Tag: GOP now the cult of Trump

Former Bush White House lawyer: ‘The United States will become a dictatorship if we keep going along this path with Donald Trump’

AlterNet logoDonald Trump’s presidency is a crisis. The examples are almost too numerous to list.

He and his regime have assaulted the rule of law, undermined the Constitution, and normalized fascism and authoritarianism in America.

Trump has publicly invited hostile foreign countries to interfere in America’s elections in order to ensure that he stays in power — perhaps indefinitely. He uses Nazi-like language to threaten reporters, journalists, news outlets and other public voices who dare to criticize him. Continue reading.

Yale psychiatrist on coronavirus: Trump is ‘putting lives at risk’

AlterNet logoPresident Trump’s preoccupation with his own image amid the spread of the coronavirus is “putting lives at risk” and Vice President Pence is only “enabling” him, Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee told Salon in an interview this week.

Lee is a forensic psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine who also teaches at Yale Law School and has spent the last three years urging Congress to respond more forcefully to the dangers posed by what she sees as the president’s deteriorating mental health. Lee, who consults widely with state and foreign governments on public health approaches to violence prevention, urged the House Judiciary Committee to include a panel of mental health experts during Trump’s impeachment and called for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to request an involuntary 72-hour psychiatric hold of the president.

Some mental health experts have pushed back on Lee’s comments. Dr. Amy Barnhost, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Davis, previously told Salon that such calls would do more harm than good. Lee argues that Congress and other government officials have enabled Trump’s worst tendencies by not acknowledging the risk posed by the president’s mental state. Continue reading.

Senate Republicans Suddenly Call For New Biden Probe

A top GOP senator on Sunday announced new actions in a Republican-led investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter — less than 24 hours after the elder Biden’s primary victory in South Carolina.

According to CBS News, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) sent a letter to his colleagues on Sunday, saying he wanted to subpoena witnesses related to Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Johnson, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) initially launched the investigation in November to back up Donald Trump at the height of his impeachment inquiry. Continue reading.

White House pulls nomination of Pentagon official who raised Ukraine aid concerns

Washington Post logoThe White House on Monday pulled the nomination of a Pentagon official who gained prominence because of concerns she raised about withholding military aid for Ukraine.

In a statement, the White House said it had withdrawn the nomination of Elaine McCusker as Pentagon comptroller, a position she has held on an acting basis. It provided no reason why McCusker, a career civil servant who was nominated to be confirmed in the job in November, would no longer be considered.

The decision is likely to deepen concerns about whether the Trump administration is singling out officials seen as playing a role unfavorable to the president in matters related to his impeachment. It follows the departure last month of John Rood, a top policy official who likewise was a leading figure in the Pentagon’s response to the delay of security aid to Ukraine, an issue that became central to the impeachment proceedings against President Trump. Continue reading.

Furious Trump fans barrage conservative columnist who admitted coronavirus is a real problem

AlterNet logoA conservative columnist who is generally a supporter of President Donald Trump recently found himself getting barraged by the president’s fans because he admitted coronavirus could be a real problem for the global economy.

As the New York Times reports, Republican Rob Maness recently wrote a column for the conservative LifeZette website that outlined potential negative economic impacts from coronavirus, including the disruption of supply chains.

“The most significant major concern in America is the impact on pharmaceutical supply,” Maness wrote in his column. “Large numbers of drugs used to treat serious medical conditions are manufactured or their key components are produced in China. Medicines such as antibiotics amoxicillin, doxycycline, penicillin and other’s availabilities will be impacted as China continues its lock-down of factory workers because 90% of their sourcing is in China.” Continue reading.

Trump: Waitress Who Makes $2.13 An Hour Is ‘Overpaid’

By multiple measures, workers are faring poorly under Donald Trump compared to his predecessor. Yet Trump keeps telling workers that because of him they are doing better. Let’s examine the facts.

The latest news shows that growth in the last three months of 2019 was at a modest pace of 2.1 percent. That’s a third of what candidate Trump promised (a ridiculous promise that many believed). It’s lower than the 3.2 percent average growth of the last 73 years. And it’s lower than during the second Obama term.

Gross Domestic Product growth has been slower each year Trump has been in office, we reported earlier.  Continue reading.

RNC Pays Mysterious Firm Operating From Office Of Disgraced Data Outfit

Last fall the Republican National Committee paid $900,000 for “data services” to a Delaware-registered limited liability corporation that had existed for only three weeks.

The company receiving the money has no online presence and has not been used by other campaigns or committees. But there is one clue about the company, Howler Insights LLC, in paperwork the RNC filed with the Federal Election Commission. Howler’s Arlington, Virginia, address and suite number are the same as a conservative data firm whose work for the RNC was placed on hold nearly three years ago after a massive data breach.

The incident left personal information such as voter registration details, names, addresses, phone numbers and potential ethnicities of about 200 million Americans accessible to anyone on the internet. At the time, the security consultant who identified the breach called it the “largest known data exposure of its kind.” Continue reading.

How ‘conservatism’ could kill us all

AlterNet logoNothing confirms the human need for strong, honest and competent government like a looming pandemic. The possibility that thousands, or even millions, could die from a randomly transmitted virus reminds us of our species’ vulnerability — and why society cannot exist without institutions that can protect us from such staggering existential threats.

Only government can impose quarantines and precautions when necessary. Only government can trace contacts, control transportation and monitor communities. Only government can ensure that drugs, medical devices and care will be adequately distributed — and that sufficient resources will be directed toward production of a vaccine as soon as possible, without regard to profit.

At a moment like this, it suddenly becomes clear that every problem — indeed, the most pressing problems — cannot and will not be solved by “the private sector.” If that seems blazingly obvious, please inform the Republicans who constantly tell us they want to “shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Facing a potential catastrophe, those old jeers from the right sound utterly mindless. Continue reading.

Behind Trump’s Latest Threat To Press Freedom

Wednesday was an ominous day for freedom of the press in this country, and I want to tell you why.

You may have heard or seen that President Trump filed a libel suit against the New York Times. Perhaps you weren’t surprised: the president is known to frequently disparage the Times even as he reads it obsessively. Borrowing a page from what I’ve referred to before as a Mount Rushmore of totalitarians, Robespierre, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, Trump loves to call the press the “enemy of the people.”

But Wednesday’s suit is an important step beyond bluster to try to silence the press using the legal system — and just days after the president announced that he considers himself the country’s “chief law enforcement officer.” Continue reading.

Conservative pundits blame a grab bag of supposed villains amid the coronavirus outbreak

Washington Post logoChoose your scapegoat: Democrats, the news media, the Chinese government, the “deep state,” Bernie Sanders or even “identity politics.”

All received some share of the blame this week from conservative media figures for the growing public concern over the coronavirus, the communicable disease that has spread across the globe.

In fact, many conservative commentators have expressed less interest in the spread of the virus or efforts to combat it than they are in the story of the virus — a story they are convinced shows evidence of bias designed to harm President Trump. Continue reading.