that way, no one can determine damage caused by the government shutdown and uncover Zinke’s ethics violations. Even the conservative Heritage Foundation agrees that Zinke’s proposal violates the FOIA because it says nothing about the “vast quantity of material” requested. DOJ is also investigating whether Zinke committed the criminal offence of lying to the Inspector General.

Despite the shutdown, Robert Mueller’s investigation is still funded, and the federal grand jury has been extended for another six months.

Almost 400,000 federal workers are “furloughed” because they aren’t “essential,” and some of them won’t get paychecks when they go back to work because they are employed by a private contractor. Zach Fuentes, one of the lucky ones who keeps getting paid, needs six more months of work to qualify for a Coast Guard early retirement program that expired at the end of 2018. DHS pushed to have the program renewed, but reporters’ questions led legislation for the program to be removed from the House appropriations bill. John Kelly saved the 36-year-old with under 15 years of service by making him his deputy chief of staff. Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney wanted another deputy but said that Fuentes will stick around. Mulvaney said, “Zach’s a good man; we’ll find something for him to do productive.” His new title is assistant to the president and senior adviser to the chief of staff. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), chair of the committee with oversight over the White House, has promised an investigation into the Fuentes affair.

The stock of Goldman Sachs, former employer of several DDT appointments, went down 35 percent because Malaysian filed criminal charges against Goldman after country’s Prime Minster Najib Razak, DDT’s friend, took huge amounts of cash from a state investment fund. Malaysia has filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs, demanding $7.5 billion in reparations, and at least ten countries have probes into Goldman Sachs’ business. Before the 2008 recession, Goldman profited in the collapse in subprime mortgage bonds by short-selling subprime mortgage-backed securities. DDT’s White House is known for having employed a large number of Goldman Sachs alumni.

DDT’s rambling comments in a press conference yesterday followed his disastrous 90-minute meeting Wednesday when he offended India by accusing them of only building a small library in Afghanistan. India, which didn’t attack and destroy Afghanistan as the U.S. did, gave $3 billion to Afghanistan which included building the Parliament. DDT also parroted Vladimir Putin’s propaganda in his revisionist history that the USSR collapsed after declaring bankruptcy fighting in Afghanistan in retaliation for its terrorists going into Russia. The statement that “Russia used to be the Soviet Union” ignored the 14 other republics in the USSR, and DDT’s statement that the USSR was “right to be there” conflicted with U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. opposed the USSR in that conflict, the USSR went into Afghanistan to keep communism in the country, the Soviet economy didn’t go bankrupt, and its financial problems came from declining oil prices. DDT’s comments come directly from Vladimir Putin, and he went farther than Putin when he excused Russian aggression.

National Security adviser John Bolton assured Israel that DDT had no timeline for a military pullout from Syria two weeks after DDT declared it eminent. Mulvaney had said that DDT wouldn’t change his mind about the immediate pullout, but Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is taking credit for talking DDT into a “pause situation.” DDT decided to slow down the withdrawal of troops in Syria after tweeting that retired U.S. commander in Afghanistan, retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has “big, dumb mouth” in accord with Fox’s Laura Ingraham’s criticism of McChrystal caution against the pullout.

After George W. Bush’s judge’s ruling that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, the media addressed the possibility of “Medicare for All” (aka universal health care like every other industrialized nation). The judge has now decided that the ACA would stay in effect until the issue moves through the courts because “many everyday Americans would… face great uncertainty during the pendency of appeal”—an obvious conclusion from his first ruling. A coalition of 17 states has appealed the decision, and the House plans to direct its Office of General Counsel to represent lawmakers in any litigation involving the act and authorize hiring of outside counsel.

DDT has starting to chip away at Medicare Part D by cutting some medications provided by Part D of Medicare—specifically those for HIV, depression, schizophrenia, cancer, epilepsy, and immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection of organ transplants. Despite DDT’s bragging that he had lowered costs of drugs, pharmaceutical companies raised prices at the beginning of 2019 for hundreds of prescription medications this week. The increases, as high as 133.4 percent, averaged 6.3 percent and included drugs for high blood pressure, pain relievers, and anesthetics.

Facing at least seven major investigations—campaign, transition, inaugural committee, presidency, business, charity, emoluments, and personal finances—DDT is looking at an eighth one about the employment of undocumented immigrants at his Bedminster (NJ) golf resort in New Jersey. Federal and state investigators are looking into the employment records of immigrants after several undocumented immigrants said they were recruited to work at the facility. An employer told Victorina Morales, assured that her immigration status didn’t matter, that she couldn’t do anything about abuse at work because she wasn’t documented and worked for the president. Employers at the club deliberately removed names of undocumented workers so that the Secret Service would not vet them, but the undocumented immigrants kept working.

Video from a privatized government Southwest Key facility for migrant children shows the staff physically dragging, pulling, and slapping children in their care, but Arizona authorities have determined that this abuse is not criminal. Maricopa County closed three cases of child abuse without interviewing staff or minors involved. The place, along with another operated by Southwest Key, had its license canceled two months ago because of faulty employee background checks. Taxpayers gave the company, holding more migrant children than any other corporation, $1.7 billion in the last decade, $620 million just last year. Salary for the owner, Juan Sanchez, was $1.5 million last year.

The IRS has more serious problems than the inability to refund taxes as the GOP guarantees that it fails to collect revenue. Its 9,510 IRS auditors are one third fewer than 2010 and fewer than the 10,000 revenue agents in 1953 when the economy was one-seventh of the present day. Over one-third of IRS employees is eligible for retirement next year. Corporations and billionaires are the biggest beneficiaries of these cuts because their audits require specialized personnel. Instead, the IRS audits the working poor who receive the earned income tax credit the highest priority. GOP policies are losing the United States tens of billions of dollars. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, also acting chief of staff, failed to pay over $15,000 in taxes for his nanny from 2000 through 2004.

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis left his office on New Year’s Eve with his message for U.S. troops: “Hold Fast.”  With Mattis gone, US Strategic Command (StratCom) tweeted, “We are ready to drop something much, much bigger [than the ball in New York].” StratCom waited three hours to decide that a threat from the “guardians of several thousand nuclear missiles” about “raining death and destruction from above is some kind of joke,” as Derek Johnson, executive director of the anti-nuclear weapons group Global Zero, pointed out. Walter Schaub, former head of the Office of Government Ethics, asked, “What kind of maniacs are running this country?” We’ll learn in the coming months. [visual]

DDT’s ICE celebrated New Year’s Day by teargassing migrants on the Mexico side of the border. They were seeking asylum according to law, lifting toddlers over the fence, but ICE claimed that they were throwing rocks. AP reported that no one threw rocks until after they were teargassed, and Mexico is investigating.

Over two decades ago, then House Speaker Newt Gingrich took money from staff for committees and outsourced policy making to right-wing think tanks and lobbyists. Last summer, DDT believed in a “red wave” and budgeted $129 million for staff “handy for investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails.” On January 3, the new House Speaker, likely Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), took control over that $129 million to hire more personnel for investigations—maybe into DDT’s administration. Welcome to the U.S. House of 2019!

DDT: Week 101 – Watch China’s Growing Influence in Middle East

Day Seven of Government Shutdown: Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) may think that his shutdown isn’t successful because he’s now threatening to close the U.S. southern border and stop aid to several Latin American countries without his wall. Having canceled plans for any holiday vacation to Mar-a-Lago, DDT is sitting in Washington, D.C. with nothing to do except tweet. The U.S. has already announced a collaboration with Mexico, providing $10.6 billion to slow migration from South American countries.

• The shutdown moves toward more debacles:
• The possible cancellation of a global weather conference with over 4,000 attendees that wastes research and contracts.
• Closure of all Smithsonian Museums and the National Zoo on January 2.
• “Furlough” of EPA employees.
• Lack of payments, farm loans, and disaster assistance for farmers.
• Suspension of FTC investigations and litigation, including those against Facebook.

Fortunately for Mar-a-Lago, taxpayers are still paying for DDT’s holiday bash, even though he didn’t attend, starting with $54,020 for tents on December 19. Individuals paid DDT’s private business $1,000 per person.

Some startling news has received almost no attention in the Western media amidst the shutdown hubbub. DDT, self-proclaimed great negotiator, planned to scare Pakistan’s military into cooperation by suspending billions of dollars of security aid to Pakistan. Instead, China is buying Pakistan-built military jets, weaponry, and other hardware, a move that can deepen the two countries’ cooperation in space that China wants to militarize. It can also encourage other countries to buy military equipment from Pakistan instead of the U.S. Only Pakistan has access to China’s satellite navigation system allowing better guidance for missiles, ships, and aircraft. The countries also plan to link a port in coastal Gwadar across 2,000 miles to western China, allowing Chinese goods to have a much shorter and less expensive shipping route and avoid territorial waters of U.S. allies in Asia. China may also militarize Gwadar and other seaports being built in places such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, giving China great geopolitical influence in both commerce and military action.

The first Chinese ship, the cargo ship Zhen Xing Sung, reached Gwadar’s port this week loaded with seafood. Its owner, the China Overseas Shipping Co (Cosco), has a 40-year lease of the port and will export to Central Asia and the Middle East.

DDT became so angry with former Defense Secretary James Mattis’ resignation letter—once the media explained to him what it meant—that he had his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney immediately fire Mattis instead of allowing for a transition period until late February. Mattis’ deputy, Patrick Shanahan, is the temporary replacement until the Senate has time to confirm him. Shanahan worked for the U.S.’s most profitable defense contractors Boeing for thirty years, quitting as senior vice president of supply chain and operations to join the Pentagon. Former Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) expressed concern when Shanahan was selected as Deputy Secretary of Defense and said, “I have to have confidence that the fox is not going to be put back into the henhouse.” Shanahan promised to recuse himself from any financial interests related to Boeing.

One reason for Shanahan’s selection as Defense Secretary may be his enthusiasm about DDT’s Space Patrol control outer space, an idea that has been soundly ridiculed. DDT may find Shanahan useful because he has neither military nor foreign policy experience. Shanahan finds the position useful because Boeing has been successful in winning competitive contracts since he joined the Pentagon. The Air Force wants F-35 stealth fighters from Lockheed, but the Pentagon is requesting F-15X fighters from Boeing, thanks to Shanahan’s involvement in funding.

DDT is facing not only investigations but also liens against his properties. A third lien, this one from AES Electrical, brings the total to over $5 million against his Washington hotel after the company assigned 45 workers to 12-hour shifts for almost 50 consecutive days to get it open when he wanted. The hotel opened on time, and DDT stopped paying AES. Plumbing firm Joseph J. Magnolia Inc. and Northern Virginia company A&D Construction also filed $2.98 million and $79,700. DDT claims that he’s worth $10 billion, but he has a long-time reputation of stiffing his workers at all levels.

Elected politicians are causing a “collapse in pay for the bottom 90 percent” of the labor market since 1979 by giving power to employers through weakening unions, damaging minimum wage, and prioritizing low inflation over full employment. The bottom 90 percent of wage earners lost $1.53 trillion in income–$10,800 for every U.S. household—in 2015 alone. As a result of these policies, productivity has rapidly slowed since the 1970s, growing half as fast between 1973 and 2017 as it did from 1948 to 1973.

As DDT rails against Jerome Powell, the man he picked as chair of the Federal Reserve, the media is reminding people that he fired the former chair, Janet Yellen, because she is “too short.” Janet L. Yellen was considered the most qualified Federal Reserve chair perhaps ever, but DDT he broke a long-standing bipartisan tradition of retaining the Fed chair if they wanted to stay and were good at the job. Yellen fit both these criteria.

DDT is helping drug companies make more money from opioids by recommending that people with prescription for opioids also get prescriptions for an antidote. The health care costs will run over $1 billion. The recommendation came from DDT-appointed Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir. A two-dose kit of Naloxone nasal spray costs about $125. An automatic injector runs $4,000 per kit.

EPA has approved the Monsanto’s pesticide dicamba, an airborne chemical that can kill crops for miles away. Corn and other grass crops can tolerate the weed killer, but it kills soybeans, tomatoes, and other broadleaf plants. In 2017 and 2018, dicamba damaged almost 5 million acres of soybeans in 24 states, primarily in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Illinois, except for Monsanto’s genetically engineered soybeans. Dicamba drift has killed millions of dollars in pecan and peach trees plus destroying bees because they cannot survive on plants damaged from dicamba.

A new proposed EPA rule purports that a little pollution is good for people in order to erase regulations on toxic chemicals. Today, the EPA proposed a reversal of the clean-up of toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired plants. Mercury causes brain damage, learning disabilities, and other birth defects in children, and the pollutants enter the food chain.

After 17 people were shot and killed in a Parkland (FL) school last spring, DDT put Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in charge of an all-white committee to solve the gun problem. Her first solution was to use federal funds to buy guns for schools, but she moved back from that move because of the backlash. In her next step, she admitted to Congress that her commission on gun violence would not study the role of guns in school shootings. Ten months after the tragedy, DeVos will use the “school safety commission” to discriminate against blacks and other minority students, permitting schools to use race in punishing them because of her claim that are the cause for an increase in school violence. The racial difference is already dire: black girls are suspended six times more than white girls, and black boys are suspended three times more than white boys. The commission was created because of killing by a white teenager, and most mass shootings at schools are by white males.

Almost 40,000 people died in shootings across the United States in 2017 during DDT’s first year after his inauguration, the highest number in 20 years. The U.S. now has 12 deaths per 100,000 people from guns compared to 0.2 per 100,000 people in Japan, 0.3 in the UK and 0.9 in Germany.

Last week, a second Guatemalan child died on Christmas Eve in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and DHS Secretary clings to her story that parents are at fault. Yet on December 23 to 25, ICE officials dumped 600 hundred asylum seekers in the cold outside a Greyhound bus terminal in El Paso where they had no housing or food and local shelters were not warned. Many of them were ill. The only other time that this has occurred was the week before the 2018 midterm elections.

Gallup poll’s most admired man for 2018 is Barack Obama, and the winning women is Michelle Obama. Barack tops the list for the 11^th year in a row, one place short of tying Dwight Eisenhower for the record. Michelle has broken Hillary Clinton’s 17 year run. DDT came in second to Barack, and Melania Trump is fourth after Oprah Winfrey and Clinton.

Katherine Walker, the TV producer who oversaw the first five seasons of The Apprentice, said that workers “struggled to make Trump seem coherent.” She added that he frequently commented on women’s bodies in a derogatory fashion. Walker believes—like many of us—that DDT would not have been elected president if not for that show. A piece in the New Yorker describes how Mark Burnett, former executive producer of the show, gave DDT the appearance of a tycoon. Voters bought the image, not the real person.

DDT: Week 100 – Not Very ‘Positive’

Day One of GOP/Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) government shutdown: Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) who fought to close down the government said that workers without paychecks is “actually part of what you do when you sign up for any public service position.” Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) said, “Who’s living that they’re not going to make it to the next paycheck?” He’s talking about 78 percent of fulltime workers.

The House Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), demanded that the FBI vet over 3,400 pages of transcripts of investigation into the DOJ, including former FBI director James Comey, within two days, but the FBI said that the shutdown kept it from meeting that deadline. Materials cannot be released without an evaluation for classified, sensitive, or personally revealing information. Goodlatte, retiring this year, is single-handedly holding up a bill, unanimously passed in the Senate, to hopefully lower the incredibly high rate of violence against Native American women. He complained that states with high percentages of this population would receive grants for this purpose.

Failing to get an agreement on the CR today, the Senate adjourned and took their paychecks home for Christmas, leaving 800,000 government workers, over half of them still working, without pay.

Yesterday, DDT told reporters:

“We have had a very busy two or three days. It’s been very positive.”

Some of these “positive” events:

DDT’s pullout from Syria worsened—if possible—after Brett McGurk, U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting ISIS, Brett McGurk, quit because he disagrees with DDT’s decision and statement about ISIS being defeated.

DDT’s shutdown of the government after conservative media goading and the chaos that he’s causing by pulling troops out of the Middle East with no plan made even stalwart Republican legislators at least raise eyebrows, especially after his Defense Secretary resigned in protest.

A senior Justice Department ethics official concluded that acting DOJ AG Matt Whitaker should recuse himself from overseeing Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Russian scandal, but Whitaker refuses to ask for an official ethics decision. The DOJ has notified Congress of Whitaker’s refusal.

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified that she has no idea how many immigrants have died in custody under her watch. In a hearing about the death of a 7-year-old girl while in DHS custody, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said, “There have been at least 12 deaths under your watch,” Jayapal said. Nielsen also lied again that “we do not have a policy of separating families at the border,” and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) told Nielsen that his committee plans to do its job of “meaningful oversight,” beginning in January. Note that Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) tried to save Nielsen by comparing the situation to Robert Mueller separating Paul Manafort from “his two beautiful children”—who happen to be 30 years old.

Nielsen said later that asylum seekers will be kept in Mexico instead of allowed to enter the U.S. This decision may not hold up in court after two judgments the past week. The D.C. appeals court struck down DDT and DOJ policies that refused asylum to victims of domestic and gang violence, and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four liberal justices to block DDT’s attempts to turn asylum seekers from the border. The ruling supported the decision of U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, who DDT called an “Obama judge,” that DDT’s new rules were illegal.

Latest nominee for DOJ AG William Barr sent an unsolicited 20-page memo to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and Assistant AG Steven Engel last summer giving arguments against Robert Mueller’s right to investigate DDT for potential obstruction of justice and refuting the government’s ability to even question DDT. Barr also sent the memo to DDT before he was appointed.

In a tweet announcing the signing of the farm bill, DDT provided the clip of himself singing the Green Acres theme song at the 2005 Emmys, a performance not to be missed. When the final bill failed to punish some food stamps recipients who did not have jobs, DDT planned an executive order to eliminate legal waivers that would take food from almost 800,000 people, a decision that may be determined illegal.

Instead of going free for giving up information after lying to the FBI, former national security adviser Michael Flynn has another 90 days to tell more secrets after an irritated judge accused him of selling out his country for pushing Turkish interests in the U.S. during DDT’s campaign and blaming the FBI for his lies because they didn’t tell him it was a crime. Flynn’s business partner Bijan Kian has been charged as an illegal agent of Turkey and conspiracy in his efforts to get a Turkish cleric extradited from the U.S., an 80-year-old man who would certainly killed if he were sent to Turkey after living in the U.S. for almost 20 years. DDT said that he would “take a look” at the man’s extradition, obviously not concerned about killings after his indifference to the torture and dismemberment of longtime U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi royalty.

A conservative Texas judge ruled that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, bad news for DDT and Republicans because 53 percent of people have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act. People voted Democrats into the House to keep their health care. Approval in a November KFF Health Tracking Poll:

• 82 percent – Young adults stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26
• 82 percent – Health insurance exchanges for small businesses and people to shop for insurance and compare prices and benefits
• 81 percent – Financial insurance premium help to low- and moderate-income Americans who don’t get insurance through their jobs
• 81 percent – Gradually closure of the Medicare prescription drug “doughnut hole” so people will no longer be required to pay the full cost of their medications
• 79 percent – No out-of-pocket costs for many preventive services
• 77 percent – State expansion of existing Medicaid programs to cover more low-income, uninsured adults (now in three-fourths of the states)
• 65 percent – No denial of coverage because of a person’s medical history

Republicans were in the majority in all of the above.

DDT’s sort-of lawyer Rudy Giuliani contradicted his boss by saying DDT knew that fixer Michael Cohen was negotiating with Russia for a Trump Tower in Moscow long after DDT said it had stopped ten months before his election, perhaps after June 2016, the date that Cohen gave. A letter of intent from DDT to move forward with his negotiations four months into his campaign has also emerged. Giuliani claimed that DDT knew nothing about it, but  DDT signed a letter of intent four months into his campaign for the project.

Documentation proves that DDT also broke his pledge to have no new business deals while he is in the Oval Office by acting as partner in the development of a proposed beachside resort in the Dominican Republic. Taxpayers provide the high costs of business trips for travel and security by DDT’s children in a business that opens up opportunities for more money laundering on the part of the Trump Organization.

DDT’s charitable foundation, called “a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests” by the New York AG, has been closed with any assets distributed under court supervision. The AG office is now pursuing a lawsuit to prevent DDT and his three oldest children from membership on boards of any other New York charities and force the payment of $2.8 million in restitution and penalties.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who made her first appearance since November to declare that the FBI “ambushed” Flynn, also attacked Comey on her official government Twitter account, an ethics issue. After his second six-hour House hearing, Comey, a Republican until 2016, exhorted Republicans:

“At some point someone has to stand up and face the fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement but stand up and speak the truth.”

Instead of the spending spree called the “Santa rally,” the Dow Jones’ seven-percent fall had its worst week since 2008—the year of George W. Bush’s recession—and dropped to the same number as 15 months ago. The Standard & Poor, down 11.4 percent thus far this month, is headed toward its worst December since 1931. DDT is blaming the Federal Reserve, but long time Republicans are blaming DDT. Crude oil plunged 11 percent during the past week for its worst weekly performance in three months.

DDT tweeted that he was negotiating with Democratic leaders about the shutdown for a bipartisan deal and announced a “large group” for a White House lunch but invited only GOP lawmakers and officials, primarily immigration hardliners. Conservatives keep repeating the wall as DDT’s promise but avoid the other promise that Mexico would fund the project.

This NBC/Wall Street Journal poll was taken before DDT’s “positive” busyness this past week:

• 71 percent: DDT regularly makes “misleading” statements.
• 62 percent: DDT has not been honest and truthful about Russia.
• 60 percent: Lawmakers should make compromises to reach consensus on legislation.
• 54 percent: Disapprove of the job that DDT is doing; negative feelings about DDT.
• 50 percent: Mueller’s investigation has provided more doubts about DDT’s presidency.
• 33 percent: The country is headed in the right direction.

Who should take the lead in country’s policies? Trump – 19 percent; GOP – 21 percent; Democrats – 48 percent.

The funniest news of the week: Funds raised by an online campaign We the People Will Fund the Wall—up to $14 million for 241,601 donors for 2/3 of a mile—will end up in the general fund for “general use” or “budget needs,” according to law. These funds are controlled by congressional appropriations. With this law, funds may be returned because GoFundMe prohibits “not using funds for their stated purpose.” Brian Kolfage, creator of the funding project has a background of sites with conspiracy theories. Another GoFundMe site has been introduced called “Ladders to Get over Trump’s Wall.”

If necessary, the money will be donated to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a Texas-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency that promotes justice by providing free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees.

DDT: Week 100 – Government Shutdown, Middle East Chaos

Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) is holding nine government agencies hostage to get his steel slats, DDT’s new name for his border wall.

• Over 420,000 federal employees will continue to work without paychecks—41,00 in the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and other law enforcement and correctional officers.
• Almost 90 percent of DHS employees working without a paycheck includes 53,000 Transportation Security Administration employees, 42,000 Coast Guard employees, and 54,000 employees from Customs and Border Protection.
• Other unpaid employees are 5,000 Forest Service firefighters and 3,600 National Weather Service forecasters.
• Another 380,000 federal workers who also lose their paychecks and not allowed to work include over 44,000 employees from the Forest and National Park Services, 52,000 IRS staff, and 7,100 Housing and Urban Development workers, and 18,300 Transportation Department employees. Robert Mueller’s investigation continues.
• Departments shut down are Treasury, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Commerce, and Justice.
• Services lost include income tax returns, availability of national parks and zoo, loan processing for housing, trade appropriations, paychecks for active-duty military members, WIC funds feeding low-income pregnant women and new mothers with their children up to five years old, with healthy food, detection and investigation of disease breakouts, and appeals for VA disability benefits.
• Other losers are janitors, security guards, and other low-wage federal contractors who live paycheck from paycheck. Subsidized grocery stores for military families are closing.

DDT is in his third shutdown in 100 weeks, but the others were short. He is promising that this one will last a “long time.” The 17-day government shutdown in October 2013, the longest in U.S. history except for Bill Clinton’s 21 days over Christmas in 1996, cost $2 billion in just “lost productivity of furloughed workers.” A shutdown when one party controlled the government—both legislative and executive—hasn’t happened for over 40 years.

During the past few days, DDT has led everyone on a roller coaster with shutdown talk.  Without retiring senators, DDT might have gotten through a 60-day CR for the budget that included his steel slats. In a meeting with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), DDT said he was “proud” to cause a shutdown. That temper tantrum was followed by his claim that he would sign a short-term continuing resolution without funding for the wall. Congress took him at his word and passed the bill that he offered. At that point, he refused to sign the CR because it didn’t include $5 billion for a wall because the Fox network and other far-right pundits said he should demand the wall.

Members of Congress had already gone home and were forced to return for votes. Rep. Brian Schatz (D-HI) spent 17 minutes with his family before he had to go back to Washington, almost 5,000 miles away from his home, for a vote. The House caved and passed another CR with $5.7 billion for the wall, but the Senate needs 60 votes to move any bill forward. It managed 47 votes for a tie in a bill with the funding that VP Mike Pence broke. Tonight the shutdown began, and DDT is sitting by himself in the White House waiting for his direction from Fox and Rush Limbaugh. Congress may—or may not—return tomorrow to address the problem, depending on whether their work could bear fruit—or steel slats. DDT has decided to blame Democrats for the shutdown, but he is on record as saying that he “owns” the shutdown.

In ten days, the House will have the same majority of Democrats that the House enjoys now. They are less likely to pass a bill funding steel slats, and DDT has always guaranteed that Mexico, not U.S. taxpayers, will pay for a wall. From DDT came this tweet: [visual]

“A design of our Steel Slat Barrier which is totally effective while at the same time beautiful!”

While the government was responsible for averting a shutdown today, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), who lost his re-election bid, held an emergency House meeting on the Senate “Curd Act” to define natural cheese. Amid all the following disastrous events of the past week—plus the government shutdown, Sessions considered the definition of “natural cheese” to be an emergency. Sessions lost to a black civil rights lawyer by six points after he was in Congress for 22 years.

For the first time in the history of the United States, a Defense Secretary has resigned to protest the actions of the man in the Oval Office. DDT’s intemperate decision to remove all the U.S. military from Syria appeared to be the last straw for James “Mad Dog” Mattis who went to the Oval Office seeking reason from the U.S. “leader.” According to DDT’s tweets, Mattis will be gone in two months. During his career in the Cabinet, James Mattis stopped a U.S. strike on North Korea, tried to preserve relationships with allies, stalled the proposed military parade, sided with keeping transgender military members, and worked, although failing, to keep the Iran deal, according to David Graham.

Mattis’ action came after DDT pulled all 2,200 military members out of Syria despite disagreement from his aides and secretaries of Defense and State as well as no plan. These officials were unable to convince DDT that the Kurd-dominated ground fighters trained and equipped by the U.S. are vital after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called them terrorists and threatened to attack them. Erdogan talked with DDT at the G20 Summit and again last Friday. Turkey has purchased Patriot missile defense batteries from the United States, indicating that DDT may operate on a purely commercial basis. DDT announced his decision on Twitter without telling anyone about the withdrawal except Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—not even congressional leaders. Even staunch DDT supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called the move a “huge mistake.” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), said that DDT’s generals “believe the high-fiving winners today are Iran, ISIS, and Hezbollah.”

DDT falsely claimed the ISIS is defeated in Syria although senior officials concluded that this defeat could be months away with thousands of ISIS militants underground in Syria. The Pentagon estimates 17,100 ISIS in Syria and another 13,000 in Iraq, the same as in 2014. In 2016, DDT blamed President Obama as “founder of ISIS” because he withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq.

Turkey and Russia are both pleased with Putin’s move because they both support Syria’s Assad government and oppose the Kurds who are fighting ISIS. DDT lied in his tweet about Russia being “unhappy” about the withdrawal, and Russian officials corrected him, saying that it was a good idea. “Trump is God’s gift that keeps on giving,” said Russian columnist and foreign affairs analyst.

Iran is also delighted because DDT’s troop withdrawal opens a path for Iran to defeat Israel.  Netanyahu tried to put on a happy face, merely saying that Israel will escalate its fight against Iran.

White supremacists in the United States are also ecstatic about DDT’s removal of troops from Syria because they look on its president, Bashar al-Assad as a hero with the far-right white supremacists in the United States.

DDT’s 30-day timeline for withdrawing the military troops, equipment, and heavy weapons may be impossible. The Pentagon wonders whether to retake thousands of weapons distributed to Syrian ground forces and the equipment over a half-dozen military bases. The latter may be destroyed in place. And a serious question is what to do with Kurdish fighters and the 79-nation international coalition to erase ISIS. With cells throughout the world, ISIS routinely initiates attacks throughout Syria. NGO’s supporting U.S. agencies bringing water and sanitation back to the ruined town of Raqqa were ordered to immediately leave.

Pulling troops out of Syria doesn’t mean that DDT will stop killing civilians there. He is leaving the air power and may increase strikes after U.S. troops are gone. DDT is also strengthening Iran because they support Turkey in opposing the Kurds.

Although DDT didn’t tweet his orders, he plans to pull 7,000 military members out of Afghanistan, about half the number stationed there. The Taliban will most likely be satisfied with the pullout, but Israel is concerned that the U.S. will leave Iraq next.

Even Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends opposes DDT’s action, calling the pullout a “stunning and irresponsible” move. Ed Henry protested. DDT is sticking to the advice of Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham to pull out troops and shut down the government.

DDT’s creation of chaos by pulling troops out of the Middle East and causing a government shutdown provides his latest diversion from the multiple investigations of him, his campaign, and his associates. And “acting” Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney flunked his first task of handling Congress.

And much more to report about this week’s disasters–tomorrow.

DDT: Week 99 – More Highlights

Biggest news today! Ryan Zinke resigned (was fired?) as Secretary of the Interior because the House may investigate multiple allegations of his violating ethics rules. Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, former lobbyist for fossil fuel industries who may be more evil than Zinke in policy-making, will temporarily assume leadership at the agency that oversees federal land, wildlife, and American Indian relations. Will someone still have to fly the agency flag when Bernhardt is in his office, and what will happen to all the commemorative coins with Zinke’s name?

In yesterday’s surprise, Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) named Mick Mulvaney, Budget Director and controller of the gelded Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for his “acting” chief of staff. Mulvaney plans to keep his Budget gig as an escape hatch. Earlier, he indicated he wouldn’t take the position, preferring Treasury or Commerce. DDT may have promised Mulvaney the position he wants after he fires Mnuchin or Wilbur Ross, in trouble for the citizenship question on the 2020 census. A lawsuit against Ross goes to trial on January 7, 2019.

The chief-of-staff job opened after DDT fired John Kelly and Nick Ayers, DDT’s choice, fired DDT. Steve Mnuchin (Treasury) and Robert Lighthizer (Trade), said they liked their jobs, and Chris Christie turned down the gig. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), leader of the House Freedom Caucus, begged for it, but DDT turned him down. AG Matt Whitaker and son-in-law Jared Kushner were possibilities, but they might both be indicted soon. Part of Mulvaney’s new job includes coping with the Russian scandal, handling DDT’s instability, and getting Democrats in the House to do what DDT wants, but House Democrats don’t like the former far-right representative.

At Arlington Cemetery today, DDT praised the Texas judge who ruled that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional—an excellent place to call no health care for people “a great victory.” Concern about health care among voters during the recent election led many GOP candidates to falsely state that they had always supported insurance for people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans will again be in trouble if a health care crisis reappears front and center.

Pandering to his base, DDT issued a directive to stop creating mice with human-like immune systems using human fetal tissue, an order that shuts down HIV research. The mice were ready to be shipped, but HHS called a halt to the delivery. More research can be destroyed if non-NIH labs receiving NIH funding are banned from using the fetal tissue. Scientists at UCLA have used these mice for 25 years; getting the directive immediately reverse still extends any discovery for at least a year.

Department of Energy plans to reclassify high-level radioactive waste residue from producing nuclear weapons to low-level, like hospital wipes and clothes, so that it can be more easily—and dangerously—distributed. Among affected facilities is Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state on the Oregon border, the most highly contaminated area half the size of Rhode Island. Public comment originally stopped on December 10, but Sen. Rn Wyden (D-OR) asked for an extension until January 9.

DDT’s new “Opportunity Zones” for “economically distressed” areas, created in the 2017 tax bill, benefits his own business and those of his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his New York developer friend Richard LeFrak. DDT’s planned developments in Greenville (MS) and New Jersey could be eligible for the tax break as could Kushner’s two Maryland properties. State governors can pick places such as downtown Charleston (SC) and West Palm Beach. Legislation lacks accountability by failure to require that investments benefit the community or collect and report data about investors, kinds of investments, and subjects impacted by the program.

When the government hired Accenture Federal Services $13.6 million to recruit border protection staffing, taxpayers gave the company $13.6 million for two accepted job offers with no records for any other applicants.

Texting, a common form of telecommunication, can now be blocked and censored because DDT’s FCC classified it as an “information service.” People who live in areas with a variety of wi-fi providers can switch to keep their texts from being blocked, but those with limited providers lack the same advantage.

DDT’s coalition with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Russia weakens a UN report on the disastrous climate change through their refusal to endorse the document. He also reaffirmed his removal of the United States from the Paris agreement to reduce fossil fuel emissions. At the G20 summit, only the U.S. refused to endorse a statement affirming the Paris climate accord, signing a document only after language about DDT’s decision to exit the Paris compact. Fifty-eight percent of people in the U.S. agree that human activity accelerates climate change.

VP Mike Pence may have been roundly ridiculed for being a silent bobblehead at DDT’s disastrous meeting with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), but he took time to cast a tie vote in the Senate that put Jonathan Kobes onto the 8th Circuit Court for a lifetime appointment—the first time any VP broke a tie to put a judge on a circuit court. The ABA gave Kobes a “not qualified” rating because he “has neither the requisite experience nor evidence of his ability to fulfill the scholarly writing required of a United States Circuit Court Judge.” Over 200 civil and human rights groups opposed Kobes because he opposes marriage equality and defended crisis pregnancy centers (fake women’s health care centers).

Other “not qualified” nominees to be confirmed are U.S. Circuit Judge Leonard Steven Grasz, “unable to separate his role as an advocate from that of a judge” because of his strong anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion views; U.S. District Judge Charles Goodwin, lacking the ability to fulfill the demands of a federal judge because of his frequent absence from the courthouse as a magistrate judge; and U.S. District Judge Holly Teeter, without trial court experience. DDT and the GOP have seated two Supreme Court justices, 30 circuit judges, and 53 district judges—most of them anti-LGBTQ rights, anti-voting rights, and anti-abortion.

Facing a government shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has caved in to a possible vote on a criminal reform bill after DDT’s specifically demand. McConnell had avoided a vote on the bill because of “no” votes from the most conservative senators, according to Whip John Cornyn (R-TX). https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/421328-senate-heads-toward-floor-fight-on-criminal-justice-bill  The Senate may have to stay in session over Christmas instead departing this week as scheduled.

At least 14 DDT associates interacted with Russians during DDT’s campaign and presidential transition, Russians who seemed to take cues from DDT or coordinate with his requests. DDT continues to lie about the cost of Mueller’s investigation, falsely stating an estimate of $40 million instead of the actual $25 million. Ken Starr’s six-year investigation of Whitewater, leading to the president’s impeachment for lying under oath, cost over $70 million, but no one was indicted. During his 18 months’ investigation, Mueller indicted 34 people and three companies while garnering guilty pleas from seven of them including five ex-DDT aides. Mueller has paid for his investigation thus far with fines, penalties, and forfeited real estate properties.

In honor of DDT’s lying, WaPo has created the Bottomless Pinocchio, awarded to politicians who repeat a false claim so many times that they engage in campaigns of disinformation. The claim must receive at least three Pinocchios from the Fact Checker and be repeated at least 20 times. Only DDT, with at least 14 qualifying statements, has thus far achieved the Bottomless Pinocchio, for example: the U.S. spent $7 trillion in the Middle East (36 times); the U.S. pays most of NATO costs (87 times); Democrats colluded with Russia during the election (48 times); Robert Mueller has conflicts of interest (30 times); the U.S. economy is the best in U.S. history (99 times); a wall is necessary to stop drugs from crossing the border (40 times); U.S. steel is building new plants (37 times).

DDT’s lies trickle down to his agencies. After repeated DDT falsehoods about having started to build his wall, DHS announced that it has begun building a 30-foot “border wall,” higher than any ever built. NBC patiently explained “construction on a new section of border barrier has not yet begun and won’t this year.” The DHS is also the agency claiming that they aren’t separating migrant children from parents and that they have returned them. They also tried to conceal the death of a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl from lack of care in their custody before blaming her father.

Last month, DDT told a reporter that he cannot imagine anyone else being Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.” He has always felt it to be an honor instead of “the man, woman, group or concept that has had the most influence on the world during the previous 12 months.” For 2018, Time picked “the Guardians,” journalists who have been persecuted throughout the world, including attacks by DDT, in an ongoing “war on truth.” Four separate covers honor these brave people, including Jamal Khashoggi, tortured and dismembered by Saudi Arabia royalty, and the staff of the Capital Gazette, where five of them were shot dead in their Maryland newsroom. Time has never before selected someone no longer alive for this honor. They did so because his influence grew because of his death. DDT has responded to Time with tweets displaying increased invective against the media.

A Fox poll shows that at this time 55 percent of respondents would definitely/probably vote against DDT. Only 38 percent could vote for him.

DDT: Week 99 – Advent Surprises

In Advent’s 22 to 28 days leading up to Christmas, one custom is the calendar which has pockets or drawers, each concealing a gift that delight children. This Advent is bringing political surprises for Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), but the “gifts” won’t delight him.

Thinking that he could control the Democrats in the coming year, DDT met with Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (CA) last Tuesday. Pelosi and Schumer expected a closed meeting, but DDT invited the press so that they could hear him say that he would be “proud” to shut down the federal government if he didn’t get money for his “wall.” Later in a closed-door meeting, Pelosi told the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee that the wall is “like a manhood thing for him.” DDT said that the money for his new wall would come from his new NAFTA, which means he plans to use non-existent money gained from his new trade agreement for a $25 billion wall.

Some events from the past week that should terrify DDT:

Russian agent  Maria Butina is pleading guilty and giving testimony about her conspiracy to infiltrate the NRA to help Russia. Although Vladimir claims that he and his spies know nothing about her, Natasha Bertrand of The Atlantic tweeted:

“Is that why the Russian gov has conducted 6 consular visits to Butina, passed 4 diplomatic notes to State about her case, and had Lavrov personally speak to Pompeo twice about her prosecution? (The official Kremlin Twitter account changed its avatar to a picture of her, too.)”

In possible illegal “coordination” (maybe collusion?), DDT’s presidential campaign and the NRA used the same people and parent company in strategically making ad buys. The law permits the NRA to spend as much money for advertising, but any expenditures sharing information with a campaign is limited to $5,000 as in-kind donations. The NRA spent $30 million.

DDT’s former fixer Michael Cohen received a sentence of three years for failure to report his multimillion-dollar payoff for orchestrating secret hush payments to women who claim affairs with DDT and an additional concurrent two months sentence and $50,000 fine for lying to Congress about his dealings with a Trump Tower in Moscow. DDT has thus far failed in his attempts to distance himself from his former fixer, the man who DDT called “my attorney. The slightest chink in the GOP indifference to DDT’s criminal activity came from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) when he expressed “concern” about the possibility that DDT might have implicated himself in a crime, if, according to Cassidy, “this so-called hush money is a crime.”

After almost a day of silence, DDT insisted that the hush-money payoffs were “not campaign finance” despite the admission of the National Enquirer’s owner AMI that it paid off one of the women “in concert with” DDT’s campaign to “suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.” DDT also claimed that, although Cohen pled guilty to these violations of campaign-finance law, they “are not a crime.”

After DDT’s election, he appointed Kushner to replace Cohen as his contact with David Pecker, National Enquirer publisher and chief executive of AMI. Kushner and Pecker talked frequently after DDT’s inauguration on a variety of subjects from relationships with Saudis to dirt on Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. Pecker’s pro-DDT coverage drastically diminished after the raids on Cohen’s office, leading to Pecker becoming an unindicted co-conspirator. AMI’s admission that its pre-election hush-money scheme was specifically connected to DDT’s campaign.

DDT claimed that he would pick only the “best people.” One of them was Michael Flynn, DDT’s former national security adviser who is now waiting his sentence for lying to the FBI. Flynn’s defense is that nobody told him the consequences of lying to the FBI. Special investigator Robert Mueller responded to this feeble excuse: Flynn lied multiple times before, during, and after the FBI interview—sticking to his lies even when given a chance to tell the truth—and he was told about the interview topic.

The Mueller team wrote:

“A sitting National Security Advisor, former head of an intelligence agency, retired Lieutenant General, and 33-year veteran of the armed forces knows he should not lie to federal agents. He does not need to be warned it is a crime to lie to federal agents to know the importance of telling them the truth. The defendant undoubtedly was aware, in light of his ‘many years’ working with the FBI, that lying to the FBI carries serious consequences.”

Soon after DDT’s inauguration, DDT’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort urged him to vigorously attack the FBI. Communications regarding Manafort’s lying showed that DDT’s undermining the FBI would damage its investigation into the Russian election collusion, as shown in some communications that are the subject of Manafort’s lying. Manafort specifically identified former FBI Director James Comey for damage to the FBI credibility and advised a senior administration official to attack DOJ, the FBI, and Obama officials for seeking FISA warrants to eavesdrop on himself and Carter Page, again to delay the investigation. A hearing on allegations about Manafort’s lying is on January 25.

Beyond investigations into DDT’s campaign, transition team operations, business, and foundation operations, prosecutors are delving into expenditures of his inaugural committee and his super PAC. Foreigners—primarily from Middle Eastern nations—likely contributed donations to both these funds in exchange for influence on U.S. policy, a violation of U.S. law The probe into inaugural donations involves federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Despite the claim that donors to the inaugural committee were “fully vetted and disclosed” to the FEC, the audit has not been made public, and a GOP lobbyist pleaded guilty to arranging for foreigners to pay $50,000 for inaugural tickets through a U.S. purchaser.

Ivanka Trump has been found to funnel huge sums from the inaugural donations into the Trump Organization while she was executive vice president. Internal emails and receipts show that she negotiated hotel prices for venue rentals. Overcharging for event spaces violates tax law, and the IRS can issue steep fines if a person with “substantial influence” over a nonprofit group overcharges for their outside business. Rick Gates, then deputy to the inaugural chair who is guilty of lying to the FBI and conspiracy against the U.S., asked vendors to take payments directly from vendors and sign confidentiality agreements about their payments. With a third of the staff, a quarter of the events, and revenue of twice as much as George W. Bush’s second inauguration, the records for DDT’s inauguration show at least $40 million missing from the funds.

Mueller’s investigation continues with revelations about work by DDT’s officials in the Middle East to influence politics in the United States.

While Republicans were reluctant to criticize DDT’s legal problems, a bipartisan vote in the Senate of 59-41 called for an end to military assistance to Saudi Arabia in connection with its war in Yemen that has killed 50,000 people and starved another 12 million. The Congress can order DDT to remove U.S. military members from “hostilities abroad” without the existence of a declaration of war or authorization of the use of force. Last month, the Senate passed a resolution by 58 to 41 removing the U.S. military’s refueling of Saudi coalition aircraft. House Speaker quashed a similar measure by putting an amendment in the farm bill that just passed, but the House changes party majority at the end of the year. The Senate is also considering a bill suspending weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and imposing sanctions on officials blocking humanitarian access in Yemen or who were involved in the torture and dismemberment of U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The “rule of law” has moved 180 degrees in the past two decades. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the GOP investigated Whitewater, a land deal in which the Clintons lost $45,000 several years before Clinton went to the White House. He was impeached for a lie about Monica Lewinsky. In the 1990s, Republicans believed that the rule of law had no exceptions, that a serving president is subject to a civil lawsuit, required to answer a subpoena and testify before a grand jury. One telephone call from the White House to the Treasury Department was classified as obstruction of justice. The current occupant of the Oval Office can threaten and dismiss law enforcement officials for investigating him, intimidate prosecutors, repeatedly defame legal opponents, offer pardons for witnesses against him, lie about multimillion-dollar deals with a country that has leverage against him, and offer a bribe to the president of said country with a $50 million penthouse. Republicans respond by promising more investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

No one knows if a sitting president can be indicted, but a memo from Ken Starr, hidden in the National Archives for almost 20 years, says “yes.” According to Starr, “in this country, no one, even President Clinton, is above the law.” Maybe Republican presidents are exempt, however, since the Supreme Court became an arm of the executive branch.

DDT: Week 98 – Furious Tweets Show Fear

Events during the past week, especially Robert Mueller’s investigation freight train increasing speed, have so terrified Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) that he released his longest, and most virulent, hate tweets this week—and that’s a record.

Michael Cohen, DDT’s former fixer, has revealed information about a Russian contact who would provide government connections to DDT’s business and political interests as early as 2015. He also said that DDT told him to reach out to Russia.

Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for DDT, has been discovered to lie about his contacts with Russian intelligence. Manafort sold his Florida mansion, purchased for $1.3 million and then renovated, to his wife for $10.

Vanity Fair reported that Donald Trump Jr. has gone into hiding in Canada, afraid that he would be indicted for lying to Congress and his behavior as a Trump Organization executive. Cohen has provided New York’s AG office information about the business finances. A hunting trip will help Jr. avoid the media.

Two House committees spent one of the last five days of GOP control before Democrats take over in January grilling former FBI Director James Comey in a closed session. The event appears to be a nothing-burger, with the focus on Hillary Clinton’s emails.

DDT followed yesterday’s White House reception for Hanakkah with his furious tweet calling the media “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” a minute before a bomb threat was called into CNN NYC at the Times Warner Center and six weeks after pipe bombs were mailed to CNN and Democratic leaders.

Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, DDT’s appointment formerly under consideration for AG, has been in the news when an in-depth reporting described how Acosta, then Miami’s top federal prosecutor, blocked a FBI probe for child molestation allegations again financier Jeffrey Epstein. Ten years ago, Acosta gave federal immunity to Epstein, involved with at least 40 underage girls and trafficking girls from overseas, and unnamed people involved with him. Instead, Epstein served 13 months in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail with his own private secretary while he was on release 12 hours a day. Epstein again managed to weasel out of a trial this past week in which his victims were being allowed to testify.

DDT still supports Saudi Arabia despite their torturing and dismembering U.S. resident and WaPo journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but GOP Senate members separated themselves from DDT in his support of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salam after CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed the Senate leaders. Referring to DDT’s claim that he doesn’t see a “smoking gun” linking MBS to Khashoggi’s murder, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “There’s not a smoking gun, there’s a smoking saw.” Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said about MBS, “He murdered him. …No question in my mind.”

Like DDT’s other grandiose claims, his promise of solving U.S. tariff problems with China after a meeting with President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit isn’t bearing fruit. Chinese media announced that DDT’s assertions such as “an incredible deal” for U.S. farmers were bogus, and White House officials in the meeting with Xi didn’t hear anything about DDT’s claims. DDT said that Xi agreed to approve a deal between San Diego chip maker Qualcomm and the Dutch firm NXP, but Qualcomm has no intention to buy NXP. China skeptic Robert Lighthizer will lead the negotiations; his position is to punish China into change with harsher tariffs.

DDT said he canceled his meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit. They still met, but Russia’s state media called DDT “clumsy,” “morose,” and “defensive” who “brought dissonance to the #G20Summit.”

In his response to the legally-mandated climate change report produced by over 300 scientists from 13 agencies and released the Friday after Thanksgiving, DDT said, “I don’t believe it.”

DDT, who calls himself “Tariff Man,” appears increasingly confused. In a recent interview, he twice mixed tariffs (the fine on imported goods) with interest rates, once after he was corrected by a journalist. He also claimed that China would be paying for the tariff although consumers will be paying these costs through increased prices. His false statement that “the steel industry has been rebuilt in a period of a year” because of tariffs is a misconception because the industry is not “building plants all over the country.” In more confusion, DDT said that U.S. arms expenditures are $716; that’s the entire military budget with $10 billion for arms.

This past week, the Dow Jones stock market dropped 800 points in one day; the week’s loss was 1,150 which takes the Dow back to a year ago. Of the worst 20 daily drops in the past 20 years, three were during President Obama’s eight years in office; ten have been in 2018—five of them in the last month during the worst quarter in seven years.

Candidate DDT promised to drop, perhaps even eliminate, the nation’s trade deficit. For the month of October, the U.S. trade deficit hit $55.5 billion, a ten-year high and a $1 billion increase from September. The first ten months of 2018 almost matched the entire year of 2016—President Obama’s last year. October’s trade deficit in goods went to $76.9, the highest ever and far more than the $66.5 billion in the month before DDT was inaugurated.

The 155,000 jobs added in November shows a slowing trend for DDT and represents only three-fourths of he expected number. The 4.2 million jobs added during his first 22 months is .54 million jobs less—a 13 percent drop—than the preceding 22 months.

Warned about the future disaster from escalating federal debt, DDT said, “I won’t be here.” DDT’s spokesman, Hogan Gridley, blames Congress, because they are the ones who pass the president’s budget. The GOP congressional members largely follow DDT’s directives out of fear for his turning on them.

Supposedly traumatized by George H.W. Bush’s funeral, Congress put off a budget measure to pass a short-term continuing resolution until December 21—an odd date because they are scheduled to leave for home on December 14. A big question for the measure to keep the country from closing down is whether Democrats will give DDT $5 billion to wall off Mexico. He even upped the ante for the amount that U.S. taxpayers must pay for the wall’s construction, which he promised that Mexico will provide, to $25 billion.

Two million federal workers received a memo ordering them not to discuss any possibility of DDT impeachment and telling them that they cannot use the word “resist.” The Office of Special Counsel used the Hatch Act against political activity as justification for the order, a law that at least six DDT’s officials have violated by using their official Twitter accounts to spread campaign messages without disciplinary actions.

DDT’s bone spurs must be acting up again. He was unable to walk 250 yards, about the length of two football fields, instead requiring a stretch limo in an eight-car motorcade to go from the White House to Blair House where George W. Bush was staying.

When DDT signed the new NAFTA, the media reported that the trade agreement protected LGBTQ workers. Not true. Only federal workers are protected from discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identity, as per federal law. The language has been amended with a footnote that “no additional action is required on the part of the United States, including amendments to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” An executive order from President Clinton added these protections to federal workers, but DDT undermined President Obama’s executive order by adding “religious freedom” to allow discrimination.

VP Mike Pence commemorated World AIDS Day without mentioning LGBTQ people—for the second year in a row.

According to “Apostle of Joy” Georgian Banov, DDT ordered a Christian “prophet,” disguised as a janitor, to put olive oil on every White House door to ward off demons. Another pastor, Paul Begley, claimed that Melania Trump would not move to the White House until the “demonic taint” of the Obama administration was exorcised. Evangelical leaders have also followed the “laying on of hands” to anoint DDT.

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told CBS News’ Bob Schieffer about his relationship with DDT on the job, conflicts from DDT’s insistence that Tillerson violate the law. Yet DDT was unwilling to get Congress to change the law, according to Tillerson. Tillerson added:

“It was challenging for me, coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented Exxon Mobil Corporation, to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, ‘Look, this is what I believe, and you can try to convince me otherwise, but most of the time you’re not going to do that.'”

Not one to let things go, DDT called Tillerson “dumb as a rock” and “lazy as hell.” DDT’s praise for current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Heather Nauert as his appointment for United Nations Ambassador, temperamental Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and others show DDT’s reliance on sycophants from far-right congressional members, the Fox network, and the Federalist Society.

More about the new sycophants later.

DDT: Week 97 – Revelations Increase Call for Revenge

Of this week’s bombshells for Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), the biggest may be his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s admission that he lied about when DDT stopped trying to make financial deals in Russia. In 2016, while DDT was campaigning and saying he had nothing to do with Russia, he was negotiating a deal for a Trump Tower Moscow, including illegally working with a sanctioned bank because of money laundering and planning to give Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse to sweeten the deal. Cohen’s testimony also puts DDT’s family in legal danger because of their discussions about the deal. Last year, Donald Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was only “peripherally aware” of the Moscow deal in 2016 and may have also lied to the House Intelligence Committee about the same issue. Cohen may also corroborate the key parts about DDT’s ties to Russia in the Steele dossier. New Yorker reporter Adam Davidson tweeted that “*any* significant real estate development in Moscow is, almost by definition, part of a money laundering scheme.”

DDT claimed that he could do business while campaigning for president, but he concealed his activities while repeatedly lying about them.  He tried to cover his activities by saying that he never cared about building in Russia, but he’s been working on the project for 30 years. DDT accused Cohen of lying but added “even if he was right.”

Another crisis for DDT was Russia’s firing on three Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait and seizing 24 sailors. Putin blamed Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko of creating the naval “provocation.” In response, Poroshenko, who accused Putin of trying to take the Sea of Azov, has called for martial law across Ukraine’s border regions for a month. Put has already taken Crimea and eastern Ukraine; now Ukraine claims that Russia is sealing off the Sea of Azov by blockading ports Mariupol and Berdyansk and preventing ships from going under the Crimean Bridge through the Kerch Strait. The EU called on Russia to release the ships and crews and respect Ukraine’s sovereignty; Poland wants new sanctions on Russia. Although DDT seemed to blame Ukraine and Russia equally for Russia’s attack, he finally canceled his meeting with Putin at the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires (Argentina) this weekend. Both U.S. and world media, included in Russia, blamed the cancellation, on new revelations about DDT’s lying about his business affairs.

Putin, largely a pariah at the summit because of his attack on the Ukrainian ships, didn’t look happy to see DDT at the summit. Yet he greeted Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salam (MBS) with a high five and big smiles. Even after intelligence shows that MBS was responsible for torturing and dismembering U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, DDT still denies that MBS had any involvement in the murder at the Saudi embassy in Turkey. DDT’s faithful sidekick John Bolton, national security adviser, refused to listen to the torture and dismemberment tape of Jamal Khashoggi because it wasn’t in English.

The real pariah at the summit, however, was DDT. U.S. former allies avoided him, and DDT was afraid to connect with his authoritarian friends. David Ignatius has provided a detailed background of MBS’ paranoid and violent move toward power that he compares to Saddam Hussein.

When DDT signed his new NAFTA with Mexico and Canada at the G20 summit, he claimed that the slightly revised and renamed trade agreement is monumental, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pointed out that DDT’s tariffs hurt Canada and mentioned the loss of jobs at a Canadian General Motors factory. The agreement must still pass the Congress with a Democratic House and conservatives in both chambers who opposed the anti-discrimination provision against LGBTQ people.

Although DDT was supposed to talk at the summit with Xi Jinping, China’s president, about solving DDT’s trade Chinese trade war, DDT left early after the death of former President George H.W. Bush on Friday, claiming that he and Xi had declared a truce on the tariff problem. The stock market has been going up and down, based on how buyers perceive the tariff situation. China has found ways to avoid the new U.S. tariffs:

• Avoid 25 percent tariffs on Maine lobster by getting them from Nova Scotia.
• Buy more oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia.
• Get soybeans from Brazil and Argentina.
• Replace U.S.-made high-tech imports with those from Asia.

DDT blamed the struggles of the stock market and the GM layoffs on the Federal Reserve, especially his own appointee Chair Jerome Powell, yet Wednesday’s headlines stated that DDT might be making a deal with China about the tariffs, and the Dow skyrocketed more than 600 points. DDT is still trying to take credit for the stock market, claiming that it is up 13 points more than the 25 percent rise since he was inaugurated. Even so, the rise is less than that during President Obama’s first two years in office—33 percent.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was behind DDT’s selection of Powell, and DDT has another reason to dislike his hand-picked Treasury secretary. If Democrats request DDT’s tax returns, Mnuchin indicated that he will follow the law. Meanwhile DDT listens to Larry Kudlow for economic advice—the man who swore that there would be no recession just three months before Bear Stearns and the dominos began to fall. Faced with the disaster, he said, “Recessions are therapeutic.” The “therapy” of recessions may occur before the end of DDT’s first term.

DDT’s reputation with his base has been damaged by General Motors’ announcement that it is slashing 14,700 jobs—many in Michigan and Ohio—by eliminating 15 percent of its workforce in North America and closing four factories in the U.S. Offering buyouts to 50,000 salaried North American workers, GM stated that DDT’s steel tariffs cost them $1 billion. Traditional passenger cars went from 50 percent of GM U.S. vehicle sales in 2012 to 31 percent this year while SUV and pickup truck sales increased by 31 percent. The company also gained a massive tax break from the GOP cuts and failed to invest in U.S. jobs, choosing instead to build the Blazer in Mexico. DDT took the closures personally and threatened GM, saying that the company “better damn well open a new plant [in Ohio] very quickly.” He continued, “I love Ohio. I told them, ‘you’re playing around with the wrong person.’ ” He lied that he would eliminate tax credits for purchasing GM electric cars—only Congress can do that—and false accused GM of not paying back the bailout money the company received after the Bush recession.

Over a month ago, Ford announced 24,000 layoffs of its 202,000 worldwide workers and stated that DDT’s tariffs had lost the company $1 billion. It was producing 32.8 vehicles per employee compared to GM’s 52.7 vehicles per employee. The company also plans to switch to SUVs, CUVs, and pickups, leaving the only the Mustang in its passenger-car line-up. Even that car may disappear with China’s tariffs on U.S.-made vehicles.

More Russian connections for DDT:

Late night chats between DDT and friend Roger Stone may have covered WikiLeaks’ dropping bombshells from hacks into Clinton’s campaign, but Stone denies it “unless [Robert] Mueller has tape recordings of the phone calls.” Conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi gave WaPo an August 2, 2016 email in which Corsi told Stone that WikiLeaks was planning a major release of “very damaging” material, the day before a private Stone-DDT talk. Mueller may have evidence that Stone told Corsi to get him the WikiLeaks information and then funnel it to DDT’s campaign.

DDT’s chief defense lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has admitted that he received briefings from Paul Manafort’s attorneys while Manafort was supposedly cooperating with Mueller in conversations not covered by attorney-client privilege. A joint defense agreement exists only between people with common legal interests which Manafort lacked when he claimed he was cooperating with Mueller. Now DDT is suggesting that he may pardon Manafort, possibly as a reward for Manafort passing along confidential information. Manafort shouldn’t count on a pardon, however: he has already pled guilty to state crimes in California, New Jersey, and Virginia. DDT can pardon only federal crimes.

Despite at least 15 blanket denials from those involved, DDT’s campaign team had at least 92 contacts with Russia-linked operatives, and at least 26 high-level campaign officials and DDT advisors knew about these contacts, including three successive people who ran Trump’s campaign.

As more information is released about the Russian scandal, DDT’s tweets become more manic. Last Wednesday, he retweeted images of special counsel Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, President Obama, former AG Eric Holder, and former President Bill Clinton—all behind bars—and calling for the Democrats and law enforcement and intelligence officials to be imprisoned and claiming that they should have trials for treason. DDT fan Cesar Sayoc targeted many of these people with pipe bombs. He also falsely accused Mueller of “viciously telling witnesses to lie about facts” in exchange for “relief.” The desperate DDT is calling for more violence.

DDT: Week 96 – New ‘Normal’ for Thanksgiving

Between tweets and personal appearances, Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) spent much of his “working” time early Thanksgiving week trying to deflect attention about real issues.

• Issue: Investigating acting AG Matthew Whitaker; response, reference to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), new Intelligence Committee chairman, as “little Adam Schitt” while DDT’s wife continues her program against cyber bullying.
• Issue: Concerns from retired Adm. Bill McRaven, the former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, about DDT’s attack on the free press; response, false claim that McRaven is a “Hillary Clinton fan” and didn’t capture Osama bin Ladin in a timely fashion.
• Issue: The deadliest fire in California history; response, lies about “gross mismanagement of the forests” because they didn’t rake the forest as Finland does. (Fact: Finland has an early warning system, aerial surveillance system, and an extensive network of forest roads; the country also pays local aviation clubs to fly over the most threatened areas of forest so that fires will be found before they go out of control. California is also much warmer and drier than Finland and has vegetation much likelier to catch on fire. During his visit to Paradise, DDT also called the town “Pleasure”—twice.) Next DDT lie: fire mitigation raises 2019 budget by $500,000. Didn’t happen and none of his officials or members of Congress know anything about this.
• Issue: climate change; response, “I want great climate.”
• Issue: GOP midterm election losses; response, after claiming that the election was a referendum on him, “I didn’t run. I wasn’t running. My name wasn’t on the ballot.”
• Issue: Not going to Arlington on Veterans Day; response, “I was extremely busy on calls for the country…. I should have and I did last year.” (DDT had nothing on his schedule, he sent a large number of tweets accusing Florida of rigging the election and Democrats for dropping the stock market, and he was in Asia on Veterans Day 2017.)

Maybe Saudi’s Crown Prince did torture and dismember a U.S. journalist in its Turkish embassy, DDT said, but he’s not going to do anything about the murder. Saudi Arabia is a “great spectacular ally,” according to DDT, meaning that they give DDT lots of money for his personal use and nothing will change in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. DDT also lied about Saudi Arabia investing $450 billion dollars in the U.S. economy, about Saudi’s war in Yemen in response to Iranian intervention, about hundreds of thousands of jobs, and about right-wing smear that the murdered Jamal Khashoggi was a “member of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Facts: Only $14.5 billion in military purchases have been confirmed, and the number of jobs is under 17,500 for a full $110 billion in sales possible. Khashoggi was not part of the Muslim brotherhood. The end of the statement was DDT’s support for a foreign murdering dictator over his own nation’s intelligence that concluded Mohammed bin Salam ordered Khashoggi’s dismemberment and assassination. “It’s a shame, but it is what it is,” DDT said on his way to Mar-a-Lago today.

DDT’s message: He’ll overlook murder if somebody pays him.

DDT continued last Sunday with his long list of lies in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox: his White House runs “like a well-oiled machine”; he “did well in France”; he didn’t know the deputy national security advisor who Melania Trump fired but “she was with me for a long time”; he didn’t know that his new acting AG Matthew Whitaker had any “views on the Mueller investigation” but Whitaker was right in “no collusion”; he won’t meet Robert Mueller as promised and he won’t give written answers about obstruction of justice as promised; he’s not responsible for Democrats elected to the House but did cause Republican elections to the Senate; and he has an “A+” for his presidential ranking.

DDT also said he refuses to hear the Jamal Khashoggi tape while he was tortured and dismembered because it’s a “suffering” tape.

Thanksgiving messages from DDT:

Criticism of a court ruling: “Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster.” (Followed by his holiday greetings to the armed forces: “We get a lot of bad court decisions from the Ninth Circuit.”)

Khashoggi’s murder: “It’s a mean & nasty world out there, the Middle East in particular.” (Followed in person by “Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place.”)

Four minutes later: “HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!”

DDT’s fury with the 9^th Circuit Court came from Judge Jon S.Tigar, not a member of the 9th Circuit Court, who temporarily blocked DDT’s plan to keep asylum seekers out of the United States. Tigar wrote, “Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden.” DDT accused Tigar of being an “Obama” judge although he’s kept silent about his own appointments who ruled twice against him in the last week.

DDT’s failure in this attempt follows others when court injunctions blocked his executive orders for punishment of “sanctuary cities,” denial of DACA protections to Dreamers, and “zero tolerance” separating migrant parents and their children. Other DDT losses include the Keystone XL Pipeline, press access to the White House, and the Emoluments Clause.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (D-IA), 85, may be developing memory loss. In response to Chief Justice John Roberts’ rebuke of DDT for denouncing the 9^th Circuit Court, Grassley said that he doesn’t remember Roberts’ criticizing President Obama for his statement that the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United would open the floodgates of wealthy and foreign interests through donations. Roberts praised the “independent judiciary, but President Obama was right in his statements. Roberts did express “concern” for the former’s president’s comments. DDT snapped back at Roberts to claim that there are “Obama” judges; he’s ignoring the recent “Trump justice” who stated a partisan position under oath in a hearing.

DDT displayed more anger at the courts on Friday when a justice from the New York Supreme Court denied his request to dismiss the lawsuit against himself and the Trump Foundation alleging that the so-called charitable foundation violated both state and federal laws for “more than a decade.” The suit claims illegal actions such as improper political activity, “self-dealing transactions,” and refusal to “implement even elementary corporate formalities required by law.”  Justice Saliann Scarpulla rejected the arguments that “a sitting president may not be sued” and that the state court lacks jurisdiction over the president in this case. Her decision means that the case can proceed and may help other cases against DDT in New York and other states, including a defamation case from Summer Zervos.

DDT proved that he controls the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA). The featured speaker for its annual dinner on 4/27/19 is Ron Chernow, biographer of founding fathers Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. Gone are the comedians: DDT didn’t like them. The question is whether anyone else can crack jokes. Another question is how the press will continue to cave. Having gotten rid of the featured comedian at the dinner, DDT said that he might go to the dinner this year, but someone should tell him that the planned speaker called him a “demagogue.”

DDT made $4.2 million for his private businesses from GOP campaign events.

Next week, business as usual. DDT offered to keep the government from shutting down if Congress gives him a wall. Then he went golfing.

DDT kept the Senate in the recent midterm elections, but a conservative publication predicts a substantially slowing economy in the next two years. Goldman Sachs projected the GDP down to 1.8 percent and 1.6 percent in the third and fourth quarters of 2019.

After avoiding service members for 96 weeks, DDT might want to pay them a little visit. His support has fallen in the past two years over two points to under 44 percent while those disapproving of him have gone from 37 percent to over 43 percent. Female service members have a 28 percent approval rating of DDT while males have 47 percent.

This past week, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a safety alert about dangerous E. coli bacteria in romaine lettuce, calling on grocery stores to remove all the produce and restaurants to discard it. Earlier this year, five people died in 210 cases in 36 states.

Thanksgiving is a time to say what you are thankful for, and I always say, “My friends.” Most commanders in chief praise service members in harm’s way; DDT said, “I made a tremendous difference in our country.” In a Coast Guard station, he posed for pictures and told officials that he would give them $100 if they could break par at his golf course. It’s the new normal.