Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Ex-CIA senior operations officer blasts Trumpification of agency — and explains how Pompeo ‘subjugated the country’s interests to those of the president’

AlterNet logoThe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), founded in 1947 under President Harry Truman, has been in existence for 73 years and has dealt with foreign intelligence under 13 different presidents — the most recent being Donald Trump. In a February 10 article for Just Security, Douglas London (a retired CIA senior operations officer who left in 2018) takes a look at the state of the agency in the Trump era. And London, who now teaches at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., laments that in the last few years, the CIA has been acting in Trump’s interests more than in the foreign intelligence interests of the United States.

Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state in the Trump Administration, served as CIA director from January 2017 to April 2018 — and London recalls that when Pompeo was in charge of the CIA, “anything that could somehow embarrass the president or make him appear weak had to be avoided.”

The former CIA operations officer explains, “Pompeo prioritized shielding Trump from news he didn’t want to hear, an approach to the job that sometimes subjugated the country’s interests to those of the president. Concerned more about his own standing with the president, Pompeo also refused to provide the CIA workforce with any words of support in the face of Trump’s repeated attacks on it — fearing such encouragement would anger Trump.” Continue reading.

Donald Trump the American fascist and authoritarian is no longer a hypothetical — it’s the here and now

AlterNet logoDonald Trump’s show-trial impeachment and “acquittal” was much better in the original Russian or German.

Last Wednesday of last week all 53 Republicans in the United States Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump on the charge of obstruction of Congress. Despite overwhelming evidence — including Trump and his own minions’ public admissions — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah was the only Republican to partly respect the Constitution and rule of law by voting to impeach Donald Trump for abuse of power. Senate Democrats, on the other hand, voted unanimously to convict Donald Trump on both counts.

In short, the Republican Party is more loyal to power than to the Constitution. Republicans all know that Trump was guilty as charged, and chose to acquit him anyway. Continue reading.

Trump Falsely Accuses Pelosi Of Crime For Ripping Up His Speech

From a Feb. 7 appearance on the White House lawn:

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I thought it was a terrible thing when she ripped up the speech. First of all it’s an official document, you’re not allowed, it’s illegal what she did. She broke the law.

But I haven’t been asked a question other than a lot of people that viewed it, they couldn’t believe that she did it. I thought it was terrible, I thought it was very disrespectful to the chamber and to the country.

Video here.

Worried Trump might weaponize the presidency? He already has, many times.

Washington Post logoWorried that President Trump might use the power of his office to punish personal enemies?

Hate to break it to you, but you’re three years too late.

In a bilious hour-long rant Thursday afternoon, Trump ranted against the “scum” and “very evil and sick people” he blames for his impeachment. And he was not the only West Winger making ominous comments about what might become of those who’ve wronged him. Continue reading.

Revisiting ‘Rules for Survival’: Here are 6 immutable rules of autocratic behavior — and tips for countering political tyranny

AlterNet logoIt’s stunning to look back and realize it now, but this was written just two days after the 2016 election.  Along with Adam Serwer’s piece in the Atlantic, bluntly titled “The Cruelty is the Point,” and Timothy Snyder’s tract, “On Tyranny,” Masha Gessen’s brief essay in the New York Review of Books,  “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,”  warning us of the threat Donald Trump posed to our nation’s continued existence as a functioning republic, has proved itself over and over as a frighteningly prescient and disturbingly accurate prediction of how this would all play out, down almost to its very last word.

Gessen, a Russian-American writer and National Book Award winner, has lived in autocracies most of her life. As an outspoken critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, she was one of the first to point out that Trump would, based on all evidence at the time, essentially govern in Putin’s shadow, slowly and inexorably transforming the American Republic by imposing a corrupt, autocratic system on so-called American “institutions.”  As it turned out, Gessen’s assessment of the looming danger posed by Trump and his collaborators in the Republican Party, and her pithy but sound advice on what to expect from a regime that considered itself unbound by such institutions, resounds even more prophetically today as we watch another supposedly hallowed institution, the United States Senate, crumble into dust and irrelevancy, right before our eyes.

The purpose of this is not to revisit the entirety of Gessen’s essay. Most here have already read it (if not you should read it now). Briefly, she sets down a list of six immutable rules of autocratic behavior and explains how ordinary citizens must react, cope, and counter this type of tyranny; and she predicts how the Trump administration would fulfill each of those rules in its efforts to transform our government into something as near a dictatorship as possible. Those rules are: 1) Believe the autocrat—do not for a minute believe anything he says is intended simply to shock or exaggerate; 2) Do not be taken in by small signs of normality; 3) Institutions will not save you; 4) Be outraged; 5) Don’t make compromises; and 6) Remember the future.  Each one of these principles is followed by a prediction of how Trump would turn them into reality for our nation.  And each one, more or less, turned out to be accurate. Continue reading.

The Putin defense: How far will Donald Trump go now to stay in power?

AlterNet logoDonald Trump never faced even the tiniest chance that two-thirds of the United States Senate would vote to find him guilty in the impeachment trial we’re now being told will come to its ignominious end in the middle of next week. You don’t need to put on a defense when you already know the outcome of the trial. He could have gone with what you might call the “potted plant defense,” sending Jay Sekulow or Pat Cipollone or even one of the lesser lights on his team to essentially sit there by himself and watch the House managers set their hair on fire. He didn’t even need to ask for what amounted to a directed verdict of acquittal. He had all the Republican votes he needed right from the start.

Trump didn’t bother merely swatting aside the rule of law and the Constitution. No, he dropped all pretense and went full-on authoritarian, tapping no less a figure than Jeffrey Epstein pal Alan Dershowitz to present the Putin Defense: If it’s good for Trump, it’s good for the country, and that means it can’t be illegal.

I guess we always knew it would come to this. How else can you account for Trump’s parade of obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin? It goes back to December of 2015, when Trump was running for the Republican nomination. He appeared on “Morning Joe” not long after Putin had praised him as “brilliant” and “talented.” Host Joe Scarborough asked him if he still accepted Putin’s praise in the face of his violent policies. Continue reading.

Trump praises Pompeo over handling of NPR reporter: ‘You did a good job on her’

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Tuesday complimented Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his handling of a dispute with an NPR reporter, making light of the incident and saying that the top diplomat “did a good job on her.”

Trump recognized Pompeo as “our great secretary of State” during remarks announcing his administration’s Middle East peace plan alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, before referencing his clash with the NPR reporter unprompted.

“That’s impressive. That was very impressive,” Trump said, commenting on the applause that Pompeo received from the crowd when he said his name. “That reporter couldn’t have done too good a job on you yesterday. I think you did a good job on her, actually.” Continue reading.

 

Bolton Was Concerned That Trump Did Favors for Autocratic Leaders, Book Says

The former national security adviser shared his unease with the attorney general, who cited his own worries about the president’s conversations with the leaders of Turkey and China.

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, privately told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Barr responded by pointing to a pair of Justice Department investigations of companies in those countries and said he was worried that Mr. Trump had created the appearance that he had undue influence over what would typically be independent inquiries, according to the manuscript. Backing up his point, Mr. Barr mentioned conversations Mr. Trump had with the leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China.

Mr. Bolton’s account underscores the fact that the unease about Mr. Trump’s seeming embrace of authoritarian leaders, long expressed by experts and his opponents, also existed among some of the senior cabinet officers entrusted by the president to carry out his foreign policy and national security agendas. Continue reading.

Trump Tweet Threatens NPR Over Pompeo Tantrum

The cycle of Fox News coverage and President Donald Trump’s id repeated itself this weekend, this time involving the network’s coverage of the now-infamous blowup between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly.

In response to negative media coverage, Trump is now seconding a suggestion from Fox News personality Mark Levin — to end NPR’s funding, and even get rid of the organization itself.

Original controversy regarding Pompeo

Kelly’s interview of Pompeo on January 24 became heated when she asked him about the ongoing Ukraine scandal and impeachment, to which he replied that he had only come on to talk about Iran. (Kelly answered that she had confirmed with his staff that she would discuss both Iran and Ukraine.) Continue reading.

Schiff ‘has not paid the price’ for impeachment, Trump says in what appears to be veiled threat

Washington Post logoPresident Trump escalated his attacks on Rep. Adam B. Schiff on Sunday, issuing what appears to be a veiled threat against the California Democrat one day before Trump’s team is expected to deliver the crux of its defense in the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history.

“Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!”

Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is the lead impeachment manager in the Senate trial. Continue reading.