Impeachment Today: Bumbling Idiots, Racists, and War Criminals

What we have learned from watching the Trump administration in action is that they’re incompetent, and just as mean as a junkyard dog.

Let’s start with the stupid, cause the cruel stuff is genuinely depressing.

Presidential lawyer and alleged cyber security expert Rudy Giuliani has American intelligence officials slack jawed as details of his alt-world diplomacy have come to light.

Here’s the New York Times:

• But inside the National Security Council, officials expressed wonderment that Mr. Giuliani was running his “irregular channel” of Ukraine diplomacy over open cell lines and communications apps in Ukraine that the Russians have deeply penetrated.

• In his testimony to the House impeachment inquiry, Tim Morrison, who is leaving as the National Security Council’s head of Europe and Russia, recalled expressing astonishment to William B. Taylor Jr., who was sitting in as the chief American diplomat in Ukraine, that the leaders of the “irregular channel” seemed to have little concern about revealing their conversations to Moscow.

• “He and I discussed a lack of, shall we say, OPSEC, that much of Rudy’s discussions were happening over an unclassified cellphone or, perhaps as bad, WhatsApp messages, and therefore you can only imagine who else knew about them,” Mr. Morrison testified. OPSEC is the government’s shorthand for operational security.

Anybody who’s been paying attention should be aware of the open cellphone conversation between Gordon D. Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union and the President from a restaurant in Ukraine.

Trump’s voice was so loud that others at the table were able to hear the ambassador’s promise about the President of Ukraine being willing to play ball with the scheme to discredit Democrats generally, candidate Joe Biden specifically, and flip the Russia-did-it narrative left over from 2016.

By any measure the Russians are wired into Ukraine’s infrastructure. Putin’s people have used the former Soviet republic as a testing ground for cyber war maneuvers. The regular foreign service types, the ones Giuliani, et. al., call the Deep State, know all about the omnipresent surveillance throughout the region. The alt-diplomats don’t seem to care.

So there are two theories to consider here. Either Trump’s troopers were ignorant, or, they didn’t care about being overheard because they were doing the Russians a favor. Take your pick.

***

Since former Vice President Joe Biden’s son is at the center of right wing fantasies about nepotism and corruption, it seems only fair to wonder about what pro-golfer and son of Rudy Giuliani, Andrew, does with his job at the White House.

The Atlantic Magazine looked into his employment situation. Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly didn’t think the title of associate director in the Office of Public Liaison merited a security clearance. Andrew, it seems, in tasked with coordinating Oval Office visits by the few sports teams still willing to embarrass themselves.

When Mick Mulvaney took over as Trump’s COS, he restored Andrew’s clearance, so he now has unfettered access to the West Wing.

***
When the extent of illnesses connected to ecigarettes/vaping became a public issue, the President was quick to promise a ban on flavored products that appeal to younger users.

Here’s the low-down, via Gizmodo:

• Trump was presented with a “decision memo” on November 4 that, if signed, would have allowed the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to move forward with a federal ban on any flavor of vape that’s not tobacco, according to a new story from the Washington Post. But Trump didn’t sign the one-page memo, and there’s no indication that he will ever sign it if the move costs him a single vote.

• An anonymous Trump advisor told the Post that a vape ban might cost jobs and, in turn, lead to fewer Trump supporters in key battleground states. And there’s nothing worse in Trump’s mind than losing his hardcore believers—people who claim that the president is right about everything. Stealing babies and refusing to give them soap and toothpaste? That’s A-OK with Trump voters. But don’t you dare touch their vapes.

• “[President Trump] didn’t know much about the issue and was just doing it for Melania and Ivanka,” one senior administration official told the Post.

***

SuuuuperTrump...On Saturday, a presidential motorcade took the President to Walter Reed National Military Hospital for an unannounced “screening,” according to NBC. Unlike his two previous exams, this “surprise” exam wasn’t on his public schedule and no one—even the staff at the hospital—seemed to know about it.

This, of course, has led to endless speculation.

https://twitter.com/thor_benson/status/1196268174242656256?s=20

Everything’s just fine, according to the White House.

https://twitter.com/HoneyBadgerRulz/status/1196540377190170624?s=20

***

Now to the news from the grisly side of the administration…

Stephen Miller, White House senior policy advisor for Donald Trump, was the subject of a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which presented emails in which Miller reportedly shared information on white nationalist literature and other controversial topics with Breitbart, a web site associated with ‘alt-right’ ideologies.

From the New York Times:

• An analysis of more than 900 emails from Miller to editors at Breitbart News, the report shows Miller’s single-minded focus on nonwhite immigration and his immersion in an online ecosystem of virulent, unapologetic racism. The Miller of these emails isn’t just an immigration restrictionist, he’s an ideological white nationalist.

• It’s tempting to dismiss this as old news. Miller is, after all, the architect behind the Trump administration’s most draconian border and immigration policies, as well as some of its harshest anti-immigrant rhetoric.

• The first travel ban, rolled out within days of President Trump’s inauguration? That was Miller. Family separation at the border? That was Miller too. The relentless effort to limit asylum, deport protected migrants and block refugees from entering the country? Also Miller. The president’s January address from the Oval Office, in which he spun gruesome tales of immigrant crime and violence (“In California, an Air Force veteran was raped, murdered and beaten to death with a hammer by an illegal alien with a long criminal history”)? Stephen Miller.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, along with other civil rights groups, has called on President Trump to fire White House advisor Stephen Miller for propagating racist, anti-immigrant sentiments. 

At just about any other time in recent history, this sort of a damning revelation would have resulted in dismissal of a public official. But in the era of Trump, this is barely a blip in the news cycle.

UPDATE:

https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1196811265970245637?s=20

***

I saved the worst for last.

President Trump issued pardons on Friday for two Army officers accused of war crimes in Afghanistan and restored the rank of a Navy SEAL who was acquitted of murder in Iraq.

The New Republic called this move correctly:

• The timing of the pardons, which came just hours after a federal jury in D.C. convicted his longtime political adviser Roger Stone of lying to Congress and hindering the Russia investigation, couldn’t have been more appropriate. They reaffirmed Trump’s commitment to omertà, the code of silence whereby those who report wrongdoing are castigated and those who commit it—whether on his behalf or in ways he supports—are protected.

• Trump gave formal pardons to 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn of the Army, as well as a promotion to Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher. Lorance had already served six years of a 19-year sentence for murdering two men on a motorcycle in Afghanistan in 2012. Golsteyn was set to stand trial for hunting down and murdering an Afghan man after U.S. forces released him from custody. Gallagher escaped conviction on multiple murder charges but received a conviction earlier this year for desecrating a corpse; he was sentenced to time served and received a demotion that Trump’s move overrode…

• ...It’s possible that the White House announced the pardons late on a Friday in an effort to partially bury the politically awkward news, and that Stone’s conviction was merely a coincidence. But it would be hard to fault the president’s former dirty trickster for seeing a clear pattern here or for getting the same signal from Trump that Manafort apparently received last year. The president’s approach to federal investigations, whether into his own misdeeds or those he simply admires, can be boiled down to two simple words: Stop snitching.

https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1196789094539571200?s=20

https://twitter.com/AdamParkhomenko/status/1196788428895064065?s=20

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