Tag: Trump authoritarian tendencies

Two more years? Trump’s retweet sets off a furor over the idea of bonus time.

President Trump for months has griped, complained and tweeted about what he says is the unfair Russia “witch hunt” investigation that has consumed nearly half of his presidency.

Now, the president has floated a possible solution: two bonus years.

Trump over the weekend shared a tweet by Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, in which Falwell complimented Trump for “no obstruction, no collusion” and a soaring economy, before adding, “Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term as pay back for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup.”

White House officials and others close to the president said he was joking and is not serious about trying to increase his first four-year term by 50 percent — an extension that would violate the Constitution and has no historical precedent.

View the complete May 6 article by Ashley Parker on The Washington Post website here.

Statement by Former Federal Prosecutors: Trump Behavior Would Have Resulted in Multiple Felony Charles for Obstruction

We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include:

View the complete May 6 post (which more former prosecutors have been adding their names to, as of this posting the number was 690) on the Medium website here.

If Trump’s first 2 years don’t count, here’s everything he did that can be cancelled

The president re-tweeted a demand from Jerry Falwell Jr. that his term be extended by two years to make up for the Russia investigation.

President Donald Trump retweeted a post from Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. on Sunday night, embracing the unconstitutional idea that his four-year term should be extended by two years.

Falwell suggested that the extension would make up for the two years “stolen” from his presidency by the “corrupt failed coup” that was special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference.

“After the best week ever for @realDonaldTrump – no obstruction, no collusion, NYT admits @BarackObama did spy on his campaign, & the economy is soaring,” Falwell wrote, referencing a report from The New York Times that outlined how FBI informants had spoken with Trump campaign officials in 2016 to investigate their ties to Russia.

View the complete May 6 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Constitutional scholars echo Pelosi’s prediction: Trump will not step down if he loses re-election in 2020

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi predicted this weekend that President Donald Trump may not step down from power if he is defeated in the 2020 election.

“We have to inoculate against that. We have to be prepared for that,” Pelosi told The New York Times on Wednesday after cautioning that unless Democrats defeat Trump by a margin “so big” that the legitimacy of the election is beyond dispute, the president could challenge the outcome.

After discussing how she felt the Democrats could best run up a large margin against Trump — by running a center-left campaign and avoiding impeachment, which she believes would hit a dead end due to Republicans controlling the Senate — the House speaker described her fears during the 2018 midterm elections that Trump would challenge individual House races where Democrats won unless the party prevailed by a large margin.

View the complete May 6 article by Matthew Rozsa of Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Trump ramps up his wannabe dictator act by floating idea of two more unconstitutional years in White House

Donald Trump is grappling with the end of the Mueller investigation, and it’s getting scary. One minute Trump is insistingthat he was completely exonerated by the Mueller report, and the next he’s showing just how terrified he is of Robert Mueller testifying before Congress. But the really worrying part is when Trump suggests he should get two extra years in the White House to make up for the time he was under investigation. Because “Oh, just give me a couple of extra unconstitutional years and then I’ll go peacefully” is pretty much the script for an aspiring dictator.

The “two more years” idea originated with Jerry Falwell Jr., who described it as “reparations,” but Trump took it up enthusiastically, retweeting Falwell and then himself tweeting about the “stolen two years of my (our) Presidency (Collusion Delusion) that we will never be able to get back…..”

Almost as disturbing as Trump embracing this idea is The Washington Post as “perhaps tongue-in-cheek” and “raised playfully.” Donald Trump does not have a playful bone in his body. Any time Donald Trump attempts to appear playful, you know he is running the bully’s gambit of testing what he can get away with. Remember that Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer and fixer, told Congress that “I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

View the complete May 6 article by Laura Clawson of Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

Trump rails against political elites on Washington media’s big night

President Trump railed against the political and social elites at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Saturday night as members of the press gathered in Washington for the White House correspondents’ dinner.

Trump cast the news media, Democrats and Washington insiders as out of touch with ordinary Americans and made the case that his administration’s policies have benefited working-class voters in the Midwest states that will be pivotal in determining the outcome of the 2020 election.

“There’s no place I’d rather be than right here in America’s heartland,” Trump said in a 90-minute speech at a packed arena in Green Bay. “And there’s no one I’d rather be with than you, the hardworking patriots who make our country run so well.”

View the complete April 27 article by Jonathan Easley on The Hill website here.

A therapist explains the dangers of a world leader who ‘repeatedly blames others’ and becomes isolated — and how we can protect ourselves

Last week’s release of Robert Mueller’s report, even in redacted form, highlights a president and his regime typified by disdain for the rule of law, democratic norms, and any principles of public service or the common good. Mueller’s prose is overflowing with repeated examples of Donald Trump engaging in obstruction of justice, which only add to the public mountain of evidence why he should be impeached, convicted and removed from office. The Mueller Report also shows a president who were open and eager to accept to accept help, both direct and indirect, from the agents of a hostile foreign government to distort and subvert the 2016 presidential election.

Beyond collusion and obstruction of justice, the Mueller report is damning in other ways as well. It shows how Donald Trump rules through fear and intimidation. But Trump’s power is far from absolute: Members of his inner circle routinely ignore him and apparently think that he is an ignorant, dangerous manchild. Many of the people who work for Trump, in other words, neither like nor respect him.

Is Donald Trump a dangerous “high conflict and high emotion” personality? Is he a malignant narcissist? Why do these kinds of leaders pose such a threat, even while they inspire such extreme loyalty from their followers? Why do Trump’s supporters continue to adore him even though he has repeatedly lied to them? Do sick societies produce dangerous leaders like Donald Trump, or is another dynamic at work?

View the complete April 27 article by Chauncey DeVega of Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Pentagon set to expand military role along southern border

The Pentagon is preparing to loosen rules that bar troops from interacting with migrants entering the United States, expanding the military’s involvement in President Trump’s operation along the southern border.

Senior Defense Department officials have recommended that acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan approve a new request from the Department of Homeland Security to provide military lawyers, cooks and drivers to assist with handling a surge of migrants along the border.

The move would require authorizing waivers for about 300 troops to a long-standing policy prohibiting military personnel from coming into contact with migrants.

View the complete April 26 article by Greg Jaffe, Missy Ryan and Nick Miroff on The Washington Post website here.

Trump attacks Paul Krugman after NYT columnist publishes scathing column on death of GOP

President Donald Trump on Tuesday inadvertently called attention to a scathing New York Times column written by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.

In an angry tweet, Trump wrote that “Paul Krugman, of the Fake News New York Times, has lost all credibility, as has the Times itself, with his false and highly inaccurate writings on me.” Trump also wrote that Krugman “is obsessed with hatred, just as others are obsessed with how stupid he is.”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Paul Krugman, of the Fake News New York Times, has lost all credibility, as has the Times itself, with his false and highly inaccurate writings on me. He is obsessed with hatred, just as others are obsessed with how stupid he is. He said Market would crash, Only Record Highs!

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In his latest column, Krugman argued that the Republican Party has shown it is completely devoid of ethics and only wants to hold and maintain power.

View the complete April 23 article by Brad Reed with Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Angry and desperate Trump declares he should be ‘immune from criticism’ in crazed early morning tweetstorm

Trump falsely claims, “if you were President and you had a good economy, you were basically immune from criticism.”

President Donald Trump kicked Tuesday off with a stunning declaration: he believes he should be “immune from criticism.”

Trump announced his expectation in an unusually-early, wide-ranging tweetstorm attacking the free press, including The New York Times, Paul Krugman, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” CNN, and Chris Cuomo. He also attacked the social media platform Twitter and the “Radical Left Democrats.” Starting at 5:59 AM he posted 12 tweets in rapid-fire succession in under two hours.

The President said he longed for the “old days,” when, “if you were President and you had a good economy, you were basically immune from criticism.”

View the complete April 23 article by David Badash on the New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.