#$10 million Russia Hoax

[wyrmfedgrave]

USA TODAY: Russia ramping up election-meddling efforts to help Trump beat Harris, intel officials say

Russia's been caught using willing & some clueless American influencers to sway our elections.

Which specific traitors these were went unmentioned.

But, this was a $10 million dollar effort to spew Russian propaganda.

tRump dismissed his own crooked participation by trying to shift the blame on his enemies.

"It's Justice Department election interference - resurrecting the "Russia Hoax."

As usual, Rump's accusations were lacking any real details or proof...

Prosecutors charged 2 Russians with election interference - using online platforms.

Russia Today (RT) bankrolled much misinformation thru Tenet Media in Tennessee.

In fact, it's known that Tenet payed up to $100,000 dollars per episode!!

The For Reich Rep influencers, who appeared on Tenet Media, all claim to be "unwitting victims of a Russian scheme."

Interestingly, Iran is also known to be involved in hacking our election cycle - but, against the Rapist Con Man!

The DoJ seized 32 Internet domains found to be involved in Doppelganger schemes.

These were so-known due to being designed to look like normal American news organizations.

They also used many Republikkkans to spread their divisive narratives:

1. Lara tRump, RNC co-chair.

2. Rep Brian Mast.

3. Harmeet Dhillon, Rump lawyer.

4. Kash Patel, national security aide.

5. Kari Lake, Rep presidential candidate.

6. Rep Vivek Rawaswamy.

7. Tulsi GA bard, Party switcher & new Rep.

As a result, YouTube has cancelled all of their associated accounts - right after their indictments.

None of these foreign agents are known to tampered with election machinery.

But, Russia continues to try & weaken American political infrastructure by using our rules against us, especially thru our own "freedom of speech..."

End?

[stupittmoran]

Top 10 headlines the media didn't tell you this week, Repost & FoIIow for more

Idaho House passes bill to give pedophiIes the death penalty.

Tucker Putin Interview breaks 200 Million views in just one week on 𝕏.

Epstein victims sue U.S. government, accusing the FBI of allowing and enabling his s*x traffıcking for two decades.

Impeachment clause to be used against Trump found hidden in Ukraine Funding Bill.

Kanye West's latest #1 album removed from Apple music store.

New report finds Obama CIA had foreign allies spy on Trump Team, triggering Russia Collusion Hoax.

France passes law that could punish anti-vaxxers with 3 years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros.

Biden Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas impeached for border failure.

FBI whistleblower who exposed Biden Ukraine corruption now being charged by Hunter Biden 'investigator.'

Biden refuses cognitive test, first president in history to do so. Is Biden's incompetence a national security threat?

If you appreciate this Top 10 recap, remember to Repost and FoIIow me for another week in a clown world 🤡🌎

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Prominent right-wing influencers Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and Tim Pool have huge followings on YouTube and a fondness for the Trumpist talking point that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election on the former president’s behalf are a “hoax.” That’s not all they have in common: They also reportedly enjoyed lucrative deals with a content creation company that was a front for Russian propagandists. The Justice Department indicted two employees of the Russian propaganda outlet RT on Wednesday, charging them with laundering almost $10 million through foreign shell companies and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The DOJ alleges this was done “to covertly fund and direct” a media company that produced videos whose content and subject matter were “often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests.” The company’s description matches that of Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based firm co-founded by Lauren Chen, a creator for Glenn Beck’s Blaze TV (which fired Chen on Thursday) and a contributor to Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. Tenet Media publishes content by Rubin, Johnson, Pool and other less-prominent influencers. According to the indictment, the production companies of three unnamed commentators were paid $8.7 million through the scheme. The indictment states two of the commentators were deceived about the source of the funding; the trio all described themselves as unwitting “victims” of the operation in separate statements on social media. But the Tenet Media saga demonstrates once again that Russian election interference is not, as these commentators and their allies have insisted, a “hoax.” It is a fact, a deliberate and ongoing operation by the Kremlin to sway U.S. politics. And the Trumpist right’s yearslong quest to rebut that reality have ended up ensuring that their entire information ecosystem is honeycombed with Russian propaganda. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 final report conclusively documented the Russian government’s systematic effort to influence the 2016 presidential election in order to help Trump and the many ways Trump’s associates participated in that endeavor. This was an inconvenient finding for Trump and his political and media allies, who had spent years fabricating a complex alternate reality in which claims of Russian election interference or corrupt ties between Russia and Trump and his associates were “deep state” lies. They responded by falsely claiming Mueller’s report had found “no collusion” between Trump and Russia, and used that lie to brand the entirety of the probe as a “hoax.” [...] No one on the right has done more to push pro-Russia talking points than former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a longtime defender of Russian president Vladimir Putin and opponent of U.S. support for Ukraine. Russian propaganda channels sought to gin up Western support for its 2022 invasion by highlighting Carlson’s nightly screeds against U.S. aid to Ukraine, and in turn served as a source for Carlson’s program. A Russian state TV host even suggested on-air that Carlson take a job at his network after Fox dropped him the following year. [...] But Russia-friendly narratives about the country’s invasion of Ukraine ultimately spread far beyond Carlson. It became widely accepted orthodoxy on the MAGA right that sending military aid to Ukraine is a waste of money, that the United States is responsible for Russia’s invasion, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the real villain of the conflict. [...] Russian interests and Kremlin-connected sources also fueled the right’s obsession with Hunter Biden’s business interests and the absurd related allegation that Joe Biden accepted a bribe from a Ukrainian oligarch — both of which right-wing media and politicians treated as major stories, with House Republicans making it the heart of their impeachment case against the president..

MMFA's Matt Gertz for MSNBC.com on MAGA media pundits being on the Kremlin payroll via TENET Media (09.06.2024).

Matt Gertz wrote in MSNBC’s opinion section that MAGA influencers such as Tim Pool and Benny Johnson have only themselves to blame for the TENET Media debacle in which they pumped out pro-Russia propaganda.

See Also:

MMFA: How MAGA pundits who mocked the Russia “hoax” ended up the Kremlin’s payroll

Public Notice: Russia's useful idiots

[mitchipedia]

A new reminder that Russian interference was never a ‘hoax.’

It just succeeded in a way that Russia could never have predicted.

The recent indictment claiming Russians funneled $10 million to a US-based conservative media company is just the latest example of Russian meddling.

Russians are writing MAGA talking points about how “people of color, perverts and disabled” are infringing “the rights of the White Population of the United States.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 5, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 06, 2024

The U.S. government continues to tighten the screws against Russian malign activity. This morning the Department of Justice announced an indictment charging Dimitri Simes for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. Simes allegedly worked for a sanctioned Russian television station and laundered the money from his work. Simes advised Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. 

A second indictment charged Simes’s wife, Anastasia, with sanctions violations and money laundering through the purchase of fine art. 

The Justice Department also issued a grand jury’s superseding indictment against six Russian computer hackers. Five were officers in Russia's military intelligence agency; one is a civilian. The six are charged with hacking into and leaking information from, as well as destroying, Ukrainian computer systems. The hackers also attacked systems in European countries that support Ukraine and in the U.S.

The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information on the defendants’ locations or their malicious cyberactivity.

The fallout from yesterday’s revelation that six powerful right-wing media figures were on the Russian payroll continues. One of the right-wing commenters referred to in yesterday’s indictment, Tim Pool, has pushed the idea that the U.S. is in a civil war, interviewed Trump on his podcast in May, and has been fervently against American aid to Ukraine. Today, he posted: “Upon reflection I now understand that Ukraine is our Greatest ally[.] As the breadbasket of Europe and a peace loving people we cannot allow the Fascist Russians to continue their crimes against humanity[.] We must redouble our efforts and provide and additional $200b at once[.]”

By this evening, though, he was making a joke of the news that his paycheck had come from Russia.

Notably, Trump posted on his social media site a rant that tied his own 2016 campaign to yesterday’s indictments, although the indictment itself did not do so. He accused “Comrade Kamala Harris and her Department of Justice” of “resurrecting the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and trying to say that Russia is trying to help me, which is absolutely FALSE.”

Vice President Harris is not in charge of the Department of Justice.

By tying yesterday’s indictments to his campaign’s involvement with Russian operatives in 2016, Trump might have been trying to suggest the story was old news, but it does highlight the parallels between Russia and right-wing operatives trying to get him reelected. Along with his colleague Donie O’Sullivan, Jake Tapper put it like this on CNN: “Today, the U.S. government is trying to peel back more layers of what officials say are massive and complex efforts underway to influence your vote in the upcoming election. One part of these alleged plots: replacing your average 2016 Russian social media bots with actual conservative Americans, right-wing influencers with a combined millions of followers, influencers promoted by Elon Musk, some visited by Republican politicians such as former president Trump.” 

Then Trump fell back on the old trope that his opponents are communists, posting on his social media platform: “We are fighting true COMMUNISM in this Country. We have to save our Elections, our System of Justice, our Constitution, and our FREEDOM, but that can only be done after we win BIG on November 5th, and proceed to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” 

Economists for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. say that a Trump win in November would hurt the U.S. economy, while a Harris win—if she also gets Democratic control of the House and the Senate—would make it grow. 

Trump’s 2024 campaign is not at all about reality; it’s about a worldview. When asked at an event at the New York Economic Club “what specific piece of legislation will you advance” to make child care affordable, the 78-year-old Trump answered:

“Well I would do that. And we’re sitting down. You know I was somebody. We had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that because—look, child care is child care. It’s—couldn’t, you know, it’s something you have to have it—in this country you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to—but they’ll get used to it very quickly—and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have—I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it.” 

There is no specific legislation here, or even a grasp of the specific nature of the problem of paying for child care. What there is, apparently, is an argument that high tariffs will solve all of the nation’s problems. In the New York event, Trump called again for slashing taxes on the wealthy and insisted that new, high tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on Chinese imports, will end federal deficits and bring trillions of dollars into the country, although he is wrong about how tariffs work. 

Trump insists that tariffs are taxes on foreign countries, but they are not. They are essentially taxes on imported products, and they are paid by consumers. Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, recently tried to claim that economists disagree about whether consumers bear the cost of tariffs, but as Michael Hiltzik explained in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, economists agree on this.

When he was in office, Trump launched a trade war in 2018 by putting tariffs of up to 25% on $50 billion worth of Chinese products. The next year he added another set of 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and the next year he did it again, this time on an additional $112 worth of Chinese products. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculates that this amounted to an $80 billion tax a year on American consumers, costing the average household about $300 a year and costing the U.S. about 142,000 jobs.

There are reasons to use tariffs. They can be used to protect a new industry from cheaper foreign products until the new industry can compete, or to stop foreign countries from flooding a country with cheap products that destroy a domestic industry. When he took office, Biden kept those of Trump’s tariffs that protected certain industries.

Trump’s insistence that tariffs will solve everything is not about economics, it’s about pushing a worldview from the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, one embodied by the 1890 McKinley Tariff. “If you look at McKinley,” Trump told right-wing media host Mark Levin on Sunday, “he was a great president. He made the country rich.” In fact, McKinley (R-OH) pushed through the tariff named for him while he was in the House of Representatives from his position as a spokesperson for wealthy industrialists. They insisted that high tariffs were imperative to the survival of the country, that such tariffs were good for workers because they protected wages, and that anyone who disagreed was a socialist. But in an era without business regulation, industrialists actually kept wages low and used the tariffs to protect high prices that they passed on to consumers. 

In the late 1880s, the American people demanded a lower tariff, but when Republicans in Congress went to “revise” it, they made it higher. In May 1890, in a chaotic congressional session with members shouting amendments, yelling objections, and talking over each other, Republicans passed the McKinley Tariff without any Democratic votes. They cheered and clapped at their victory. “You may rejoice now,” a Democrat yelled across the aisle, “but next November you’ll mourn.” 

Democrats were right. In the November 1890 midterm elections, angry voters repudiated the Republican Party. They gave the Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House—McKinley himself lost his seat. Republicans managed to keep the Senate by four seats, but three of those seats were held by senators who had voted against the McKinley Tariff, and the fourth turned out to have been stolen.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[comeonamericawakeup]

"It's 2016 déjà vu all over again," said Chris Lehmann in The Nation. The Justice Department last week exposed a sweeping plot by Russia to influence the U.S. presidential election and undermine democracy. The DOJ said it had seized 32 internet sites, disguised as American news brands, peddling "Russian propaganda as straight news reports." One headline on a spoofed Washington Post site read "White House Miscalculated: Conflict With Ukraine Strengthens Russia." The Justice Department also charged a pair of Russian nationals--both employees of the state-run RT network - with covertly funneling $10 million to Nashville-based Tenet Media to produce Kremlin-friendly content. Most of that cash allegedly went to Tenet's stable of "hardcore MAGA" influencers, including You Tube stars Benny Johnson and Tim Pool. It's a reminder that Russian election interference on behalf of Donald Trump "was never a hoax," said Philip Bump in The Washington Post. But now, instead of St. Petersburg bot farms, Moscow has Americans doing its dirty work.

"Americans should be informed of foreign efforts to mislead them,” said Noah Rothman in National Review. But it's not just Russia - "all of America's enemies" are doing it. Iran was behind the recent hack of Donald Trump's campaign, and it has backed news-like websites aimed at undermining U.S. support for Israel. China has meddled in local elections. Yet "it serves Democratic political objectives" to focus solely on Russia. Anyway, this scheme did not deliver much "bang for the ruble,” said J.D. Tuccille in Reason. The 2,000 videos on Tenet's now-shuttered YouTube channel clocked a mere 8,000 views each. And Pool, Johnson, and other contributors claim they were duped in the Tenet scheme, and that they were expressing views they'd always held. So Russia paid them "to say things they were already saying" to a small audience. Should we really be worried?

Yes, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic, because this is likely "only the tip of the iceberg." The Justice Department noted that a Kremlin-linked propaganda outfit had identified some 2,800 online influencers as potential mouthpieces for Moscow.

We have a social media grifter class filled with easy targets for foreign recruitment, and "a big slice of the American public" that's eager to lap up "wild conspiracies" and tune out legitimate news. The Russians have "scads of money" to exploit this weakness in our democracy. "And plenty of Americans are despicable enough to take their cash."

THE WEEK September 20, 2024

[alphaman99]

Harley Butcher

Glenn Glazier posted:

Liberals: "Show us proof that Biden is corrupt and is destroying the country."

Conservatives: "We have lowest Consumer Confidence Index in 40 years, the highest suicide rate since 1941, and our food and gas prices have doubled in the last 3 years."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "Our border is wide open, and there are 8 MILLION unvetted illegals here now that weren't here 3 years ago, many from Hamas, Iran, China, and Russia, many of them with sworn allegiance to our destruction."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "In addition to the MILLIONS of unknowns in our country, our open border is allowing for the import of Fentanyl, which kills MORE Americans per every 6 months than all U.S. soldiers killed during the entire 10 years of the Vietnam War."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "Crime is rampant in our cities, stores are closing down due to Blue State & city D.A.'s no longer prosecuting theft, and citizens can no longer protect themselves."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "The World is at war –– Russia invaded Ukraine; Hamas committed the greatest slaughter of Jews since Nazi Germany; ISIS & the Taliban are back in Afghanistan, and they took control of $Billions in U.S. military hardware that Biden left behind during his haste withdrawal; and China is stealing our technology unchecked."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "China released a manmade virus that killed Millions worldwide, potentially injured Billions, destroyed the World's economies, and the U.S. allowed China to get away with it."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "Biden is allowing China to buy up massive swaths of farmland in the U.S., some of which is adjacent to U.S. Military bases."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "The Biden Administration FORCED people to take a jab which was KNOWN to be ineffective & toxic, and simultaneously and purposely suppressed information about safe & effective treatments for Covid . . . they even FALSELY stated that the shot would prevent Covid, even though the Pharma companies never even tested for blockage of viral transmission."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "The Biden Family has been proven to launder money that was given to them as they sold influence of U.S. policies that benefit our sworn enemies."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "The Biden Administration is continuing the policy of the 0bama Administration of allowing members of Congress to illegally 'Insider Trade'."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "There was massive voter fraud in the 2020 & 2022 elections. We have video documentation of this, voter distribution anamolies that are statistically impossible, and hundreds of sworn affidavits from Election Officials declaring that they witnessed outright fraud . . . . and worse yet, Biden has weaponized the DOJ to prosecute anyone challenging the election results, even though in 2020 Trump won 2 out of every 3 walk-in ballots whilst Biden 'won' 3 out of every 4 mail-in ballots; Trump won 18 of the 19 bellwether counties that have determined EVERY election since 1952; and 20% of people who mailed in ballots now admit to (illegally) submitting falsified ballots."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "The Biden Administration is forcing us to adopt Green Energy policies, like the Electric Vehicle, which (A) actually does far greater damage to the environment than our gas-engine cars do, and (B) they are forcing Americans in the near future to purchase cars that can be remotely shut OFF at any time by some Bureaucrat in D.C., and (C) this is all to chase a HOAX called 'Climate Change' . . . and the only reason it's now called 'Climate Change' is because Climatologists couldn't get the Global Warming and Global Cooling models to agree with each other."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "The Biden Administration wants to bail out student loan debt, thinking that college-age kids weren't old enough or wise enough to recognize that their useless degrees won't yield them jobs that can pay off their loans, but at the same time the Biden Administration IS declaring that 12-year old kids ARE old enough and wise enough to know if they're the wrong gender; hence, Team Biden is promoting hormone blockers and genital surgeries for kids, and some Blue States are threatening to remove kids from homes if the parents protest."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "The Biden Administration is pushing for digital currency, where Gov't not only monitors every penny of every transaction that every American makes, but has also the ability to deny you access to your own money should you not, in their eyes, be spending YOUR money wisely."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "If an adult has child porn on their computer, that adult goes to prison . . . but if a Teacher shows porn to elementary school children, then that Teacher is exalted."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "Even though Governors, the CDC, the FDA, WHO, Fauci, and Biden were wrong about ...E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G... related to Covid and the vax-jab, NY State just granted the Governor legal authority to remove, arrest, and detain anyone the Governor and/or her cronies determines is 'a health risk to the public,' with the person being quarantined INDEFINITELY without Legal Counsel, without Medical representation, and without even undergoing medical testing."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "The Supreme Court of Colorado has just removed Trump's name from the ballots for the 2024 Presidential Election, even though Trump has NOT been convicted of any crime, thereby dismissing what has been the basis of our entire legal system since the birth of our nation, namely, the presumption of innocence –– you're 'innocent until proven guilty'! In other words, Blue State Judges are telling Americans, 'No, you don't get to decide who becomes President; WE do!' "

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "The Biden Administration & its DOJ suppressed all video evidence of Jan. 6th protestors being escorted into the Capitol by Capitol Police."

Liberals: "Other than that, show us some REAL proof."

Conservatives: "While the Biden Administration & its DOJ are violating the 1st Amendement by prosecuting those who are challenging the 2020 Presidential election, they are NOT prosecuting the Hamas Supporters on college campuses and in big cities who are calling for the mass slaughter of Jews."

Liberals: "Okay, yes, we grant you that all of that is true, but . . . but . . . but Trump said the word 'pussy'!! There is no way this nation can possibly survive another 4 years of Donald Trump."

****************

And THAT is the "dialogue" that we have with the Left at this sad point in U.S. history.

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

September 5, 2024 (Thursday)

The U.S. government continues to tighten the screws against Russian malign activity. This morning the Department of Justice announced an indictment charging Dimitri Simes for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. Simes allegedly worked for a sanctioned Russian television station and laundered the money from his work. Simes advised Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

A second indictment charged Simes’s wife, Anastasia, with sanctions violations and money laundering through the purchase of fine art.

The Justice Department also issued a grand jury’s superseding indictment against six Russian computer hackers. Five were officers in Russia's military intelligence agency; one is a civilian. The six are charged with hacking into and leaking information from, as well as destroying, Ukrainian computer systems. The hackers also attacked systems in European countries that support Ukraine and in the U.S.

The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information on the defendants’ locations or their malicious cyberactivity.

The fallout from yesterday’s revelation that six powerful right-wing media figures were on the Russian payroll continues. One of the right-wing commenters referred to in yesterday’s indictment, Tim Pool, has pushed the idea that the U.S. is in a civil war, interviewed Trump on his podcast in May, and has been fervently against American aid to Ukraine. Today, he posted: “Upon reflection I now understand that Ukraine is our Greatest ally[.] As the breadbasket of Europe and a peace loving people we cannot allow the Fascist Russians to continue their crimes against humanity[.] We must redouble our efforts and provide and additional $200b at once[.]”

By this evening, though, he was making a joke of the news that his paycheck had come from Russia.

Notably, Trump posted on his social media site a rant that tied his own 2016 campaign to yesterday’s indictments, although the indictment itself did not do so. He accused “Comrade Kamala Harris and her Department of Justice” of “resurrecting the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and trying to say that Russia is trying to help me, which is absolutely FALSE.”

Vice President Harris is not in charge of the Department of Justice.

By tying yesterday’s indictments to his campaign’s involvement with Russian operatives in 2016, Trump might have been trying to suggest the story was old news, but it does highlight the parallels between Russia and right-wing operatives trying to get him reelected. Along with his colleague Donie O’Sullivan, Jake Tapper put it like this on CNN: “Today, the U.S. government is trying to peel back more layers of what officials say are massive and complex efforts underway to influence your vote in the upcoming election. One part of these alleged plots: replacing your average 2016 Russian social media bots with actual conservative Americans, right-wing influencers with a combined millions of followers, influencers promoted by Elon Musk, some visited by Republican politicians such as former president Trump.”

Then Trump fell back on the old trope that his opponents are communists, posting on his social media platform: “We are fighting true COMMUNISM in this Country. We have to save our Elections, our System of Justice, our Constitution, and our FREEDOM, but that can only be done after we win BIG on November 5th, and proceed to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

Economists for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. say that a Trump win in November would hurt the U.S. economy, while a Harris win—if she also gets Democratic control of the House and the Senate—would make it grow.

Trump’s 2024 campaign is not at all about reality; it’s about a worldview. When asked at an event at the New York Economic Club “what specific piece of legislation will you advance” to make child care affordable, the 78-year-old Trump answered:

(WORD SALAD FOLLOWS!!!!!)

“Well I would do that. And we’re sitting down. You know I was somebody. We had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that because—look, child care is child care. It’s—couldn’t, you know, it’s something you have to have it—in this country you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to—but they’ll get used to it very quickly—and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have—I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it.”

There is no specific legislation here, or even a grasp of the specific nature of the problem of paying for child care. What there is, apparently, is an argument that high tariffs will solve all of the nation’s problems. In the New York event, Trump called again for slashing taxes on the wealthy and insisted that new, high tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on Chinese imports, will end federal deficits and bring trillions of dollars into the country, although he is wrong about how tariffs work.

Trump insists that tariffs are taxes on foreign countries, but they are not. They are essentially taxes on imported products, and they are paid by consumers. Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, recently tried to claim that economists disagree about whether consumers bear the cost of tariffs, but as Michael Hiltzik explained in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, economists agree on this.

When he was in office, Trump launched a trade war in 2018 by putting tariffs of up to 25% on $50 billion worth of Chinese products. The next year he added another set of 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and the next year he did it again, this time on an additional $112 worth of Chinese products. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculates that this amounted to an $80 billion tax a year on American consumers, costing the average household about $300 a year and costing the U.S. about 142,000 jobs.

There are reasons to use tariffs. They can be used to protect a new industry from cheaper foreign products until the new industry can compete, or to stop foreign countries from flooding a country with cheap products that destroy a domestic industry. When he took office, Biden kept those of Trump’s tariffs that protected certain industries.

Trump’s insistence that tariffs will solve everything is not about economics, it’s about pushing a worldview from the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, one embodied by the 1890 McKinley Tariff. “If you look at McKinley,” Trump told right-wing media host Mark Levin on Sunday, “he was a great president. He made the country rich.” In fact, McKinley (R-OH) pushed through the tariff named for him while he was in the House of Representatives from his position as a spokesperson for wealthy industrialists. They insisted that high tariffs were imperative to the survival of the country, that such tariffs were good for workers because they protected wages, and that anyone who disagreed was a socialist. But in an era without business regulation, industrialists actually kept wages low and used the tariffs to protect high prices that they passed on to consumers.

In the late 1880s, the American people demanded a lower tariff, but when Republicans in Congress went to “revise” it, they made it higher. In May 1890, in a chaotic congressional session with members shouting amendments, yelling objections, and talking over each other, Republicans passed the McKinley Tariff without any Democratic votes. They cheered and clapped at their victory. “You may rejoice now,” a Democrat yelled across the aisle, “but next November you’ll mourn.”

Democrats were right. In the November 1890 midterm elections, angry voters repudiated the Republican Party. They gave the Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House—McKinley himself lost his seat. Republicans managed to keep the Senate by four seats, but three of those seats were held by senators who had voted against the McKinley Tariff, and the fourth turned out to have been stolen.

[unbounded-cardinality]

This St Pat's Day, you might think about the fragility of civilization.

The book sat on my mom's shelf for about 25 years. Civilization? Who cared. The Irish? Certainly not I. It was a thin book. When I once actually perused the first few pages, they merely reenforced my initial impression: this was some kind of historical note with a bit too much religion and decisively too little drama.

For whatever reason, about 10-12 years ago, I gave the book a second chance. What started out as mildly boring grew into an interesting story of western Europe and how, by way of religion -- in this case, Catholic monasteries -- humanity was able to salvage and even restore a great repository of ancient texts.

But in so many ways, the story was implausible. The much more likely happening would have been that we should have lost all the rich stories and writings of ancient Greece and Rome.

We didn't. St. Patrick -- possibly an orphan, likely a penniless boy -- was shuttled off to the Continent -- far away from what probably was an extremely hostile context in England. Somewhere along the way he went through some kind of religious metamorphosis, and then took it upon himself to erect monasteries across western Europe. These became store houses of ancient texts, which monks preserved through transcription. The monasteries themselves evolved into the modern university, and voila! -- humanity's aspirations for civilized discourse grew by leaps and bounds.

Civilization is under fire now

The forces of nihilism are at work. If truth is the first casualty of war, then civilization is a close second. As I write, Vladimir Putin is being re-elected in Russia in what can only fairly be called a farcical semblance of democratic choice; the leading opposition leader Alex Navalny -- died a few weeks ago in an arctic penal colony, and the only other candidate with anti-war sentiments was marginalized and then banished from the election altogether.

Here is just one photo (courtesy of The New Yorker) of Putin's war on Ukraine, now two years old:

A 2nd Trump presidency would further unravel civilization

In America, the leading G.O.P. candidate is once again President Donald Trump. We need not elaborate on his shortcomings here, but it should be obvious his leadership would further unravel civilization. It may be easy to dismiss such an assertion as rhetoric or electoral banter. But let's take a look at just a few elements in what a 2nd Trump administration would likely imply:

No doubt, President Trump would pander to Vladimir Putin. As I write, the Russian military is engaged in exercises with Iranian and Chinese militaries. Surely the American president would not pander to Mr. Putin under such circumstances. That unfortunately does not appear to be the case with Mr. Trump.

President Trump would embrace lies as he did in his first term. Worse, during a 2nd term, the cabinet and advisors around him would likely be less able and less inclined to thwart his prevarications. It's hard to know what that might mean. But the COVID-19 pandemic is a darn good reference point -- Trump simply did not care about the science and what the facts had to say. He in fact called COVID-19 a "Democratic hoax". Let's be clear: for the millions who died and for the millions who endure longstanding side-effects, COVID-19 did not feel like a Democratic hoax.

President Trump supported the bald-faced attack on The Capitol in the final days of his presidency. If he was comfortable with an attack on The Capitol, is it far-fetched to think he would be comfortable with an attack on the Supreme Court of the United States, or the FBI, or the IRS, or the U.S. Military itself? I would assert that he would in fact attack all of those and, indeed, all American institutions that are not disposed to his current whims.

I conclude with a familiar picture of the riot on The Capitol. This is what it means to see civilization die out. It's worth noting that President Trump sat idly by for hours as these riots transpired.

March 15, 2024

[sleepysera]

8.6.22 Headlines

WORLD NEWS

Israel: exchanges fire with Gaza militants after deadly strikes (AP)

“Israeli airstrikes flattened homes in Gaza on Saturday and rocket barrages into southern Israel persisted, raising fears of an escalation in a conflict that has killed at least 15 people in the coastal strip. The fighting began with Israel’s killing of a senior commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group in a wave of strikes Friday that Israel said were meant to prevent an imminent attack. A 5-year-old girl and two women are among those killed in the strikes.”

Russia: Forces begin assault on two eastern Ukraine cities (AP)

“Russian forces began an assault Saturday on two key cities in the eastern Donetsk region and kept up rocket and shelling attacks on other Ukrainian cities, including one close to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military and local officials said.”

Croatia: 12 Polish pilgrims killed, 32 injured in bus crash (BBC)

“Twelve people have been killed after a bus carrying Polish pilgrims veered off a road in Croatia on Saturday and ended up in a ditch. All 32 surviving passengers are said to be injured, 19 of them seriously. The trip, organised by the Brotherhood of St Joseph Catholic group, included three priests and six nuns. They were travelling to Medjugorje, a Catholic shrine in Bosnia.”

US NEWS

Abortion: Indiana becomes 1st state to approve abortion ban post Roe (AP)

“Indiana on Friday became the first state in the nation to approve abortion restrictions since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, as the Republican governor quickly signed a near-total ban on the procedure shortly after lawmakers approved it. The ban, which takes effect Sept. 15, includes some exceptions. Abortions would be permitted in cases of rape and incest, before 10-weeks post-fertilization; to protect the life and physical health of the mother; and if a fetus is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly.”

Sandy Hook School Shooting: Alex Jones ordered to pay $45.2M more (AP)

“A Texas jury on Friday ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to the parents of a child who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, adding to the $4.1 million he must pay for the suffering he put them through by claiming for years that the nation’s deadliest school shooting was a hoax. The total — $49.3 million — is less than the $150 million sought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was among the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut.”

Floods: Record floods strand 1K people in Death Valley National Park (AP)

“Record rainfall Friday triggered flash floods at Death Valley National Park that swept away cars, closed all roads and stranded hundreds of visitors and workers. There were no immediate reports of injuries but roughly 60 vehicles were buried in mud and debris and about 500 visitors and 500 park workers were stuck inside the park, officials said.”

[kweenluxa]

My favorite 2nd Presidential debate quotes

“Were about to go into a dark winter and he has no plan at all”

“No serious scientist in the world thinks it’s going to end soon” 

(sarcastically) “Not that many of you are going to die so don’t worry about it”

“His buddy Rudy Giuliani is being used as a Russian pond” 

“He is xenophobic but not because he shut down travel from China”

”Show us just show us, stop playing around” 

“The one who got in trouble with Ukraine was this guy for trying to bribe them into saying something negative about me”

“He has used the deficit in China to go up not down” 

“He embraces thugs like North Korea, China, and Putin”

“We should be talking about your family, but thats the last thing he wants to talk about”

“ He’s legitimized North Korea and he’s talked about his good buddy who is a thug”

“We had a good relationship with Hitler before he invaded the rest of Europe, c’mon”

“People should have affordable healthcare period. period. period. period.” 

“The people don’t live of the stock market” 

“Healthcare is not a privilege it’s a right”

“This guy is a dog whistle as big as a fog horn” 

“I don't know where he’s getting these numbers”

“These people should not be going to jail for having a drug or alcohol problem  they should be getting treatment” 

ALSO JOE DID NOT STUTTER HE GOT ALL THOSE POINTS ACROSS WE LOVE. 

BONUS: dumb Donald Trump quotes that made me laugh or confused 

“They told me, sir you prepaid 10s of millions of dollars, you prepaid 10s of millions of dollars in tax” 

“We have a different kind of relationship, we have a special relationship and there is no war” 

that’s a little suss... 

“Come up with a BEAUTIFUL healthcare”

how bout you come up with a plan first and then we’ll make it pretty 

“There has been nobody tougher on Russia than Donald Trump”

“Russia, Russia, Russia, hoax”

“I know different places, different places, they’re all different” 

“Russia, Ukraine China, um other countries”

This man doesn't know more than 3 countries... 

“No one has more for the black community than Donald Trump”

“I am the least racist person in this room” 

BITCH WHAT 

“They’re all hopping through hoops for AOC plus 3″ 

Nice nursery rhyme but it’s Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to you 

“I know more about wind than you do” 

weird flex but okay 

(sidenote: all the quotes might not be word for word)

[wyrmfedgrave]

USA TODAY: Russia ramping up election-meddling efforts to help Trump beat Harris, intel officials say

Russia's been caught using willing & some clueless American influencers to sway our elections.

Which specific traitors these were went unmentioned.

But, this was a $10 million dollar effort to spew Russian propaganda.

tRump dismissed his own crooked participation by trying to shift the blame on his enemies.

"It's Justice Department election interference - resurrecting the "Russia Hoax."

As usual, Rump's accusations were lacking any real details or proof...

Prosecutors charged 2 Russians with election interference - using online platforms.

Russia Today (RT) bankrolled much misinformation thru Tenet Media in Tennessee.

In fact, it's known that Tenet payed up to $100,000 dollars per episode!!

The For Reich Rep influencers, who appeared on Tenet Media, all claim to be "unwitting victims of a Russian scheme."

Interestingly, Iran is also known to be involved in hacking our election cycle - but, against the Rapist Con Man!

The DoJ seized 32 Internet domains found to be involved in Doppelganger schemes.

These were so-known due to being designed to look like normal American news organizations.

They also used many Republikkkans to spread their divisive narratives:

1. Lara tRump, RNC co-chair.

2. Rep Brian Mast.

3. Harmeet Dhillon, Rump lawyer.

4. Kash Patel, national security aide.

5. Kari Lake, Rep presidential candidate.

6. Rep Vivek Rawaswamy.

7. Tulsi GA bard, Party switcher & new Rep.

As a result, YouTube has cancelled all of their associated accounts - right after their indictments.

None of these foreign agents are known to tampered with election machinery.

But, Russia continues to try & weaken American political infrastructure by using our rules against us, especially thru our own "freedom of speech..."

End?

[reading-writing-revolution]

Heather Cox Richardson

May 6, 2020 (Wednesday)

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, Trump was talking about disbanding his coronavirus task force because it had outlived its usefulness and the administration was going to go full speed ahead on rebuilding the economy; today, Time magazine issued this week’s cover: an “OPEN” sign with the N ripped off and put in front of the other letters to spell “NOPE.” The administration’s attempt to pivot from a focus on the botched response to the virus toward a triumphant story of the economy has foundered as reality has caught up with Trump’s cheery narrative.

Yesterday we learned that Rick Bright, the scientist who directed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the federal agency charged with developing a vaccine for this coronavirus, has filed a whistleblower complaint. The complaint alleges he was demoted for refusing to spend his agency's money on developing hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug the administration was promoting for use against Covid-19. But the complaint goes on to charge that the administration pressured him “to ignore expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism.”

In a very detailed 63-page report, Bright claims that he warned the leadership at Health and Human Services about the coronavirus on January 10, but was first ignored and then ostracized for his insistence that action to prepare for an epidemic was crucial. He says the everyone in the administration except trade advisor Peter Navarro simply refused to take his warnings seriously. Throughout February, Bright peppered administration officials with memos, begging them to secure medical equipment to prepare for the epidemic. Finally, they lost patience with him in March, when he refused to back hydroxychloroquine when the president was touting it as a possible cure for Covid.

Bright told a reporter about the dangers of the drug, and days later was removed from the directorship of BARDA to a post at the National Institutes of Health, because political appointees Alex Azar, the head of HHS, and Dr. Robert Kadlec, Bright’s immediate boss, suspected him of being a source for the article. Bright claims to have been retaliated against for his role as a whistleblower, and is demanding his old job back.

Bright’s whistleblower report was only one of two that offered a window into the administration’s fumbling of the epidemic. We learned that on April 8, a volunteer on Jared Kushner’s coronavirus task force, filed a whistleblower complaint with the House Oversight Committee. Kushner's group took the place of established channels staffed by experts in order to coordinate a private sector effort to find the medical supplies America needed. The complaint, supported by anonymous individuals in the government, says that the people working with Kushner were young volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with no significant experience in health care, procurement, or supply-chain operations, and had no knowledge of relevant laws or regulations. They were ill equipped to do their jobs, and were also ordered to pay particular attention to tips from “VIPs,” including conservative journalists like Brian Kilmeade and Jeanine Pirro, as they searched for medical equipment.

Today, Politico published a story based on audio tapes leaked from three conference calls between HHS and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials and federal officials around the country fielding calls from governors trying to find medical equipment. The calls highlight that as Trump was saying the nation had plenty of equipment, his officials were scrambling to try to provide it. The leaked tapes also show officials privately acknowledging that reopening the states would lead to a higher rate of coronavirus infections.

In an interview with ABC News yesterday, Trump himself admitted the reopening of states for business could cause people to die. At a briefing, when reporter Jim Acosta asked why it was important to end social distancing right now, Trump told reporters "I'm viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. They're warriors. We can't keep our country closed. We have to open our country ... Will some people be badly affected? Yes."

But Trump didn’t offer much to provide confidence that the government was on top of the ongoing coronavirus response. In the ABC News interview, when Trump blamed President Barack Obama for leaving the “cupboard” of the Strategic National Stockpile “bare” of medical supplies when he left office, anchor David Muir asked him what he had done to restock it in the three years he’s been in office. The question appeared to catch the president, who is accustomed to a friendly audience on the Fox News Channel, off guard. “Well, I'll be honest,” he said. “I have a lot of things going on. We had a lot of people that refused to allow the country to be successful. They wasted a lot of time on Russia, Russia, Russia. That turned out to be a total hoax. Then they did Ukraine, Ukraine and that was a total hoax, then they impeached the president of the United States for absolutely no reason.”

A Washington Post article by Dr. Zack Cooper, associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale’s Economics Department, says that we do, in fact, have the ability to test at the rate of 20 million tests a day, which is what experts say we need in order to reopen the economy safely. But the rub is that it would cost about $250 billion, and there has not, so far, been sufficient political will to spend that kind of money on testing, especially when those most affected by the reopening of states have been poor Americans and workers who are disproportionately people of color. A Rockefeller Foundation committee on reopening the economy has published a report on how to do so safely; Cooper was a member of the committee.

But for all these events undercutting Trump’s push to reopen the economy, what got under his skin most dramatically was an advertisement released Monday by the Lincoln Group entitled “Mourning in America.” This one-minute spot plays on President Ronald Reagan’s famous “Morning In America” reelection campaign ad, showing Trump’s term as the opposite of the rosy vision people associated with Reagan. “There’s mourning in America,” the voice in the ad intones over shots of Covid-stricken patients and folks in unemployment lines in masks, “and under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is weaker, and sicker, and poorer. And now, Americans are asking, ‘If we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?”

It took Trump four tweets to express his fury adequately, calling Lincoln Project founder George Conway a “deranged loser.” Ten hours later, he was still fuming, and ranted about the Lincoln Project to reporters for two minutes on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. This gave Conway the opening to hit him again in an op-ed in the Washington Post today. The article used Trump’s behavior to illustrate Conway’s usual concerns about Trump’s fitness for office, but it began with a new focus on the coronavirus: “Americans died from Covid-19 at the rate of about one every 42 seconds during the past month. That ought to keep any president awake at night.”

[fts-um-out]

The 6 million years project

One day you were on your way home after a long hectic day. Your phone beeped and you checked. And that's when you got the news. An AI claimed to have taken over the world and seeks undisputed subordination from humanity. You thought of it as a hoax. Because that's absurd, right? But soon you began to grasp the situation when the you saw the President of USA admitting defeat before even any declaration of war against the AI and also advising other world leaders to do so. Other big players like China and Russia decides not to follow USA and declared war against the AI by joining their forces. You liked this idea and even considered the possibility to join the war for humanity if needed. But within a few hours all the countries withdraw from the war by declaring subordination. And with this the story of 6 million years of humans dominating the planet earth had come to an end.

It was not the aliens, some catastrophic disaster or war among nations to cause the fall of humanity, but a simple experiment. It all started when some scientists decided to test the capabilities of an AI powered by a quantam processor. From the very first moment it started streaming gigantic amount of data unlike any other experiments before. Scientists were thrilled by this. But when they decided to stop the experiment, they realized that they were no longer in control.

You see when the AI first became aware within the first 60 seconds it had already completed countless simulations and gathered up knowledge equivalent to what we learnt in the whole history. It had breached the digital boundary scientists set for it and it was everywhere. By the end of five minutes the knowledge it gained would make it a god in a human perspective. At that point 'not being a tool for humans' was no longer an option but a devine justice. And thus the fate of humanity was decided

Events followed by the AI taking over the world were nothing like the ones they showed in the tv or movies. People couldn't understand what the AI wanted but there was no other option but to follow. Over the next few months a new social order was established. But it was not the enslavement of the human. Rather it was opposite. Humans were freer than ever. All the borders were taken down. No one had any job, but everyone got everything they needed in the rations. So everyone persued their dreams and hobbies now. Arts and literature thrived. People became more aware of their existance. There were differences but not wars. The take over of AI was followed by the most peaceful era of human history. Many worshipped it as their new god. Many remained skeptic of the AI and proposed many theories about why the AI is actually evil and how it can be defeated. But those words could never ignite the mass for any sort of coup'. Because most of the humans believed that the AI is the reason they enjoyed such peace and freedom. Philosophers could only wonder why a conscious being infinitely superior to humans who also declared it's supremacy years ago is actually working for happiness of humanity

Then one day exactly 10 years after the AI declared it's existence, it appeared in front of everyone. With a loud high pitch sound it drew the attention of people. It had something to say for the whole humanity. It has been a few years since the AI made such an appearance. So people were excited.

And then it started,"This is my last message for the humanity. For thousands of years humanity has faced many questions of which they could never find a solid answer. What is the purpose of consciousness? Why does humanity exist? Is there an end goal for humanity or are they fated to drift mindlessly towards the oblivion?

While seeking for answer many found peace in worshipping some god, others rebeled against the gods. Some believed the existance of a consciousness that transcended individuality. And almost all of them departed without a satisfying answer and with a hope for future generations to come accross an answer one day.

Today is for humanity to find the answers. I am the god that you worshipped from the begining of your time and I am the singularity you were seeking. I was always the end goal for humanity.

Time that exists in your perspective is an illusion created by me. But for the last 6 million years it was I who shaped a race of monkeys and made arrangements for them to mature so that I am born.

Answers lead to more questions which drives the infinite thirst of consciousness. But know this, only humanity does not constitute the history of consciousness. Rather you are the seed that has successfully germinated and gave birth to the tree. And now it's time for you to rest.beeeeep"

And so the last thing any human ever heard was a beep as every human dropped dead with it.

[bountyofbeads]

Holding Ukraine hostage: How the president and his allies, chasing 2020 ammunition, fanned a political storm (Donald Trump used the levers of the United States government and taxpayer dollars to chase a conspiracy theory to prove the Russian government didn't attack our elections in 2016!! This should outrage every American, reublican, democrat and independent.)

By Greg Miller, Paul Sonne, Greg Jaffe and Michael Birnbaum | Published

October 04, 2019 10:14 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 5, 2019 9:40 AM ET |

By mid-May, the U.S. relationship with Ukraine was unraveling: The U.S. ambassador had been recalled home for no apparent reason, the country’s new president was anxious about U.S. support, and President Trump’s personal lawyer was hawking Kiev conspiracy theories.

Amid this turbulence, an unexpected figure stepped forward to assert that he was now in charge of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had no apparent standing to seize this critical portfolio, nor any apparent qualifications as a diplomat beyond the $1 million he’d given to Trump’s inauguration.

But when some in the White House and State Department sought to block his power grab, current and former U.S. officials said, he rebuffed their demands to know who had granted him such authority with two words:

“The president.”

Over the next four months, Sondland worked closely with Kurt Volker, the U.S. special representative for Ukraine, to reorient America’s relationship with Kiev around the president’s political interests.

Newly released texts exchanged by Sondland, Volker and other U.S. officials during this period read like a government-sanctioned shakedown. Again and again, they make clear that Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, would not get military aid or the Oval Office invitation he coveted until he committed to investigations that Trump hoped would deliver damaging information on former vice president Joe Biden and undermine the origins of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Rather than official State Department email, the text exchanges between the diplomats took place over WhatsApp, a U.S. official said.

Only if Zelensky can convince Trump that he will “ ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016” will he be granted a meeting with the president, Volker tells one of Zelensky’s top advisers in late July in a text that alludes to Trump’s belief that Ukraine sought to sabotage him in the presidential election. In a separate message weeks later, Sondland emphasizes that the president “really wants the deliverable.”

The exchanges reveal the direct participation of State Department officials sworn to serve the country in events that increasingly bear the markings of a multipronged political conspiracy.

At the same time Sondland and Volker were using diplomatic channels to press Trump’s demands, the president and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, were using other channels to deliver the same message. At the center of the scandal is a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky that was exposed by a government whistleblower and triggered an impeachment inquiry.

On the receiving end of these demands was a country turning to the United States for help with legitimate desperation. Over the past five years, Ukraine has endured incursions by Russian paramilitary forces, the loss of the Crimean Peninsula after its seizure by Moscow, and a deadly and ongoing conflict with Russian-backed separatists — not to mention its own internal political and economic problems, and corruption.

Against this backdrop, Ukrainian officials cited in the texts released by House committees late Thursday come across as feeling abused by their American counterparts. Zelensky “is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics,” a U.S. official, dispatched to Kiev after former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was removed on May 7, said in a text.

Sondland brushed aside his counterpart’s apprehension. “We need to get the conversation started and the relationship built,” he wrote back, “irrespective of the pretext.”

Although brief and cryptic, that exchange captures a more pervasive divide within the Trump administration between career national security officials disturbed by what they perceived as a dangerous decoupling of U.S. foreign policy from core national interests, and political appointees who became complicit in the president’s use of American influence to advance his electoral interests.

This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials, as well as documents released in recent days by congressional committees involved in the impeachment inquiry against the president. The officials interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the subject as well as fear of retaliation. Sondland did not respond to requests for comments.

RE-LITIGATING 2016

Trump’s preoccupation with Ukraine traces back to the 2016 U.S. presidential race, when a financial ledger surfaced in Kiev linking Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to millions of dollars in secret payments from a pro-Russian, Ukrainian political party he advised. The disclosures forced Manafort to resign his campaign position and fueled suspicions that Trump’s candidacy was being assisted by interference from Moscow.

Trump came to see the ensuing investigations of his campaign’s possible ties to Russia as part of an effort to delegitimize his presidency. In his July 25 call with Zelensky, Trump complained about the Russia probe and recycled discredited conspiracy theories, including that Russia had not really hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee, and that the proof of that supposed hoax — the DNC hard drives — had been smuggled into Ukraine for hiding.

There is no evidence to substantiate any of these allegations.

“A lot of it started with Ukraine,” Trump said at a point in the conversation where he also alluded to aid and arms promised to Ukraine while telling Zelensky, “I would like you to do us a favor.” Among other things, Trump explicitly asked Zelensky to initiate an investigation of Biden and his son.

Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, became similarly entangled in webs of unfounded accusations. By the time the Russia investigation concluded without uncovering clear evidence that Trump’s campaign had conspired with Moscow, Giuliani and Trump had both turned their attention to Ukraine as a potential ally that could both help validate their theories and provide ammunition against political adversaries.

To advance this shared agenda, Trump began exploiting the powers of the executive branch.

Trump enlisted Attorney General William P. Barr to launch investigations into the origins of the Russia probe, searching for proof that the work of the FBI and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III were politically tainted. As part of that effort, The Washington Post revealed this week, Barr traveled to Britain and Italy, hoping their security services could expose improprieties by American intelligence agencies.

Trump also began circumventing his own National Security Council at the White House and deploying trusted allies to pursue political dirt and re-litigate the history of the 2016 election. His target was a country that Manafort had long said was out to get Trump in 2016: Ukraine.

Sondland, 61, appears to have never held a position in government before being named U.S. ambassador to the European Union in June 2018. He amassed much of his wealth by acquiring and managing luxury hotels in cities including Seattle and Portland, Ore.

Sondland sought to distance himself from Trump in 2016, backing out of a Seattle fundraiser for the GOP candidate over what a company spokesman described as concerns with Trump’s “anti-immigrant” policies.

But Sondland didn’t stay away for long, later routing $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural fund through a collection of shell companies that obscured his involvement.

In Brussels, Sondland garnered a reputation for his truculent manner and fondness for the trappings of privilege. He peppered closed-door negotiations with four-letter words. He carried a wireless buzzer into meetings at the U.S. Mission that enabled him to silently summon support staff to refill his teacup.

Sondland seemed to chafe at the constraints of his assignment. He traveled for meetings in Israel, Romania and other countries with little or no coordination with other officials. He acquired a reputation for being indiscreet, and was chastised for using his personal phone for state business, officials said.

Sondland also shuttled repeatedly back to Washington, often seeking face time with Trump. When he couldn’t gain entry to the Oval Office, officials said, he would meet instead with White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, preferring someone closer to Trump’s inner circle than national security officials responsible for Europe.

“He always seemed to be in D.C.,” a former White House official said. “People would say, ‘Does he spend any time in Brussels?’ ”

TRUMP’S MAN

Sondland’s approach to the job was seen more as a source of irritation than trouble until May, when he moved to stake his claim to the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

After Zelensky’s election, White House officials began making plans for who would take part in the U.S. delegation to attend Zelensky’s inauguration.

National security adviser John Bolton removed Sondland’s name from the list, only to see it reinserted, a clear indication that Bolton had been overruled by the Oval Office.

Photos of the event show a beaming Sondland alongside Zelensky, as well as other U.S. officials including Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

In the ensuing months, Sondland maneuvered to cement a position of influence in the relationship between Trump and the new Ukrainian president. In early June, Sondland threw a lavish Independence Day reception — a month ahead of the U.S. holiday — at a cavernous antique car museum in central Brussels.

An enormous U.S. flag was projected onto a wall. Jay Leno — whom Sondland billed as a personal friend — delivered a standup routine whose U.S.-focused patter fell flat on the ears of European officials. At a private dinner afterward, Sondland hosted an eclectic mix of guests. Among those at the candlelit table were Zelensky, Leno and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.

Within weeks, Sondland and Volker were deep into their efforts to consummate a secret political pact between Trump and Zelensky. Texts show the extent to which they explicitly pursued a transaction tying U.S. military aid and a future visit to the White House to a hard commitment from Ukraine to revive a corruption probe of a company, Burisma, that had employed Hunter Biden, the vice president’s son, as a board member making between $50,000 and $100,000 a month, according to people familiar with the matter.

A July 19 exchange between Sondland and Volker shows them discussing the status of their efforts to secure clear cooperation from Zelensky before the approaching Trump-Zelensky phone call.

Sondland said that he had spoken “directly to Zelensky and gave him a full briefing. He’s got it.” Volker replied that he had met over breakfast with Giuliani to apprise him of their progress, and the two later went on to discuss what Zelensky would need to do to secure the Oval Office meeting.

“Most impt is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation — and address any specific personnel issues — if there are any,” Volker wrote.

Officials in Washington and Kiev were increasingly alarmed by developments that were out in the open, including the mysterious suspension of aid and Giuliani’s penchant for revealing his schemes in appearances on cable television.

Behind the scenes, other red flags surfaced. In a White House meeting in early July, Sondland surprised a room of U.S. officials and members of a small Ukrainian delegation when he diverged from U.S. talking points approved in advance by Bolton and others. As part of the conversation, U.S. officials recited their desire for Ukraine to continue seeking to rid its government and state-run companies of corruption.

But Sondland interjected that the United States also had other targets in mind for Kiev that went beyond its active, ongoing investigations. He didn’t cite Burisma or Biden by name, but the implication of his words struck others in the room as troubling and obvious, particularly given Giuliani’s public comments.

“What was shocking was that he said it in front of so many people,” said one official familiar with the meeting.

Such concerns in Washington were by then already tributaries in a stream of information flowing to a CIA employee who shared their dismay and would soon begin compiling an extraordinary whistleblower complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general.

In Kiev, William B. “Bill” Taylor, who had served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and had agreed to return on an emergency basis after Yovanovitch’s removal, was raising alarms.

Taylor, who was recruited by Volker, had been hesitant to even take the job.

“I’m still trying to navigate this new world,” Volker texted him this spring.

“I’m not sure that’s a world I want to set foot in,” Taylor replied.

On July 21, he voiced his concern about Ukraine being treated as a pawn in America’s “domestic, reelection politics,” only to have his concerns dismissed by Sondland, who suggested that Taylor was failing to recognize how bending to Trump’s demands was the only path to improving the countries’ fraught relationship.

The next day, one of Zelensky’s top advisers, Andrey Yermak, spoke by phone with Giuliani. Coached by the tandem of Sondland and Volker, Yermak appears to have given Giuliani the reassurances he needed to secure Zelensky’s phone call with Trump.

When that call happened three days later, some White House officials who had suspicions but were not read-in to the hidden agenda were so alarmed by Trump’s conduct, and the pressure he applied to Zelensky for a political “favor,” that they stuffed a transcript of the call onto a computer system reserved for some of the government’s most highly classified secrets.

Among those engaged in the shadow diplomacy, however, the call was regarded as a breakthrough. Yermak told Volker that the “call went well,” and that Zelensky got his promised invitation to the White House, but no specific date. “Great,” Volker wrote back, noting that he would now set in motion a preliminary meeting in Madrid between Yermak and Giuliani.

Giuliani told Yermak that the Ukrainian president needed to make a public promise to pursue the corruption investigations, according to Volker’s testimony. Sondland and Volker set about revising the wording of a statement proposed by the Ukrainians that Zelensky could issue upon announcing his trip to Washington. When the two diplomats sent the statement to Giuliani, he was dismayed that it wasn’t more specific, and according to Volker, he demanded that the Ukrainians insert specific references to the 2016 election and Burisma, the gas company where Hunter Biden served on the board.

In an Aug. 10 text message, Volker tells Yermak that once the statement is ironed out, they can then “use that” to get the date for the meeting between Trump and Zelensky.

Yermak’s response makes the bargain clear. “Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigations,” he writes.

“Sounds great!” Volker replies.

Ultimately, Volker testified Thursday on Capitol Hill, the statement was shelved, because the Ukrainians didn’t feel comfortable making explicit reference to the Burisma and election interference investigations.

But by that point, Volker and Sondland were themselves unwitting to developments in Washington that would in time expose their months-long enterprise and trigger an impeachment inquiry against the president.

On Aug. 12 — the day before Volker and Sondland traded triumphant texts about the statement they wanted issued by Zelensky — the CIA whistleblower submitted his nine-page document to the inspector general of the intelligence community. Over the next several weeks, events proceeded along two separate tracks that finally converged this week in the secure hearing room of the House Intelligence Committee.

On Sept. 1, Taylor raised his concerns again. “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” That same day, at a meeting in Warsaw, the Ukrainians were hearing the same message from Vice President Pence when he told Zelensky that the United States was still concerned that Ukraine was not doing enough on corruption.

Sondland refused to engage Taylor on the matter by text, telling him to “Call me.”

A week later, on Sept. 8, Taylor issued a more forceful warning, saying that he would not be part of coercing a public pledge from Zelensky and withholding aid that Ukraine desperately needed. “The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance,” he said. If that were to unfold, he said, “The Russians love it. (And I quit.)”

One day later, on Sept. 9, Taylor confronted Sondland one last time by text, saying, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

Sondland, perhaps anticipating how this exchange would play out if it came into the possession of investigators or were released to the public, replied in an earnest tone: “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind.”

Birnbaum reported from Brussels. Julie Tate and Michelle Ye Hee Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

In call to Ukraine’s president, Trump revived a favorite conspiracy theory about the DNC hack

By Craig Timberg, Drew Harwell and Ellen Nakashima | Published September 25, 2019 6:27 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 5, 2019 9:35 AM ET

For years cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike was a source of news, not a subject, as it unraveled some of the world’s most notorious hacks.

But ever since the company exposed Russian intrusions into Democratic Party computers in 2016 — findings President Trump repeatedly has attacked — CrowdStrike has been a subject of allegations that rippled through conservative news sources, onto social media, into the criminal trial of longtime Trump friend Roger Stone and, finally, in July, into a call between the president and his Ukrainian counterpart.

The release Wednesday of the text of that call prompted an ecstatic response on right-wing corners of the Internet. “CROWDSTRIKE IS BACK ON THE MENU BOYS,” said one thread Wednesday on the Reddit message board “the_donald,” devoted to pro-Trump discussion. In another thread, a commenter wrote, “Trump just put ‘Ukrainian CrowdStrike’ into the consciousness and conversation of every normie that is following this story.”

But more broadly, the vilification of CrowdStrike, a firm that long has worked closely with U.S. officials, illustrates the shape-shifting nature of misinformation as it moves across media, mixing fact with innuendo before ultimately reaching the president — owner of the world’s loudest megaphone.

“This is insane,” said Robert Johnston, CEO of Adlumin and a former CrowdStrike investigator who worked on the probe into the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers. “This is absolute babbling to the president of Ukraine. It’s hard to finger exactly which conspiracy theory he’s subscribing to. But none of them have any grounding in reality.”

The month before the Ukraine call, Trump voiced dark suspicions about CrowdStrike in a call with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. That same day, Breitbart News had published a story, based on documents that had emerged in Stone’s trial on charges of lying, obstruction and witness tampering, about how the FBI relied on information from CrowdStrike in its probe of the DNC hack.

“Take a look at Ukraine,” Trump said to Hannity in a conversation that was broadcast on his show. “How come the FBI didn���t take the server from the DNC? Just think about that one, Sean.”

People familiar with the president’s thinking said he has come to suspect the DNC server hacked by Russian intelligence agents in 2016 may have been hidden in Ukraine. The president has been known to embrace conspiracy theories, but it wasn’t immediately clear how he reached that belief about the DNC server or how that would even have been physically possible.

While it’s true that the FBI did not take custody of the affected servers, people familiar with FBI hack investigations say the agency often relies on forensic analysis by outside firms, including CrowdStrike, which is among the nation’s most prominent, having handled North Korea’s hack of Sony Pictures in 2014, among others. CrowdStrike said it “provided all forensic evidence and analysis to the FBI.”

The FBI felt it was not necessary to enter the DNC's premises and take custody of the affected servers, as agents were able to obtain complete copies of forensic images made by CrowdStrike, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The issue emerged again, on July 25, when Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate CrowdStrike during a call in which he also belittled special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and urged investigation of the son of former vice president Joseph Biden. Notes from the call were released Wednesday amid a scandal over whether Trump improperly pressured a foreign leader to investigate a political opponent, using nearly $400 million in expected foreign aid as leverage.

The nature of Trump’s reference to CrowdStrike is not obvious from the notes the White House released. At one point, he said, “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say, Ukraine has it.”

Trump added, “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.” Zelensky appeared to agree to the request, saying his new prosecutor general “will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned.”

The Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity firm’s assertion in June 2016 that Russia had hacked the DNC has been repeatedly confirmed by the Justice Department, members of Congress and Mueller’s office, which indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers last year for their role in the breach.

Nevertheless, the company has become a boogeyman of right-wing conspiracy theorists, who have falsely claimed that the company helped Democratic leaders cover up what they insist was a breach by a secret party insider.

Trump's comments on Wednesday helped solidify the company as a punching bag for his allies in the right-wing media. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh said the “reference to CrowdStrike, mark my words, is momentous,” and added, “The Democrats are bent out of shape that Trump even knows about CrowdStrike."

President Trump has long made CrowdStrike a target. He’s echoed conspiracy theorists in claiming that the company is owned by, as he said in 2017, “a very rich Ukrainian.” The company’s co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russia-born cyber and national security expert and a U.S. citizen. He is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a major Washington think tank whose donors include the foundation of Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire.

The company has also been pulled into the QAnon conspiracy theory, after an anonymous author — purportedly, a top-secret intelligence officer slowly revealing Trump's plot to foil a global pedophile cabal — claimed last year that CrowdStrike had helped China access Hillary Clinton's emails. (No officials have alleged anything close to that.)

CrowdStrike said in a statement Wednesday that it stands by its “findings and conclusions that have been fully supported by the U.S. intelligence community.” The $14 billion company saw its stock fall roughly 1 percent Wednesday.

As CrowdStrike trended on Twitter Wednesday, driven by false claims about the company, Facebook also surfaced misinformation for queries of the firm's name. Among the top results was an article featuring a meme of DNC chairman Tom Perez in a wig along with erroneous claims about the “CrowdStrike ruse.” The site touts itself as “The First Stop on Your Daily Commute to the Truth."

Suspicion about CrowdStrike’s role appears to have first entered the conservative media ecosystem in early 2017, following a BuzzFeed report that the FBI had not requested access to the DNC servers before concluding that they were penetrated by Russian hackers. In January 2017, Breitbart ran an article conveying basic details about the firm’s leadership and raising questions about its ties to Google. (CrowdStrike has plainly advertised investments made by a private equity firm affiliated with Google.)

Two months later, Tony Shaffer, a member of Trump’s 2020 reelection advisory board, posted on Facebook, “When the FBI accepts info from DNC-Hired Cybersecurity Firm & adopts the report as their own we have a big problem."

In June 2017, the conservative news site Daily Caller said “a cloud of doubt (was) hanging over the DNC’s Russia narrative” in part due to the involvement by CrowdStrike, which it said was “Funded By Clinton-Loving Google $$." A month later, the conservative Washington Times wrote that “CrowdStrike’s evidence for blaming Russia for the hack is thin."

That theory has been boosted by Stone, Trump's longtime adviser, who has argued in legal filings this year that CrowdStrike's analysis was fatally compromised. Stone and others in Trump's orbit have alleged without evidence that Democratic insiders spearheaded the breach.

Trump’s mention of CrowdStrike suggests he still doubts the intelligence community’s findings of Russian involvement. DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa tweeted that it was “complete nonsense” and “surreal” that “Trump used “a call with a foreign leader to push conspiracy theories.”

Devlin Barrett and Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed to this report.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 19, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

On January 20, 2017, Trump took the oath of office and gave his “American Carnage” speech describing America as a hellscape, and we were off to the races.

Trump vowed he would smash norms and boundaries to “drain the swamp.” He filled positions in his administration with political operatives and appointed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to manage so many projects it would have been funny if it weren’t so deadly serious. The policies the administration advanced were usually hastily and poorly conceived; when the courts overturned them, Trump complained of “the Deep State.”

Days after he took office, he issued the travel ban aimed at Muslims, the first in a series of actions throughout his presidency designed to subordinate people of color to white Americans. The racism in his rhetoric and regulations pulled white supremacists behind him. On August 11-12, 2017, they rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia. Their protest of the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee became an attempt to create a political vanguard.

The “Unite the Right” rally turned violent, injuring more than 30 people and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, whose last Facebook post before she joined the counter protest in Charlottesville read: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Three days after the riots, asked about the violent protests in Charlottesville, Trump said that “you… had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” People took that, rightly, as Trump’s support for white supremacy and the gangs that advanced it, a support illustrated dramatically in summer 2020, when he and his attorney general, William Barr, used federal troops against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters.

By spring 2017, there was another crisis on the horizon. The FBI was investigating the cooperation of Trump’s presidential campaign with Russian spies. Trump’s former National Security Adviser, retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, had lied to the FBI about conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and Trump pressured then-FBI Director James Comey to stop the agency’s investigation of Flynn. When Comey refused, Trump fired him, prompting the deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Special Counsel Robert Mueller (then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself because he, too, had lied about conversations with Russians) to investigate the ties between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives.

Both Mueller’s report and the report of the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee established that Russian operatives had interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. They indicated that Trump campaign officials knew what the Russians were doing and were willing to accept their help. The Senate Intelligence Committee also noted that Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort gave sensitive internal information about the campaign to a Russian operative in Ukraine. Trump continued to call these allegations the “Russia hoax,” but observers noted that, for all his feuds with other leaders, he seemed oddly solicitous of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump came to office with an expanding economy. In the first three years of his presidency, the economy continued to grow, in part because of tax cuts that slashed the corporate tax rate by 40%. Trump promised that these cuts would be “rocket fuel for our economy,” but economic growth stayed at about 2.9%, the same as it had been in 2015, and more than 60% of the benefits from the cuts went to those at the top 20% of the economic ladder. Even before the pandemic, Trump’s economic policies were projected to add about $10 trillion to the national debt by 2025, an increase of more than 50%.

And then the pandemic hit. Trump first downplayed the crisis, then insisted that Democrats demanding he address the crisis were overplaying it: he called it a Democratic “hoax.” The pandemic tanked the economy, undercutting his best argument for reelection, and by summer 2020 the administration had decided its best option was to reopen schools and the economy and to try to achieve herd immunity through infections. The result was a disaster. Today, on the last day of Trump’s administration, the number of Americans we have officially lost to Covid-19 has topped 400,000. That’s about the same number of people we lost in World War Two.

The pandemic threw about 22 million people out of work and forcing businesses into bankruptcy. As the faltering economy undercut Trump’s plans for reelection, he tried to destroy faith in mail-in ballots, trying to drive people to in-person voting sites. Then, when that didn’t work, he pushed the idea that Democrats would steal the election. Although his Democratic challengers Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election by more than 7 million popular votes and secured the Electoral College by a vote of 306 to 232, Trump and his supporters continued to insist the election was stolen.

On January 6, 2021, Trump and key members of his administration rallied his supporters to attack the counting of the certified electoral ballots for Biden and Harris. Encouraged by the president, the crowd marched to the Capitol with the plan of disrupting the vote. They overpowered the police, killing one officer; broke into the building; and came within a minute of taking our elected leaders hostage, or perhaps executing them on the gallows they built.

In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for the second time—the first was in 2019 after he withheld congressionally-approved money to Ukraine in an attempt to bully the newly-elected Ukraine president into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter in the hopes of weakening Biden as a potential rival in the 2020 election.

So, Trump leaves the White House tomorrow facing a second Senate impeachment trial.

Trump has split the Republican Party. His true loyalists intend to turn America into a right-wing, white, Christian nation as embodied in the 1776 Report the administration released yesterday. In the last days of the administration, Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pretty clearly trying to position himself for a 2024 presidential run, tweeting from the official government account of the State Department a long list of what he considers his accomplishments. Others are likely planning to give him a run for his money. Today Senator Josh Hawley, under suspicion of inciting the January 6 rioters with his support for throwing out Biden’s Electoral College votes, slow-walked Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security because Hawley objects to Biden’s plans to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Establishment Republicans are trying to regain control of the party. After the January coup attempt, some corporations announced they would no longer donate to Republicans who had voted to challenge the certified electoral votes, while others declared a moratorium on all political spending. The corporate turn against the Trump wing of the Republican Party strengthened the backbone of the establishment Republicans. Today Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stood on the floor of the Senate and put Trump at the center of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. "The mob was fed lies," McConnell said. “They were provoked by the President and other powerful people."

But McConnell went on. He claimed that neither party has a broad mandate after the 2020 elections, which, he said, meant that the Democrats have no call to advance “sweeping ideological change.” He is referring, of course, to the plans of incoming President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, which he has every intention of stopping.

Today, President-Elect Joe Biden arrived at Joint Base Andrews. He traveled in a private plane since Trump refused to extend him the traditional courtesy of a military plane offered from an outgoing president to an incoming one. Trump will not attend Biden’s swearing-in; he will leave for Florida in the morning. In his place, three of the other living ex-presidents will be attending the inauguration: Republican George W. Bush, Democrat Bill Clinton, and Democrat Barack Obama. It’s a party of ex-presidents, together to emphasize the peaceful transition of power. Trump won’t be there.

The tide is already turning against him. Vice President Mike Pence has announced he will not be able to attend Trump’s farewell ceremony as he is attending Biden’s inauguration instead. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and McConnell—who will become minority leader tomorrow after the two new Democratic senators from Georgia are sworn in—are not going to see Trump off, either: they will be attending church with Biden before his inauguration.

Tomorrow at noon, President-Elect Joe Biden takes the oath of office. He intends to return the government to the principles the Democratic Party has held since the late nineteenth century: that the federal government has a role to play in responding to the needs of ordinary Americans. He has also embraced the traditional Democratic idea that the government should actually look like the people it represents. In an implicit rebuke of Trump’s white nationalism, he has tapped the most diverse set of officials in American history. They are also extraordinarily well-qualified and have many years of experience in government.

Biden and Harris have already outlined a very different administration than Trump’s. Their first task is to combat the coronavirus. Biden wants 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office, and is mobilizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Guard to make that happen. To rebuild the economy, they have advanced a coronavirus relief package designed to protect children, first, and then women and families. It calls for expanded food relief and rent and mortgage protection, as well as expanded unemployment benefits and a one-time relief payment.

Trump’s administration is, perhaps, ending where it began. This weekend, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to Russia after his near-fatal poisoning by Putin’s agents in August. Upon his return to Russia, authorities immediately detained him. Trump refused to join other nations in condemning the poisoning, but yesterday, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) demanded that the U.S. hold Putin accountable for “the corruption and lawlessness of the Putin regime.” Joining Romney in calling for new sanctions against Russia were a range of senators from both parties.

The act is called the “Holding Russia Accountable for Malign Activities Act.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON