Tag: GOP OK with Trump abuse of power

Retired military brass sound the alarm about the peril Trump poses to democracy

AlterNet logoRetired four-star Marine General John Allen has seen enough. In a op-ed for Foreign Policy, Allen tore into Donald Trump and his orders to attack American citizens in front of the White House. Allen said he fears we are “witnessing the beginning of the end of American democracy.”

In a three-part breakdown of how Trump has failed this moment and the nation, (Ret.) Gen. Allen specifically called out this administration singling out antifa—a leaderless movement that is, by definition, anti-fascist—as a terrorist group while ignoring the white supremacists who have been proven to be inciting violence at some of these protests. Allen said: “Far more damage to the United States has come from these terrorists—fascists, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis, all feeling newly empowered today—than those who have opposed them.”

For the record, the FBI found “no intelligence linking Antifa to violence at the Black Lives Matter protests.” Continue reading.

GOP senators release list of Obama officials who asked to ‘unmask’ Flynn. It ‘backfired,’ Biden campaign says.

Two Republicans senators released a list Wednesday of three dozen former Obama administration officials who had asked the National Security Agency in late 2016 for the name of an American — Michael Flynn, President Trump’s national security adviser, it turned out — whose conversations with foreign agents had been intercepted. The list was requested by acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist, and sent to Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Ron Johnson (Wis.). After they released it, Trump immediately touted Flynn’s “unmasking” as “a massive thing.” It doesn’t appear to be.

“Unmasking” is routine, and has actually increased under Trump. Grenell’s list includes former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, but “Biden and the other officials had full authority to seek the name of the unidentified American in the reports — it turned out to be Flynn — and did so through proper channels,” The Associated Pressreports, citing Trump administration documents. “Rather than reveal any actual wrongdoing, the release of the information by the president’s allies seems designed to create suspicion around Biden and other senior Democrats as the November election approaches.”

The NSA said in a note appended to the documents that there’s no indication the people named actually read the unmasked intelligence. Continue reading.

Trump Moves to Replace Watchdog Who Identified Critical Medical Shortages

New York Times logoThe president announced the nomination of an inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, who, if confirmed, would replace an acting official whose report embarrassed Mr. Trump.

WASHINGTON — President Trump moved on Friday night to replace a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services who angered him with a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

The White House waited until after business hours to announce the nomination of a new inspector general for the department who, if confirmed, would take over for Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who was publicly assailed by the president at a news briefing three weeks ago.

The nomination was the latest effort by Mr. Trump against watchdog offices around his administration that have defied him. In recent weeks, he fired an inspector general involved in the inquiry that led to the president’s impeachment, nominated a White House aide to another key inspector general post overseeing virus relief spending and moved to block still another inspector general from taking over as chairman of a pandemic spending oversight panel. Continue reading.

ABC News Corona Virus Government. Response Americans receiving letters signed by Trump explaining stimulus checks, touting coronavirus response

Some experts say the move is “clearly connected to his reelection.”

Americans receiving stimulus checks amid the coronavirus pandemic have started getting signed letters by President Donald Trump in the mail.

The letter sent to millions of Americans, which prominently features a massive signature by the president that stands a full 2.25 inches long and about an inch high, looks to explain the reasoning for the direct payments while touting the government response to the crisis.

While the purpose of the letter, according to the Internal Revenue Service website, is to confirm receipt of a stimulus payment and, most important, to provide guidance about what to do if someone is due a payment and have not received one, it mostly appears to highlight the government’s response to the virus while providing a website and phone number at the bottom without any further instructions. Continue reading.

Trump Airs Another Campaign Ad At Briefing, Produced By White House Staff

Donald Trump used time during his regular COVID-19 briefing on Monday to play a campaign ad for himself. Trump said that the video had been put together by White House staff — a possible violation of federal law regulating the election activities of federal employees.

Under fire for downplaying the coronavirus’ risk and doing little to prepare for the pandemic, Trump made reporters watch what was effectively a campaign ad. “We have a few clips that we’re just going to put up,” he said, before playing a video containing clips organized and edited to blame the media for minimizing the threat of the pandemic and tout Trump’s response.

After the video was over, ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl asked about its origins. Continue reading.

Under Donald Trump, COVID-19 is accelerating the Republican Party’s descent into authoritarianism

AlterNet logo“When somebody’s the President of the United States, the authority is total.”

– Donald Trump, April 13th.

That Maya Angelou quote about believing people when they show you who they are gets tossed around quite a bit in reference to the 45th President of the United States, but it seems like no matter how many times Donald J. Trump beats us over the head with the message, there are still a lot of people who don’t quite get it.

So allow me to translate: Trump and his allies within the GOP ecosystem are hostile to democracy. Their response to the COVID-19 outbreak clarifies existing authoritarian trends within the regime and the broader Republican coalition and provides a pretext for accelerating them. Most recently, Trump fired both the Inspector General for the intelligence community who complied with the law and passed on a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s attempt to strong arm Ukraine to Congress, and the Inspector General originally responsible for overseeing over $2 trillion in pandemic bailout funds. (We’ll return to these offenses.)

In How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt provide a checklist of authoritarian behavior which weaken and eventually destroy democracies. They include: Undermining the legitimacy of elections; denying the legitimacy of political opponents; tolerating or encouraging violence and attempts to curtail civil liberties, including or especially the freedom of the press. The Trump administration checks every box. Continue reading.

Presidential historian: Trump is ‘the worst president you can imagine’ for the COVID-19 crisis

AlterNet logoA presidential historian on Thursday said he couldn’t imagine any other president responding to the COVID-19 pandemic as poorly as President Donald Trump has so far.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley said that the United States has been getting hit hard by the coronavirus in part because Trump completely distrusts scientists.

“With Donald Trump, we’ve had a president who has been denouncing scientific experts since day one,” he said. “Total climate denial, saying 99 percent of the scientists are wrong about climate change, treating it as if it is some kind of hoax. So this is a president that’s been having a war against science his entire administration. He gutted CDC, got rid of the experts in the White House, so he was caught deeply flat-footed.” Continue reading.

Ex-ethics official explains why Trump’s ‘weird propaganda video’ may have been illegal in 3 different ways

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump has been criticized in numerous media outlets for the weeks he spent downplaying the dangers that the coronavirus pandemic posed for the United States. But when Trump held a coronavirus-related press conference on Monday, he showed journalists a video making the ludicrous claim that it was the mainstream media — not Trump — who downplayed COVID-19’s severity.

And according to attorney Walter Shaub, the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, the video “may have violated a legal prohibition against using appropriated funds for the dissemination of unauthorized publicity or propaganda.”

In an article for the website of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Shaub writes, “The video, which had the feel of a campaign ad, prompted stunned reactions on social media and among news outlets. It opened by falsely characterizing media outlets as having downplayed the pandemic ‘WHILE PRESIDENT TRUMP TOOK DECISIVE ACTION.’ The capital letters in this statement appeared in the video. It also featured selected clips of President Trump and set them to dramatic music.” Continue reading.

Biden blasts Trump comments: ‘I am not running for office to be King of America’

The Hill logoFormer Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday ripped President Trump for his assertion that he has the power to make states reopen their economies amid the continuing COVID-19 outbreak.

“I am not running for office to be King of America. I respect the Constitution. I’ve read the Constitution. I’ve sworn an oath to it many times,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee tweeted.
“I respect the great job so many of this country’s governors — Democratic and Republican — are doing under these horrific circumstances,” he said. Continue reading.

George Conway: Trump can’t accept that the presidency doesn’t belong to him

The Hill logoGeorge Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conwayand a frequent critic of President Trump, argued in The Washington Post that Trump can’t accept that he doesn’t own the presidency like a business. 

“When he ran a private company, one he owned, Trump could command all its constituent parts to do his bidding and make the rules himself,” Conway wrote in an op-ed. “You’d think by his fourth year in the White House, he would have learned that the presidency doesn’t work that way. But obviously he hasn’t.”

Trump on Monday sparked controversy when he claimed he has “ultimate authority” to force governors, who have been issuing stay-at-home orders to curtail the spread of the coronavirus, to reopen schools, businesses and other institutions in their states currently shuttered by the pandemic.