What also should be learned in history classes is Chicago, Michigan Ave. battle 1968.
I just learn about this today, watching MJ in the morning.
The violence of not so distant past is astounding, I use to live in Chicago until moving to NYC, but I never heard that from anyone.
http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/the-lasting-impact-of-the-1968-de...
3
I love this headline.
4
There could be a bright side. Maybe DT is the best thing that could have happened to a lazy, apathetic country whose citizens rarely bother to vote. It has shocked them all out of their complacency and into action, and exposed (or will expose) all the dirt and corruption so that it can be swept clean and replaced with a bright and shining democracy. He is the last gasp of an old white elite trying to hang on by its fingernails.
16
This is all correct in every detail.
And Hillary Clinton lost to him.
5
Thank Jill Stein, the Berniacs, and the "wha'ever, dude," dudes.
I know I do.
13
I think Allen Weisselberg, longtime chief financial officer of the Trump organization, was not granted immunity from prosecution as the result of a plea deal. Rather, Muller et al may have granted Weisselberg immunity to deprive him of the ability to assert his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer investigators' questions. If this is correct, a reluctant Weisselberg might not be as valuable a witness as we assume.
4
And all this evil was made possible and is still defended by many of our own seemingly ordinary neighbors and acquaintances and relatives. People who act civil, go to church, and even do some good deeds for others. That is the deeper horror, and it must be defeated. We will need to see a mass repentance if we are to truly cleanse the soul of this nation.
13
I fear Trump's base (termed zombies here ) every day. They are ultra-armed, and many possess an undifferentiated rage. A lot of them may venerate Trump as a crazy "daddy" figure, as well.
Trump is tapping the rage of uneducated whites; I am concerned he could try to set off a firestorm if he is pushed much further against the wall. I suspect he would do this indirectly and with innuendo, and then deny any culpability for the damage and chaos he can summon. Pure Bosch.
6
Nah. Good thing is, the rabid ones are pretty much fat cowards, or thick as a brick. Regular old Trump voters--I know several personally--think Trump's a clown. They just agreed with him more, and hoped he'd shake stuff up.
2
@SBA Indirectly and with innuendo? He doesn't know how to spell the words. He is a chaotic ship in a storm with no one at the helm. He doesn't have a reason, plan or purpose. We can only hope that his ship ends up on the rocks and that the biggest rat goes down with it.
9
Let's not put Trump on a pedestal.
He's just an ordinary rich person. Like all rich people, he has privilege.
The privilege of the rich is casual corruption.
By joining the rich person's club you gain advice, tips, expertise, favors, and lies to further mutual corruption. This is your outfit.
There should be no surprise that every one of Trump's associates and appointees are also accomplices - they've all been chosen for their ability to earn.
Trumpolini's crew is tied into a web of corruption; if you pull the string there will always be more criminals.
But Trump is not special, all rich people - especially Republicans - are like this.
6
To finish the thought in the scriptural quote: "Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind."
7
Please spare the scripture quotes. It is those old, political documents like the bible, koran and talmud that these under-employed religious leaders have used for hundreds of years to legitimize their patriarchy and abuse of all kinds.
10
Back during "it's" campaign, you wisely avoiding speaking or writing the name of the person who, by dint of pay-offs and Putin's help, assended (sic) to the White House.
I ask that you stop speaking the name of the GOP-enabled despot. To be ignored by the media is tough on "it." We might as well make his remaining time in power one devoid of free publicity.
Then we will face the GOP-enabled zealot, Mr. Pence.
3
My kingdom for a horse! Would that someone persuade all media to bless us with "A Day Without Trump"! To go one day would rest what grey matter remains and---it would drive him off the rails!
4
It still cracks me up that the man who swore he would never again mention Trumps name, nowadays every article he submits is about Trump. And he still doesn't understand why half ( a little less than) of the country supported him. Its true that whatever fate awaits The Despicable will be well deserved. But maybe spread out some of that verbal and intellectual ability toward groups that are outside your normal audience, Mr. Blow what say you!
1
Can't speak for him, but I say check your math: Trump got 46% of about 55%, which works out to maybe a quarter of possible voters.
5
“Donald Trump has warped reality”: Charles Blow champions the American justice system. (You may be held to that.)
1
Last night I had a dream that I was looking at a political cartoon. It featured a huge Trump similar to the Stay Puft marshmallow man in "Ghostbusters". This giant Trump had the grotesque tongue of a demon-long and red like his tie with a bulbous hairy poisonous tip. Like an anteater, he was going after reporters who were scrambling up buildings to escape him. His main target was Jim Acosta. Now I have never had a political dream that I can remember, but this one was a nightmare. I awoke feeling a kinship with you brave reporters, and I thank you for fighting these demons to get the truth for us.
12
You have to give some of the credit to Frank Luntz, who spread the word among GOP members to refer to an estate tax as a death tax, climate change as global warming (so an idiot in Congress could walk in with a snowball to refute the science), our social safety net as "entitlements" while referring to Wall Street bonuses - after our economy tanked - as "performance pay".
I also noticed that while former President Obama was in office and returned a bust of Churchill that was on loan from England, the GOP routinely went out of their way to praise Churchill as one of theirs. Really? Was he? He was for universal healthcare, so as a Type 1 Diabetic, I beg to differ. Since when was a man who (a) fought fascists and (b) was for universal healthcare anything like what this GOP has devolved into.
11
Charles, get out of your bubble. Trump isn’t going anywhere.
1
It's simple..."the donald" wants to be "THE DON". Sad (sic) that this 72 year old child's dreams will not come true. RESIST!!!!
5
"I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping"
Almost by definition, the only people who "flip" are criminals. So Trump is saying (bragging) that he has many friends who are criminals. That he fails to see this as a bad thing to admit seriously brings into question his intelligence. We already knew he was a very stable idiot. Now one must wonder if he is indeed suffering from some sort of dementia.
13
Perhaps a soap opera of demons. Trump and his crew are pretty low-brown stuff, far worse than operatic melodrama.
2
I have already been shocked. I knew that trump gets his money from putin but to see him on TV in front of the whole world believing putin ( murderous liar and thug) over US inteligence - telling the whole world that he is putin puppet by defering to him- he is a traitor to his own country yet his followers still bow down to him . That 40% of the country don't believe in truth or facts anymore is beyond shocking and very sad.
9
Beware of answered prayers Mr. Blow. Since 2017, virtually every one of your columns has been a diatribe against President Trump. Sure, you change the title and rearrange the words, but at the end of the day, your pieces are all devoted to removing Trump from office. Certainly, you have the right to regurgitate your columns. But what happens when your wish comes true? Trump’s presidency has been a blessing to your career; post-impeachment, the hard work begins. As you stare at that blank computer screen with a deadline fast approaching, you’ll pray Trump was President once again.
Oh, he'll cope. With a lighter heart, as will we all.
11
Omarosa deserves a starring role in your Trump opera, Charles. Avenging Angel, perhaps?
3
Donald Trump is like 7 year old Anthony Fremont in Rod
Serling's classic Twilight Zone episode "It's A Good Life" (1961) starring child acting genius Billy Mumy.
On an isolated family farm, a young boy with vast mental powers, but lacking emotional development, holds his terrified family in thrall to his every juvenile wish. (imdb)
Threatening to turn them into a "scarecrow in the cornfields" Anthony has the undying loyalty of his
parents and relatives no matter what he chooses
to do on any given day.
"That's a good idea Anthony, a real good idea. You
know how much we love your ideas." But if this little
demon thinks for one second you're not 100% behind
him, with nostrils flaring and eyes bulging he'll turn you
into a jack-in-the box.
In the end, no one stood up to Anthony and it was clear
that his family and the Ohio town they lived in would soon perish.
Fortunately it appears people are less scared of crossing
Donald Trump.
By the way do you wake up every morning as I do and
think "I can believe this con man cum monster is
president (no caps) of the United States?
8
1. Would not include Stormy in this list, certainly would not make her first. She has hurt not done any harm to the general public or our civil society, whatever we may think of her career choice.
2. I hope the Bible is right on this, but I still have my doubts. One must admit, however, that the more damning things you have done, the more likely you are to be damned.
3. In fairness to his bozoness, it may be a witch hunt, but then again Trump is a witch. (Apologies to all actual witches.)
2
@TvdV
He is a warlock.
Women are witches.
Men are warlocks.
1
Another brilliant column from Mr. Blow. There is no one that encapsulates this con man president better.
12
http://tinyurl.com/hhblxbq Nytimes Paul Krugman dec 2016
.
“Seduced and Betrayed by Donald Trump.”
.
Krugman: Nobel Laureate, econ, 2008
--------------
https://tinyurl.com/yckuclcs washpost sept 2017
.
*** “ Trump Betrays Everyone ” ***
.
‘Rick Wilson, a GOP strategist sharply critical of Trump :
.
“Trump betrays everyone:
.
“wives, business associates, contractors, bankers and now, the leaders of the House and Senate of his own party.”
.
2
Hopefully , Spence’s proposed military space patrol will stumble upon the missing souls of the bunch of crooks, cons, lackeys, and sell outs in and outside the
White House protecting and enabling the unspeakably
heartless actions and unrelenting vicious attacks and harangues of DT.
If so, they will most likely be found to be too corrupted
To save and return to earth.
1
Mr. Blow, you are more than kind to state that Trump has, “lived on the edges of the law.” Trump ‘shows,’ no respect for law or constitution. You can probably add Koch brothers to your list of those whom we (democrats, progressives’ liberals) would never have thought to agree with. Allegedly, the Koch brothers have renounced Trump. The plague of Trump runs deep and his morphing of reality has infected his base. Recently, a caller to a satellite radio program, David Webb, lamented that the unhinged opponents of Trump should just leave him alone, after all, didn’t we do everything possible to support Obama’s presidency. The host, instead of asking caller where he was from 2009 till 2016 basically acquiesced to this wildly re-visioning of history. You lie, he swears to it, new truth, alternate facts, Orwell would have called it ‘Trumpspeak.”
2
Mr. Blow, I too, love Galatians 6:7 and often think that Karma (a more secular way to put this) is coming for Donald!
What disturbs me much more than Donald’s obvious criminality, is the silence of the congressional Republicans! Looks like they will lose the House and Senate and yet they don’t do a thing. Lindsey Graham for one, who pontificated on the floor of the senate when the Republicans were impeaching Clinton! Who said that “impeachment was not punishment but a cleansing of the office.” Well....Graham’s words are hallow since now faced with a truly crimanl president he turn s a blind eye, and even talks about “e news AG after the election.”
Trump is a crook, but the Republicans are much worse for standing by doing nothing to sanction the lair and crook!
10
I am relieved that Mr. blow's columns still have comments. The comments are as important to me as the article itself and I do learn a lot from them. Bruini did not have any comments. Keep it up NY Times and I just may cancel. If you are going broke I would accept a five or even a ten dollar increase in my subscription. Keep the comments coming, please.
As for Trump maybe we should forget him for a few days and move onto more articles on what space pictures are showing us and the possible over all meaning of it all. Something, anything besides Trump, the Pope, or even the overly long coverage of John McCain. I think McCain would be embarrassed by this overly long coverage, and yes, I did like McCain.
A good column but it's basically a rehash of what already has happened. When Trump slips on a banana peel, cracks his noggin, starts speaking in tongues, write about that. It will happen sooner or later. Be patient.
2
Can anything be more indicative of just what kind of petty, vindictive, soulless narcissist is infesting the White House than his refusal to note John McCain's service to our country and his heroism? Trump can't even let the flag fly at half-mast this week because to do so might endanger his fragile ego and sense of aggrieved amour-propre at having been called out and compared unfavorably to a true national hero and patriot. McCain showed the type of courage and self-sacrifice Trump couldn't muster under any circumstances. Trump can't even bring himself to visit our troops in combat areas with as much protection as the US military could give him. Guess those bone spurs are acting up, unless he's on the golf course. Disgust doesn't even begin to do justice to the reactions this man elicits.
11
It is simple.
Anyone who continues to support this so-called president should be pronounced "stateless".
Anyone who defends this so-called president should be pronounced "traitorous".
Anyone who has been or is now part of this so-called president's staff should be
proclaimed as "classless".
All of the above should lose all their rights, all their privileges and all their benefits as Americans.
They are no longer to be deemed citizens because they have chosen to stand against America not for America.
3
Of course, Lanny Davis has since walked back his assertion of Cohen having evidence of Trump's knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting.
1
Oh. So only Trump's kid and campaign manager are gonna do time for that one. Nice to know.
1
The most shocking part of "Trump's Truth" thus far is that he inspires so many acolytes.
3
The fact that people like trump are turning on him for their own self preservation comes as no surprise. Trump would turn on himself if he thought that it would save his neck and be a "win".
6
No matter how bad it gets for Trump, his supporters will ignore it.
He could be in prison and they would still kiss his feet. That's the way it was in merry old England with the king and his subjects.
Trump is the king and his supporters are his subjects.
4
I have come to the same conclusion in the last month or two, Mr. Blow after watching Mueller's path and pattern. I believe we ain't seen nothin' yet. I'm betting that the final Mueller report is going to be a shocking bombshell. Treasonous Trump seems to be running scared, knowing full well what's coming.
8
I sure do appreciate the hopeful article, Mr. Blow. I myself waver between hope and despair. Recent events, however give me a glimmer of hope. If only our system of govt and justice has enough honorable people to make sure that justice is done and our democracy is safe, I will sleep easier. It is one thing to have a President I don't agree with much, but another who daily displays his complete unfitness for the position.
4
I can only hope that Trump reaps what he has sown relatively soon, before he destroys even more of our trusted institutions, norms and values.
7
Trump would be nowhere without a few very important backers and assists. The Russian connection is so obvious and abhorrent that we are not paying attention to an equally determined oligarchic family right here in the U.S.: the Mercers. I want real journalistic digging about them. Why do they fund ideologues like Bannon, Breitbart and Alex Jones who want to destroy democracy? Not just our form of it — ALL democracies. After we pin Trump to the ground, let’s shine a klieg light on the Mercers. I’m certain the revelations will be astounding.
7
"Trump is a man who has lived a life evading justice, using the legal system and the threat of legal action against people. For him, the justice system is a tool at the disposal of the wealthy and the ruthless, one to be used against anyone of lesser means and lesser fortitude." How true and the same can be said for Kushner.
6
@Jacquie
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/nyregion/kushner-cohen-rent-regulated...
1
It is so transparent that Trump cries" flipping" as "something that ought to be illegal" when "flipping doesn't serve Trump's purpose". Trump has been "flipping lies" for decades with his "birther statements, well documented, self-serving outright lies, etc.
In addition, I find it quite refreshing that John McCain expressed his desire to have Ex-Presidents, Obama & Bush deliver eulogies at his services while publicly denying Trump any form of invitee dignity. I love it!!!
4
To Trump justice is only what he says it is. He uses his rallies like kangaroo courts where his mob shouting 'Lock her up' is the only justice. Any real court that finds against him is not legitimate. But that so many will participate in his farce is beyond belief and a threat to our rule of law and our courts.
3
The self described 'conservatives' in these comments keep saying they are only motivated by their desire to oppose the role of government proposed by the 'liberals'. They refuse to acknowledge they are motivated by an intense desire to not under any circumstances pay their share of the cost of running a society. If they have high motivations, why are they so willing embrace corruption and lie down with dogs to achieve their ends?
21
@Paul You are not listening, or for purposes of winning on your cherished issues, project an attitude and motivation onto millions who consist of an electoral college majority that has no basis in fact. They are not mostly "conservative" and are not focused "cost." They are focused on the collectivism and post-modernism of the left, and increasingly the Democrat party, that is using the long-identified tactic of identity politics and denial of progress actually being made, along with open borders and flooding of our country with way more immigrants that can be reasonably assimilated. The recognize what happens when the left gets into positions of power, such as in the Universities, and race and gender issues are allowed to override native intelligence and civil rights. They saw the impotence of the GOP to oppose or even moderate this rush to a drastically-different future so they chose an imperfect vessel in which they see a chance, probably against the odds, but a chance nevertheless to stop it. They will not be deterred nor intimidated by the cheap theatrics of a Clinton loyalist-attorney concocting a plea agreement targeting Trump rather than the all the other felonies committed by Cohen. They will not be deterred by a hit-squad of Clinton supporters masquerading independent prosecutors. Trump may make them, as he does me, sick to my stomach but I know what is at stake in the left's attacks and the Democrat's desire to oust a duly-elected President.
After hearing recently about Nixon's manipulation of the ending of peace talks with North and South Viet Nam to be President and then he was elected President, not once but twice, I wonder if we will really know the extent of Trump's criminality.
I am betting on Mueller to sort it all out, but the fact that the Republican Congress will not protect his investigation, does not leave me much hope.
I hope Charles Blow is right.
10
@Jean Have trust. He is right.
2
@Cyndy
Thank you.
3
I would go a bit further - easier to do in comment than in column.
Trump's whole approach to law is that of a criminal. His inaugural oath to "uphold the Constitution" was as sincere as his many marital vows.
His organizational strategy is that of a Mafia don - loyalty is the primary value, only his undoing will be that loyalty has always been a one way deal with him.
It is no coincidence that the strategy of Mueller, et al is exactly the same strategy that has brought down other crime "families".
When the truth comes out, I think many will be shocked but not those who have known him over the years. Money laundering of Russian money will be at the heart of his "wealth".
"Steal a little and they call you a thief, steal a lot and they call you a king." (Bob Dylan)
Regarding his followers... and they are followers: some are just in an alternate reality. Others have made compromises with their own values. This story is not going to be over when DJT is gone... it is part of Americana now.
15
This columnist continues to state the obvious about Trump, attempting to cower people-not racists nor nationalists of any color-who see Trump as helping to defeat radical leftists on issues of transcending importance to the Country:
-open borders and reversing Obama's reckless, abuse-of-power-expansion of asylum;
-finding ways to be "good samaritans" other than unchecked immigration that is changing society too fast for proper integration;
-reversing the decline of manufacturing and securing competencies that are critical to national security;
-having the courage to challenge outdated trade agreements in the face of moribund foreign policy and trade establishments.
I live on the Left Coast but travel to interior states and can assure that the continuing deep support of Trump by these populations, and resulting silence or neutrality of their representatives in Congress, is not because of nationalism or cowardice but because they are sane and resistant to leftist use of the "nationalist" or "Trumpkin" clubs to cower them into submission on important policy choices.
The continuing denigration by Mr. Blow of those who honestly differ with him on policy, risks inciting both left and right to the streets. If liberals want to identify who is most responsible for Trump's election, they just need to look in the mirror. The Country is in a fight for the future that goes way beyond Trump and should be resolved through elections, not on the streets.
1
@SonomaEastSide you know, “Leftists” are angry that the Trump supporters have sold out our nation to this criminal. He is a crook, and his crimes will be outed! I cannot respect anyone who supports a man who has all but dismantled the State Department, who admires Putin a man who has his country imprisoned!
5
@SonomaEastSide The delusion of this screed is exemplified by the absurd believe that the US has "open borders".
6
Of course illegal immigration dropped massively during the Obama Admin, manufacturing increased and so far all Trump's done is prop up coal and make life harder for small businesses that make stuff from steel and aluminum, and somehow you guys never seem to get around to explaining the details of your beef with NAFTA or why you're good to go with Russian and Chinese expansion into our various markets, but let's not let mere reality interfere with rounding up the usual suspects.
Odd, though, that you can survive in Sonoma, what with all the commies.
1
Hooray Charles, you hit the nail on the head in this article. This narcissistic, lying person that is our president made one fatal error in his empire....he gave it up to step into the bright lights of public scrutiny. He should have stayed in his cave in Trump Tower surrounded by his family for comfort. He is so arrogant that he thought once he was president our government would be his business partner in his nefarious pursuits to further line his own pockets and the pockets of his cohorts.
19
I want Trump to remain in the White House, I do not support impeachment because a "President" Pence frightens me. This because I expect Democrats to take over the House in November. Let them have hearing after hearing after hearing from January 2019 through December 2020. Let them hobble this awful administration so that it can no longer do any harm to this country. Hearings on the environment, on education, on international treaties, on campaign finance, and serious investigations into Russian attempts to subvert our democracy, limits of executive power over law enforcement agencies. Let Trump's base complain about hearings, about baseless attacks. They did it to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Democrats in the House need to play dirty because that is the only thing that spineless Republicans will understand.
14
@EMiller: What you propose is not "playing dirty", it's allowing no compromises about having the truth come out. Also, Democrats should allow no compromises about securing and strengthening the social safety net for all Americans. That is what the government is supposed to do, no ifs or ands or buts. Let the corrupted Republicans scream "Socialism" and "Spending" all they want, but they lost every shred of their credibility in supporting Trump and implementing welfare for the rich.
6
Trump is confused. He thought based upon his life, we were a country of lies. He is soon to find out we are a country of laws.
I trust he will see the inside of a cell before all of this is over. Do not make the same mistake that was made with Nixon. No pardon, just jail time. I can think of no more deserving individual.
15
No one can outrun the truth forever indeed! Whenever I find myself discouraged because of this national nightmare which has become Donald Trump’s presidency, I think about Gandhi who said that tyrants always fall, even if they appear to be invincible at the time. If everything in Donald Trump’s psyche is defined by winning and losing , and assuming that he continues his malignantly narcissistic behavior, he will eventually lose and America will be all the better for it . And no one will be able to defeat him as soundly as he will defeat himself .
9
As they say, "money can't buy class"...Trump is a totally classless individual.
12
"I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world, even more than it is already shocked."
... and I think you'll be even more shocked than you think you'll be.
13
@CVP
Nice ambiguous remark. I think the writer is saying that we will be shocked at how clean and noble we will find Mr. Trump. On the other hand, he may mean that he will appear even dirtier and more disgraceful than we imagined. The former would be more shocking than the later.
1
@Bill Paoli
Bill, it's "on the other hand."
Nice catch on the ambiguity, though. Totally unintended.
1
"...I am fond of Galatians 6:7 in the Bible: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”"
Too many evangelicals seem to have overlooked Galatians.
15
"I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world, even more than it is already shocked" I predict it won't be shocking, unless you're living in Casablanca.
3
To live outside the law, you must be honest -- Bob Dylan
6
@Ben, the ever cryptic bd
2
Trump's impeachment will restore America to greatness.
7
@Walter no impeachment, he will resign and then be criminally charged.
1
As always, a fantastic assessment of what is going on with the criminal-in-chief. I also believe in the idea that progress always wins - which you can extrapolate from the "truth always comes out" idea. Progress and truth will march on....even if it feels horribly slow to the bystanders.
3
Charles, bless you and may you be carried by grace - in addition to your great gifts of mind and soul. If the Cosmos is indeed imbued with and created by the great and Mysterious Love, then the truth will out. But we must attend to and grieve with all those who are being wounded by this Empty Man.
8
@Lee
beautifully said. thank you.
1
The NYT continues to view issues using a double standard.
Once for the liberals like Clinton, one for all the non-liberals.
Another wishful thinking article by the Left.
There's not going to be any impeachment. For what? Trump personally financed the majority of his campaign. IT was HIS money. He had the constitutional right to fire Comey, and McCabe, and Strok, and all the other Hillary hacks in the FBI.
And the Mueller investigation is based on an unverified dossier created and circulated by an unregistered foreign agent. People see, and believe what they like based on their political leanings. The Trump base doesn't have a monopoly on that. As the Left repeatedly proven.
3
Amid that farrago, one point about reality: no, it actually isn't legal to dump money into your campaign, and conceal what you've done. And a point about morality: no, they DON'T all do it, and why are you okay with setting up a dummy corp to hide what you've done, telling a long string of lies to hide what you've done, and having your buddy at a newspaper kill stories you don't like?
16
@Robert
Show me the law that states it’s illegal for a candidate to fund their own presidential campaign. The “hush money” you reference concerned alleged trysts between a private business man, and consenting females. Many years before said private businessman ran for POTUS. This sort of stuff is only news when it’s a non-liberal politician. The Left has become SO predictable in their narrative.
Here ya go, ace. Citations are on the bottom.
https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-rece...
In essence, you break the law if you exceed campaign limits, take funding from iffy people for iffy purposes, and/or fail to report it all. If you do this stuff accidentally, you get fined after you return the dough. If you do it knowingly, amd deliberately conspire to evade the law, you earn yourself a felony prosecution or two. Mens rea, yawl.
It may be worth noting that the Right's now pushing the very, very strange theory that Michael Cohen pled guilty to two counts of violating Federal election laws that don't exist. Thing is, most commentors agree that if Trump weren't El Maximo Presidente, he'd have been indicted half an hour after Cohen pled out.
1
No mention of Omarosa? The most vile and Trump-like of all the characters to turn on him.
2
@Pono He cut off her revenue stream and any hope for future payouts - what else do you want her to do?
"Rats and weasels" what more needs to be said...except perhaps call in the exterminator!
19
Trump's capos are almost as corrupt as the Boss. But now, at least, they can be of some service to the American people, instead of further empowering the career criminal in the Oval Office. The lesser of two evils is still better than the greater evil. Kudos to Charles Blow for succinctly pointing that out. As usual, he's not afraid to expose the unpleasant truth.
14
Great piece, Mr. Blow.
Trump's wall are a tumblin' down.
6
A past approaching from all sides, soon to ensnare him. It isn't just one offense, it's a mountain of offenses. Let the imperial treasonous grifter finally be accountable for his lifetime of unethical, criminal behavior.
16
Since all Republican politics is zero sum its surprising the way Sessions allowed the Russian interference charge take on such a huge proportions. The Congress and Trump have put needless provocative sanctions on Russia that could cause vast unintended consequences for world peace. Mueller's mandate as special counsel was started with a bogus application for a visa warrant. This relentless noise has only showed the absence of any real justification for Mueller. Mueller has expanded his probe beyond its original mandate and damaged Trump. Sessions inactivity has been aiding and abetting Trump's tormentors. Trump has daily been shown to be a racist plutocrat bully with a mind full of misinformation and prejudices which has been hurting the Rs in the polls.
Excellent analysis of the demonic Trumpian Opera Mr. Blow.
Thank you.
But what I continue to marvel at and silently agonize about in every day life as I go about my work and my various exposures to everyone around me, be they co-workers, friends, strangers, and even those who come here to comment is this- who ARE the people who are guilty of actually pulling the 'Trump" voting lever at the ballot box way back in November 2016. What's more, do any of them, any at all, harbor even a sliver of self-doubt for foisting this pompous liar onto the rest of us, a man who still has yet to formally and publicly eulogize the death of the honorable Senator McCain, a man of his generation, a man of his same political stripe who dared to challenge us all to work together for the greater good ?
When will the voters of the Republican party finally begin to call out their own party's corruption? I'm still waiting....
19
"Trump may have the undying loyalty of the zombies who rose from what was once the mainstream Republican Party, but not even that can forever stave off the reckoning."
Brilliant -- the White Walkers vs. the western world.
10
All this hate that Mr. Blow and other "progressive" exhibit over Trump's past sex life hasn't moved the needle at all. Trump's approval ratings have remained unchanged.
2
@jaco - You are right, and I see it as a desire to witness a Sideshow Bob episode in the White House rather than admit they could not identify true leadership in the Republican ranks. The Trump purists' emotional immaturity is on display, everyday, by not admitting they were the mark in his three-card monte game. His game plan has run out of tricks.
12
@jaco
Just to be clear. It's more than just "hate" over Trump's past sex life; which by the way, is something we New Yorkers know more about than others... it's all the other things Trump stands for that has nothing to do with protecting and serving our Democracy.
And while his approval ratings may have remained unchanged -- that's only among his loyal base, which is STILL not the majority of Americans.
14
@jaco:
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
2
All that Mr. Blow reports and now:
America’s would-be Nero disrespects America’s hero.
Trump opposed McCain’s rejection of torture. Maybe we should employ torture to get some semblance of truth out of President Trump.
6
@Andrew G. Bjelland, Sr. "If it's what you say it is, I love it"
3
On the other hand, consider this scenario: Democrats eak out a slim majority in the House. Trump fires Sessions and replaces him with a Republican Senate-approved sycophant. This person fires Rosenstein and shuts down the Mueller investigation The House drafts articles of impeachment and sends them to the Seante. The Senate Republicans, following their now established "tisk, tisk" Mr. President" ritual, refuses to consider the articles. The Trump base is ecstatic. The now right wing-stuffed courts do nothing. Welcome to authoritarian government. And for reference, Stalin never reaped what hd'd sown.
6
@Phillip Usher
You are leaving out the whole "trial in the well of the House" part of the equation.
If the Dems start impeachment proceedings it won't be about lying to cover up an extramarital affair, it will be a systematic laying out of every crime and offense that Trump has done... from criminal conspiracy with the Russian government, to obstruction of justice, to violations of the emoluments clause, to directing campaign financing violations done by Michael Cohen, to money laundering, to misuse of Trump foundation funds, to lying to congress, to human rights violations (ripping children away from their parents), and every other piece of dirt that's fallen off Trump since he walked into the Oval office. All with millions of pages of supporting evidence.
Will the Republican Senate convict Trump and force him out of office? Maybe, maybe not, but the point is to make EVERY Republican in the Senate OWN Trump. It's about making those Senators stand in front of the American public and in broad daylight vote on each and every one of these charges. You can bet the thought of that terrifies them.
12
“... A life lived on the edges of the law...”
It remains an unfathomable mystery how a known con man was allowed candidacy by the Republican Party. Yes, they have been vile for decades, but there should be regulations regarding who can run for PRESIDENT, for Pete’s sake! There are laws regulating voters. Ex-cons can’t vote. So what about restricting national candidates to people who, say, aren’t serial bankrupts? Doesn’t that sound reasonable?
17
@joymars
Unfortunately most of our customary civic behavior by politicians is just that, custom. It has not been codified into law. In the last couple decades we have seen the Republican Party break all the accepted customs of civilized political behavior.
Especially after the thuggery surrounding this last election, the US needs to codify proper behavior into law. This should start with requiring, by law, that all candidates disclose the last 10 years of their income tax statements.
6
@Juanita, much of the gop was adamantly vs Trump being their nominee, including leaders like Mitt Romney.
Trump's inability to set aside his petty disagreements with Senator John McCain and make some small nod to decency by honoring McCain in death is yet another tribute to Trump's lack of character.
I want to thank Mr. Blow for being an early and unflinching critic of Trump. Mr. Blow represents true patriotism. Stay strong.
Let us hope that at some point the mountain of evidence that has already accumulated and continues to accumulate rouses at least some Republicans from their moral slumber.
Permanent damage has been done. Our nation beclowned, we will wear the humiliation of this presidency for centuries to come.
Nevertheless, we must focus on mitigation of the damage rather than revenge. What is best for the nation going forward?
Unless there is clear evidence of treason and assuming democratic control of the House, we should not impeach Trump. Rather, Congress should hold countless hearings and legislate reforms to prevent another Trump from happening again.
7
Mr. Blow: thank you for your instructive column. It's not often where one can review all of Trump's character flaws and how far from grace Mr. Trump has fallen. Your column states the following comment made by Trump: “I’ve always had controversy in my life and I’ve always succeeded. I’ve always won. I’ve always won.” Evidently Mr. Trump doesn't remember the fine of $10 million the Treasury Department placed against the Taj Mahal for money laundering. Nor does he seem to remember the $25 million fine recently brought by the court system against Trump U/Trump Institute for the fraudulent business practices. Need I remind Mr. Trump of his numerous business bankruptcies or the fact that he's been involved in over 3,500 lawsuits in federal and state courts? If you call this winning, my god, what would he call losing? I guess the only classification in Trump's mind that would equivocate to losing is a jail sentence. Then, again, he might claim that as winning if the jail time was in lieu of a death sentence.
8
I so hope Charles is right and that the whole truth about Trump will eventually be told, and it will be shocking. But even if so, Trump's base will not believe it, and a portion will not care about his corrupt life.
For me, I have lost confidence in the country and no longer believe that the better angels of our nature will prevail. The Trump Presidency has proven to me that the system has failed, and it is largely due to the Republican party's weakness, led by the greatest partisan ever, Mitch McConnell, who I strongly suspect has some secrets of his own.
242
@nl
Don't forget Citizens United which unleashed obscene amounts of money into the system. The current situation works really well for the 1 per cent, not so much for the rest of us. Trump's base will wise up once they have gone broke or jobless or hungry for a spell.
1
@nl
The Dallas News has an updated article on money from Russian oligarchs, the NRA and McConnell.
See: How Putin's oligarchs funneled millions into GOP campaigns ...
https://www.dallasnews.com › Opinion › Commentary
May 8, 2018 - New allegations about $500k in payments from a Russian oligarch made to Trump ... Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.
"McConnell surely knew as a participant in high level intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election."
5
@nl Another all-time market record high today. I figure I'll give the country another couple of weeks before I lose confidence in it.
I loved the Bible verse and I believe it its very appropriate Mr. T is hitting wall of lies as thought they were the one he built in his dreams along Mexico he cannot seem to keep up the down cycles are more and last longer. As to the Zombies and mostly because they are a true reality as you see it we need a pause and we get that in a successful midterm result. In my heart of hearts I do believe there is something seriously, seriously wrong with the whole Trump campaign machine and Presidency I also believe for the long term health of out democracy we need to end this nightmare not with an Impeachment but votes in 2020. This midterm year is critical to put a period to the crazy stuff as much as voters in due course can.
5
Trump is who he is....despicable, lying, cheating, not an ounce of respect in him....we all knew who he was just by his campaigning...! He hasn't changed! One of the things at fault here is the voters who voted for him...Those red states that voted for him seem to be the populous that love "stars" - especially TV stars at best. He made himself a TV reality "star" and everybody loved it. Firing people....aaah, what power! Stand him up against an honest, honorable person, and he will always overpower them. They witness a kind of drama - bullying - in real life. The second thing at fault here, is that they don't care and he doesn't either. God help us!
19
As the stock market sets yet another record high today, we're treated to even more fire and brimstone from Mr. Blow, replete with a biblical verse no less. Meanwhile, unemployment remains at a 20-year low, American combat casualties are at a 15-year low, and the planet keeps spinning. Can't wait for next week's column.
3
@John D: A few non-alternative facts:
– The Dow may be up today, but it’s still quite short of its record high (26,616.71 on January 26, 2018). The mindless trade wars instituted by 45*, not to mention the looming trillion-dollar deficit, are catching up to us. And let’s not forget, the stock market is not an indicator of wealth for a broad swath of Americans… in fact, much of the current boomlet is a result of stock buy-backs from companies spending their billion-dollar savings from the GOP Tax Scam.
– Employment is at a 20-year low – a trend which started under Obama; job growth, however, is slower under 45* than it was under Obama. And real wages are down. Inflation is creeping up as the effects of killing the Iran deal (higher gas prices) and instituting ridiculous tariffs (higher everything prices) start to kick in. Many Americans are having to work two and three jobs just to keep treading water.
But crow if you want, while you can. I fear that the reign of the lying, thieving sociopath who happens to currently occupy the White House will end badly for all of us.
17
@John D
Unemployment, brought down by the economic RECOVERY begun in 2009 under President Obama.
American combat causalities shouldn't be occurring oh, but those endless wars started by, em, Republicans, based on LIES.
2
The market run-up rests on three things: a) the economy getting yanked out of a deep, deep hole after 2010; b) deregulation that we're all gonna end up paying for; c) massive stock buy-backs that run up stock prices, and which are financed largely with a $2 trillion tax cut that we were assured would get spent on increased wages, plant modernization, and new businesses.
Sayonara, suckers.
12
45 is basically untouchable. The GOP establishment has realized they can use him to pack the court and steer their agenda as long as they don't rock the boat when it comes time to vote.
40% of the people would not care what evidence you show or how persuasive your arguments are. 45 is their guy, warts and all.
19
@Alex
Here's the thing: simple math.
40% of the people is still not the majority...nor is it even half.
The rest of us care, and you'll see that come November.
3
@Alex
Mike Pence can do all of these things without making half of Congress dread looking in a mirror. Trump's usefulness to Republicans peaked at his inauguration; he is now a big liability that will only get bigger. Trump is not the only one who knows how to act in self-preservation.
We simply do not know how most people, including Republicans, will react to Mueller's findings or those of the SDNY investigations, and there is no obvious benefit to speculating about that now.
Thank you, Mr. Blow. Always enjoy your contributions.
5
As usual you give your readers a "Birds eye view" of all the corrupt shenanigans of #45 and I love it, keep telling the hard truths, Mr. Blow.
9
"No one can outrun the truth forever."
Thank you, Charles, for simply stating the reality all those who have achieved human maturity acknowledge. We understand that this too shall pass.
16
"Opera of Demons"!!! Charles' title grabbed me from the moment I saw it. Elsewhere a reader's comments in today's NYT labels Trump "America's Caligula" - not really a stretch of the imagination, is it?
7
@post-meridian
Not really. Gaius Caesar (aka Caligula) spent the treasury and then had his favorite horse appointed senator.
2
Mr Blow,
When speaking about #FakePresident, you don't have to use words like "possible" - as in "possible criminality". You probably don't have to use the word "allegedly", either.
18
I have finally achieved some insight into the mindset of Trump supporters. Our housekeeper revealed to us that she is a Trump supporter, and so are her friends and family. When I asked her what she thinks about his endless lying and his general malfeasance, her response was 'I don't really pay any attention to the news or what he is doing'.
Now I get it. After winning their admiration for being a TV star and a 'tough business man', his supporters pretty much go about their lives having moved on after making their decision between him and Secretary Clinton. I asked her about where she gets her health insurance, and of course, she gets it through the (Obama) health care exchange. I asked her if she knew Trump was trying to eradicate her health coverage, and her response was 'whatever, I've paid out-of-pocket before'.
So, now I understand, in-part, the mindset of Trump supporters; make a decision every four years, and in-between, just don't pay any attention to the consequences of your decision. The choice between Clinton and Trump unfortunately drove many Obama voters into Trump's clutches.
Ignorance used to be bliss in better, less trying times. But since 2016, ignorance has become gravely dangerous as it seems to be the new status quo for America's political leadership, and a blissfully ignorant electorate who seems to think 'whatever' is good enough for them.
In the words of Trump, 'How sad'.
41
@Solar Farmer
Wilful ignorance is also called idiocy
14
@Solar Farmer Thank you for laying this out. It is indeed 'sad' and VERY telling if how we've dumbed down our citizens not stressing history, civics, and consequences for our actions. It is very telling that ~62M Trump voters are so clueless and, instead of wanting to know truths, they seek out idols regardless of how morally bankrupt and corrupt he has been his entire life.
3
@Solar Farmer Thank you for laying this out. It is indeed 'sad' and VERY telling if how we've dumbed down our citizens not stressing history, civics, and consequences for our actions. It is very telling that ~62M Trump voters are so clueless and, instead of wanting to know truths, they seek out idols regardless of how morally bankrupt and corrupt he has been his entire life.
It kills the left we actually have a President with a love of the country. He is working tirelessly to undo all the damage that politicians have done over the years.People like Charles Blow make a wealthy living playing the worn out race card and that’s where his philosophy lies. Blow , try to look through the smoke of hate and see that monorities and the middle class are actually having some hope in their lives. People like Charles call the immigration battle racism-when in actuality it’s the only way this country survives. Otherwise , the country will be overrun with a number of illegal immigrants that will be a weight Americans won’t be able to bare. Keep calling names like deplorable. It will guarantee a Trump 2020 presidency.
5
I get that you need to repeat the lies about how great Trump's been for "minorities," but I'm really curious about this fantasy of Trump's "love of country."
Where'd you get that from? The draft-dodging? The attacks on POWs and the parents of a dead veteran? The yelling about a Senator being a closet Muslim from Kenya? The putting three cronies from Mar-a-Lago in charge of the VA? The attacks on our own Justice Department and CIA? The craven behavior in Helsinki? The insults to our allies?
I'd really like to know. What's this guy ever given up for America?
37
@Dean Robichaux
@Dean Robichaux
It kills decent people when there's a president who cares about no one and nothing other than himself.
7
I appreciate your honesty and deplore your judgement. As for me, Charles Blow is clear eyed and fearless and that encourages me.
7
Trump and his minions, DeVos...Ross.... Manafort.... Cohen.... etc. have bigly money.
But have you ever seen a more miserable, unsatisfied group of people?
Even the younger Trumps seem weary and worn. Cynical , empty millionaires.
34
What kind of man has "friends" like Michael Cohen and David Pecker? What kind of man refuses to honor a senior Senator from his own party? What kind of man pays hush money to numerous women to save his "reputaion"? What kind of man publicly shames his own Cabinet officers? What kind of President wants to use government for his own benefit? Ours.
355
@Bob What kind of man has friends like Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers? What kind of man says to McCain at a public meeting "I won and elections have consequences"? What kind of a man is proud of his reputation as a coke user and admits it in a book? What kind of man trades 5 terrorists for a traitor? What kind of man claims it was a video for the deaths of 4 Americans? BHO.
1
@Bob
I was going to answer your question, "what kind of man" and state a dog. Then I thought, why would I ever wish to disrespect mans' best friend by tying up such a gutter crawling low life as Trump to canines.
12
@mark johnson
Mark man, you sound a little silly make false equivalencies. Your's is a textbook example of whataboutism. I consider repeated hush money for adultery in a presidential campaign more serious than someone doing drugs with their girlfriend in college.
Also, you might notice Trump said he doesn't drink. That doesn't mean he never did drugs. A New York aristocrat in the 80s? I think Tom Wolfe wrote a book about the subject.
"I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world..."
Except for his supporters. The only thing Trump has ever been right about was his comment about shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Ave.
19
Oh, how I hope you will be proven right.
6
Trump's lucky. The one flip that should have happened, didn't. Jeff Flake bailed rather than stay and fight - the way his fellow party member Jim Jeffords did, in 2001:
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/23/politics/senator-from-vermont-says-he...
3
Yet another fine, telling column by Charles Blow, with the utmost truth and honesty, with justified scorn for trump and his vast tribe of scoundrels.
Impressive are the commenters, demonstrating brilliant critical thinking. Appreciation to you all. Here's to : "east of the gwb"; L. of OK.; Christine, a favorite; the gentleman from Alameda; the sage of downtown Verona; and more, many more, from across these United States; last, certainly not least, the venerable poet, Larry Eisenberg, succinctly summing it all up very nicely. Thank you.
10
Thank you! Charles. This gives me an intelligent hope.
5
"Hopefully these coalitions will not need to be longstanding. Trump’s fortress of fraudulence is showing cracks. A life lived on the edges of the law is inching into full view. Justice is yearning to be served."
I wish Charles Blow would just come out and say it. Just say it.
"I'm Batman."
4
"I've always won. I've a;ways won."
From the biggest loser our nation has seen.
20
"Trump may have the undying loyalty of the zombies who rose from what was once the mainstream Republican Party, but not even that can forever stave off the reckoning."
Yes, the trajectory for Trump is now becoming clear--he is going down, even if we can't yet tell the specifics.
But we should all be even more concerned about the "zombies"--the 40% of America (which includes the Fox News family) that still thinks Trump is great and continue to deny any evidence to the contrary. They will still be with us after Trump's demise. They will scream "deep state" and "rigged witch hunt" no matter how clear and obvious are the facts. After more than a year and a half as president, and even more as a candidate, we have had plenty of time and evidence to measure this man's character.
What does this mean for the rest of us? We will still have to deal with Trump's damage, and his zombie cult, long after he is gone. There are other Trump wannabes in the making, and they would happily replace him and pick up the zombie following. So even when Trump is gone, we will still have to continue to defend our nation against these autocratic, anti-democratic forces. We must vote with passion every two years: certainly in 2018 and 2020, but also in 2022, 2024, 2026, and onward for a generation. As John McCain's life reminds us: there are things bigger than ourselves that are worth fighting for.
24
@Stubborn Facts Actually, we need to vote EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. because we need to focus on local and state elections too.
2
This is where the black and white of honestly/integrity is diametrically opposed to lying/cheating. There can be NO gray area in anyone's mind. If there is, you should question your own perception of right and wrong.
9
Today we have the pictures of the young man who just blew away lives and wounded others
in Jacksonville. Another white guy with a gun.
But Trump made a huge thing out of an accused Latino for raping and killing a white girl in Iowa. To support his claim that Latino
illegals are rapists, as a class.
How about making a bigger stink over the many, many white shooters who kill many many more other human beings with their
paranoid armories?
This alone marks Trump and Sessions as racists.
29
Trump is made of flesh and blood like all of us. Once his house of cards and smoke screens have fallen away, and once his last toadies will have abandoned him, he will be standing naked (only figuratively I hope) in front of all, in his complete ugliness.
I do not believe for an instant that he will feel contrition or remorse, because that is not the way he is wired. Because it takes a conscience and a degree of humility to admit your errors and apologize. But does he have a conscience?
Even harder will be for all those who followed him blindly or not so blindly. How will they not feel the deepest shame?
This maybe be more of a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean tragedy rather than an Opera...
But truly it is no show. There are plenty of real victims and the damage will be long lasting.
Do not let yourself be too much fascinated by the show, go and vote in November!
17
@Fly on the wall
This is in response to Fly on the wall's excellent
comment, along with that of Nb, which follows.
Be assured, there is no contrition, no conscience,
no shame, no humility, no apologies
There are, though, and will be plenty of victims, some of whom still believe that Trump is their champion.
6
"But does he have a conscience?"
I think he had one once, but disease progression has robbed him of it.
2
Based on recent polls, many Trump supporters support him because he is a smartass. They like his lip. They also seem to know very little about his policies. They cannot recall what he has done or plans to do. And morality and ethical behavior is unimportant.
I liked Bernie’s rhetoric once but quickly realized that he was all criticism and no plans. I expect more from elected officials than jaw jaw. Apparently Trump supporters are just too easy.
17
@Nb, Poorest county in West Va [ a poor state, ] is still heavily pro Trump
"Trump may have the undying loyalty of the zombies who rose from what was once the mainstream Republican Party, but not even that can forever stave off the reckoning."
Indeed, but when will the reckoning come? Soon, at the midterm elections, at the end of Trump's first term when he is not reelected, sometime during his second term, or after?
5
Again Mr. Blow's eloquence helps me get through the day and reminds me that I am not alone. Thank you, Mr. Blow.
15
The truth will set us free and send Trump to jail where he belongs!
13
A close friend worked for The Donald for a number of years. He left broken and dispirited, knowing all the details: the lies, the deceit, the abject stupidity.
We still talk.
Conrad's "Oh, the horror!" resounds.
20
I am struck, Mr. Blow, by your quote from Galatians. That verse has often occurred to me.
"The very rats instinctively have quit it."
Thus Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, in Shakespeare's "Tempest." Describing the flimsy craft he and his young daughter were set adrift in.
And you think of that scene in "Titanic." Innumerable rats, in terror of their lives, rushing down some corridor as the big boat goes down.
"Kingdom of rats and weasels"--my goodness! Mr. Blow. You can turn a phrase.
But I would contend these "rats and weasels" have indeed sacrificed something for their scowling chief.
My wife and I--and hey! this is NORM, not SUSAN. . ..
. .my wife and I were talking about it the other day.
"How many people," she wondered, "will put WORKED FOR PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP on their resume."
Good question!
They might conceivably have sacrificed any decent job prospects for the foreseeable future.
AND--their good name.
AND--in some cases--their integrity.
Real sacrifices, wouldn't you say?
"Men," said Captain Smith as RMS Titanic went down, "you have done your full duty. It's every man for himself now. Good-bye--and God bless you."
I don't think your "rats and weasels", Mr. Blow, are waiting for any valedictory blessings as they scurry off.
Or PERMISSION to scurry off.
I suspect you're on the money here, Mr. Blow.
It really IS--every man for himself.
(Every woman too. You know what I mean.)
7
@Susan Fitzwater Charles Blow, many of your readers will demonstrate in the elections that, rather than every man or woman for themselves, we will vote for liberty and justice for all, by voting for Democrats!
2
We clearly have an unindicted co-conspirator in The White House thanks to the guilty pleas of Michael Cohen and the immunity granted to co-conspirators David Pecker and Allen Weisellberg. But where in this "Opera of Demons" does that leave us? Can Robert Mueller be the final act by demonstrating unequivocally a conspiracy with Russia and Donald Trump as both Lanny Davis and Omarosa Manigault Newman have hinted. If so, the Trumpublicans may finally have to banish their inner demons and embrace their "better (more appropriately, "battered") angels." If Mueller can not produce the goods, there will be no impeachment even if the blue wave sweeps through both the House and the Senate this November. Trump may escape justice (at least while he's in office), but the Constitution will be saved if Democrats have enough power (and spine) to end his unchallenged demonic march toward to autocratic one-man rule. It's our choice: democracy or demons.
3
Mr. Blow, thanks for this editorial. Donald Trump has always been the bully, whether it was on Fifth Avenue in New York City or at Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D. C. As a well-informed bully, Trump learned to use others for his own ends. Now he is attempting to use all the American citizenry for his own purposes. When will the US Congress understand this and act appropriately? Or do we all get pulled down so badly that all of us are bruised—socially, politically and economically?
5
If only God were in charge of Donald Trump's fate. Unfortunately that task falls to the House and Senate, both of which are controlled by gutless amoral Republicans more concerned about their political futures than the welfare of the country whose Constitution they pledged to preserve. protect, and defend. As long as that's the case Donald Trump will no more be held to account for his high crimes and misdemeanors than he was for fleecing who knows how many creditors, contractors, tenants, and "students" of Trump University.
5
"In this dramatic opera of demons, the lesser evils are part of the phalanx standing between us and the greater evils"
I believe in going with the lesser of evils, but one must realize that the lesser of evils is still evil.
2
In another place and time, it would be a remarkable admission from a sitting president that he has and continues to surround himself with people who are either flippers or flippees. Both are, by definition, people in serious trouble with law enforcement. Trump's self-proclaimed law and order impulses only apply to illegal immigrants.
5
There will be much more about Trump that comes out. I also predict that much more will come out about members of congress. I think recent events are likely to cause others to waiver and "flip". The depths of Trumps evilness have yet to be fully understood. I would like Mueller to not hurry in completing his investigation of Trump because I think the breadth of the operations designed to cause instability in our country potentially goes way beyond just Trump and Trump's team's collusion with Russia.
The investigations and prosecutions will go on for many more years. It will implicate many others. Mueller will only be interested in the high level stuff, but many many rats are on that ship, and they haven't starting jumping yet. At some point they will realize that they either flip or they go down too, and why would you do that for Trump. No one has any reason to do that. They were never with Trump because of loyalty, they were there for the money opportunity. How many people have been wired lately. How many were protecting themselves somehow. It would likely be anyone in their right mind, you know, greedy, but not insane. Although, it will be interesting to see who the true Trump disciple may be, I would like to know who the most delusional person on earth is.
7
Missing from this fine column: the hero protesting Trump's attacks our democracy in this opera of demons - Senator John McCain - valiant until the end.
8
We all know in the pit of our stomach that nothing will happen to Trump. He controls 90% of the Republican party, which controls government, and most likely will still control it after the mid-terms. Trump has so numbed the electorate that scandals now mean nothing. He can act as he wants because that is what is supporters want, a show (and the exploding heads of the educated liberal elitists); they will believe and support anything to keep the show going. Hunker down for six more years of MAGA.
3
Unfortunately I agree with this post. We have a large percentage of the voting public who don’t bother even showing up. And another percentage are enjoying the trump show
6
@Laura Heaton
Wait til they find out that for the Trump Show you have to pay on the way out instead of on the way in.
"No one can outrun the truth forever. Eventually, the truth always catches up."
Trump is under scrutiny now because of his position. Without that scrutiny he would have gone on with his illegal activities--so would Michael Cohen, etc. Truth would have never caught up. There are probably plenty of others like them who are cheating and stealing and evading taxes, happily protected by their wealth. Will the truth ever catch up to them?
8
@susaneber
At least maybe now the rest of the big-time crooks will realize that running for office can expose their criminal activities to the light of day, especially if they manage to win. It should give them pause.
We are "bedfellows" with people like Comey, Daniels and Cohen because they have proof of the corruption, we don't; and yes, the enemies of my enemies are useful "tools" in restoring Democracy. But let's not lay down with these dogs too long lest we get up with fleas.
Remember, Clinton won the general by 3.7 million votes. More voters than not prefer the progress of inclusiveness and equality. That helps me sleep at night, and gives me hope for how we will restore Democracy when Trump has skipped bail and is hiding in Slovenia.
6
Another spot on article from Mr. Blow. Please keep at it. However, I diverge from his thinking on the general area of justice and the future. I just don't believe:
"No one can outrun the truth forever. Eventually, the truth always catches up. It comes out. It shines. I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world, even more than it is already shocked." - or quotes from the bible.
The wealthy and powerful (i.e., white men in the case of the U.S.) have been 'winning' and will continue to do so. Sexism, racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, etc. are all alive and well.
It is not that we shouldn't continue to fight for justice, kindness, compassion and fairness. We should just be prepared for an outcome that is peace of mind.
7
I was at a major league ball game the other day, but my head was some place else, far into the future. Seated in the row in front of me was a young couple with their brand new, right out of the wrappers infant. All game long I’m wondering what wonderful things this child will see, fifty years from now, and how history may look to her. How will history look back at the trump years? How will text books (electronic of course) record this era when America almost committed suicide?
I’ll be long gone, so should it matter to me now? Of course, that’s part of what being an American is all about. Handing the baton of democracy to the next generations, and hoping your generation added to the quality of life to posterity.
I remembered a quote of John Adams, from a letter to his wife Abigail.
“Posterity! You will never know the price this generation paid for your freedom. I hope you use it well.” April 1777
15
Here's what I think will be revealed in this sick soap opera's plot:
Trump is indebted to Russia for millions, particularly for the bailout he got for bad and then bankrupt casino deals. Russia is indebted to Trump bc buying Trump real estate is the way they steal and launder $. This mutual illegal back-scratching,going on since the 1980's, is in the best interest of both parties. Therefore both Russia and Trump wanted Trump to be elected. Hence collusion. Also Trump owes millions to the IRS in unpaid taxes. Let's not forget all the campaign funds used to pay off unknown numbers of women he slept with. Who knows what other illegalities will be revealed, like some sinister Alfred Hitchcock twist? Follow the $.
8
@JG Yes! All of this. Spot on.
Trump's grave weakness is his ego. It had been well padded with a false construction of prosperity, bolstered by the clever manipulation of debt and "gaming the system." It is alarming how far Trump has gotten, given most of his highly suspicious financial dealings. But his ego didn't foresee the danger of becoming president, that close scrutiny would come uninvited to his doorstep. Now it's here and there's smoke coming from under the door. The DOJ is going to open it, and there's nothing that Donald Trump can do about it. His day of reckoning is coming soon. And his presumed shield of the presidency won't hold for very long. The question is, will Republicans allow justice to be served or are they going to obstruct it to lessen the blow to Trump? If ever there was a poster-man for corruption, Trump is it. He deserves to be a cell mate of Madoff.
8
Oh, if only the Galatians 6:7 passage had some agency, at the least among Republican "Christians." But 50+ years of evidence of that cabal clearly shows that it doesn't. Lying about voter fraud, gerrymandering, lying about former President Obama, etc., etc., and, now, complete silence upon--well, really vigorously defending--the lies of Donald Trump is more than enough proof. The only glimmer of hope we have is that at least some pieces of our criminal justice system are still working, but only against the fierce and completely cynical opposition of the same cabal--"Christians," they call themselves.
6
I must be missing something. Trump had encounters and maybe affairs that he covered up. Isn't that the nature of extramarital affairs? You cover them up. I know, in this case, covering up affairs amounted to campaign violations, okay. So that's the scandal? That's what's going to bring him down?
How about separating babies from their mothers who are escaping horrific conditions and even death? How about endeavoring to take away health care from thousands and as a result causing suffering and even death? How about assigning heads of departments with so-called leaders who want to destroy the very programs they are assigned to administer? How about denying climate change and championing policies that make climate change even more dire than it already is? How about getting tax cuts for billionaires and corporations so that when climate disasters inevitably happen, there will not be sufficient funds to address the hardship, the displacements, the lack of basic resources? How about increasing military spending so that we can support war crimes such as bombing starving people in Yemen?
What am I missing? I guess what I am missing is the lack of willingness to face the truth of what our country continues to do in the name of freedom and free enterprise. I guess what I am missing is the tacit approval of far right officials and voters. So what's bringing Trump down is covering up sexual encounters? Really?
5
@LoveNOtWar
You ain't seen nothin yet.
5
@LoveNOtWar,
Yes...really. The affairs are Trump's Achilles heel as they involve illegal spending of campaign funds. All the other points you mention are the backbone of the Republican platform. Disgusting as they may be they are not illegal and yes, are done in the name of free enterprise and freedom.You can hang your flag on that!
4
@Matt586
I blame in part the mainstream media for leaving too much out of the national narrative so that people are only acting on what they know from watching the news. For example, it is only recently that the NY Times published something about the US backed Saudi bombing of Yemen. How long has this country been backing these attacks? It started several years ago with the Obama administration. How come so many of us did not know about this at that time and are only learning about it now? What about the US efforts to undermine democratically elected officials and placing corporate killers in their places so that many of the countries in Central America have become violent societies? What about explaining why these parents and young children are seeking asylum here? Most people do not want to dig beneath the surface but take at face value what they are told by the MSM. So Americans are not so much arguing about what is right or wrong; many are on the same page and would not agree to these atrocities. What they disagree about is the reality about what has actually been going on.
He is not agged yet. We may see many cohorts go down and criminality exposed but I would not surprised to see him escape to a non-extradition country with some hidden fortune left - much as Nixon retreated to San Clemente with a large Government payment and hidden support from Certain Republican money people.
5
Dean--Don't forget The Southern District of New York, which will not let him, them go. Nor will there be any pardons.
10
Thank you for reminding us of the reckoning that must needs come for the unrighteousness of Trump’s actions against the laws of the land and its people. “Though the mills of God grind slow, they grind exceedingly fine.”
Thank you, Mr. Mueller, for helping to grind for Justice’s sake.
3
The problem is that for Trump's supporters the truth is whatever the Dear Leader says it is. The will never vote him out of office or support impeachment until the day that Republican policies makes their lives so miserable that they finally wake up to the fact they've been conned. We're still far away from that day judging by the slavish adoration exhibited by Trump's supporters at his rallies.
6
A mystery to me is Trump's support from FoxNews. For a network happy to jump on any conspiracy theory involving a Clinton or Obama, why are they so willing to let the daily craziness go?
It's remarkable how flexible they are to excuse him.
3
Why are we living with this nightmare of a presidency? That is the question each of us must answer. We must accept the responsibility for what happened, even if we didn’t vote for him. Never let this travesty be repeated. That’s the only way America will survive.
5
Congress. Wake Up! It should be telling that this president and his media handler, Fox News, has made a demon out of John McCain. I looked on Twitter on some articles about McCain and the extremists give the man no honor, and even call him a traitor.
This is appalling and telling. The man in the Oval office has made a demon of a man that gave over 5 years of his life this country life in the worst possible conditions. A man I certainly did not always agree with, but could always respect. Most of the time, I did agree with him. I'll never get the Sarah Palin thing, but to his credit, he NEVER threw her under the bus.
President Under-The-Bus-Thrower hasn't completely tossed his close family under the bus yet, but he will. No honor is due him. No respect.
McCain was a million times the man Trump could ever be.
8
Thank you Charles. I still believe in America, and I believe that, once we are rid of Trump AND Pence, that there will be a resurgence of the values that the men and women of my generation fought for. With Trump, Sessions, and Pence we have seen racism, xenophobia, greed, and rampant chicanery in action: we understand more fully than ever that these are not our American values. Your writing and the very existence of the New York Times gives me hope. Stay the course Mr. Blow.
314
@Philadelphia Jim, if you are just now seeing racism, xenophobia, greed, and rampant chicanery in action then I wonder how long you have lived in America.
2
@Philadelphia Jim
As long as a significant portion of the population will believe any conspiracy theory, I think we will be in trouble.
2
@Philadelphia Jim ... There's something you're forgetting. The men and women of your generation, who fought for the values of which you speak, are all headed toward their inevitable death. Sorry to be so cold and hard about it. What we all need to do is look to the young generation. We need to look at those young people who have this country's interests at heart. They need proper guidance. Is there ANYONE left who can do the job of guiding our future leaders?
Sending some high-profile and well-connected people to jail always does wonders for probity in public office. We should do it more often.
17
"he only sees things through the lens of winning or losing. There is no other measure of success or failure. If you win, you were right."
So if Trump (finally) loses, was he wrong? As with anything in his mind, this logic is malleable and so his logic would conveniently flip, as he has done countless other times. Trump has the best flippers and nobody flips like him!
1
Trump makes Nixon look like a saint.
4
Blow finally started out with an in interesting and true premise regarding Corker, Flake Cohen, Daniels, etc. How under ordinary circumstances this people in my mind would not be looked up to at all. But then the op-ed soon reverted back to his usual what Trump did this week thing.
1
Why is no one talking about how Allen Weisselberg "flipped" on Michael Cohen? Weisselberg got immunity for testifying against Cohen. That testimony pretty much threw Cohen under the bus.
It's the Trump Organization that struck the first blow against Cohen. You can't blame the little guy for striking back.
Galatians 6:7 is the right quote for a 7th grade bully called Trump whose whole life has been one of wanting to win at "all cost", specially at the expense of destroying his enemies...
Did this Country deserve this nightmare?
6
trumps mantra, I`ve always won. You don`t win by lying, cheating and race baiting. They don`t let you in the winners circle until all the contested facts are in and trump is about to meet the the one fact he can`t fight, the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law has a tendency to separate criminals, to isolate them, it`s about to get very lonely mr trump.
3
I would like to share your optimism, but I can't ... when I read David Leonhardt referencing hateful messages Trump supporters have spread against Senator McCain for being a party traitor.
4
Right on! Trump's father taught him truth and facts are for fools. Keeping my fingers crossed that truth and fact will get rid of him. He's trash.
And for his followers and others: everyone is entitled to his own opinion or interpretation, but nobody is entitled to his own facts. Yet there re people who will continue to argue theirs are the same as fact even after they have been proven wrong. A mature person says, "I was wrong. I didn't have the facts. I full of it."
1
"I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world,...". Yes Charles you are correct. And that "truth" is in one word, and that word is: TREASON! The president of the United States has committed and continues to commit treason.
6
@tbs
And treason from the commander in chief has only one answer : bringing him in front of a martial court, and the rest of his life in confinement!
Let's hope you're right . . .
The swamp has been drained replaced be a cesspool.
5
The eminently quotable Charles Blow does it again. Excellent column.
1
Mr. Cohen: You know, I finally figured it out; you are cruel, evil, and don't care about anybody.
Mr. Trump: Yeah, you're right. But you're worse; you're a loser.
4
OK, trumpistas, we get that there will be no point at which you will call trump on his hateful, racist power lust. We get it, because you keep blindly making your Presidential standard lower and lower.....until truly, it doesn't matter what he says or orders others to say. He could order his rally crowd to attack the journalists in the back of the stadium and provide them clubs to do it, and it would happen. So we're done arguing with you, trying to show you American history books, world events, facts, compromise and an appeal to humanity. You turn all these things into 'hate for DearLeader"! and you salivate at harming us, Democrats and liberals, your 'real enemies'!
We get it. For you, truth comes only from the mouth of trump, and you love splashing in the mud pit of his hatred. We'll stop throwing books and stupid statistics in there for you to gleefully tear up while you point at us in rage. I no longer recognize you as true Americans. If you can talk to me, fine. If you can only point and scream "Nancy Pelosiiiiiiiiii!" we're done for good.
6
Ah, but the Tramp's base will forgive him anything. Even if they lock him up, they'll stand outside the prison with their fraying, faded MAGA caps and yell.
Just as there is nothing, absolutely nothing about him that is good or worthy, there is nothing about him that this basest of bases will not forgive for the sake of sticking it to the rest of us.
So, until that base moves off its seemingly permanently inflexible position, the rest of us must unite and vote out the Trumpites, the Tea Bag Party, and the Freedumb Coalition and get the government out from under the GOP dead steamroller.
7
These Republicans comprise the Satanic wing of the party. What a terrible fate has befallen a once proud and principled political movement.
3
Bravo!
1
As always, thank you Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It took Zombies (voting and non-voting) to elect a Zombie in Chief.
3
“God is not mocked?” How else to describe this rancid administration?
And the evangelical “Christians” who support it? Donald Trump is their god. And by this soiled treasure do they mark out their beliefs.
6
Trump loyalists could more accurately be called suppositories rather than supporters.
5
"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sows, shall he reap also" Mr. Blow went to church today!
Trump's dealings are ALL corrupt!
1
@Caeyenne Brown
Mr. Blow may have, but Trump continues to worship at the altar of lucre. He is an abomination. An antichrist who has managed to form his own religion, hence his crazed worshipful followers.
1
He who sups with the devil, must use a long spoon.
2
To expand to much energy on Trump and repeat the obvious is tiresome. Lets trust the legal system that will prosecute this shyster and usurper of the presidency and hope he will crack soon. Then get back and manage the American society. Politics are dead, isn
Yessss! Thanks Mr. Blow. You did it again., Keep on keepin' on.
3
Poignant editorial Charles. There doesn't appear to be any bottom to this vile pig's lack of class and candor. Mocking a war hero who suffered six years of torture is a low point for any previous American President. And not to issue a statement praising John McCain for his patriotism and heroism is a new low even for Trump. That 90% of Republicans support this heap of manure says everything about America's moral decay. I don't even recognize this country any more. We're a pariah in the world and the Swine in Chief has turned us all against each other with hate-filled speeches.
4
Charles Blow has been the most reliable of all Trump detesters. Excellent.
Yet one thing instructive about Trump is that we come to learn how Kings, as Trump sees himself, think. And further, we get to see how a medieval malevolent king thinks.
What a slob, the smirking gangster! He could play the perfectly miserable king slouching on his throne while tearing at a drumstick and casting judgement on his enemies, the reporters; "Off with their heads!"
A funny vision. Until it isn't.
3
@Nelly
Great image, but replace that drumstick with his favorite chocolate cake smeared on his hideous face.
But lest we forget, millions of brainless zombies support him.
1
A president gets the help hedeserves
Clinton Rossiter
he is surrounded by a menagerie of mediocrity
only the best people? HAH
1
Trump was a bully as a child and uncontrollable. He still is. He always had to win. He still does. His mind was set at a young age and he has not grown up or changed a bit. He never will. He will blame everybody else and have a tantrum. This is not a normal pattern for an old man.
5
White-collar crime is endemic in our culture. Most of us commoners don't know about it, accept it, or are powerless to do anything. It's a rigged system where money talks, and con men walk. The poor suffer while the rich get a get out of jail card. Trump has a history of committing white-collar crime but has paid his lawyers and others to help him avoid jail, paying taxes, and very high fines. Some rationalize that's the price of doing business. But it is criminal when you are president and use these tactics to your advantage. It's eroding our democracy and tantamount to the selling of the presidency. Greed and power come first, even if it means polarizing the country by racism. His cronies like Cohen or Manafort or Mnuchin are no different than him. They share the same sick qualities, money and power and selfishness over what's good for the country. Cohen flipped, as did Pecker, and Trump's chief financial officer. Manafort might flip also and Omarosa has. There will be others. They are not the best and the brighest. They are parasitic lowlifes like Trump who have no decency or shame.
7
This is my favorite quote regarding 45 and his cohorts, Mr. Blow. It's Latin and one of the few leftover memories from my Catholic school eduction: "Fiat justitia ruat cælum." Translation:
"Let justice be done though the heavens fall."
4
Brilliant column Mr. Blow. Thank you.
3
After watching documentaries on John McCain, I reflected on the backgrounds of the late senator and our current president. McCain descended from a family whose dedication was to country beyond self. It appears that Donald Trump's father focused on making money. President Trump's values had the possibility of being enhanced by the schools he attended - Fordham University, where the study of moral philosophy is a cornerstone, and the Wharton School of Finance. I find it impossible to think that Trump's ways of doing business reflect the teachings at Wharton, whose graduates don't usually aspire to the building gambling casinos. We hoped that Donald Trump would grow in the presidency, but he still doesn't get it.
3
“This is where we are now: building coalitions around causes, often with those to whom we take offense or even despise.”
I agree, but at least there’s a more or less broad acknowledgment that Trump is so beyond the pale that even those we find repulsive agree with us; that we can find common ground if the threat is substantial enough. Isn’t that what happened in WWII? The US and Britain hated and feared Russia, but we came together to combat, and defeat, an even greater evil. Let’s hope the same is happening now.
6
Trump and most of the self-serving slaves to the rich and powerful who now populate our state and federal elected offices, would not be in office without the propaganda machine of Fox news and talk radio. When I grew up in postwar America, we were constantly told about the horrible Soviets who had state owned "propaganda", the most dangerous of all enemies of a democratic nation.
The First Amendment allows pretty much all speech except in two instances. One is the equivalent of yelling "fire!" in a crowded venue when there is none, and the second is what's called "fighting words" -- speech that is designed to stir up animosity and stoke conflict. Helloooooooo.
1
@Entera Under Reagan, the "equal time" regulations were eliminated. I remember hearing as a child something on the radio to the effect "we will now hear from the other side".
Great opinion piece Mr. Blow! I always look forward to reading your opinions and tweets as well as hearing what you have to say in interviews on television. Keep up the excellence. We need more like you Sir.
5
I sense too, as Mr. Blow suggests, that we are creeping towards a reaping, a deep dive into Trump's criminal roots. I can't imagine anything about his nefarious history as on par with the shock of hearing and seeing the exudate of ignorance, hatred and fascism on display and the silence of so many witnessing it. May the reaping begin. May it not stop until we as a nation reckon with the sepsis of Trump et al as rooted in American soil from its outset. May the reaping empty it all. May we have clarity about the magnitude of healing work before us.
1
Let's not to forget how Trump turned public perception of Comey around 180. From Democratic Party pariah to poster-boy.
Comey, Corker, Flake. Perhaps Trump's next tag line should be "Make you great again !" : Just look what I did for Cohen, Corker, Flake...et al.
We knew things would be bad if Donald J. Trump ever became president, but not this bad! There is clearly more drama to come, and all the speculation in the world will not prepare us for the shocking revaluations ahead. Trump has spent his entire adult life trying to hide the Trump truth, so it must be really bad. Trump doesn’t seem to be facing reality, but fear has clearly set in, which could explain why his behaviour has become more bizarre with each passing day. When the entire truth is finally revealed I predict it will be worse than we could ever have imagined. So as difficult as it is to watch all the destruction and havoc caused by Trump and his corrupt administration and cronies, we must continue to exercise patience and have faith that Trump will be stopped and justice will be served. No man is above the law, especially when it’s the President of United States.
6
I hope you’re correct, Mr. Blow. You may be wrong about everyone being shocked though. After two years of Trump chicanery, a lot of us are simply numb to most of his actions.
This column made me think of Dominick Dunne, who told the tales of the rich and powerful who get away with almost everything, including murder on Fifth Avenue. Mr. Blow is so right - they find the idea of accountability unfair - after all, they rigged the system to avoid justice for themselves, as the financial crisis of 2008 showed. Remember when Obama said he couldn't prosecute any of the bankers who looted the world economy because there weren't any laws by which to do so? And did we make any?
We ARE living in the bizarro USA. We have entered the era of mass ignorance. I doubt we will snap out of it in time to save ourselves or anything else, with environmental disaster lurking.
The memorial service for Senator McCain this Saturday might mark a turning point in our national nightmare. This tribute to a military hero and public servant will have all the usual attendees-except for our "President" who has been told by John McCain to stay away. Perhaps the spineless GOPers will gain some courage from this american hero and public servant and start to say out loud what millions of us have known for quite a while: Trump is a criminal disgrace to the Presidency and should be removed from office.
8
@beth reese
Trump just raised the flag back up at the White House. Unlike the rest of the nation, he kept it at half-staff for only the minimum amount of time to honor the dead war veteran and Senator John McCain.
Trump is an unpatriotic disgrace.
Your last comment is a propo; He who sows the wind shall reap a tempest. And Trump's demagoguery via straight-out lies must end by exposing the truth, based on evidence. Trump's demons are within himself, as he may not be able, anymore, to tell fact from fiction. He has no friends to really defend his misdeeds, just strange bedfellows waiting for the right time to strike a deal, and escape judgement if not jail.
1
And one might add for Trump and the Republican party:
Mark 8:36 King James Version (KJV)
36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
8
There are two kinds of people in trump's world, subordinates and enemies. The former group is swelling the ranks of the latter. Soon his world will be uninhabitable. If trump goes down in disgrace he will come out of it with nothing. He knows that and it could make him very dangerous.
2
The problem would be how do you make people that believed Trump's election was a solution to American immense predicaments see the light and make amends, maybe sharing a little of Democrats' indignation and undo what has been done, collaboratively? I refuse to think Republicans can't go beyond "he is a human being" or "everybody does wrong once in a while"; I refuse to think they reason with their eyes shut and wear blinkers just because have been dragged into this whirlwind of populism, xenophobia and racism and know nothing else? Surely there is another way out instead of trusting a man that says one thing denying it the next day - I say the next quarter of an hour? Is this future based on inconsistency, dissonance, disharmony and incongruity the only explanation? They will say the economy is strong, unemployment is low and the market is riding high and that is enough to give him credit. But just look at it: Trump was elected on his "drain the swamp" platform; now he is the swamp. Was lionized as being anti-elite; now he "flips" and is the elite. He is not the answer; he is the illness that corrodes.
1
If you have been operating in a less than honest way for years, why do you run for President? Robert Mueller aside, eventually someone would have pulled a string to unravel the whole unethical enterprise or a whistleblower would have come forward to shine a very strong light on 40 years of dishonesty and corruption. Where were our justice officials all those years? Did someone the day before yesterday realize what was going on with the Trump Foundation? Did the IRS never uncover any kind of tax evasion? Did the SDNY just discover problems? Manafort took the job as campaign manager for Trump because he had been allowed to get away with all kinds of illegal activities for years.
19
@Lee M, our country has been pulling people and resources from the pursuit of white collar crime for years. Now we're catching a glimpse of what a huge cost that is for us.
6
It boggles the mind that the black hole of need and greed at the center of this one individual, who represents the lowest possible common denominator of humanity, can affect the entire world. Purely from the standpoint of political science observation, it is fascinating, compelling, impossible to look away.
What smacks the gob even more is that there apparently are millions of our fellow citizens who can look at and listen to He Who Shall Not Be Named and find something acceptable, appealing, laudable. If he sat down on the adjacent bar stool and blathered and slobbered incoherently as he does on TV would they sit and listen adoringly, or would they find the sudden need to visit the loo, then slip out the back?
Nothing of enlightening substance can be found in the comments at right-wing "news" sites - nothing coherent, anyway. Just endless, shallow, mindless MAGA regurgitation. Who are these folks? What is their worldview? What do they value?
21
@Miss Anne Thrope, who are they? : Useful Idiots, Low Info's, and the GOP's mainstay, its heavily indoctrinated Southern Strategy Base
A few thoughts on the subject at hand:
1) None of this will matter if the democrats do not take over the majority in the House and Senate as the Republicans are too tied to power and party, not the American people and their individual constituencies, to move against President Trump.
2) Charles Blow has been spot on in his alarms and alerts from before the election of 2016. Kudos to you, sir.
3) Trump supporters don't want to hear it. Trump has given license to those who need to vent their anger over having to endure a black President for 8 years and may well feel like the white South Africans did near the conclusion of apartheid.
4) Those who are "singing" are not rats but may be portrayed more as patriots. See Edward Snowden. When someone brings light to a disaster in the public sphere there will always we detractors. But the democracy works best in the sunshine.
5) The comparison to Watergate is an easy parallel to make. That said, Nixon had supporters right to the end. That is until a few Republican Senators made the trip to the White House to tell him, in person, that the game was over. I fear there a few if any Republicans who have that sort of courage.
2
I want Mueller to keep working and issue his report in July 2020.
In the interim, he should indict : Roger Stone, Eric, DJ, Jared, Ivanka and at least 10 others.
1
You won nothing if your stepped on the backs of others or lied and cheated your way into a win. Sound familiar, Trump? You have won nothing but total contempt of the masses and a name shame that will go down in American history.
I make comparisons all the time and always thank God I am not a Trump. I come off as a Mother Theresa in comparison and I would ordinarily not place my name in the same sentence of that woman who devoted her entire life to the caring of the sick and the poor.
If Galatians 6:7 applies to the goose it also must apply to the gander. We are all sowing and we will all be reaping, the obviously despicable (deplorable) and those who (rightly) judge them. There must be judges in the world but woe to those called to that awesome office. God grant us all some humility.
3
Can't outrun the truth? I hope you're right, CB. But PR and politics are rarely about reason and truth: they're about feelings and their molding by tribalism. How old is the Book of Genesis? How many Americans believe it is literally true? For how long have people believed the fallacy that skin color reflects intellect and character?
2
After all that Trump has done and been revealed about him I have very little hope that even the worst truth will sway the Republican party. They are the ones who need to get moved by the truth and they won't.
Trump always finds a way to save himself. I am reading David Cay Johnston's book about Trump. Read it and find out how amazing Trump is when it comes to beating the law and forcing/deceiving people to do what he wants. He has always succeeded in bending the law and coming out ok at the other end.
3
The litigious Trump doesn't like to talk about the lawsuits he has lost, including the whopping $25 million penalty for the fake Trump University. He's not the great winner he claims to be - even his bid for the Presidency was won by the fluke of the Electoral College, but losing the popular vote by 3 million.
I hope the mid-terms prove him to be a loser again!
5
@Pat Boice: That wasn't a whopping penalty - trump kept much more in fraudulent admission and intuition fees than he paid out in penalties. So he "won" that one.
"This is where we are now: building coalitions around causes, often with those to whom we take offense or even despise. The enemy of my enemy is my temporary tool."
Out of this whole mess and personal morality aside this is exactly what the founders intended. The founders also figured on most people being sensible about things and putting the long term benefit of the nation above their personal desires.
Of course the founders never imagined one party, or any party's, would set out to capture all 3 branches of government with the expressed intent of corrupting them to their personal unconstitutional desires and be able to do so unchallenged for five decades.
The republicans have succeeded in fact with the election of El Trumpo.
The republicans have been able to operate as if they had captured them all for at least 30 years.
"Cohen flipped, and Trump flipped out. " We do not know Cohen "flipped". All we know is that the prosecution was able to get him to take a plea deal. El Trumpo is the one who asserted a flip and the press has gone along w/o analysing it.
Is it any surprise that this type of corrupt amoral individual has reached the Oval Office? The country has been on the path to this destruction for a while now. When a nation chooses to forget morality and decency in the pursuit of money, when a Supreme Court equates speech with money, when a Congress can be bought by the highest bidders, then we have the cancer called Trump. He is a reflection of all that ails America. At this point, either he goes or we are done for.
7
After this is all over, we will be rethinking and changing some norms into rules. For example, we should probably require that candidates for president show their tax returns.
But we need to think really deeply. We've been "lucky" that Trump has been so incompetent, that he will blurt out his guilt over and over again.
Imagine what could happen (with this supine and corrupted a Republican party, and a large portion of the electorate easily taken in) if they found a sociopathic authoritarian candidate with enough of a brain to hide his subversion.
That is what is most chilling.
5
trump demands loyalty but never gives any. It will be a great day when he is run from office and financially ruined.
2
Perhaps the most encouraging piece of information in "45"'s sovereignty is that the rats are leaving the sinking ship bearing gifts for Mueller.
2
This is just every person for themself. The truth is still the truth and we are simply witnessing corrupt, desperate or street-smart people trying to save themselves and/or make the most of this opportune situation. They have not suddenly becoming honest or developed integrity. The Senators speaking out have already jumped ship from the Republican Party, otherwise they too might not have the spines to speak out. Hardly beacons of light, but a small ray. And Stormy Daniels is going to get a great book deal out of this at the very least for her honesty. Michael Cohen looks out for Michael Cohen, just like everyone else in Trumps circle, especially Trump. This is sad!
1
Trump only dislikes flipping when flippers flip against him. He's fine with torturing people for incriminating information, after all, which is a lot kinder than a plea bargain.
Here's another verse. Mark 8:36 - "What profit a man if he gains the world and loses his own soul?" The only problem applying this to Trump is that he has no soul to lose.
1
"I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world, even more than it is already shocked."
I agree. Once the whole mess is out it will be much worse than our worst imaginings.
And when he goes down he's taking a bunch of currently non-suspects with him into ignominy.
4
Opera is too big and wonderful to be related to this 3rd rate mobster soap opera. A soap opera which as you said, is showing that Trump is worse than we thought. The question is until when this shameless impunity will last?
As a tribute to McCain, congress should act and pass the McCain Bill of Decency. One that will grant the president his day in court in order to preserve America’s democracy.
1
What more can be said about this stain on humanity?
Dishonest Don has made a career and something of a fortune defrauding those around him. It would be shocking if any of his Borgata had any scintilla of honor or character.
The Donald is a reflection of the underside of the American culture - winning regardless of cost. My Dad taught me that the journey getting to your goal was the reward.
1
Follow the money.
#1. Trump's is not as much as he claims.
#2. It's Russian.
6
It's so disconcerting to hear the president of the United States to refer to defenders of the constitution as "rats" or discuss flipping as if he were an expert on the subject or demanding personal loyalty over the rule of law and his oath to preserve, protect and defend. Just as disheartening is in fact that he seems to have be involved in a serious crime and none in his party have the nards to stand up and be counted. Just how bad does it have to get?
2
I'm glad we finally have someone in the White House who sees as his goal "The US Winning." Amazing how this is turned into a negative in these pages.
2
@smacc1 For those who are following the actual, objective reality, there is no winning as we destroy the nation's standing in the world.
2
@smacc1
This!
A perfect example of the GOP electorate self delusion.
You cannot address anything said all of which proves how bad the president is. So you raise a non sequitur point that contains a smidge of factual reference, literally one word, but is entirely out of context and say it with contempt and petulance as if telling you the facts that should lead to you dropping your support for the president is an unjust imposition on you.
How do we overcome such irrational mental defenses from reality? is the only question the rest of us should be focused on.
1
@smacc1
You just bought his con. How is the US winning by giving even more tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations increasing the income inequality? How is the US winning by dividing the country along, racial, gender, political and economic lines? How is the US wining by making enemies out of our allies? How is the US winning when he believes Putin over Americans? How is the US winning when 40% are conned into believing this fraudster as a prophet? How is the US winning when the country's decency, decorum, civility and democratic institutions are rotting away under constant assault from the con man?
How is the US winning by taking away healthcare from those in need and reducing the education budget in a country which is at the bottom of all developed economies in education and health metrics? How is the US winning when our environment is ruined permanently by coal and other pollutants? How is the US winning when the con man just tweets, rants, watches Fox news and plays golf most of his days?
3
Trump didn't turn Ms Daniels into Joan of Arc, the media did.
2
@Margo: Nice try. No, the media did not turn Stormy into Joan of Arc. It was trump blundering along with his henchmen that elevated Stormy's tale to Legend.
An opera of demons? More like a Greek tragedy with this miserable human being acting as the swirling vortex of chaos into which everything is swallowed and consumed, never to be the same again.
1
Except that most of the protagonists in Greek tragedy had some modicum of nobility, of greatness, brought down by the underlying flaws in his character. All this man has are the underlying flaws.
1
@Richard Luettgen,
The columnist refers to “the undying loyalty of the zombies” that will stand with Trump no matter how much evidence of his corruption or malfeasance comes out. Do you know anyone like that, Richard?
3
"As he told Fox: “I’ve always had controversy in my life and I’ve always succeeded. I’ve always won. I’ve always won.”
Djt is a wealthy white male who is a power- hungry opportunist and is ruled by his aggrandized ego. An ego that thrives on the game, 'catch me if you can' and The Art of the Lie was his greatest ally.
Don, you have to be thinking you should have listened to that momentary whisper of reason that told you not expose your life, one built on a complicated and bigger than Goliath web of lies to a world stage. Son, you ain't no David.
"I've always won". The use of this past tense tells me he ignored this warning. He knows that he knows it's the beginning of the end. "All the king's men", his consiglieres and soldiers are jumping ship. Perfectly stated Mr. Blow, now 'The enemy of my enemy is my temporary tool.'
This statement you shared, regardless of your belief system has withstood the test of time;
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Thanks for a well written article.
5
@mary
The essence of EL Trumpo is and has always been his deep deep deep Insecurity. His deceased brother was the strong one in that family. It was he who stood up to daddy and tried to go his own way. He paid for that with abuse that El Trumpo's witnessed and whose main reaction was cowardice. That cowardice made him choose to be the people pleasing insecure coward he is.
3
@magicisnotreal
I think you're right about cowardice.
A short time ago I had a conversation with a gentleman who had spent time with trump. He shared he was surprised what an insecure and weak person he was.
What is interesting to note is the language you use: the language of “largesse.” Only the Bible or possibly SHAKESPEARE could provide the metaphors needed for the horrific times we are in. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
5
The New York Times continues down the wrong road reporting what they hope happens rather than actually reporting the news. President Trump has done much more for the good of America in two years than President Obama did in two terms.
3
@P McGrath Your problem is that you are getting your fake news from fake news central - Faux News. Every other source of information about the world around us is at odds with Faux News. Why? You should at least consider that you are believing propoganda. His accomplishments, like tearing up the Iran treaty without a replacement, separating children from parents potentially accused of a misdemeanor, giving the wealthy a huge tax break that will explode our deficit, do not count as PLUSES in the real world. They are terrible acts that you should condemn, if you have a shred of deceny or intelligence.
6
@P McGrath Are you aware that Obama's last 18 months in office saw 3.7 million jobs created, 0.3 million more than in Trump's first 18 months (3.4 million)? It was President Obama who got the economy moving again, and Trump is merely riding his coat tails. (Not to mention, the naked corruption in his administration is one for the record books.) It seems certain that history will see Trump as both an aberrational fluke and the worst president ever to hold the office.
3
The narcissist Trump does not have friends.He has people who are useful to him, people that he can do favors for, or people he can bully.No One is loyal to him or feels any affection for him.He has lived his life only for Donald Trump-now he has only himself to fight his battles.There are no loyal friends to come to his aid.
6
Or in less biblical language, the chickens will come home to roost.
2
That military parade Trump wanted to have in DC? I've got a better idea. A ticker tape parade through the canyons of Manhattan when Trump is purged from the White House and expurgated from America's journey into the future. They wannabe king is on the defensive big time and it's only a matter of time before he is toppled by his court.
2
The opening sentence of your essay is most important and worthy of much more discussion.
There is no reality for Trump. All America is a “poor player” within his scattered mind. Like a character from a Don DeLillo novel that is not human, but rather an accumulation of electronic “bits” to be seen and photographed. Trump is the most viewed human in the world, because he is unreal. The Trump mind has no center; no idea of itself or its consequences.
All of Trump’s “reality” is fragmented from its center -
less centrifugal motion. The sounds he makes are meaningless and he will ultimately collapse into his own lonely void.
The Times should allow its op-ed writers more space to develop their ideas. See N 1.
2
I don’t think he is fooling anyone with a pulse. It seems to me that so many people are willing to give him a pass for the cruelty and embarrassment he has thrust upon our country is beyond me. VOTE!!!
5
One thing America needs less of these days are the breathless ravings of commentators like Sean Hannity and Charles Blow. They are both obviously very bright and articulate fellows who choose to inflame their audiences at every turn when they could provide a respite from the constant drumbeat of of the chaotic crowd.
1
@John Jabo Sean Hannity claims to be a news reporter, Charles Blow is writing an editorial. Therein lies an important distinguishing factor that you have ignored.
5
The man has been a principal in some 1,400 law suits (as both defendant and plaintiff). That's an extraordinary record. At what point does one begin to think something is very wrong here?
19
Sad how you can judge a man by the company he keeps. Just look at the low life surrounding t-Rump. All trash, just as he is. White collar trash. This country has gotten so low that it voted for t-Rump for president. How are we going to change this? t-Rump and his velcro may go down but we are left with a ruined and diminished country who no longer trusts the law or our democracy. This is going to be a long crawl out of the mud. Vote folks. Our lives and democracy depend on it.
5
@heysus If he wasn't POTUS then his criminal acts would make him subject to indictment, already. We will see all of those who surround him fall, including his children, before the final curtain.
This Opera has many subplots to unravel before the final curtain comes crashing down on the don's head.
Does Omarosa have more tapes?
Is AG Sesson's staying till the final scene?
Will Manafort wear the Ostrich coat again or an orange jump suit with stripes instead?
Will the white-supremacist find an alternative to Tikki Torches?
Will Cohen the Fixer fix his way out of jail?
What is Pecker willing to show?
Who is the mysterious Trump Organization CFO and will his cameo appearance be a scene-stealer or a flop?
Will Don jr. and Eric make another appearance in the show?
Will the WH Cabinet destroy the country with de-regulation or will they all be fired for incompetence and stupidity?
Will the GOP finally rise up or continue to Go Out & Play?
And finally, was this Opera worth the embarrassment, the pain, and the suffering that the country has endured under this administration over the past 20-months?
6
“He has turned porn star Stormy Daniels into Joan of Arc.”
Actually, it is the media, including Charles Blow, that has turned the attention seeking porn star into Joan of Arc. And Cohen into an anti-hero. And so on and so on.
Odd bedfellows works for the media, as well as Trump.
5
Incisive column, Mr. Blow. Eliot A. Cohen had another excellent take on Trump the other day in The Atlantic: "But to really get the feel for the Trump administration’s end, we must turn to the finest political psychologist of them all, William Shakespeare. The text is in the final act of what superstitious actors only refer to as the 'Scottish play.' One of the nobles who has turned on their murderous usurper king describes Macbeth’s predicament:
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief."
2
The President surrounds himself with crooks and charlatans and is angry and amazed that anyone would consider that to mean that President is a crook and charlatan.
He might be both and proud of it, as long as he wins. And I suspect he will win, because he is right about the whole shooting someone on Fifth Avenue thing. A certain portion of the population blindly trusts him, and will not see any evil or betrayal, even if the evil or betrayal hurts them. They will excuse the Pres and look for someone else to blame, preferably Obama or Hilary Clinton. (E-Mails!! Benghazi!!)
I don't know who this mess will end, but I am sure it ill not end with anything approaching integrity or national interest. We don't have a government in place that respects either quality.
6
Ultimately with Trump, we are all losers; he just hasn't gotten to all of us ...yet.
4
The Plutocratic GOP is a MINORITY Party buoyed by regressive, reactionary, racist, fascist, and non-secular evangelical forces.
Via propaganda GOP gives tolerance, understanding, compassion, fair ethics, and human kinship a bad name.
Cleverly they fire-up their base TO VOTE while sowing apathy/cynicism by lies, distortions, sophistry in non-GOP voters so they do NOT VOTE.
Even if they don't entirely rule, given any type of power, they impede the modern progress of our Country by NOT being the LOYAL opposition.
But their base will defend them at all costs including intellectual honesty.
Listen!
The economy never been better - oh that is why Trump gets my support!
He's finally securing our borders - oh that is why Trump gets my support!
List goes on trying to sound factually rational and committed to the highest values and motives.
Balderdash and illusion!
For example any serious examination of the economy tells a different story (1) Trump luckily riding a good trend initialized by Prez Obama , (2) the struggling still are and will more, (3) Trump policies will handicap/hurt most of us in long run.
Dig into their souls - SCOTUS formation is why they like Trump and the GOP. Why? Because a Right SCOTUS will satisfy their visceral need for social regressiveness even when their GOP does not hold power!
They ignore that that SCOTUS will allow a fascist Plutocracy and protect the more powerful from those they exploit which includes them! Insanity!
.
4
Correct. They seek to impose on America a fundamentalist Christian state. Eliminated in that state are the principles of separation of church and state, democracy, and tolerance of others.
It is unfortunate that true republicans have aligned themselves with these extremist factions, and along the way discredited themselves.
The only cute is to vote for Democrats until the Republicans can divest themselves of their current ills.
1
Isn't this same screed repeated day after day, week after week, month after month and now year after year -- getting a little old for Time's readers? Seriously. Trump didn't collude with Russia. He's not a member of the mafia.
He is however the legally elected president of the United States. Like it or not. And the left's constant misrepresentations of fact, ad hominem attacks etc., don't change that. The 2016 election will not have a do over. Turn your fantasy life towards something else.
1
@Ralphie I am not sure what world you live in - there is something rotten in Denmark (the White House), and your capacity to ignore all that is happening is beyond belief to anyone who is NOT using Faux News as their source of Fake News.
5
@Ralphie
You are the one constantly bringing up the lost election barely won by Slavery era as a point. And he maybe the titular head of the nation BUT not the president for everyone UNTIL he starts serving everyone and not just his conned base.
You are making statements as if you belong to his inner group. Whether he colluded or not it is factual that believes Putin over Americans. This is a man who lies, cheats, rants, shows no decency or civility to anyone or to any of the nation's traditions or its institutions, disrespects women/minorities/alies alike, divides the nation and shows no qualities of presidency. Let him change and we will show him respect. He is out PUBLIC servant but he seems to think we are here to serve him with platitudes and riches as our messiah. He better get that this is America and not his kingdom. HE HAS TO EARN OUR RESPECT AND LOVE. We owe the con man nothing.
1
Misrepresentation of fact? Trump is a criminal - soon to be proven by Mueller - a Republican! If he shot someone on 5th Ave - Fox News would provide justification based on alternative facts which his followers would believe without hesitation.
Truth is truth. Trump's money and corrupt fixers created the thin illusion that he was above the swamp. Now he is drowning in it and I can't imagine the rich fantasy lives of those who still support him with evidence proving his words are simply self-serving lies.
1
When will these columns end? I don't like Trump either, but Mr. Blow commits the cardinal sin of a writer: his columns are not entertaining any more and provide nothing new. This is a super valuable real estate on one of the most read pages in the world. Use it better! I still remember Mr. Blow's pledge never to mention Trump's name. Now he can't stop doing it. Yawn.
3
@Alan Saly
The reason why these articles are "not entertaining", is because this president is too entertaining -- And exactly therein lies the problem.
2
@Alan Saly**** Amen
It goes without saying that Trump is irrational, irresponsible and, at this point, irredeemable. That such a selfish and reckless man succeeded in basically stealing the office of President is a permanent stain on our national history. The sooner he is out of office - by whatever means - the better for our country and the world at large. Shame on all Republicans who have supported such a terrible and dishonorable man!
17
As John Adams said, “facts are stubborn things.” Great column!
4
John McCain was a man of principle and character whose life was devoted to service to his country.
Donald Trump is a liar and a cheat and a bully whose life is devoted to self-aggrandizement.
10
This Opera has many subplots to unravel before the final curtain comes crashing down on the don's head.
1. Does Omarosa have more tapes?
2. Is AG Sesson's staying till the final scene?
3. Will Manafort wear the Ostrich coat again or an orange jump suit with stripes instead?
4. Will the white-supremacist find an alternative to Tikki Torches?
5. Will Cohen the Fixer fix his way out of jail?
6. What is Pecker willing to show?
7. Who is the mysterious Trump Organization CFO and will his cameo appearance be a scene-stealer or a flop?
8. Will Don jr. and Eric make another appearance in the show?
9. Will the WH Cabinet destroy the country with de-regulation or will they all be fired for incompetence and stupidity?
10. Will the GOP finally rise up or continue to Go Out & Play?
11. And finally, was this Opera worth the embarrassment, the pain, and the suffering that the country has endured under this administration over the past 20-months?
Hmmm.
5
@Lalo
#6 has me chortling.
Was it on purpose?
Actually, I do not know if I want an answer.
1
But as SOS Hillary Clinton forwarded 3 highly classified emails containing only public information to State Department employees unauthorized to receive them. She also had a private server, as advised by Condi Rice and Colon Powell, which was not compromised, unlike the servers of State and the DOD. No media outlet ever praised Hillary for what she did that PROTECTED our national security.
Since Hillary is a Democrat, what she did is far worse than anything Trump has done so far, am I right? After all, Fox cable news said Trump won ALL the debates because he stood up the entire time and never said the N word.
Hillary was NEVER given the benefit of the doubt by the Times or any other media outlet.
Figuratively, our nation's reporters did back flips through flaming hoops to prove that Hillary was less than honest. The Times gave whatever she said a few grains of salt, while giving whatever Trump said a ton of salt -- more than a million times as much.
Charles Blow, as well as the whole of the NYT, save Krugman, has yet to subject Trump to the same type of skepticism and investigative reporting that was devoted to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
1
Okay, but he hasn't "warped reality." You have attributed to him various uncanny Satanic powers. You're building him up, man.
2
I'm sorry are you saying you want the Presidency to fail?
I thought that was verboten since you all said repubs were evil wanting to stop Obama.
Double standard? Hypocrites?
2
@J. Scott It has already failed. Duh.
2
@J. Scott
Obama was not a con man who lied 7.8 times a day.
3
Wow! Jeremiad! The author so het up he resorts to the dramatic example of opera and even quotes the bible! What's left? If the Dems don't win in November I expect some kind of journalistic immolation scene or auto-da-fe. I can't wait!
1
Since Donald Trump first began his campaign for President, Charles Blow has had almost nothing to write about in any column except how awful he is. But when Blow quotes The Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians (after the typical disclaimer "I'm not a very religious person"), it seems worth reciting what the Letter to the Galatians is really about. "A man is not justified by observing the law. but by faith in Christ Jesus. ... By observing the law no one will be justified. . . . The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself from me." Gal.2:15-17. Paul is upset and concerned that the Galatians have fallen back into a Jewish, ceremonial religious life of observances, and he criticizes Peter directly for "[separating] himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision [Jewish] group." Gal. 2:11. Paul asks the Galatians indignantly and rhetorically "Who has bewitched you? Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law,,, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish?" Gal. 3:1-2. The point of his letter is "Clearly, no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith." Gal. 3:11. "For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. . . The whole world is a prisoner of sin, so the promises were given to those who believe." 3:22. Quote Paul, Mr. Blow, but understand him.
2
"Fallen back into a Jewish, ceremonial life."
Well, that really takes the matzoh. Charming.
I agree with the "soweth/reapeth" thing. Trump will suffer for his bad Karma. However, I believe that the President believes in the old adage, "If you don't get caught, it's not a crime".
6
Mr Blow has been relentless in his effort to expose the the real essence of Trump since the election. He declared that he would lead tha resistance against an ill-prepared and illegitimate president. The presidency is crumbling and Charles deserves the gratitude of every fair-minded American for his determination to expose the real Trump. An unquailfied pretender with the morality and values of a mob boss.
10
I for one cannot be shocked by any revelation about Trump. I already know he is evil incarnate. You could reveal a video of Trump kicking puppies, urinating on the original Constitution, while making out with Putin and I would say, "what did you expect?"
1
It will be a glorious day when we can say, "Good riddance!" to the phony president who has no soul, no conscience, and no compassion.
He is a sick man who is in desperate need of professional help but is incapable of recognizing it. And the last place a man of his character, intelligence, and character belongs is in our Oval Office.
He is a cancer on our national soul and a danger to national and international peace and security. Let the impeachment hearings begin!
16
The Anti Christ in the White House and his Republican worshippers have turned this entire country into a swamp. The moment he was elected, America lost its veneer of democracy and became what the rest of the world already knew it to be.
8
Feels like a cheap shot at Stormy Daniels.
2
Whenever I read Mr. Blow I wonder what his column will be like when this ugly nightmare is over. I bet he remains as civil and righteous in his writing as usual. Charles will not gloat. He will earnestly set us out on some new adventure in thought. His aim, as always, is toward equality, fairness and above all, the truth. The truth, it is true, will set us free!
5
Amen brother, amen.
5
So will it be President Obama or President Bush #43 or gives the Marc Antony speech in their eulogy for Sen McCain?
....and who will be the "Brutus" to stick the last knife into the Dotard in Chief (Caesar).
Candidates include Weisselberg, Jared Kushner, Melania, Cohen, Putin...???
2
@adara614: Don't forget Don Jr - the perfect Brutus
Charles.....truer words never spoken.
I want trump to”BE STILL”
“Jesus wept”....for us.
Vote the republican majorities out.
Then be ready for a possible street fight encouraged by the Freedom Caucus .
5
All of these people that are celebrating Mueller's birthday, celebrating him as their champion against evil, do they remember this is the same Mueller that sat in front of congress and lied about WMDs in Iraq?
1
@where did you get this? Reference please. Thank you. Mark
3
@Mark
You must be confused about the facts, Mark. Mueller was the head of the FBI during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. As any educated American knows, the FBI operates within the domestic realm. The major players who lied about WMDs were George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell (duped into doing so at the U.N), Paul Wofowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and the then director of the CIA. Mueller is a man who has earned his reputation for integrity and probity and he is the total antithesis of the sociopathic liar currently in the White House
1
Ps- Someone should really write an opera about this! I imagine he/she has already begun......
2
To riff on a Greek myth, it seems that our president has the "Merdes Touch."
4
Brilliant column. Thanks.
8
You speak of Trump’s “fortitude” in gaming the justice system to further his sleaze. But it’s Trump’s shameless audacity, his cheating, his threats, his lies that comprise the art of his con. “Fortitude” speaks of spine and stoutheartedness, of honor and valor. One would never say one’s toilet has “fortitude.”
14
I can't help but consider that our orange criminal weasel is observing the reverence and respect that Sen John McCain is presently being shown, and deep down inside Donald knows he'll never in his billions? of dollars will he ever be afforded the respect and adulation of John McCain,
8
When karma and justice are served on a platter to trump it will fill the hearts of millions with childlike glee.
7
I sense everyone is running out of gas writing about corrupt Trump. I am running on fumes with this nonsense. I want to turn the page. I want this to end.
2
So, do they provide an extensive line of hair products as well as tanning beds in prison? And do you get to pick the shade of orange jumpsuit to match your skin color?
Just askin'.
2
Trump is starting to act and look like a mobster in his ill-fitting gangster suits, they need to start hiding his eyes behind a pair of gltteringly sinister dark glasses. He looks the evil incarnate-a snake in clothes.
Is time for the American public to really know what has happened and who is responsible for what, when discussing the 2016 election, was organized crime involved, the Russians, what are the coverups, who was doing the cheating and the lying and the law breaking.
11
I have thought the way of Betsy S. I try not to but I fear for the future of this country under these people. My one consolation is that in the not so distant future, this president, this White House and all that follow these deplorables will die. Sadly, and I don't mind saying this, Ted Kennedy and John McCain had the fatal cancer and not DT. I'm just saying...and I stand by my truth.
5
“The thief does not come except to steal, to kill and destroy’” John 10:10
This is the road that Putin-Trump is taking the world down. Rats and weasels are the currency of tyrants. Trump has the desire to be a tyrant but not the ambition or single-mindedness to see it through. He blows with the wind. It’s Putin, and Bannon — yes, Steve Bannon — that have taken dead at aim at bringing down democracy in favor of a single-rule world order.
6
@JD
Yes, if there is a secret cabal working toward a One World Order, we now see that it is not made of squishy pointy-headed tree-hugging love-everybody liberals, but by extraordinarily wealthy and powerful ruthless people who want to completely rule a fascist world.
If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind
I am also not particularly religious but have read the Bible cover to cover, twice. This is the verse I choose to describe the present state of the Republican party as lead by Donald Trump.
>> Isaiah 5:20--Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
22
I wonder if Trump supporters realize that when Trump praises Manafort for not cooperating that is BOTH treason and obstruction of justice. Trump ignores his role as chief LAW ENFORCEMENT officer of the United States. Manafort has cheated the US Government/ People of the United States out of greater than $30,000,000 in tax revenues plus penalties that I can't compute.
Would our Mob Boss President be so gracious if Manafort owed him or the Trump organization $30,000,000?
I think not...
Yes, Trump is an underworld character with strong ties to the Russian mob. He like Manafort is a money launderer. He and Manafort are "Birds of a Feather" A little too close for comfort Donald?
Go Team Mueller! Lock him up!
6
A good column Mr. Blow. I strongly suspect that had this article been a reader's comment it may not have been published. Trump is the kind of fella that I warn my kids about; my three black boys. This type may just be the cop in the car that has been following you looking for that cracked brake light. The new looking car that you are driving must be stolen. He could be that white headmaster at that school in Winter Park where there were no black teachers...not one out of four score. That professor, bank president, judge and that man of God? All racist. We have been living with such types and one is now President. Long may he reign.
1
Donnie will do just fine. Oh,he will lose the presidency, but it will have served its purpose. He will have more than enough support left from his cult to sell steaks or vodka or build a media empire based on qanon and David Duke. Family members and minions will do time and or be disgraced but who really cares? Certainly not the oval office sociopath. Just another way of declaring moral bankruptcy and getting on with the winning.
2
Donald is an innocent duffer in comparison to the right wing GOP, The Tea Party & The soulless Evangelists who don't care for the consequences to democracy as long as they goals are achieved.
This evil segment have been waiting in the wings for decades & since they can't get in office, have piggybacked on a con man with no political experience.
They will not hesitate to put this Republic back a hundred years, enslave the majority & enrich themselves. Go out & vote to save our future.
8
More like a Soap Opera of demons.
2
Trump is addicted to power bought by wealth. He is addicted to the idea he is above the law and can always buy his way out. He is addicted to the idea people love him only the truth is they just use him. Like any addicted person the day of reconning is here for him.
2
We will survive Trump. I have to keep believing that and continue telling myself this or lose all faith in decency and mankind.
The cowards, criminals and willfully ignorant who still support him will still be here when he's gone. That "almost ought to be illegal."
5
"Never corner a squirrel, mouse or raccoon in your house. They will turn and fight to the death." I paraphrase from the Boy Scout manual. As long a Mr. T thinks he has a way out, he is annoying, incompetent but his damage is limited to knocking things over in the living room. But once he realizes that he is truly and irrevocably caught, watch out. He will be very, very dangerous indeed. Think war, military coup or defection to Russia.
15
“Justice is yearning to be served.”
Cogent & brilliant—thank you.
5
You can't predict the future. Which makes living history both unbearable and worthwhile.
Mr. Blow describes Dante's Inferno, the first few circles peopled by virtuous Tea Partiers and porn stars, cold-hearted puritans with spine. Deeper are those who turn their back on decency in the name of profit, power, or prejudice.
Trump's past is as demonic as any evil politician, whom Dante placed closer to hell's center than anyone but Cain and Judas. But what happens on exposure? What size does his base reduce to? Is impeachment inevitable or a stretch? Will the rich panic?
Will Trump's devils go back underground, or will they find a new prophet? Has Trump served a lesson to some demagogue in waiting, just as corrupt, but smarter? Or will he scare a generation away from it? Will he start a war in Asia to distract us? Or will Kelley use the 25th amendment?
Soon, however, Mr. Blow can write about the purgatory we face after Trump. In 1990 California, we passed through a population bottleneck faced by the nation today: whites fell under 60%. Reactionary time. 15 years later they fell below 50%. Then, rump too small, we turned blue.
The nation faces this 15 years starting now. Like purgatory, serving time. No fun, but better than this.
2
Trump has also caused Democrats to award posthumous sainthood to Senator John McCain.
9
Yes, and he has made George W. Bush appear to be a major statesman. @Jay Orchard
3
Opera of Demons? More like a nest of vipers. The USS Trump has hit an iceberg called the Rule of Law all rats get out while you can. The real cool thing? Trump might get a pardon from Pence for him and his family, but the state of New York? Ay there's the rub.
2
It is truly frightening. trump is smart, ( I will never capitalize his name) he chose Pence. A total idiot that may be worse than him. I thought Ryan would hold some balance, but his spineless leadership also deserves to be labeled as treason. Midterms may hold some sway, but seeing the power trump is abusing needs to be stopped. Hopefully we will survive until then. When trump is done, we will be the best third world country.
2
The phantom of the so-called Liberty Presidency with a cast of swine, serpents and shady persons; a dance masquerade, where faces in this charade are now revealed to the audience attending this trumped-up ball on a merry go-around, but half has already left, with fervent plans to put an end to this show at the polls this coming fall, no later than November.
Dear Mr. Blow,
You opened this piece with, "Donald Trump has warped reality." As a fellow journalist who also does not endorse our president (hardly), I wish to remind you that the second worst offense an opinion writer can have (after being wrong) is to be predictable. You have written variations on the quoted sentence, and indeed, you have written the same piece, something like 100 times over, urging people who already agree with you that they should agree with you again. If you don't believe me, read all the comments that surely will follow from the same people telling you yet again that they yet again agree with what you wrote. That is not opinion writing. That is not journalism. It is vanity. You are capable of better. Please do better. I suggest finding a different topic than the president--any topic--and have a go at it from a fresh point of view. Commentators might not agree with you this time, but that is the risk you take when offering opinion.
Your colleague,
Alan
5
To Trump and his acolytes, burning the house down is a win. Starve the beast, blow up the deficit, starve the poor, deny the weak - its all a win. When you are dealing with a man who literally embodies the Seven Deadly Sins and gives permission to all things cruel and brutish, anything that serves to debase, degrade, demoralize or demean, its all a win. When Christians come to have nothing but contempt for weakness or meekness, then Satan has won. But even that's a win in their thinking. Once Satan has won, Jesus will return the world to the glory of God. Burn the house down and its a win. Only when everyone loses will the chosen win.
4
@d. roseman
In another story today, it is reported that Trump offered his "thoughts and prayers" to the McCain family in a tweet. (Wonder if Miss Manners says tweets are an appropriate method for conveying condolences to a war hero's family.) Anyway, I wondered just who trump "prays" to when he prays. Putin? Ba'al? Don't think it's a God who prohibits lying and coveting another's wife or goods.
Bedfellows make strange politics.
google Shakespeare,,,"The Tempest"
..."I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world, even more than it is already shocked."...
Could the truth be:
1 - Treason
2 - Wire fraud
3 - Money laundering
4 - Tax fraud
5 - Filing a false financial statement(s)
6 - RICO
7 - Bribery
8 - Government ethics violations
9 - Non reporting of foreign bank account
10 - everything else that I did not list
8
@broz
You nailed it. Thank you.
Trump is bad, yes, as rotten as a dead carp killed by pollution in the D.C. swamp. But the real problem is his loyal base. How can 40% of our populace admire this man and stick with him no matter how foul?
4
Some additional fun-house mirror images: John Kelly as the sober, steadying influence in the Oval Office - the man is a (no longer closeted) bigot. Michael Wolff as a keen observer of the comings and goings at 1600 Penn Ave -- the man is a tabloid bottom feeder. Omarosa as a heroine for women of color in the Age of Trump -- a reality show grifter.
"Only the best people, only the best."
3
My step-mom is a Trump minion and refuses to back down from supporting him. Her answer to all of his unethical behaviors? Don't acknowledge them. She used to be a 24/7 Fox junkie but they've been forced to report the news on Trump's questionable behavior (even tho the Fox news still might be one-sided), thus she simply doesn't watch TV anymore except for Hannity.
She is old and depressed but no matter what, refuses to accept and deal w the realities of our narcissistic and dangerous president.
5
Politics has always made for strange bedfellows.
"No one can outrun the truth forever."
Donald Trump is the Great Pretender. Everything from his great wealth (his net worth could conceivably be negative in addition to corrupt) to his declaration of being an "author", to his pretending to be a legitimate, functional President is an absurd, massive fraud.
Many are fond of quoting from the Bible: "...and the truth shall make you free." For Donald Trump, the reality is precisely the opposite.
5
You might add Hosea 8:7-
"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it has no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up." KJV
Trump is reaping the whirlwind and I don't believe that the Truth will set him free- though it might do so for the rest of us...
1
"Give him a chance," his voters said. Well, he's had his chance. And what a sorry mess he's made of decency, stability, and truth.
Murder will out, as the Bard wrote. And it's outing.
4
Keep writing, Charles! We need your voice of truth and outrage!
5
Opera? More like farce.
1
“Donald Trump has warped reality.”
How is this for a realty warp? President Trump—along with Senators Lindsay Graham, Chuck Grassley and others in both the Senate and the House—have almost effected the impossible. They have made Attorney General Jeff Sessions appear to be something approximating a principled statesman.
There is surreal—and there is Trumpuglican alt-reality. The nightmare continues indefinitely.
10
Two famous quotes come to mind:
"Truth, like gold, is obtained by washing away all that is not gold." - Tolstoy
"A liar fears the truth like a man asked to put his hand into a snake pit. "
The truth is that the election was illegitimate, Trump is the real 'illegal' with values that are alien to the constitution. The truth is that any federal judge appointed by this man must step down.
Gorsuch if you're reading - time to go home. Reflect today if John McCain would ever accept a dishonorable nomination from unindicted co-conspirator-in-chief Trump.
"Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done."
6
On point, as usual. Bible quote one of your most perceptive points. Reading your opinions encourages us to anticipate the light at the end of "the swamp."
7
~"...but he also made himself sound more like a mob boss than a law-and-order president."~
25 indictments - 5 guilty pleas, convictions - and it is not over. This is not "sounds like" a Mob Boss; rather, this is a Criminal Enterprise caught in the cross hairs of the Judicial System.
Quit dancing around the subject. He won't sue you.
4
We have sown the wind. What now shall we reap?
3
I just wish the "reaping" would start already....
6
It was announced today that President Trump will not be attending the ceremony for the unknown soldier next year "I like soldiers who don't get killed," Mr. Trump tweeted.
3
This article totally misses the point of the danger Trump represents. It is not corruption- there have been corrupt politicians before him and there will be after. It is not cruelty - try Asad or Putin; in comparison with them, Trump is a cuddly curmudgeon. The danger is the ideology he has helped to crystallize: a combination of populism, anti-intellectualism, nativism, racism and anti-globalism. Trump is not an ideologue like Lenin or Mussolini but he has a great instinct for sensing what the mob wants and giving it to them in easily digestible sound-bites. Even if Trump is brought down by some legal shenanigans, this ideology is not going away. His base are not going away. And somebody else will come up to fill the ideological vacuum left by his fall and by the Democrats’ stammering inability to articulate a cogent alternative.
2
Trump has shown he cares about no one but himself, he seeks only adulation. Trump is a "...masterly demagogue whose power base has rested in no small measure on his unrivaled ability to play to the expectations and resentments of the people..." quote from Ian Kershaw, Nemesis.
Your articles are a must read, Charles. You have a way with words, and I always seem to learn something new from your pieces. You clearly take pains to write eloquently and are a real educator in doing so. So thank you. You have made your opinion known with great composure. Case Cohen was a relief, the beginning of things starting to come to light. Like you, I believe the worst is yet to come.
4
I like Charles Blow but his naivete surprises me:
"No one can outrun the truth forever. Eventually, the truth always catches up. "
Everyone knows this isn't true. People quite often get away with murder. In our decaying capitalist paradise let's not pretend that the rich don't run the world.
4
"In this dramatic opera of demons, the lesser evils are part of the phalanx standing between us and the greater evils: Trump’s corruption, possible criminality, and definite rage, racism and cruelty." Indeed, Mr. Blow. In this particular opera the leitmotif is 'corruption, possible criminality, and definite rage, racism and cruelty.'
I can only hope the aria of the "flippers" will be to sing like a bird...
1
Trump reminds me more of Mersault and Mueller of the Magistrate in Camus's "The Stranger," especially the end when he says, "I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate." Trump's success is measured by how much the nation can move toward hate and cynicism. To be a Trump supporter one must hate the press, the Intelligence agencies, judges, civil discourse, and the meek. As far as opera, well, you need more than one note to make an opera and Trump always sounds the same: an out of tune trumpet! Ha!
1
Trump and the Republican Party of Poodles and Puppet People make good grist for the Theater of The Absurd. America's existential end in a whimper.
A comic thread runs through the tragedy. The great American experiment brought to an end by the antithesis of its beginning. Founding Fathers, the confluence of brilliant, highly educated, selfless men of honor devise a democratic republican government, create safeguards against both mob rule and tyranny to serve the interests of the people; juxtaposed with a greedy narcissistic clown leading a party of poodle minds and puppet people.
The absurdity of the final scene is both tragic and comic. You can only appreciate the full circle of this drama by watching from a great distance (if you, as all Americans, even other people of the earth, are impacted by the action, you see only the tragedy of the great experiment and the suffering that comes of humanity's loss), you must view the play from the moon because what is unfolding is cosmic comedy.
Man's best intentions and best efforts are defeated by man's worst motives and base instincts.
We didn't see it coming until Trump was upon us, insulting our senses, amusing our credulity....and then we discovered that "us" is actually a split personality of good and evil, the seeing and the blind, the thinking and the puppet, the noble and the base. And while the split is not equal, but two to one, the one was enough to bring the great experiment to a whimpering end. Oddly funny and so sad.
3
Speaking of the Bible, thank the gods for the Southern District of New York!
One of the more galling behavior of Trump is his misuse of the presidential pardon. But since he can only exercise that for Federal crimes, he cannot do anything about state crimes.
The SDNY prosecution of Things Trump will still hold threatened jail time over the heads of the Trump Cronies like the Sword of Damocles.
5
The only way to take out a psychopath like Trump is to build a legal case against him and lock him up for life. Psychopaths are fearless and lie with abandon. As you point out, everything is win or lose to Trump. This black and white thinking makes everything easy. Trump lashes out at anyone he can’t defeat in other ways. This strong man approach is also appealing to those who can’t think for themselves. They love that Trump has divided the world into winners and losers so that they don’t have to live in a world that is ambiguous. However, our ambiguous world is the point. God gave us free will so that we could master the skills of choosing and creating. I suspect that God hopes we choose Love over greed and power, but we can choose as we like. The lessons come either way.
4
Oh if it were that Humpty Trumpty merely sits on a wall.
But Roger Cohen's recent piece points out that Trump's supporters have discounted his roué nature. He is the bully they are putting their money on. He will not fall by way of exposure to his supporters. If/when he tumbles it will be by the law, plain and simple.
8
It is impossible to imagine a person of lower class then Trump.
4
Amen to that, brother. I only wish the whole truth will be revealed soon
I'm not a very religious man either, Mr. Blow, but God bless you!
Keep the fire going under Trump's feet.
5
Mr. Trump operated his own criminal organization, pretty much free of scrutiny because he wasn't considered a man of influence or seriousness. No doubt he has committed numerous illegal actions throughout his career.
But when you win the highest elected office in the world's one remaining superpower, a little focus comes as part of the deal. No amount of bluster and lying will protect him. Too many eyes are upon him. Mr. Trump is too cognitively challenged to understand this and just plays into the various investigations.
Yet, his supporters will never admit they have been taken for a ride and will claim some deep state effort did him in. Hopefully his downfall will take the rest of the GOP with him.
6
NEWS FLASH Mr Blow
Davis had his client Cohen plead to a non-crime:
“Cohen told a judge that he directed the payments “for the principal purpose of influencing the election” and “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office” — a reference to Trump.”
Having done so, Davis maybe suborning perjury.
"subornation of perjury is the crime of persuading a person to commit perjury, the swearing of a false oath to tell the truth in a legal proceeding, whether spoken or written."
Here is some useful information:
“Payments used to silence people who have potentially damaging information on a political candidate cannot be classified as a campaign contribution, according to the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Bradley Smith.”
“Not everything that might benefit a candidate is a campaign expense,” Smith wrote in an editorial for the Wall Street Journal.
“If paying hush money is a campaign expense, a candidate would be required to make that payment with campaign funds,” Bradley said.
“How ironic, given that using campaign funds as hush money was one of the articles of impeachment in the Watergate scandal, which gave rise to modern campaign-finance law.”
I like Jeremiah 9 for the currency of it.
2 Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
3 And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord.
All of Jeremiah 9KJV where the preceding came from, is worth reading as well. Full of lamentations for the time. Our time.
We will see if the Lord gets Old Testament about these liars, thieves, and adulterers.
Once Trump is run out of office, we’re going to need a second Reconstruction, because we’re experiencing the equivalent of a civil war. The descendants of the characters who refused to accept the outcome of the last one aren’t going to accept losing a second time around. They’re still worshipping the traitors of 1861. Going to be ugly, the takedown of this criminal. Really nasty.
1
Amen, Mr. Blow.
Ecclesiastes 12:5:
”Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets”.
Let the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out! No one wants to take a rap for someone like trump. I hope they all sing like canaries! He may have gotten away with things his entire life but it is in the fan now. Un-indicted co-conspiriter.
1
Trump has put the nail in the Republican Party coffin. On November 6th we need to finish the job with a wooden spike through a heart as black as anthracite coal.
1
The Republicans' complicity cannot be explained away based merely on fear of nasty tweets by their dear leader. It is so blatantly outrageous, there has to be something else they fear even more.
I believe it is extremely likely that Putin has dirt on many of them also. And those Putin isn't blackmailing, he probably has bought off.
Wise sages had predicted this. It is kaliyuga on full display!
"Rulers will become unreasonable: they will levy taxes unfairly.
Rulers will no longer see it as their duty to promote spirituality, or to protect their subjects: they will become a danger to the world.
People will start migrating, seeking countries where wheat and barley form the staple food source.
"At the end of Kali-yuga, when there exist no topics on the subject of God, even at the residences of so-called saints and respectable gentlemen of the three higher varnas [guna or temperament] and when nothing is known of the techniques of sacrifice, even by word, at that time the Lord will appear as the supreme chastiser."
Avarice and wrath will be common. Humans will openly display animosity towards each other. Ignorance of dharma will occur.
People will have thoughts of murder with no justification and will see nothing wrong in that.
Lust will be viewed as socially acceptable and sexual intercourse will be seen as the central requirement of life.
Sin will increase exponentially, whilst virtue will fade and cease to flourish.
People will take vows and break them soon after.
People will become addicted to intoxicating drinks and drugs.
Gurus will no longer be respected and their students will attempt to injure them. Their teachings will be insulted, and followers of Kama will wrest control of the mind from all human beings."
3
The death and funeral of Sen. John Mc Cain should be a glaring reminder to Republicans of the integrity, honor and service to country that they have abdicated, and how they have eminently ignored or refused to serve the citizens of this country and the U.S. constitution. This is their job in congress and none other. Instead, they slavishly serve the wealthy only, and have joined the cabal of the demonic #45. Like him, they, too, are now unindicted co-conspirators.
"Opera of Demons" "Trump has created a series of odd bedfellows"Charles, if Trump ever read the red colored Bible his mother gave him at age ten, he could learn from an early age of his life that "Every sin brings it own consequences."
Being born into a totally corrupted lifestyles with an opulent household and growing up in a house where his father Fred was always putting this in his young sons head "My Donny boy, never grow up with compassion for the downtrodden" which in Fred Trump's world meant only the minorities in general, Black folks in particular.
So here we've a man who said right after his inauguration,"I want to be the president of all the Americans", is deliberately running the most divisive administration ever.
And as each day brings new revelations our con artist/president is trying to sell more junk stories to the American people who've already seen ample examples of what 'hogwash' really means.
We Americans on the left knew right away on a New York Hot June '15's afternoon in Trump Tower basement about what type of candidate this "birther" would be.
But the rest of America didn't realize what a turncoat Mafia boss their future president would be.
And now when most of the Americans with a high 56 % of polled respondents are saying Trump is not an honest man, an equally high 90% of Republicans are polling for his reelection in 2020.
So in this 'Opera of Demons', only one man can save America from a criminal president. And his name is Robert S. Mueller.
The most important thing to learn is that the institutions we have will not stop fascism. They were designed to protect the status quo and themselves, and fascists take power through popular means that may appear legal, even democratic.
Under fascist leadership, the institutions themselves become fascist. We should not wait until we get there, it will be too late.
Well said. Rats and weasels are apt descriptions of Trump's band of government grifters.
Loyalty you have to buy is as valuable as enforced salutes to your leader or your flag.
1
Trump is a reincarnation of Al Capone. And, what will bring him down will be revelations of tax evasion and money laundering. These two crimes will also reveal how indebted he is to Putin.
In the meantime, 30 to 40% of Americans continue to support him. It is all very like a bad crime movie. I am reminded that some people will eat garbage as long as it is of the 'all you can eat' variety. Trump in spades.
1
As repulsive and as repugnate as Trump is, Congress is worse because of their cowardice and inability to look out for the country. They are more interested in themselves than is those they are supposed to represent. They, as well as the corrupt Trump, need to be swept aside and replaced with decent, honest Americans. Truly a daunting task in todays partisan climate.
The only path left for the country is up. I won’t hold my breath.
1
Great article Mr. Blow! The last paragraph is the best part-As the old saying goes “what goes around comes around”- There’s a whole lot of Karma coming around to DT-Can’t be soon enough!!
1
"Be not deceived; God is not mocked." Let me stop you there. The most startling aspect of Trump Nation is that my mother is a permanent resident. Everything she taught me about being a good man, a good Catholic and a good American were thrown aside the minute the sideshow came to town. My mom fell into a FOXhole 20 years ago and no one has seen hide nor hair of the wonderful women who taught me to share, to empathize, to treat my sisters with respect, to honor other religions, races and ethnicities , to never bully, to never brag and to never take advantage of our advantages. When I see my mother stand with White Supremacists, the KKK, Homophobes, xenophobes, Evangelicals (we're Catholic), pedophiles (in her politics and her religion), misogynists and people who don't know what a misogynist is, my heart melts and my brain explodes. Donald Trump hasn't warped reality, my mom has, for Donald Trump.
1
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” in a word, KARMA.
In yet another column I read that Donald Trump is a horrible man and terrible leader. Where will this end? If he fires Mueller, what then? Will all the charges against him just disappear?
And how can it be successfully argued that you cannot indict a sitting President? A criminal is a criminal.
Where has justice gone?
1
Welcome, welcome to the funhouse of amorality. Don't believe anything you see or hear, it's not real. Nothing is real. Just believe what I say, it's your new reality...most Americans ain't gonna fall for this swill.
Again another excellent article by Mr. Blow.
Donald Trump is a blight on our country. He is a small man with no compassion, integrity and an understanding of the history of our country and the presidency. I have said this many times, the White House will have to be fumigated when the Trumps leave. They say that there is a mice infestation. While in my opinion there is a rat infestation starting with Donald Trump, his family, Sarah Sanders, John Kelly, Kelly Ann Conway and Trump's entire cabinet. There is not one honorable person in the White House. Shame on John Kelly. As to the others, there has never been any integrity or honesty in any of them.
He said that he was going to drain the swamp. But instead he has created the biggest cesspool in the history of our country. Greed, racism, lack of empathy, lack of integrity and downright stupidity runs rampant in the West Wing.
1
The opera of demons is at high and tumultuous screech in Arizona.
With John McCain’s death our nation has lost a politician who evidenced great integrity, authentic patriotism and unconquerable courage. He was a maverick who put the national interest above lock-step party loyalty. He was a statesman who educated his own supporters when they had obviously been manipulated and victimized by radical right-wing propaganda.
What do we read concerning the response to McCain’s death in his home state of Arizona?
In the New York Times: “Senator John McCain’s death this weekend laid bare the long-simmering Republican tensions over who will be appointed to fill his Arizona seat, pitting the pragmatic wing of the party that Mr. McCain represented against the ascendant, hard-line forces loyal to President Trump — and hostile to the late senator.”
In the Washington Post: “In most of the country, McCain is being lauded as a hero. On Arizona’s GOP campaign trail, he’s a pariah.”
John McCain remained a loyal and conservative Republican right up to the end, but as John Boehner clearly stated: “There is no Republican Party.” The GOP has devolved into the pseudo-populist, thoroughly plutocratic, borderline kleptocratic and authoritarian personality cult that is Trumpublicanism.
Senator John McCain, along with the notion that politics is the pragmatic art of compromise, will be sorely missed.”
1
And wherever a man goeth, he’s the same lifelong fraud and con artist. Thanks, GOP. You truly deserve everything coming your way. Seriously.
19
Let't hope that he repeath what he hath soweth really fast so we can all be rid of him.
11
@Nina
And may his reapings be grim.
On this day when the country is mourning the loss of McCain and so many other things are happening, Blow writing yet another wretchedly partisan screen against Trump is unseemly. Yes, he hates Trump. We get it. McCain hated Trump too. But give it a rest already. Blow has written about nothing else for nearly two years. Is there nothing else going on in the world that deserves his attention? Just stop already.
2
@DRS Why should he stop? Has anything improved? Or has it gotten worse? Until the complicit do something about the criminal in the White House, they need constant reminding that the "new normal" is not normal, and never was, nor should it ever be. I don't find Mr. Blow's editorial "partisan" at all. There are just the facts, and I'm guessing you don't like facts. There is at the end, despite KellyAnne and Rudy only ONE truth.
1
@DRS
Ok. This deserves attention
Trump apparently asked fo the American flag to be raised at the White House instead of remaining at half mast until Senator McCain is buried
1
@DRS, Trump tweets vile and false things daily. And the people around him show corruption daily. They are running the show, and we have daily angst watching it.
1
Reap what you sow? The swamp has come home to roost in all its sleaze and vileness. Can hardly wait to see how this loathesome loser is going to go down.
14
Yes, he's all that. Dumb as dirt and as twice as dirty.
Do you think Putin has buyers remorse?
"I tell you I want Charlie McCarthy and you get me Mortimer Snerd!"
14
I look forward to Mueller's findings. The ideal headline being in red block letters: TREASON!
Or, how about: OWNED BY PUTIN!
6
"Crooked Hillary and the lying liberals say I've gone bananas. But I don't see any bananas, do you? NO BANANAS!"
6
The infuriating thing is that he's sure to pardon himself and the whole slew of criminals in his orbit, including his kids. And the next fascist to inhabit the WH is most assuredly watching and learning.
5
What his father did to him and to his alcoholic brother is for psychotherapists to wrestle, but too many people have lived too long with the consequences. That Trump has turned dozens into willing characters in the farce of his existence attests less to his oily charm than to their shallow cores. Cohen graduated the bottom of the nation’s lowest ranked law school so that from the toilet bowl Bill Maher consigned him to Trump’s smelly milieu looked like up, and let us face it that the women in Mr Trump’s boudoir weren’t going to discover penicillin. That Ms McDougal weeps over the loss of him creeps me out frankly and Stormy on a white horse only attests to the sad fate of aging porn stars wherein the breasts alone remain as high and firm as her purpose. We are subject to cliches in this culture of Trump think and Trump speak because he has morphed abject failure as a man and husband and father and entrepreneur into an exemplar of nearly absolute corruption. He prides himself on being a dead beat and the obese subliterate suckers at his rallies still don’t recognize themselves as the dead workers he beats. This isn’t tragedy because nothing noble has laid Trump or his minions low — not dreams or curiosity or perverse knowledge. He was raised to be pitiful and brutal and has therefore depended on people made to be pitied and brutalized. The Marla Maples Playboy saga is enough to make one retch to think that such a desperate dumb punk continues to con nearly half the electorate
34
@Naked In A Barrel
Thanks for a phenomenal comment that expresses my thoughts and viscera better than I could
1
Nice to see you are hi lighting all the negatives.... no doubt your yearly raise is coming soon.....
@Jay Ess,he didn't even scratch the surface of all the negatives. When Trump said "He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured." Ignoring why he was imprisoned so long. Also he said that he liked John McCain until he lost, and "I don't like losers". What kind of man is this?! He is an unethical bully like I have never imagined could have even one single follower.
3
@tennislady
Not only that, but those comments came from a person whose privileged background allowed him to skip serving any time in the military at all.
Bone spurs. Really? -- Doesn't stop Trump from playing golf, does it.
This writer is truly living in an alternate reality world. Stay there.
2
For Trump it was not good enough to be called a conman & crook. So now for sure he is called a Bum.
1
"He has turned porn star Stormy Daniels into Joan of Arc." But , in the immortal words of Gracie Allen, "They all laughed at Joan of Ark but she built it anyway."
8
This story is an affront to rats and weasels,
7
The Galatians quote rocks, Mr Blow. Otherwise, yep.
5
“Cohen flipped, and Trump flipped out.”
Yes, Cohen flipped - and Gates, and Papadopoulos, and Flynn, and probably Pecker and Weisselberg will too. There’s more than enough sleaze in Trump’s entourage for everyone to have had their “fair share” over the years, and the list of “flippers” will probably get a lot longer before Mueller is through.
But the people we most need to flip are the millions who voted for Trump and still support every outrage he perpetrates on our democracy. With the support of Fox News, they continue shouting “fake news” and show no signs of flipping.
Meanwhile, when the rest of the civilized world looks at what Trump and his administration are doing to climate change, trade, immigration, relations with our allies etc., they must think we’ve “flipped our collective lids!”
14
Trump is really just a dope.
3
Thank you Mr. Blow, again.
7
Bravo !!!
5
You libs have set a terrible precedent. Trump was elected fairly and has been illegitimately challenged by the Left and the Media since Day One. Never has a president been robbed of his office like you demons have robbed Trump. If you losers can't win an election you just pervert the justice system and sue, sue, sue. Well, imagine what your next Dem prez is going to get. You've absolutely poisoned the well.
1
@Eric Where were you during the last 6 years of Obama's presidency when McConnell almost literally let no work get done? I also feel the need to point out that Mr. Trump did NOT win the people's vote, he won an electoral college vote, and one that evidence is pretty clear was at the very least affected by a foreign power. Furthermore, it is IMPOSSIBLE to "rob a president of his office" when one holds a majority nowhere in Congress.
19
@Eric, Trump has poisoned the well, and he has created all this furor by his vile actions and the corruptness surrounding his people. If he were a democrat I would still be horrified by his low, really non existent, ethical standards.
4
@Eric
Excuse me. How soon you forget (Barack Obama).
1
Amen.....And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 NIV
Trump may have meant his deeds for evil, but God causes all things to work together for our good, those who are called. You are called, cause you recognize 45 evil deeds, we recognize 45 evil deeds cause we are called and love the Lord. And as you stated, God will Not be mocked. God is in controlled! God allowed 45 to get in to wake up America. Complacent, extremely Complacent Americans we have become. Wakeup! Wakeup! evil still lives, it is in the White house and Congress. America Wakeup !
6
Charles is becoming a parody of himself. In a few years he will look back on these sort of columns with embarassment. At least, I hope he will. Can we have the old Charles M. Blow back? Enough with the Trump histrionics. This too will pass, Charles.
2
Trump himself is the biggest porn star in US history. I'm amazed a secret that open has to be kept with hush money.
7
As I read this excellent column by Charles Blow, the following quote came to mind:
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here".
Ariel, Act One, Scene Two of "The Tempest"
by William Shakespeare.
7
From your lips to God's ears. May Trump go down and take the entire Republican party with him. May Sessions and McConnell simply be faggots on his pyre.
8
I have another Biblical quote for Mr. Blow. Book of Proverbs,16:18. Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Stormy Daniels is no Joan of Arc. Get real. She's a cunning opportunist nothing more. She should be held in contempt by all. The enemy of mine enemy is definitely not your friend. Senators Corker & Flake may hate Trump but they hate what liberals stand for even more. When I read Blows words I see a pundit completely blinded by self delusion. Trump is not the problem & never was. Trump hasn't remade this country in his own image. The voters have. Trump isn't causing the populist revolt, he's reflecting it. Face it 62 million people had to be fed up to to put a former reality star in the White House. You can hound Trump from office but it won't change the mind of one person who voted for him. The grievances that put him in the Oval Office will still exist. Only they will be amplified by grudges and resentments that will become epic. Trump is their champion. Destroy him and they will be motivated to destroy you. These voters will retaliate. In ways that we can never predict. Count on it. One thing is for sure. Progressives like Blow are pushing these people further to the right with his unrestrained glee at Trump's demise. And if he leaves what will you have achieved? President Mike Pence. A button-down Republican who is much more conservative than Trump. Brilliant. Be not deceived Democrats. Reaping what you sow always cuts both ways.
4
@Bill Brown
First, you assume that Pence isn't implicated. Second, Sure his voters may object to Trump being held accountable for his crimes. But how many of his voters are that loyal? Most of the country did not vote for him. Some of the country did but were lukewarm and are getting colder by the day. I see no reason why justice should be held hostage to these yahoo's threats. Let them be traitors to their country. There are enough patriots left to stand for it I think.
6
@Bill Brown
Well said, Mr. Brown. This subject is really starting to become very tidious. . After a while people just yawn and say, oh this again. It will have very little impact. Can we just move on.
1
@NSH Yes I assume Pence isn't implicated because I have the quaint notion that you are innocent until proven guilty. I'm sure the left wants to give him a fair trial before they smear and hang him....yes? When you say most of the country did not vote for Trump ...lets be clear 62 million did. Some of his voters may be tired of the chaos but it would be a mistake to assume they have become Democrats overnight.
The detestable Trump has been and continues to be a media money-maker. Due to the fact that Trump is a loud mouthed lout, the media have given him extensive coverage. A good case can be made that the media made the monster they now wish to destroy. I presume an editorial praising John McCain, a Republican of great principles, would be out of the question for Mr. Blow. I am not surprised that the New York Times made $24 million in the last quarter. Perhaps Mr. Blow and others should thank Mr. Trump for their job security.
3
@dudley thompson, the media cover him extensively because 1) he has done horrible things and 2) he tweets every day thus inviting media reaction. Trump loves it, because if he didn't, he would stop his vile and lying tweets
@tennislady
I agree that he does horrible things and his tweets invite media reaction. My concerns is two-fold. Liberal opinion writers are pandering to their base needlessly. Secondly, those liberal opinion writer must have something more creative to write about than the daily Trump bashing.
Every day we come closer to that day, when Trump will fall. Keep it up, Mr. Blow. Keep nudging him over the edge.
10
Why are all the creatures in Trump's swamp, those who've pleaded guilty to various felonies, white? It says something about The Don that in a country as wonderfully diverse and creative as the USA, he can't recruit a few minority Americans to help commit bank fraud, money laundering, bribery, kidnapping along our southern border if not elsewhere, and not last nor least, election fraud, probable treason, tax evasion, and environmental terrorism as a partial list. Yet The Don is tireless in his depiction of people of color as criminals. This must be what psychologists mean by 'projection.'
6
With regard to rats and weasels flipping to save their skins:
Given his ability to contradict himself within days or hours, it's not farfetched to soon expect this headline: "Trump flips. President seeks immunity in exchange for testimony about higher ups."
The prospect should keep Trump's friends and advisors (and maybe Putin) up at night.
Decades of Republican sowing gave us this malignant president. The reaping can't happen soon enough.
5
Again Charles, your unabashed simplicity of calling a spade a spade is appreciated. It sometimes is difficult to parse the news that is trying to be objective in its reporting on this despicable excuse for a man, much less a leader.
We can seldom find words that express the problem he is in better ones than you have chosen. Kudos & applause for your insights and clear expressions.
15
We are at a precipice.
VOTE DNC.....no choice, unless
you want to totally unravel the
workings of our fragile democracy.
Fragile it is.
6
I repeat what you wrote: No one can outrun the truth forever. Eventually, the truth always catches up. It comes out. It shines.
I just hope it comes out before everything else is destroyed.
6
Will the lying conman get his comeuppance? Don't count on it. Will he win reelection? Don't bet against it. Those who put him in office in 2016 still support him. Criticism from Blow and others only strengthen their support.
1
Mr Blow - your reaction is typical of what we are reading this last week especially in NYT. It seems whenever Trump slips everyone seems to take a cudgel against him for a week or so and then the situation subsides. There is some truth in his "I always win".
Hope we aren't making mountain out of a mole again this time...
A "king" and his special "followers". Tell me, who should be surprised? It just follows the fairytale book script. Very easy to understand.
1
Charles writes: “For him, the justice system is a tool at the disposal of the wealthy and the ruthless, one to be used against anyone of lesser means and lesser fortitude.” This is key to understanding how a Grade A narcissist like Trump thinks. Every thing, every person, every institution only matters insofar as it can serve his own purposes. It’s always transactional; there has to be a winner (Trump) and a loser; it’s always comes back to him. It’s as if he is genetically incapable of acting any other way.
I used to think narcissists were laughable but harmless. Ted Baxter on the old MTM show comes to mind. But in Trump’s extreme, toxic, pathological narcissism we see only ugliness, pathetic neediness, and contempt for decency and civility.
One day, sooner or later, he will leave office. Will America ever recover?, is the question.
7
Please explain to me why Trump's approval rating is higher than zero percent:
How does violating a presidential oath of office Make America Great Again?
How does honoring corruption among subordinates Make America Great Again?
How does normalizing immorality Make America Great Again?
How does petty tweeting of insults toward almost everyone and everything Make America Great Again?
How does cozying up to Putin and other autocrats Make America Great Again?
How does trashing relationships with longtime Allies Make America Great Again?
How does undermining our democracy Make America Great Again?
Lock him up!!
27
I couldn’t agree more with you Charles. Once the breadth and depth of the Fake President’s hidden criminality sees the bright light of day via the extraordinary investigative efforts of the stunning Mueller team, the world will indeed be “shocked”. From international money laundering to criminal conspiracy with the Russian State to obstruction of justice to federal election law violations to who knows what, this “shock” will turn into disgust, then anger, then overwhelming public demand that, for the first time in our history, this evil occupant of our White House be duly indicted. That “opera” will, in its final act, fittingly end in a funereal dirge for the overreaching, narcissistic ConMan from Queens, Fred’s libertine son, who outrageously thought that he could actually scam the entire U.S.A. No Donald, No.
1
No king or dictator serves without the aid of his many enablers, who aid and abet his every utterance and action.
6
What is most disturbing is the extent to which his followers do not care that he is a criminal and a traitor.
24
First, Sen. Flake is no favorite of Tea Partiers Flake is a Rino, Republican in name only, and his presence as a US Senator is among others, the reason the Tea Party came about.Second, author repeats information accessible to anyone with a computer, so how is he being educative, informative, dispensing facts I would not otherwise know? Third, if Trump talks like a mob boss, it's because he dealt with mob bosses, crooked Teamster officials to get his properties developed. Involvement of organized crime in politics is a given. Remember Tony Resko's relationship with Obama, which enabled the ex president to acquire a choice property in Chicago for a sum described as derisory?In 1984 I was introduced to members of SAC, Service d'Action Civique,"members of Mitterand's praetorian guard which had its h.q. on rue Matignon, and recognized 1 of them as a Marseilles gangster, formerly part of a gang known as the "blouses grises,"once part of the underworld of that southern French city.Finally,recall role of Sam Giancana , Momo, and his role in Kennedy's election victory in Illinois in 1960. None of what Mr. Blow says here is new, and suggest he be more forthcoming with his many readers, and write of events and folks he personally knows about. Secondary and tertiary sources do not make for compelling reading!
If President Trump He has managed to turn "porn star Stormy Daniels into Joan of Arc," then it is we, not Trump, with the warped sense of reality. The longer we fail to hold ourselves accountable for the political toxicity with which we have blanketed ourselves, the longer it will take to breathe fresh air again.
Yes, Trump too is pathologically warped, but he serves himself at our pleasure, and at last reckoning, through voter commission or omission, our pleasure is to let him do it, notwithstanding his decades of social indecency.
Until the country reverses course, his indecency is ours.
7
Mr. Blow, thank you so very much for your excellent editorial. It confirms what many Americans have come to understand about the current resident of our Oval Office.
The Trump presidency has been so very, very strange and so very, very toxic. And what makes it even more difficult to bear, is that it was achieved, to an important extent, with the help of Putin's Russia.
So much about his presidency feels fraudulent -- from how it was obtained in the first place, to the ongoing revelations about his past, and the toxic nature of the man himself.
Russia seems to be in possession of some important information about Trump's past that Trump is terrified will be revealed to the American public. So he has become a useful tool of Russia, don't you think?
Clearly the man is not qualified to be president on so many important levels. There is no honesty, no integrity, no compassion. And his ignorance and belligerence often rise to the surface to reveal a meanspirited nature.
He lacks a historical perspective because he lacks a natural curiosity. He uses his "instincts" to rule and, unfortunately, those instincts often have foul origins that produce foul results. And he often appears incapable of dealing with life and living in an honest, straightforward manner.
We will all breathe a deep, deep sigh of relief when he is escorted out of our White House for good.
7
Mr. Blow,
I agree with all that you've said, but your quote from the Bible is countered, and very accurately and presciently, by this observation from the 18th century:
"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect. . . Considering that natural disposition in many men to lie, and in multitudes to believe, I have been perplexed what to do with that maxim so frequent in every body's mouth, that truth will at last prevail."
~ Jonathan Swift, Examiner No. XIV - Thursday, November 9, 1710
If the fact that Trump could ever be elected president, and remain president, is not the proof of that sage observation I do not know what would be.
4
Trump, his business, and even his family, has already hit the iceberg. It's a question of when he will sink and not if he will sink.
1
I wish I could share Charles’ view that there will be a ‘reckoning.’ After reading the NYT’ profile of Mueller, I don’t see it. What I see is a country which has willingly allowed the POTUS to be above the law. DOJ thinks you can’t indict a sitting president. Impeachment conviction is not happening. Mueller could issue a report more damaging than our wildest imaginations and nothing will happen. The only way rid ourselves of Trump is through natural causes or term limits.
Trump will serve out his term.
He may get impeached if the Democrats win control of the House, but there will be no conviction in the Senate. That takes 67 votes.
He won’t be indicted by Mueller. He’s a straight arrow who follows the rules no matter what. The Justice Department wrote those rules long ago.
He won’t resign. Not Trump. That would mark him as a loser.
No matter how many people flip. No matter how badly the GOP loses in November. No matter the level of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Trump will remain.
Why? Aside from his own narcissistic abuse, it’s because he has a lock on the GOP base. If obvious obstruction of justice does not erode his base, what will? Even a plausible case of treason did not materially depress his support. The GOP base is fueled by fear and resentment—Trump’s tools of the trade. They are immune to facts and impartial information. Those are screened out by the polarizing lenses at Fox.
What do Democrats do in the meantime? Rebuild the Democratic base by calling for equal justice and effective government. Show how the GOP is debasing democracy by gerrymandering. Point out the power of dark money moving elections. Use social media for good by mobilizing voters who have not engaged yet—the young, new citizens, the unregistered to vote, the disenchanted—by giving them reasons to vote. Walk the streets knocking on every door to deliver the message.
There are 877 days until January 20, 2021. Use every one.
6
He never made the slightest effort to say a good word about McCain.
Whenever I think he can't go lower, he goes lower.
5
@A. Stanton, he hasn't gone lower so much as he's continued to wallow in the cesspool. trump can't go any lower.
@Gene
I take your point.
Time is just. The cold stare of history will be decidedly and deservedly brutal to Trump and most of these temporary “heroes”.
5
While I agree with Mr Blow's characterizations of the central players, I would not term this an opera: that term gives the proceedings a dignity that they do not deserve. No, this is a spaghetti western - the difference being that there are no good involved, just bad and ugly.
2
And some of us are rooting for the CIA and the FBI, even if we were never fans of these two entities. How’s that for novel?
And, of course, the idea that generals will keep a crazy man from starting a war when he’s cornered.
2
Our history is full of people who sowed and did not reap, so this is wishful thinking. Just think of generals promoted for invading foreign countries or slaughtering Native-Americans. Think of Thomas Jefferson avoiding being called on his underhanded treatment of John Adams and his hypocrisy in proclaiming liberty while denying it to his slaves, or Andrew Jackson becoming a hero through both personal and institutional violence, or Ronald Reagan undermining negotiations to free hostages so that he could be elected and then claim the credit. Even Andrew Johnson, whose personal behavior and colossal ignorance rival Trump's, was not called to account for his cronyism, corruption or pandering to defeated southern leaders -- he was in hot water more for disagreeing with the radical Republicans in Congress and he still avoided impeachment.
If people really get their comeuppance, what are we to think of current leaders in Russia, China, Turkey, Venezuela or North Korea?
5
Trump has also spawned numerous Youtube videos by Tarot experts on symbolic interpretation of card images and the direction each installment of this witch hunt. Some witches actually do their own analysis and interpretation of Trumpism. Lena Rodriguez has interesting political interpretations. They all handle their cats with an ease, as if they symbolize their viewers as well. At some point, grace and deception are at odds, in all cases.
Of course, Corker and Flake only found the spine to put principle over party once they decided not to run for re-election, and were no longer in a position to be damaged by nasty tweets and nicknames from the so-called "president."
1
"This is where we are now: building coalitions around causes, often with those to whom we take offense or even despise. The enemy of my enemy is my temporary tool." Charles Blow.
Isn't that how politics works?
The major difference today is now we are dealing with corruption, both in the executive branch and the legislative branch.
The legislative corruption has driven folks out of the process over a period of years. It fueled the Tea Party's rise, it's why the target of their ire was always traditional republicans. It's why Pelosi is perceived as so toxic in some circles. It's why not taking PAC money is a badge of honor. It allowed the emergence of an outside candidate for president who promised to drain the swamp.
Now the corruption in the executive branch is bringing them back. The candidate who promised to drain the swamp is turning out to be an extreme version of a swamp monster.
1
The first line says it all - "Donald Trump has warped reality" and we are all subjected to watching the show. An American hero dies, and he makes it about himself. Throws a public temper tantrum, he insults and disparages John McCain who was a true patriot and loved this country more than himself.
The truth shall set us all free from Trump and his family at some point. The American Grifters and Thieves will be expunged from the White House and democracy, the rule of law and the true American way will prevail again...sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Lanny Davis has waffled on his assertion and that is not a good thing. A nearly incoherent interview would be an improvement for Donald Trump. No doubt the current charges are just a stepping stone toward the endgame of money laundering as pointed out by Bannon. Unfortunately you can outrun the truth forever, cases in point Donald Trump's role models Putin, Xi, Kim. Mueller needs to be cognizant that time is not on his side, especially if come November the anticipated blue wave fizzles out. And to that end the investigation serves as a cause celebre to galvanize the right wing base
1
It seems that Trump's primary sin is removing the mask from how our government has long operated.
It's not a crisis, just the end of an illusion!
3
I've said it time and again, but it is worth repeating:
President Obama said on the 2016 campaign trail, "Donald Trump spent all 70 years of his life only caring about himself. And now he says he's going to be YOUR champion? Come on man!"
True then, and is coming to light through the Mueller probe again now. Donald Trump will do anything to make himself win (plumping up his dying real estate empire through Russian Oligarch money, and now the presidency), and making his fellow rich friends even richer, at thew expense of anyone else. The "peasants" who voted for him won't get their promised "something awesome" healthcare. They won't get their coal or steel jobs back. For their vote, they get to keep their "MAGA" hats, made in China.
1
One thing we are learning: prosecuting white collar crime needs to be made a priority again.
If Trump is what he is today, a large part of it is because of what he got away with in his business dealings over the years. And it's not just Trump.
The last time any corporation got put through the wringer was Enron. Wall Street walked away from the 2008 collapse; some corporations went down, but not the CEO's. Wells Fargo continues to demonstrate that modern bank robbers are the banks that rob from us.
Trump is a creature of white power and privilege. He trades on being a white male with his base to get them to overlook that he and corporate grifters like him are ripping all of us off.
If Trump can make the rest of them vulnerable, it will be a start.
5
I've seen what's going on. I've read the news. But please, let us not celebrate too soon. Donald Trump is slippery and slick. In spite of all of the evidence, he'll be hard to catch.
2
The Mueller Report will be devastating. But Mr. Trump will deny it all. However, Congress will have come by a lot of courageous souls by then.
His goose will be totally cooked in a vat of truth broth. And there will be many cooks lending a hand.
Picture all those Trump fans at his rallies whose hearts swell from his self-pitying anger, cruel insults, juvenile "winning," sarcasm, name-calling, us-versus-them philosophy, simplistic and delusional promises. The cataract of coarseness and negativity should be lethal to most people. I agree with Mr. Blow that the truth will finally win. But our celebration will have to ignore the millions who have a whole different truth.
2
It's interesting that Trump considers himself a winner. I certainly don't.
6
What bothers me the most is the glaring fact that otherwise good, decent and for the most part intelligent people have been so taken in by the GOP lies and prevarications that they refuse to listen to any reasonable arguments contrary to their firm, cast in concrete beliefs.
I now feel that much as I support Obama and his many accomplishments we are facing a far greater road block than we ever thought possible.
5
I loved this article, it so well describes Trump (at least as I see him) and like Charles, I am not a very religious person and I am fond of Galatians 6:7
3
The people who attend Trump rallies still believe that he is giving it to “the man” and that he is a populist savior looking out for their interests.
If the reality of what the Trump administration is doing didn’t fall upon those who oppose him, it would be perversely satisfying to sit back and watch how long it takes his supporters to realize that they have been duped.
Those supporters, that is, who are not crooks, grifters and opportunists who know exactly what is happening.
4
It's not over until Robert Mueller sings.
Mueller is the lone hero in his 15 months long meticulous investigation. Five Trump cronies are convicted felons. Mueller and his team work assiduously and without bluster or fanfare to get at the truth while Trump tweets about the deep state and witch hunts.
Trump has never faced the consequences of his corrupt actions but ironically, his ascension to the throne may be his undoing. He is no Greek hero because he possesses not an ounce of honor or integrity, but his reversal of fortune and ultimate fall will be proof that he is not above the law and that his wealth can not shield him.
McCain is put to rest and Trump golfs and sends out tweets of hate. He does not have the human decency to be gracious and to choose to unite us rather than to divide us with his rancor and pettiness.
If Blow is right, and Trump reaps what he sows, he will be doing it in an orange suit in a cell without a cell phone or a golf course in sight. Keep working Mr. Mueller. We appreciate your heroic efforts in the face of constant debasement from the leader of the free world. We are counting on you. Trump may think he is mighty but he may have met his match in Mueller, a man devoted to the pursuit of justice and truth, a man who does his job honorably and wants to remain in the background. He is the polar opposite of the narcissistic child-man Trump who believes he is the center of the universe. Trump may find himself in a universe as tiny as a cell.
359
@Patricia Caiozzo
His orange prisonwear will nicely compliment his toupee color and skin tone.
@Patricia Caiozzo
Trump will never see the inside of a jail cell. At best he will be allowed to resign , with a physical health ailment, "for the good of the country" and then will be pardoned by the new president. Even should he be impeached, there will not be 2/3 votes in the Senate to convict.
So, last week was a bad week for DJT. Who could disagree? It seems every week could be called the worst week ever, but, it's only true, until the next week. Any mortal politician would have died about 100 times over. Everything and everyone he touches, goes wrong. So it seems.
What if what you see, is meant to be seen and that which you don't see is meant to be hidden. The economy is very good, on it's way to great. Again. 4.1% GDP and going higher. The Mexican NAFTA is about to be made public. What effect will that have on the economy? We'll find out right before the mid terms.
The presidents legal team does what ever they do. What exactly is it they do? I don't know. Neither do any of the talking heads. Rudy is the front man. He makes a goofy statement every couple of days and that's all we hear about. Maybe that is the strategy.
The human pinata, AKA, Jeff Sessions is doing ...what? The AG might be in the witness protection program, for all we know. What other Team Trump member gets a mean tweet once or twice a week? Week after week. For someone that "appears" to be unloved, Mr. Sessions still has a job. Hunting MS13 among other tasks, I assume.
And, what if Politico's "Sleeper" case was next big thing?
1
An America in which "the wealthy almost always win" is "a distortion of the American power structure"? I'm not so sure. It sure isn't much of a distortion of the Texas power structure.
5
@franko
That may be true, But then again, Texas isn't the ONLY state in the union. And not everyone there is "winning".
1
Beyond Galatians 6:7 is the statement by Claudius, near the end of "I, Claudius," which is so apt during this terrible time:
"Let all the poison that lurks in the mud hatch out."
30
I’m not a very religious person, but I am fond of Galatians 6:7 in the Bible:
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
We cannot wait for this unmockable god to mete out justice, for we shall wait forever.
Trump is mocking the Constitution and all our democratic institutions along with it. It is up to us -- each and every one of us -- to put an end to the nightmare. We can start in November by voting for Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate.
31
Don't you worry, Joel, what goes around comes around and trump will get back what he gave and gives out.
No, truth doesn't always shine. Truth isn't truth. That's the sad reality of where we are today. And there is absolutely no reason to believe that people like Donald Trump reap what they sow.
People actually find it credible that Paul Manafort should not have been prosecuted for crimes because he is just a small player. They also are willing to believe that Donald Trump had nothing to do with any of the corruption that swirls around him.
I predict, with great sadness, that there will never be a report from the Mueller investigation. There are just too many people who think it's in their interest to protect Trump.
10
@Betsy That's hilarious. Keep it up libs. Keep up the insane hyperbolic criticism. Each day more people are going to support him by way over the top foolish rhetoric from the slightly insane left.
@Betsy S
"I predict, with great sadness, that there will never be a report from the Mueller investigation."
No.
Mark my words: there will be a report.
There are far too many in position to do something about this American catastrophe we are witnessing, they are as deeply offended as we are, and they are taking the time to do it thoroughly and completely.
We can only hope that what is found is unambiguous and strong enough to leave no doubt about what must be done; anything less, and the spin by Trump's profoundly cynical & cowardly enablers will be enormous. They'll do all they can to keep the train on track.
Keep your fingers crossed! It's coming.
@J. Scott
"Keep it up libs."
We will.
We were right to oppose him to begin with, more of us voted for his vastly more qualified opponent, and everything we feared would happen has happened, and then some.
That folks like you ever supported him, and continue to do so even as more proof of his unfitnesses is shown every day, is beyond sad, and you'll go down in history as having made one of the worst mistakes ever in an American election (not that you will ever, apparently, care to understand).
And by the way, we're liberals because we're right far more often than conservatives, as modern history abundantly shows. You can worry about the small segment of the left that may be "slightly insane"; the rest of us will be more concerned with the enormous damage the Right has foisted on this country for decades, leading to the monstrosity now in the White House.
Trump can’t seem to convince his Rats to stay on his sinking cardboard raft. Even Sessions has caught a passing shred of decency to cling to.
Open the National Enquirer cache of stories killed to protect old Bone Spurs.
18
A person who lies for (and with) you will someday lie TO you.
Trump chose to believe that the very people whom he chose FOR their willingness to break one code of conduct (The Law)…could be counted upon NOT to break a different code: the code of loyalty to him!
The worth of a promise will only be known when the person who MADE that promise no longer wants to keep it.
And in the words of Samuel Johnson: “Nothing focuses the mind like the sight of the gallows.“
21
Trump has no such magical powers to turn a porn star into an iconic figure. He's the touchstone that turns into trash everything it touches. It's Stormy Daniels herself who has transformed her persona the way we see it. She's an honest person who tells it like it is - and is quite clear and open about what she says and what she does. In short, all those qualities that Trump conspicuously lacks.
16
Mr. Blow is right: God is not mocked etc.- That was Malcolm Muggeridge's favorite quote for politicians in U.K. & U.S.A. In the end, according to Harry Truman. U.S. voters are not mocked either. For sure, St. Paul's Galatians' verse has less to do with the Gospel of J.C. than with the inexorability of our choices on this earth. And that's:"Just the facts" (Joe Friday's term).
4
All I can say is, "Amen to that!"
Trump's "Opera of Demons" is the coalition of the conspirators against democracy, moral values, and all that America has held dear and stood for in the past 200 years. No surprise, only shame, that President Trump refused to recognize John McCain as a great American hero yesterday or today. President Trump will not attend the funeral at the behest of our heroic American Senator -- "a most eminent citizen" -- whom he made fun of and ridiculed.
John McCain is now resting in peace on his well-earned lifetime of laurels in Arizona and will lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda, and be given a full dress funeral in the Washington National Cathedral next week. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama will be delivering eulogies to John McCain, and we will witness the obsequies.
Can we count on your prediction coming true, Charles Blow, that "the whole truth of Trump will come out and shock the world"? The American people are in a Danse Macabre with Trump and destiny. Donald Trump and his Totentanz with the United States of America has sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind (Hosea, 8:7). We pray to witness our 45th President dancing with The Reaper.
11
@Nan Socolow I have been around a long time and in politics the truth always comes out.
Opera of the Demons for sure, and the most relevant of all is the orange-haired Mephistopholes. Playing now, and live streamed on a television near you.
2
Meanwhile, we are succeeding bigly with the denuclearization of North Korea, Russia is our friend, white supremacists are good people, the rich get richer, the infrastructure is falling apart and the cannons are rolling across the deck. Winning!
22
Talk about flipping, that’s trump, when his daughter has her turn under the glare.
Squeeze him when Ivanka looks at doing time, her daddy will flip in a hurry.
8
@disgracedwife I wouldn't count on it. The man has no soul.
"...The use of informants is a central part of how some criminal prosecutions are executed. This is how the justice system works."
It should be noted that "this is how the justice system works" because it does work. How else do you get the whole truth, not just some of it, not just the easy cases to bring to court? Particularly when you are talking about a years-long and apparently wide-ranging conspiracy. I suppose that this president is on the verge of calling off our anti-terrorism agents who are preventing further attacks because their success depends on finding informants who will "flip" on their former masters. Thing is: if there were no crimes, there'd be nothing to flip on and no one to flip. How about this novel idea, Mr. President? Stick to the law even when it means sacrificing some bit of advantage on your part, and you won't need anyone to exculpate you or fear anyone who might finger you. None of this silly reality show melodrama -- Oh, but that is the whole point of your life, isn't it? Why didn't you just stick with your fictional "reality show"? Everyone would have been happier, including, in the end, you. This experiment in turning reality into a reality show is not going to end well for you come November 2018 and 2020 and beyond, when you will indeed be indictable.
19
When I think of Trump, I think of the movie entitled, "From Russia with Love"...Because that's where this creature has risen from...That's where a good part of his history and fame is derived from. But Trump is no Sean Connery, that's for sure. He's more of an invertebrate of some lowly sort.
It will be a glorious day when we can say, "Good riddance!" to the phony president who has no soul, no conscience, and no compassion.
He is a sick man who is in desperate need of professional help but is incapable of recognizing it. And the last place a man of his character, intelligence, and integrity belongs is in our Oval Office. In my mind, he is a clear and present danger to our national and international security. Congress should take immediate steps to corral this foul beast before he can do any more damage.
He is a cancer on our national soul and a danger to national and international peace and security. His election should be considered illegitimate because of the unforgivable Russian interference into our democratic process. The sanctions against Russia should never have been lifted by Trump. But if it wasn't for their interference, he wouldn't be our president today, would he? His election was a fraud and it should be negated on principle. HE DID'NT EARN IT!!!
Let the impeachment hearings begin!
52
The cornerstone of civilization is the ability to live harmoniously in large groups. The essence of harmony is that an individual's rights go only so far as to not infringe on the rights of others. Thousands of years ago the ancient Greeks' most valued goal was goodness, or virtue. Working towards one's best self while respecting and helping others. In modern times, our entire legal system is designed around codifying harmony - rules for how to live together peacefully and fairly.
Donald Trump has never ascribed to any of that. Virtue is unknown to him. He is the antithesis of a civilized man, because the rights of others are of no concern to him. Now here is the remarkable thing; Trump's insatiable need for attention, adulation, fame, has made his antisocial life extremely public for decades. His bankruptcies, his adultery, his failure to pay contractors, his many scams, all are common public knowledge. And there he sits, elected as president of the United States. 10,000 years of civilization, all leading to a country based from it's outset as a hallmark of democracy, led by a man for whom virtue is a foreign concept.
21
It is warped, but it is not Trump who warped it.
They could have been seen as the ugly spawn of Trumpworld, living proof.
The clean up was done by the Never-Trump people, who were willing to say and do anything to get Trump.
It wasn't even necessary nor effective to make these ugly people into this warped version of heroes. It would have been at least as effective to approach them as "look at his world, what is all around him."
It was lazy, the easy way to get at Trump. It was less effective, a Siren's song.
2
There is a passage somewhere in Machiavelli's writings where he says that, if one generation ever did achieve true wisdom and virtue in government, a new generation would arise opposed to the principles of virtue and wisdom. That may be what has happened here. As the generation that fought World War 2 fades into memory, a new generation has formed, completely blind to the dangerous developments that brought us to that war.
6
@Jonathan That's preposterous.
Let's remember that this all grew out of and was sponsored by the GOP. This is their creation. And even at this late date they still stand by and won't demand better.
41
The opera analogy is brilliant. I can image the libretto and score easily, with the corrupt underlings writhing on stage below a monstrous-sized villain.
4
So many people are saying, "When this ends. When this is over. When he gets what's coming to him." Well, folks, ain't gonna happen.
Millions of people still support him knowing full well who he is and what he does and they simply do not care. Millions of people don't care about the lies, the cheating, the wheeling dealing in Russia, the rude, crude and disgusting way he talks and the fact that he is an empty man with small hands and a big mouth. They simple DO NOT CARE. He's rich so he must be smart. Right.
And, regardless of what Meuller finds, he will pardon everyone including his family and himself and no one will stop him. He will win again in 2020 and that will embolden him to act like King Donald. Mitch McConnell, the truly evil force behind support for Trump, will continue to rob the poor to give to the rich and pad his own coffers. Along with the rest of that crew of nefarious creeps.
Even if an archangel were to land on earth and guide people towards what is honest, above-board and for their own best good, they wouldn't listen. The perfect storm of narrow religion, bigotry, hatred, fear, lack of jobs, lack of money for housing and a total impossibility for average people to understand anything including their own lives will continue. People who think Trump is real and doing a great job won't change. Fellini couldn't be doing a better job.
How do you wake up people who do not know they are asleep?
36
This is the question I want to ask Trump supporters. If you are really paying attention, Are You Happy Now?
Because if you are really paying attention, you should be appalled.
25
@Alan
Sadly, Trump supporters by and large do not read the NY Times. Your message should be on Fox TV to reach them.
The awful stink of corruption at the top of our republic is enough to keep us all on edge, wondering what new crime will be exposed each day, by whom, involving what players and just how it will link to the vile little man in our oval office. The web of corruption grows wider by the day and we can only speculate as to who and what is hidden beneath. This is what is happening now...in our country. Why is the GOP so silent in the face of so much rot? Why is it so indifferent to the criminality linked to the president, and to the awful deeds being done by this administration? Just asking.
20
“I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world, even more than it is already shocked.”
On what evidence? The man has already done the most outrageous and disgusting things possible, and yet his followers remain not only unshocked, but unshakably supportive. It’s creepy.
17
Read Craig Unger's book, "House of Trump, House of Putin", it is an eye opener and will give you an idea. There is a reason why Bob Mueller is taking his time...
1
The truth will out. But will it matter? When will the next “wag the dog” scene commence?
Folks say he will tear down the planet before he goes down.
Hoping he resigns before that.
6
@Anne Marshall
Trump will NEVER resign. When he leaves the White House (which should be thoroughly disinfected) it will be for Federal prison or a psychiatric hospital. In either case he must not be allowed to communicate with the public ever again.
1
Ok, Trump is a sociopath, he fits the criteria perfectly. So much for him.
It is his base in general that I wonder about. Are they all completely insulated in their own small worlds? Surely they stick their heads out of the cocoon once in a while.
They used to teach civics in grade school. We sang the national anthem and we were told about the way the country ran and the basic functions of government and a bit about the Constitution.
If this does not happen now it leaves a whole generation ignorant of the workings of the government and of the basic ethics and moral rules that the constitution is based on as well as the rules of government and why the rules are important.
This is very important. We must not leave a whole generation to decide in their own ignorance that government is always corrupt and that democracy is weak and useless to the common man. This is what ignorance looks like and these people are why Trump is in power. They abdicated their responsibility as citizens to know why they were voting and who they were voting for and why.
Education is paramount because we have to have informed and critically aware citizens . Without them we lose our democracy. It is that simple.
We also have to have an honest media with rules that prevent complete fabrications and foreign influence. This is also crucial.
40
I keep wondering what good could be accomplished if all of the money being spent by Trump and his loyalists, and all of the fees being paid to high-priced attorneys to keep a finger in the dam, could be spent on the real issues at hand. It is astounding how much $$$ continues to go down the drain as people struggle to survive and our environment is abandoned.
1
A very aptly titled column Mr. Blow. Americans now find themselves inabiting an upside down, backwards world.
A world where a porn star is more likeable and even more admirable than the First Lady or the President's daughter. A world where liberals find themselves in the odd position of cheering for Jeff Sessions when he's attacked by Trump.
Yes, it's a very odd, upside down world indeed.
Charles1:1 He shall blow his trumpet of truth
1
You vastly overstate Trump’s powers to pull the wool over the eyes of ‘all Americans all of the time’. Farmers spread manure for the temporary good they feel it may do their crops, but they still know that it’s just ‘bull’.
1
Every day that this drags on is torture. The judicial bench keeps filling up with Trump nominees. Children are the in cages in warehouses for infants, toddlers, adolescents and others who have been ripped apart from their parents. The environmental safeguards that had been put into place by saner administrations are being discarded. War heroes are denounced as losers, tyrants in far off lands are addressed with all their titles in place. Leaders of democracies are referred to by their first names, to diminish their stature. Tariffs are being put in place in a nonsensical, seemingly impulsive manner. Lobsters are now on sale in Shoprite because the reciprocal tariffs put in place by nations to which they otherwise would have been sold make them no longer exportable. We are told over and over again just to sit tight, donate to sympathetc candidates, and wait until the next election. About 70 days now until that happens. With the mad king feeling more and more like a cornered rat, there is too much of an opportunity for a dangerous event to be put into motion, on purpose. So much is riding on Mueller. Meanwhile, in tweets, he is portrayed as someone “disgraced” and driving a supposedly angry team of fiercely biased Democrats who just cannot accept the fact that their candidate lost the last Electoral College vote count. It’s going to feel like 100 degrees because of heat and temperature for the next three days in New York. This is a season in hell.
5
"No one can outrun the truth forever. Eventually, the truth always catches up. It comes out. It shines. I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world, even more than it is already shocked."
I hope you are right and your prediction will come true. I even if the whole truth of Trump will shock the world - something I don't care about, I hope the truth will cause him to fall from his reality TV height down all the way, not the hell - that should be reserved for his evangelical followers and enablers, but to a Federal prison.
10
"The use of informants is a central part of how some criminal prosecutions are executed. This is how the justice system works." But does this give one confidence in the system? I remember how so many of the civil rights and Black Panther activists were convicted and then years later it was revealed that informants had lied to get lesser sentences. It really is a use of human weasels, isn't it? One murderer rats on another. The first gets probation and the other gets the electric chair. I like the idea that both are forced to pay for their crimes not just one. On this score, let me say that I do not feel comfortable knowing that Mueller is going after all of Trump's associates in a desperate bid to get them to turn or flip or whatever the prison lingo happens to be. I would like to see Trump prosecuted directly according to the prosecutor's mandate and if there is no evidence, then write the damned report and move on. Everyone involved including the now-deceased McCain claimed to be against torture, but what else is this system based on but the premise that people will talk when threatened?
The most striking statement in that Fox interview is that he has "many friends" involved in decisions on whether to "flip." As the saying goes, we can take the measure of the man by the company he keeps.
54
"He has made Senators Bob Corker and the Tea Party darling Jeff Flake appear as valiant crusaders for integrity, unafraid to put principle above party."
"This is where we are now: building coalitions around causes, often with those to whom we take offense or even despise. The enemy of my enemy is my temporary tool."
I might have missed something but what is it about Jeff Flake's politics that puts it at odds with the value of integrity? When has he shown himself to be dishonest? Perhaps more importantly, given Mr. Blow's often voiced concerns about the GOP, when has Senator Flake been anything less than strident about criticising racism, bigotry and xenophobia in his party?
The quoted sentences reveal a disturbing intolerance on Mr. Blow's part. He seems to believe that any political disagreement with him should go down as a black mark against the other person's character. Trump could have written this piece.
Speaking of which, "building coalitions around causes" is how politics is supposed to work in functioning liberal democracies. Last I checked, this is a popular idea. Our political system was designed to elicit precisely this modus operandi.
Referring to a political adversary as an "enemy", as Mr. Blow has, suggests that Trump has been terrifyingly successful at corroding our public discourse. The existence of people we disagree with politically, let alone working with them, is desirable and what makes the American brand of liberal democracy great.
6
@Pacific No. Evil and corrupt filth are not what makes America great. Manipulating people in states with lower than average GPD per capita to believe that they’re the victims of liberals in states with sanctuary cities- and if we only had a wall we’d be great again and than stomping around and trying to be a bully with other country’s leaders is what was missing. Thinking we must have an equivalence between McConnel, Ryan and Warren is just wrong. I, for one, will not forget nor forgive.
2
@Pacific I don't think anyone who supports Trump, or even defends his amorality, has any right to take a holier-than-thou attitude with someone who supports the opposition. The party of scorched earth, of our-way-or-the-highway, of the Hastert rule, of electoral manipulation, of cheat-to-win, of demonizing one's opponent, of using fear to manipulate the vulnerable-- that party won't be able to condescend to ANYONE. It's going to take them a very very long time to crawl out of the Trump sewer they have currently sunken into, though they haven't figured that out yet.
1
James Comey was spot on when he described Trump's MO as that of a mob boss. Comey would know; his job was among the first casualties of Trump's war on the insufficiently loyal.
30
@NM FBI director works at the pleasure of the President. Many former Presidents have replaced department directors after taking office. Jim Comey, nor anyone else in that cesspool, has a "right" to his or her job. By the way, the weasel Comey lasted a LOT longer than he should have.
1
@Dan Bertone I think we need to do some serious thinking about that "pleasure of the president" thing you are talking about. It just isn't really working without an honorable president or an honorable congress to see that the checks and balances are upheld. Pleasure of the president...makes me tired.
Trumps War On the Justice System Threatens To Erode The Rule
Of Law
NYT 9/25 2018
"In his attempt at self-defense amid the swirl of legal cases and investigations involving himself, his aides and his associates, Mr. Trump is directly undermining the people and processes that are the foundation of the nation’s administration of justice."
Mr. Blow, you are correct, he is incoherent and rambling, and an embarrassment to us all.
We can not allow him to compromise our justice system, and
undermine the system of checks and balances.
Congress must do their job, to, preserve our Democracy, which is now threatened.
14
More and more people are beginning to come to the same conclusion about Trump that 150 former National Security Experts and over 30 psychologists and psychiatrists reached, that Trump is unfit for office.
Trump's particular type of unfitness is most dangerous. When the walls come closing in on him he is going to lash out in violent and dangerous ways.
It is up to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to protect the American people from Trump. If they refuse to do so, may God have mercy on us all.
20
Idea for a student political science research project...what help could we provide to Central American countries to aide in their economic stability with the funds for " the wall" together with the funds for Trump's military parade? Just asking.
6
Thank you Charles Blow for this vivid image. In six opening paragraphs, you have created use your craft to describe so much. Now we mull it over and over and over because it does explain the news we are drowning in from day to day (unless we go about our lives caring for and interacting kindly with each of those other human beings we encounter). Choose! Do you want a dog-eat-dog world? Civility can thrive. Follow those who exhibit the character you want to see. Lead your self, your family, your community ... living in the character you want to be. Resist this opera of demons.
13
Hang tough, as you do. Personally, I remain skeptical. Lindsay Graham gave Trump the ok last week to fire Sessions and Tiger Woods told his fans to respect the office.
My GOP friends mock my fears.
The game ain't over, and it definitely hasn't been won.
28
Of the million (or more) words that have been written about this sleazy American Tragedy, this piece is riveting; point-blank accuracy. Its simplicity is compelling:
"...the lesser evils are part of the phalanx standing between us and the greater evils."
"[Loyalty] freely given should be honored and revered. When the dishonorable attempt to purchase it, either with money or fear, it will always prove false in the end."
Someone like Trump neither knows or cares about such truisms.
" ...And I have seen it many times. I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping, and it almost ought to be illegal." (What other president could say that)?
When the prosecutor finally makes his/her closing arguments in "United States Of America v. Donald J.Trump", I hope that statement is included.
21
Trump has lived a life in which he endured no outer consequences for his actions. We can never know the toll the choices he’s made impacted his inner life. He probably doesn’t know, but he suffers nevertheless. I sincerely hope real, material consequences come down all around him, fast and furious now. There’s no other way forward.
20
Some people will get what they deserve. Some people will not get what they deserve.
The corruption of the justice process is just as unreliable as plea bargaining can make it. Some people think that an authoritarian like Putin can mete out more reliable justice than a trial with a jury.
As an expatriate American here in France I observe that no French president can be prosecuted while still in office but the moment the president returns to private life there is a long line of voracious prosecutors waiting to dine on the politicians liver.
If America does not return to political sanity in the coming elections and begin the process of removing Trump from office the current level of political corruption may become permanent!
14
Mr Blow is right when he says Trump's zombies will remain loyal and that eventually the truth will dome to light. The thing I fear most is that when the Democrats come into power they will try and put this whole debacle behind them in the name of consensus building and wanting to appear humane. That will be their biggest mistake. I'm not into revenge, but I am into people who have made a mockery of out republic and who have done everything they can to harm their fellow Americans every chance they had, be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and do whatever time they deserve. The left never fights back. If ever there was a time when we need to fight with all our fury it is now.
32
Fate has inscrutable ways to make heroes out of men. It would be inconceivable to me to vote to revoke mandatory insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions for the public while being treated by the public for brain cancer myself, assuming my brain still functioned.
9
This is playing exactly like a classic greek tragedy.
4
@Spiros
Staring Homer Simpson as the Don.
1
" I predict the whole truth about Donald Trump will shock the world... "
My feeling exactly. Every nefarious possibility, from a billion dollar money laundering scheme, to a treasonous conspiracy with a foreign power, will eventually be proven true.
18
@slagheap- I agree. It will be a very long table of all-you-can-eat transgressions.
"Trump may have the undying loyalty of the zombies who rose from what was once the mainstream Republican Party..."
How to explain this "zombie apocalypse?" With the publication of Craig Unger's new book, "House of Trump, House of Putin," it's more difficult than ever to think that Trump is not in Putin's pocket. But then why stop with Trump? If Putin has bought off Trump, who's to say he hasn't compromised dozens of Republican members of Congress? Putin plays the long game. Why would anyone think that Trump was Putin's only target over the past 2 decades? After all, people buy lots of lottery tickets in the hope that eventually one will pay off. Trump just happened to be Putin's winning powerball ticket.
So maybe we're coming at this all wrong. It's not that Republicans are loyal to Trump. They're loyal to Putin.
34
Trump's biggest problem is that the people he's appointed are like him, only less so. He expects them to sacrifice themselves for him, but he would never sacrifice himself for anyone. Robert Mueller, on the other hand, just goes about his job, plodding along, step by step, without regard to Trump's insults and threats. Trump doesn't understand people like Mueller, and that may be his tragic flaw.
413
@John Cameron Nixon was closer to a tragic hero because he was intelligent and educated and had gifts as a leader. But his paranoia brought him down.
Trump has always been a huckster, his whole life a sham of education, marriages, business success (11 bankruptcies), ability to make deals (he often broke the deal, didn't pay contractors, etc.) He has nothing to offer but a show for the gullible. Anyone who inherited $200 million could have done better.
1
Charles just keeps getting better and better and harder hitting as he keeps wrting about Trump. This column, in particular, really points out the dilemma of good and bad guys and how they act and are viewed by the public in awkward circumstances. Its a tangled web Trump has woven.
242
Charles just keeps on listing Trump's faults. That way, you never have to deal with the Supreme Court decision that made Trump possible.
@TS
Yes Charles, you have a talent for making us cry.
Please make us dream as well sometimes.
If I recall correctly, the lead bookkeeper's testimony was the key to the government's case against Al Capone in "The Untouchables".
This could be the worst legal development for Trump so far.
247
@Alan - and the bookkeeper at CREEP (the Committee to re-elect the president), Hugh Sloan, who resigned when he realized what was going on, was also one of the keys to unlock the Watergate investigation . "Follow the money".
2
@Alan
Trump is a man of many sins but indeed money may be his Achilles heel. Selling your soul for money has never brought a happy ending.
1
I pray you are right but fear you are wrong. It is not yet clear to me that the country can survive with Trump in power, much less recover from him after he is gone. It feels like something has gone fundamentally wrong in a way it did not during Watergate. If Trump is brought down, this malignancy on our society will have been removed but the patient may well not recover.
18
Every so often, when there is great disruption and the future is uncertain, the tendency of humans to look for simple answers and security leads major parts of populations to enter a state of mass delusion, seizing upon something or someone as a savior.
In happened in Holland with the tulip craze. It happened in Germany in the early-mid 20th century. And it's happened here now.
The population bamboozles itself into believing in the redeeming power of those things or persons, and denies the ever increasing warning signs that it is divorced from reality. But eventually, something happens that results in a circle that cannot be squared, an occurrence that cannot be easily explained in the delusion, and the whole thing comes crashing down, usually quite rapidly. And then huge numbers of those believers (though admittedly not all--some can sustain the delusion indefinitely) wonder how they could have ever believed in the first place--the delusion seems so obvious in hindsight.
It'd be nice if people would recall these situations so as to avoid falling into the next trap, but apparently we don't learn too well from history.
But I suspect that at some point, something will occur (Trump incoherently speaking in tongues at a rally? As Judy Tenuta says, it could happen) that's going to make a lot of believers in Agent Orange shift VERY rapidly. Let's hope they then show at least as much contrition as the Germans of the 60's/70's did.
29
While I agree with everything you've so eloquently/persuasively stated (and have for years), Mr. Blow, my concern is that the sooner that pesky phrase, 'the truth is not the truth' gains traction,
the harder it will become to dislodge it and the greater the damage
that it will have caused this country and the world.
24
@Guido Malsh
Right on. Orwell told us so.
2
@Prunella Arnold Grazie Molto!
True loyalty is a virtue where you remain true to a principle or remain the friend of a person whom you respect. Failing to cooperate in a legal investigation to protect a guilty party in not loyalty.
34
@Harpo: true friends do not lead one to perdition.
1
We make a big mistake to think that because a prosecutor has reached an agreement with some unsavory defendant that the agreement means the prosecutor has forged a real-life alliance with that individual.
Accepting guilty pleas from people like Michael Cohen and Rick Gates is part of the process, and those of us who recoil from the likes of Donald Trump need not worry that hoping juries will believe Cohen and Gates means we are somehow making a deal with the devil.
The chief reason for Robert Mueller’s silence, where he and the other prosecutors speak through the indictments, is to avoid vouching for witnesses in the sense of adopting their views of right and wrong.
The actual vouching is done by the quasi-lawyers like Rudy Giuliani and Lannie Davis. They are professional leakers and public relations consultants. It is no surprise that they periodically have to walk back some overly broad public statement.
Republicans try to rush Mueller is to avoid more triumphs for the prosecutors. In fact, Donald Trump’s real lawyers are willing to stall on the non-issue of whether Trump will submit to a real F.B.I. interview is to make it appear that Mueller is the one stretching out the investigation.
Let’s relax and focus on making it politically risky for Republicans in the Senate and House to undercut Robert Mueller. In the meantime, getting the Democratic vote out for the midterms is paramount.
58
Great writing.
Not ignoring the subject and discussion, just saying, it takes real talent to be interesting and informative at the same time.
Hugh
31
I missed the opening to comments on essay about handicapped parking spaces. Too bad. I wanted to express my views on how these spaces are policed by private citizens with guns in the US. Maybe another time.
6
David Leonhardt, our greatness is in peril but so is our democracy.
Rather than provide Republicans a way out by following McCain principles of multiparty legislating; humility; ,and adherence to the constitution, why not
focus on what McCain could have done had he not left us:
Respond to more of Trump's exaggerations and lies
Offer solutions for political cowardice and call others out when they see it
Recognize that Trump's crusade against immigration is as economically self defeating as many of his other policies
Remind the country every day by word and deed that America has jug re e goes
its greatest guiding principles currently hijacked for the protection of Donald Trump.
Trump is no ordinary president and McCain was no ordinary Senator.
Without his voice , we all should read more, think more and do more to right our listing ship of state.
15
Whoops, wron column. this comment was directed at David Leonhardts OP Ed.
7
@ChristineMcM: Haha. That's funny, but it still works here.
@ChristineMcM "America has jug re e goes"? Please explain. I don't understand.
Isn't the bigger story about why Republicans won't honor their oath of office and defend the Constitution from this aberration? Yes, we hear generalities: the tax cuts, immigration, etc. But, really, why are these legislators sitting on their hands? What do they really fear?
I'm exhausted from Trump's evil and outrage to it. He will go down eventually, but in the meantime, why aren't elected legislators acting on behalf of our nation? And where is the oversight to the abuses of departments like the EPA and HHS that are being turned into Orwellian counterparts of their authentic missions?
270
@Rosemary Galette: this whole fiasco is about extinguishing the relevance of the US Constitution by ignoring its most direct instruction to Congress: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", to open the way to faith-based and outright idolatrous legislation.
Their oaths are to God, not us.
6
They don't sit on their hands. They use their hands to feed and defend the dotard. They are not doing nothing about him, they are doing everything to help him.
United they hate, divisive they win.
Let's make the GOP declare 11/6 Spend More Time With The Family Day instead, by giving the sane an amendment majority in Congress with a record vote.
1
@Rosemary Galette.
What we’ve learned about republicans:
Republicans would rather win with Putin than lose without him.
Authoritarianism is okay, if it’s Republican authoritarianism.
Power and winning trumps truth and morality. (See “truth isn’t truth” for reference)
Democracy is good...only if you are in control.
White supremacy can be harnesses for the purposes of power. Yes, that’s okay, too.
If the president is an obvious criminal with ties to a hostile foreign power, its okay to subvert justice to protect him.
Kick Allies, subvert the world order? Sure. If it means power for me.
What Mueller blackmailed Cohen into doing was to CLAIM to implicate Trump in a scheme to put himself in the best light by masking spankings. Welcome to America – actually, welcome to any global venue where popular elections mean anything. It will be up to the House to determine whether Trump’s efforts rise to “high crimes and misdemeanors”. Obviously, it won’t be Russian cahooting, because Mueller clearly can’t prove that.
I rather doubt that the House will buy it.
Notice that we haven’t heard much from the Clintons about all this? If they spoke up volubly, someone might notice them and re-boot serious looks at erasing 30,000 emails for precisely the same reason that Trump sought to mask marital infidelities. Heck, some might yield to temptation and finally start looking at the political operations of their foundation. Mustn’t have that.
Then, Charles back-hands Cohen and others, defending them while also calling them “rats and weasels”. The only public people worthy of anything but disdain from Charles are Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and fellow travelers.
Charles stands revealed for all these many months not as one who wishes to purge the presidency of the icky, but as one seeking to damage Trump’s policies, with which he disagrees ideologically. If you believe that Elizabeth Warren really IS descended from America’s only blonde, blue-eyed indigenous American tribe, then you’ll buy it. If not … you won’t.
9
@Richard Luettgen It's all over, Richard. As your desperate comment elucidates, no amount of whining will change the facts.
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@Richard Luettgen
Trying to frame an argument using the phrase "Trump's policies" leads you quickly ad absurdum.
Your idol does not deal in policies or credos, he trades in tit for tat only.
You can clothe some conservative ideology in the trappings of financial and social policy, but not Mr. Trump's actions which are often individually internally inconsistent, not to mention contradictory and self-negating when viewed as a whole.
You also can try to prejudice the reality when using "blackmail" to describe Mueller's enforcement activities - ironic given your idol's "negotiating" tactics, but when Cohen's claim is based on a factual basis, and the facts indicate a crime is committed, it is not blackmail, it is plea bargaining.
If you eliminate plea bargaining, then everyone of Trump's associates will be bankrupt and jailed, after taxing public defender services throughout the country, while Guliani and Sekulow rack up the billable hours.
14
@Richard Luettgen
The DOJ has had months to re-open an investigation into Clinton’s e-mails, months. Why, Richard haven’t they done so? Could it be there is no credible evidence to indicate a new investigation? You are trying very hard to protect Trump and if you have that much faith in him, well you are a loyal follower. Best of luck.
22
I fear that my conservative friends are not exactly pleased by Trump (I don't want to needle them, so haven't heard squeals), but that they are rather pleased by the crackdown on immigrants, the insults aimed at minorities, the assertions that whites are wonderful, and tariffs (the local economy isn't much affected). They are also terribly afraid of Democrats. I expect Republican governor Rick Scott to be replaced by another Republican, our next legislature to be as red as Alabama's, and that we'll have two Republican senators instead of one.
Then again, the drama that begins the day after the fall election might eclipse the last days of Nixon. How about:
• No Mueller or New York federal indictments between now and the election, so a bunch of them on Nov. 7.
• Nov. 8. Trump fires the Attorney General and nominates a successor.
• Nov. 9. McConnell and Grassley announce a schedule for hearings and a confirmation vote. The Acting Attorney General fires Mueller and shuts down his office and everything it's doing.
• Nov. 9-10. Congressional Republicans mostly praise Trump for ending the Witch Hunt.
• Nov. 10. An Obama-size crowd shows up on the Mall, permit or not, demanding Trump and Pence resign.
• Nov. 11. Trump Day at pro football games and perhaps Veterans Day parades.
13
Dreamy and yuchie.
@David Martin And then what? If millions protested in Washington, do you think Trump would figure "let them blow off steam. They will get tired of this and quietly disperse"? Or do you think Trump will try and "control" the situation by calling out the military? Do you think Trump supporters will feel they have carte blanche to "protect" their way of life? And once the military and regular citizens begin to "police" the opposition, what do we then become? This will go as far as Trump supporters allow it to. The question in all of this is: "Who holds the conscience here? Who will say "That's enough. We can't go there." You think Trump or Pence will exercise that judgement or control? Or McConnell or Ryan or Cornyn or any of the others. This will gain steam and then become a runaway train. With a psychopath mob boss at the controls. And the passengers screaming loudly for more.
@David Martin
It will take the efforts of millions of Americans to bring down Trump and his henchmen.
Contribute to Democratic candidates, volunteer to work for Democratic candidates, help register voters, harangue your "I couldn't care less about politics" friends to THIS TIME vote on midterm election day November 6.
What you predict may or may not come to pass, but if you want more Democrats in Congress to investigate Trump's many wrongdoings, I suggest less hand wringing and more doorbell ringing for you.
1
When we find 19 black female mayors in Louisiana, including the state's 3 largest cities, and when San Francisco, Rochester, NY, Charlotte, Atlanta elect black female mayors, we are witnessing a phenomena bigger, deeper and more profound than partisan politics and power fund raising—a fight is breaking out and deepening the American identity, its mission of public service; the stewardship and purpose of public treasuries, the values of elected office, the skills of leadership; the limits of public shame, the direction of national goodwill and power.
Add to the wave, Congressional candidates who have defeated embedded incumbents or secured open seats. Soon, fo the first time, we will see two Muslim-American females in Congress, representing districts in Michigan and Minnesota, and a Puerto Rican female in the Molinari/Maloney Bronx/Queens district.
This is deep change, new roots. Achieved by a return to the grassroots, away from corporate money and establishment values to broad community goals. It puts people—workers—first.
Tom Perez doesn't get this. Neither do the cults that fight over manners and hegemony.
In local and national races, the catalyst has been policies. Obama's crowning achievement, securing healthcare coverage with no limits and including pre-conditions has made defending and expanding healthcare central. Wages and housing are too. Poverty, prosperity, progress have created issues beyond the structure of parties. Look to the candidates.
82
Trump is done, you can stick a fork in him. The problem is, we now have a zombie President, who will crazily attack everyone around him until he is shown the door.
The main question is when, since he has no shame, and will not resign. The obstacles won't be the Democrats or Judiciary. Republicans in Washington, either fooled by or afraid of the President, are figuring out how to survive. The first move has been to canonize John McCain, and try to persuade us that he is a typical Republican.
Not much is going to happen until the Midterms, when Republicans get a long deserved whupping. When they huddle over the holidays, their consultants and media shills will be devising PR campaigns to feign concern for the people. They will of course do nothing to reverse Trump's policies of imprisoning immigrant families, shoveling money to the 1%, and drilling, mining, and logging in National Monuments, BLM land, and wilderness areas.
This is when the Democrats need to step up their game, while pressuring media companies to stop normalizing the corporate shills who call themselves "Republicans".
220
President Trump will be president for eight years. We conservatives will keep him is office.
1
@Mike Roddy "Trump is done, you can stick a fork in him." That song has been number one on the Hit Parade for last 20 months. Maybe it's time for a MAGA tune.
1
@Mike You meant the one that goes "Mueller Ain't Going Away?
The president of the United States is always under scrutiny. The people looking into his wrongdoing have eyes on them all the time. While prosecutors could look the other way when he was just a hit and miss business man who made a lot of political donations, they can't do it with all those eyes on them.
We are watching a kind of Greek tragedy play out in real time. The sin of the tragic hero (I hesitate to call the President a hero, but this is his story) is always hubris, deadly pride.
Welcome to paying the consequences for once in your life, Mr. President. We are all looking forward to it.
187
@Polly . Classical tragic heroes are frequently unsavory. Lear, Richard III, MacBeth. Their common fate is that their extraordinary strengths, the trait that fueled their ascent, was the cause of their eventual downfall.
5
I remember reading Mr. Blow's column the day after the 2016 election. He did not mince any words about what a disastrous result the election of Donald Trump was for this country. I was actually surprised - although I had been crushed and depressed by Trump's election, I thought the editorial press would give the guy a pass for a day or two out of some (misguided) sense of "good sportsmanship." No. We were in uncharted, dangerous territory, and we frankly needed to understand that this particular actor was different. Blow called it then and he's been right from Day 1.
471
@Bob G. I'm pretty sure Charles Blow knew trump would be a tool of a president before the election. I sometimes wonder if it's not just to show how pathetic the two party system is for it's citizens. It's been proved again and again lets move forward and protect the earth. We were warned.
3
@Knucklehead
Most everyone here in New York City knew that Donald Trump "would be a tool of a president before the election".
And we tried to warn the rest of America, but nobody was listening.
Too late now.
@N. Smith – please remember that a significant majority of us knew absolutely that DT would be a disaster. He has exceeded expectations.
For the first time in years, I feel a certain lightness of being. As more people, innocent and not-so-innocent victims, come out of the shadows, even more dominoes are going to fall. I'm sorry, but I haven't yet gotten to the point where I feel badly about this. Gleeful is more like it.
81
The cynical principle, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend (or, as you say, my temporary tool)," doesn't really resonate with American society, but the sappy principle of falling over ourselves to mint heroes and to discover good guys where we least expected them does.
I think the proper response to the likes of Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen is watchfulness. We still don't know how their efforts will pan out, or even how faithfully they'll persevere in those efforts; and we do know that these are not knights in shining armor or damsels in distress.
We should patiently watch what's happening now with the understanding that Donald Trump has spent his life getting entangled with people on the make and people for sale, and that these people are now fighting their own battles as they see fit. Some many be fighting to escape disaster and others fighting for spoils or new opportunities, or to retrieve a portion of their dubious self-respect. We'll see more of that as Trumpworld disintegrates.
The important thing is to watch calmly, always keeping Galatians 6:7 in mind, and prepare for the aftermath.
30
@Longestaffe Stalin made a temporary friend.
By the way, the 2017 Armando Iannucci movie, "The Death of Stalin" fits well into present-day Washington. The real Stalin of course never paid the consequences for what he did.
17
@David Martin
Thanks for your reply. You're referring of course to Stalin's relationship with Hitler from 1939 to 1941.
It would be easy to call that another case of strange bedfellows, but it wasn't really so strange.
Unless there is a paper trail between Trump and Cohen or Trump and Weisselberg, Trump will slide out of Cohen's allegation of his involvement in campaign finance violations regarding hush money payments. Unless Manafort or some other insider can definitively link Trump to the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians, Trump will slide out of allegations he conspired with the Russians, even if his wonderful son and son-in-law are caught red-handed. I suspect that Mueller will come across many shady financial transactions of the Trump Organization in Cohen's files, but these would possibly lead to charges only after Trump leaves office. The only hope of containing Trump is with Democratic control of the House.
60
@Rima Regas
Mr. Mueller has probably seen President Trump's tax returns by now. If there was anything of note there, it would already have been leaked to the press. It is very likely that President Trump's taxes are a big disappointment to Mr. Mueller and, if you ever see them, to you.
1
@Thomas A. Hall
Even if Mueller has seen Trump’s tax returns, there is no reason to assume they would have leaked by now, whatever information they might contain. Since the very beginning of his investigation, the only leaking he and his team have done has been through the charges in the indictments that they have brought.
20
@Thomas A. Hall Not necessarily because Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III has kept everything quite tight lipped. We've only learned of what he's uncovered thus far from indictments and plea deals filed with the courts and now Manafort's trial. I suspect the tax returns will be very telling and that that is why Mr. Trump has refused to provide them like all others have done in the past.
4
This may be an opera with a very large cast, but at least some of them can sing.
120
Nicely penned, Charles.
"Opera" is a good choice, I think burlesque also works well. Things are stranger, getting stranger. A reckoning is coming and there will be dancing in the streets.
87
@mark Seiler
There has to be protests in the streets before there is dancing in the streets
1
This is what happens when "winning" becomes the objective at any cost.
And in the case, the cost is not only very high, but it will be paid by this country long after the curtain has come down on this administration.
Still, the most amazing aspect of this 'Opera' is that the first and last act has happened in such a relatively short amount of time -- and we haven't even yet come to the end.
39
"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. " Shelley. That is exactly what Trump Party is doing to us. What really made America great was not people like Trump. What really made our country endure is what is said on that statue in New York Harbor. Trump keeps "winning", but Lady Liberty cries for what we have lost.
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@Edgar
“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed..."
At least in my imagination, Ozymandius' mouth makes the same horrible shape Trump's does.
5
@Bluelotus Alec Baldwin said that when he is doing his Trump impersonation, he shapes his mouth by imagining that he is sucking the wallpaper off of the wall.
He has a firewall in the Senate, and if Kavanaugh is appointed he will have the Supreme's as his court of last resort.
Trump is playing a zero sum game with our democracy. The state of N.Y., his own neighborhood, will right the wrongs, while our politicians fiddle.
133
Never before have we had a national figure who's personality, mental stability, psychology been so reported on, dissected, speculated upon, he has become a classic case in the study of abnormal behavior; yet today there seems to be no general consensus as to what is behind his behavior.
All his motives, what he wants, why he does what he does is postulated upon by most of the voters, and their suppositions are rejected by those who seem to think he is perfectly normal. The members of the political party he represents do not speak out, which leaves the question, are they cowardly, or does he support their aims to reorganize American society?
That there is a large segment of society that believes such actions, his threats, insults, swindles, attacks on the legal system are legitimate ways of governing and doing business, and that many of them will resort to violence to be able to continue these ways should scare anyone.
The leadership of the GOP is complicit in this, they have the power to end this charade, but the GOP is no longer a legitimate political party, it has become the party of thugs, authoritarians, self serving fascists clones, reminiscent of dictators and tyrants gone by, and enablers of several today, rulers of the masses.
He has unleashed those demons Mr.Blow refers to, and they have to be slain, just as in any medieval tale of horror.
182
Does anyone think Trump has any regrets running for the presidency? Just think, if he did not, he could have continued his unorthodox business practices. But no, he had to show Obama. Be careful what you wish for.
188
@Paro5
No, he doesn't. Regret requires introspection and the ability to acknowledge errors and failings. These are capabilities that Daffy Donald lacks.
3
@Paro5 Yes, I don't think he would have run if it wasn't for the White House Correspondents dinner roast.
@Jay – nonsense. DT had toyed with the idea for years before that dinner; furthermore, his Russian 'friends' encouraged him, for obvious reasons.
1
Charles, I agree with this column, as I agree with just about all your other columns. But they are nearly all part of the same monotone. I'm drawn to columns about trump's personal failings in spite of myself. They feel good going down but they are empty calories.
So, with respect, I think its time it's time to let trump's dishonorable character speak for itself. I would like to see you and your fellow columnists at the Times focus instead on the deep harms his administration is doing.
You could start from today's (Sunday) extensive report in the times about how the chemical industry has captured the EPA, which now decrees that epidemiological science be ignored in deciding whether pesticides are harmful to humans. Other departments and agencies are being similarly turned against the public interest.
It's one thing to publish factual news articles about such things, but that doesn't usually by itself contribute to widespread public awareness; it must spread into the mass media, and that won't happen unless the information is hammered home often in editorial and op-ed columns that tend to get picked up by other media.
688
@mancuroc
Yes.
There are so many of us waiting for the lead stories to be about the deep damage being done at the Cabinet level. We know trump is deplorable.
We don't read the Times primarily for the latest trump idiocy. We read the Times for serious analysis of what the government is doing behind the circus rings.
Substance, please, as quickly as you can write it, Charles.
3
@mancuroc
I hope the NYT pays attention to this. Most people either don’t know how, or for some reason, fail to link formal government actions to real effects in their lives. It is important for the press to make those connections for them.
Yes, the press has got to “hammer it home”.
6
@mancuroc
You are doing the right thing looking at other sections of the Times and if possible, you, and I do mean that collectively, should be listening and reading from as many different sources as possible.
This is OPED and Mr. Blow is commiserating with us about the disgust that many of us have with Trump, 'the man,' and yes, this is a guilty pleasure and I'm glad that their no calories attached.
Why be overly-concerned about making use of people who are fundamentally dishonest and dishonorable? After all, The Donald did precisely that- and he knew what they were when he bedded down with them. If we have to consort with bits and pieces of trash in order to rid ourselves of the compost heap that lies below it's surely a price worth paying. As for Trump's intolerance towards so-called "flippers" (i.e., the schnooks who've come to realize that they can't entirely count upon him to grant them pardons once they've hung on to his secrets) suffice it to say that if their erstwhile lord and master has done nothing wrong then their willingness to "flip" will result in absolutely no consequences for him. How, after all, can they possibly expose detrimental information if no such data exists? ("Fake news" and all that.) And for that matter why should he have to keep calling attention to the fact (?) that there was no collusion with the Russkies if no such evidence to the contrary could possibly be revealed? Truth is not in the eye of the beholder; if this President saw fit to reverse his decades-long antagonism to honesty and integrity beginning with the moment he decided to run for office then he has nothing at all to fear. Regardless of what 60% of his fellow citizens choose to think.
58
“The truth eventually catches up.”
Unfortunately we’ve seen all too often that 40% of Americans do not know nor care what the truth may be, about Trump, tax cuts, the environment, or human rights.
“Eventual truth” doesn’t save people, nations, or the environment from being destroyed by lies.
170
Nicely written essay. Great Title. I'm hopeful we will get to the whole truth of Trump long about October.
64
Trump's understanding of politics is limited to that of the business office, and a legally shady office at that. Thus he does whatever he has to, or whatever he likes to, to get what he wants. Compromise is not a concept he is acquainted with, and neither are collegiality or decorum. He has no concept of the national good other than how it makes him look. He is a blight on all our lives, including the civic life of out country.
229
“I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world, even more than it is already shocked.”
It won’t shock Trump supporters and the GOP will continue to sit on their hands.
It will be business as usual.
81
(very) Unfortunately, I agree entirely. Our democracy is in serious peril. It has been sold to the highest bidders, lock, stock, and barrel. And the price was not high. The ultimate cost will be enormous, but "they" got it for cheap.
I still wonder sometimes how our GOP Congress members and justices sleep at night, but then I simply remember the gist of my first paragraph: follow the money.
99
@Pups: Not directed at you, Pups, but to Charles- With respect, I ain't gonna be shocked, no matter what we find out about this guy. I'm just gonna shrug my shoulders.
1
It's that flipping loyalty thing. That's why the trump insists on loyalty. Problem is, when loyalty is a one way street, both sides eventually get burned.
McCain's loyalty to the country is unquestioned. Does anyone really think the trump has any loyalty to his base, to Sessions (as he claimed) or to the nation he pretends to lead?
"I predict that the whole truth of Trump will shock the world, even more than it is already shocked." I predict so too.
I also predict "humiliations galore" for trump. I am not religious at all, so I prefer to quote Inigo Montoya of "The Princess Bride" instead of that Big book.
125
The loyalty whining is a common if laughable complaint by many thugs. To be consciously "loyal" to someone like Trump, one would have to be amoral. But amoral people are not loyal to anyone.
"Oldish shady guy trades dirt on Trump for get out of jail free card" might become a shockingly frequent headline.
5
@PAN
Please reconcile the love of country with his attempt to inflict S. Palin on us as VP.
The imperfections of both parties are seen in the difference between word and action but the GOP under McConnell and Ryan shows the absolute disdain they secretly harbor for the people whose votes they manage to entice. They have as little respect for their constituents as the guy at a carnival running the ring-toss booth; everyone's considered an endlessly exploitable rube except their donors, who at least get something in return. Most voters in their states are walking around with a big "kick me" sign on their backs, but apparently it's OK, so long as the guy kicking you has an "R" after their name.
8
The president stands atop of a pyramid of lesser evils. He couldn’t be there without his henchmen colluding with each other to protect their boss, even as he committed fraud and lied through his teeth. But it appears he may ultimately get his comeuppance, and the little criminals will be left to defend their association with the mobster in chief.
While he’s incoherent most of the time, his interview with Fox News was particularly bizarre. This man couldn’t talk his way out of a paper bag, so when Mueller tightens the noose, he’s going to be speechless. That will be a pleasant change.
We can only hope that once this fiasco is over, people will remember that Republicans apologized for this man, tried to implement his hateful policies and made out like bandits in a bait-and-switch tax “reform” act. It was an act all right.
Our only hope is that we can rebuild something good on the ruins of this dismal period in our political history. The president has his loyal supporters, but if Democrats can quit carping and sitting out elections because of minor policy differences that hardly matter, they should be able to prevent a Republican challenge for years to come.
827
@gemli: Yes, this guy is mostly incoherent. However, I did watch a clip of him testifying in some trial and yes, he was incoherent. That said, it seemed to me that people 'bought' the nonsense.
2
@gemli: "...a pyramid of lesser evils..." Where I grew up we called that a du'hill (dung hill).
2
@gemli Fortunately, he won't be "speechless." He can't help himself and will almost certainly talk, talk, talk. Strong possibility - almost a certainty - that he manages to simultaneously implicate himself and commit perjury. Because he is that dumb.
7
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Trump has certainly soweth more than his share of discord and strife. We can't look to God to administer divine justice (it's a First Admendment thing) but Trump has mocked the constitution and the norms of American democracy. He has mocked the law.
To date, America has reaped what our most un-American President has sown, but I believe that will change. I look forward to a reinvigorated American electorate, Robert Mueller, and State Attorney Generals to make sure Trump reaps the pardon-proof justice he deserves.
193
@LT...our most un-American president? You mean Obama? he despised what America was/is and what it has stood for. Long live President Trump! Make America Great Again!
1
@Eric
"...our most un-American president? You mean Obama?"
Thanks for the laugh. Especially if you think Donald Trump is going to make America great again.
3
@Eric – please list for us what exactly Barack Obama did or didn't do that causes you to think he "despised what America was/is and what it has stood for."
We'll wait ....
2
Donald J. Trump is the president that the Electoral College was created for. He is almost completely unqualified except for his age. He has no experience in government or governing. He doesn't seem to understand the importance of allies. He is impulsive, has public temper tantrums, and listens solely to Donald J. Trump.
The GOP is currently engaged in worshipping Donald Trump. I'm tired of hearing from the people planning to leave about how awful Trump is. What about those who are staying? Why aren't they getting together to inform this so-called president that he is not a king, a dictator, or the center of the universe? It's all about the money and the power for the GOP.
This is a party that has, since the Dixiecrats joined it in the mid 1960s, used identity politics and smear tactics to polarize Americans to the point where nothing gets done except under the table where we don't see it. This same party does not have any interest in working for 99% of us. Trump is the logical outcome of over 50 years of race baiting, racism, and the talking up of white supremacy and the supposed superiority of running government like a business rather than for the people it represents.
While Donald Trump ought to be impeached and removed from office, the GOP ought to be severely censured for its part in creating this presidency of hatred. If we want some real progress in America we need McConnell out, Pence out, Sessions gone, etc. Campaign finance reform would help too.
1037
@hen3ry
Actually, the Electoral College was created so that thoughtful men would pick mainstream, respectable leaders. The idea was that you shouldn't trust the average voter to popularly elect a President. If states were still choosing electors, I guarantee we wouldn't have had Daffy-D as President. The issue we have isn't the original idea for the college, it is that we have moved toward popular election without getting rid of the small state distortions built into the college.
29
1. Doug knows what he's talking about, though I disagree about the small state stuff. For one thing,mperhaps the broad American earth itself needs a voice, though unfortunately it is all to often represented by coal companies. See also Kim Stanley Robinson's books on Mars.
2. Just read some Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, not merely for the real environmentalism but the good, plain prose, okay?
@hen3ry
"Donald J. Trump is the president that the Electoral College was created for."
Just exactly the opposite is true. The EC was designed by the founding fathers, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, to prevent someone who is "not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." And chillingly, to prevent "foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils."
But the original process of the EC was early on subverted until the EC became something that actually does the opposite of what the framers intended.
2
"I've always won."
After a lifetime of lying, bullying and cheating -- this is one thing that is about to end.
588
By "I've always won." I think he means "I've always spun."
If Trump were captain of the Titanic, I suspect he would frantically order his crew to drop everything and repaint where the iceberg made scratches.
Bankruptcies, divorces and fraud cases do not exactly make him seem like Michael Jordan, and Trump's delusions do not change that.
6
We can only hope.
Trump has not “always won” - look at Atlantic City just for two examples.
And the number of buildings across the world which have become the ~_^| Luxury Condominiums, with workers still trying to remove traces of glue that held his name above the front doors, as the real owners (the name was attached to management work) struggle with the last of the brackets and glue.
I strongly suspect (along with other things about the President and his family) that he os not worth anywhere near the worth he has claimed - and that his position on various Fortune Magazine lists may well fall or be listed with asterisks.
How can you really tell the worth of a man who releases neither audits or tax returns?
As his casino business began to crumble, Trump left his alleged tradition of micromanagement and became the center of a “reality” television show - I hope most readers are aware that with one exception*, “reality TV” is as real and unscripted as professional wrestling.
He seems to have been running for years, a leveraged operation.
It works like this: I take out a loan to build Project A, then list myself/company as full owner of A when I use it as collateral on Project B, etc. Like a Ponzi scheme, it works as long as there’s some money coming in and I can keep getting loans. When banks compare books, the operation collapses like a house of cards.
*the only true reality show was a mid 1970s production when the Loud family allowed PBS to tape in their home 24/7 result:“An American Family”
2
Trump has insulted almost everyone, friend and foe alike, except for Putin and possibly Ivanka. Maybe that's why he's discovering that he's running out of friends.
244
@Linda: Oh, I don't know, Linda. If I were Ivanka, and if MY father were talking about my body ("she's hot!") as though I were one of his babes, I'd be insulted. Actually, I'd be horrified. Scared. Disgusted. Nauseated. Outraged.
9
Wow. This is great. Of course-how did those people gain in temporary stature like they did? And I love the ending of this column. The stock market can go up and the fever Trump’s base are under can continue but we are still a country of laws. We are. We are.
113
We have critical issues that need our immediate attention, such as: mitigating and reversing bleaching of coral reefs and species extinction – harbingers of calamity with global warming and climate change, establishing domestic universal health care and a minimum basic income, promoting public education, fighting for racial and wealth equality, repairing and refurbishing infrastructure, protecting public lands, and reestablishing robust international relations with our allies.
We have never had time for Trump's circus sideshow. And when After Trump takes the stage – hopefully Democratic control of the government – there will be no time to lose. It will be incumbent on us, as returning capable custodians of the planet, to resume the task of helping people in the United States and the rest of the world lead better lives.
We need to get back to work with warmth, compassion, altruism, and dignity in our hearts, or we are surely lost.
769
@Blue Moon--One of the scarier things that the Republicans have managed under Trump is the repudiation by government of science, with much of the general public buying in. It will take years of good public education to counter all the damage done.
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@Susan
I taught community college science for many years, and I know how difficult education is, particularly science education. It seems to me our best hope is to install Democrats who will aggressively enact pro-science legislation with the hope that voters can be convinced to come along in parallel. We will have to persevere with education concurrently. For the immediate future, we just don't have enough time left for anything else.
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@Susan You think that the Republicans denounced science only once Trump came on the scene? This has been going on for decades with an eye to maximizing corporate profits at the expense of anything that would help the middle class.
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“... a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election.”
Trump is the result of an election system that has been in peril since we moved to computerized voting.
Fitrakis and Wasserman: Why the U.S. State Department Would Not Certify Trump’s Election as Legitimate https://tinyurl.com/y8a7gqn9
A handful of private rightwing corporations count our votes with proprietary software ... our ballots are corporate property ... large exit poll discrepancies appear “only in competitive elections” ... voting machines can be hacked or manipulated by insiders without leaving a trace ... machines have miscounted ballots or lost votes.
Wired Magazine: ES&S Voting Machines in Michigan Flunk Tests, Don’t Tally Votes Consistently https://tinyurl.com/y74npzjb
“The Election Assistance Commission did not [notify] election officials, but simply included a link to the [Oakland County Clerk’s] letter in a routine newsletter that it distributed by e-mail to election officials less than 24 hours before voters around the country arrive to the polls. John Gideon of Voters Unite said "If they didn't do something with it, as far as I'm concerned it's misfeasance.”
Daily News: Board of Elections Does Nothing as Hundreds of Bronx Votes Go Missing https://tinyurl.com/ycvf73gn
The Cleveland Plain Dealer: 10 Percent of Cuyahoga County's Voting Machines Fail Pre-Election Tests https://tinyurl.com/y55rh6z
#DemocracyDemandsTransparentVoteCounting
#HandCountedBallotsNow!
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Many states do not allow ex-felons to vote, yet the Harper’s article points out that voting machine companies have convicted felons running our elections.
Harper’s Magazine: How to Rig an Election — The G.O.P. Aims to Paint the Country Red https://tinyurl.com/y9xx63f6
In 1996, Chuck Hagel ran for a Senate seat in Nebraska two weeks after leaving his position as chairman of a voting machine company called American Information Systems at the time (now ES&S). Hagel went from being far behind to winning by 15 points in an upset against Ben Nelson, a popular governor who won in a landslide two years earlier. AIS counted the votes. Charlie Matulka, Hagel’s opponent in his reelection race, asked “Is this the fox guarding the henhouse?”
In 2002, popular Georgia Senator Max Cleland went from a large lead to losing to Saxby Chambliss by 7 points. In his autobiography, Cleland maintained that e-voting machines were “ripe for fraud.”
“In the month leading up to the election, Diebold employees led by Bob Urosevich applied a mysterious uncertified software patch to 5,000 machines. ‘We were told that it was intended to fix the clock, which it didn’t do,’ Diebold whistleblower Chris Hood recounted in Rolling Stone. ‘The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done ... It was an unauthorized patch and we were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that the president would be involved at that level.’”
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@RLS
Can’t be repeated often enough.
I suspect the election of Trump/Pence has caused so much anguish and division in the country, because it is not only figuratively a fraud, but literally - and voters on both sides know it, instinctively.
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@RLS--We in WA and OR vote by mail. Paper trail all the way.
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"In this dramatic opera of demons, the lesser evils are part of the phalanx standing between us and the greater evils: Trump’s corruption, possible criminality, and definite rage, racism and cruelty."
Nobody nails it better than Charles Blow. It's said, "politics makes strange bedfellows" but so does criminality, proven or still on prosecutors' desks.
In a malign application of the Peter Principle, alliances expand to meet the level of malfeasance committed.
Because you never know what you're capable of doing until the threat gets closer. This is as true for Donald Trump as it is for his many resisters, who find themselves asking, "at this point, what wouldn't I do to save my country?
Donald Trump doesn't just sound like a mob boss, he thinks like one. If you have no moral compass or you believe wrong is right when you get away with it, your view of the law is really warped.
Fortunately for us (so far), justice doesn't work that way: it's precise, measurable, and under our jury system, not "rigged" by the prosecution.
But for Trump, cheating his way to the presidency is no biggie. How can it be when victory is vindication, or as Charles so eloquently puts it, "if you win, you were right?"
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There used to be five Mafia mob “families” in NY. Now the count should be bumped ( opps, no Pun ) up to six.
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It's his kids that are most at risk. If they are involved with any of this, and they most likely are, there is nothing that can prevent them from being indicted. In fact, there is nothing that can prevent Trump from being indicted except what is called "Justice Dept. guidance". That too can change.
The Federal Courts of New York are his biggest threat. They can't be shut down like Mueller can. Furthermore, Mueller can pass along any information he has to them and probably already has to some extent. Basically, Trump has been boxed into a corner. If he fires Mueller and installs a lackey, he appears guilty. If he starts pardoning people, especially his relatives, he looks really guilty.
Just as Giuliani is attempting to have Trump tried in the court of public opinion, the same can be said of the any prosecutors he shuts down. Evidence can be made public, either through proper channels or not. People can come forward and inform the press. Trump can't lock this up. It's too big and has too many tentacles.
So what does he do. He cries witch hunt and everyone else are liars. It's all made up in order to install Hillary as president, which is impossible.
What goes on inside a grand jury is secret. But what happens in a trial is not. If the lower courts go after him, their evidence will be made public. That will just push Trump further down his own rathole.
The die has been cast. He's going down. It's just a matter of where and when.
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@Bruce Rozenblit
Yes, he will go down. But at what cost? He will not go down for the full count without out the attempt of civil insurrection to save himself is my guess.
It is frequently best to give your adversary a way out, and those with experience of such things know this. It becomes more delicate every day.
Likely too is for Big Ginger to try and negotiate his way out: "OK, I leave the White House but you guys drop charges. He will certainly try this as well.
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@Bruce Rozenblit. While I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments, it is only in state courts that the Trump mafia will be truly taken down. The results of a federal trial are pardonable while state court outcomes will be out of his reach.
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@Bruce
Aye, and for the record (again) me money is still on Flynn (and son) being the key (as far as Russian conspiracy) to charges of impeachment and possible treason. We shall see.
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We currently have a sociopath residing in the White House. To realize how accurate that (layperson) diagnosis is, I looked up the definition of Sociopath (https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/sociopath#diagnosis-and-...
"To receive a diagnosis of ASPD, someone must be older than 18. Their behaviors must show a pattern of at least three of the following seven traits:
1. Doesn’t respect social norms or laws. They consistently break laws or overstep social boundaries.
2. Lies, deceives others, uses false identities or nicknames, and uses others for personal gain.
3. Doesn’t make any long-term plans. They also often behave without thinking of consequences.
4. Shows aggressive or aggravated behavior. They consistently get into fights or physically harm others.
5. Doesn’t consider their own safety or the safety of others.
6. Doesn't follow up on personal or professional responsibilities. This can include repeatedly being late to work or not paying bills on time.
7. Doesn’t feel guilt or remorse for having harmed or mistreated others."
I would argue, that, with the possible exception of (5), Trump exhibits all other of these traits. One does not even have to engage in speculation - these sociopathic traits are obvious from almost every Trump utterance, be it in spoken words or tweets.
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Repealing the Paris treaty. Repealing environmental regulations. Trying to repeal the ACA. These are not the actions who takes into account the safety of others.
#5 is included.
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I’ve known two sociopaths up close, and have read extensively about the subject in order to make sense of the chaos with which they live their lives. In the book The Sociopath Next Door, Dr. Martha Stout explains there are subtypes of sociopaths, but the one trait they have in common is that they consistently play the victim. Nothing is ever their fault. Let’s add that to your list.
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Yes, Trump is a sociopath, but what does that make Trumps base, who hang on his every word?
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The enemy of my enemy is my temporary tool. But why does it have to be that way?
Speaking only for myself, after this nightmare is over I will find myself having new found respect for Sen. Jeff Flake, Sen. Bob Corker, Gov. Kasich, Sen. Susan Collins. They may have politics I do not agree with but they are decent human beings who love their country and had the temerity to stand up to trump.
We need a two party system. I want the GOP to find its soul again.
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@Jane
I want world peace, a true Progressive tax system (where if you make more, then you pay more taxes Progressively - not less). health care as a human right under a Single Payer system, human rights and respect for all, a woman's right to choose with them having sole dominion over their own bodies, less pollution and steps to mitigate climate change (even acknowledging it) etc. etc, etc,
The republican party does not stand for any of those things - in fact it is diametrically opposed to most if not all of them (and more)
So forgive me if I do not shed a tear for the republican party being soon banished to the political wilderness to perhaps. never hold power ever again.
Let's try true Liberalism for a change. See what happens.
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Hmm, I haven’t seen much standing up. The Senators all voted for massive tax cuts for the wealthy, in a bill they hadn’t read and that was written in parts in scribbles in the margins, because they voted party line. That isn’t standing up in my book. Sen Collins did vote against repealing the ACA, but the others again toed the line, despite the harm it would inflict on their constituents. None of them stood up against McConnell when he refused a hearing on the presidents Supreme Court nominee.
They all look pretty supine to me.
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@Lisa. And FunkyIrishman
I understand and share your concerns. I believe right now the Democratic Party and the GOP are at loggerheads. I want a blue wave in November in part to establish Committee chairs to properly investigate the 2016 election and to promote Democratic policies like Universal Healthcare, Voting Rights, etc.
I also believe the 2 parties need to work together for the common good and vilifying each and every one of the GOP does not accomplish that goal.
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After Trump, maybe we are going to have to rethink how we teach the humanities. If even thirty per-cent of the populace supports him, we are in trouble. Teachers could begin by spending much more time studying how propaganda works (Fox News, tweets, and social media). Would it also be possible to look at the nature of logic, rational thinking and the power of custom and tradition in our lives .Lastly, can we now start to help students better understand how so much of our thinking is flawed when we think it is infallible. None of this is a perfect answer, but it is an attempt to move in the right direction.
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@norv blake
Yes, this should be introduced to classes in civics and history. Unfortunately, long overdue revisions in the public school curriculum will not occur during the tenure of De Vos.
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I remember being taught about propaganda in a required U. S. history class. It was in the context of the rise of fascism and resulting genocide and world war.
If such lessons do not grab people's attention, we have deeper issues than what a civics teacher can fix.
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@norv blake--That, along with education on the scientific method, how science works, and why it's important to the public and to public policy. Much damage has been done in that realm as well.
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The "warped reality" induced by Trump will unfortunately linger long after him. This country's majority will drift to the right-of-center, reinforced by the 5-4 conservative Supreme Court, unless progressives can offer a visionary agenda, compelling in breadth but reasonable in spending, a tough task even in politically calm times.
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@MCV207 The entire point is that whereas 20 months ago we were all assured that Trump had committed treason; had destroyed American Democracy through his dealings with Russian puppet-masters, we are now reduced to saying "That scallywag slept with a Playboy Model twelve years ago.....maybe". And then paid her chump change (for him) not to enrage the bitter and no-sex-outside-heterosexual-marriage 1950s left media we see commenting on this stuff every BORING day.
And thus it ends up in the nothingest of all burgers. The puritanical and madly inhibited school marm "progressives" crying that only THEIR presidents can sleep with gangster molls and blonde bombshells (a la JFK) or else order interns to smoke THEIR cigars in the Oval Office a la Billy-Boy, while later receiving hundreds of millions from Russian oligarchs and Saudi Oil Princes which never went anywhere (certainly never got to places like Haiti!) except into their own pockets.
The US left is the laughing-stock of the world. Those actually sophisticated French must surely be sniggering at Les Americains, since their man Macron was already bedding HIS teachers when he was only FIFTEEN. Ha, you guys are a pathetic whiners and losers. Only six and a half years more, before Donny Junior becomes the next trump Presiden President. Suck it up petals!
@Mantaray
Nothing burger - How many indictments and guilty pleas to date? I guess crimes are not really crimes if rich people do them in your mind or is it just rich republicans?
How much money does trump owe putin? Oh wait we don't know because he won't release his taxes and won't make much difference because he doesn't think tax fraud is a crime.
Trump is more than the laughing stock of the world he is dangerously incompetent and a pathological liar. Our French and European allies have been ridiculed and harassed by this man, so not a lot of love for trump there only with dictators.
Since you mention the millions from russian oligarchs please back up your claims with actual facts not your fox propaganda. We know trump gets his money from putin because he told us he did and why else would he have such a huge crush on putin otherwise? Hopefully Don jr will be in jail for collusion in 6 yrs because we know he had meetings with russians to get dirt on his dad's opponents. Treason treason and even more treason from this bunch.
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If there are any coalitions, then there is the coalition of one - the President. (everyone else is but to serve and stay loyal to him)
If they don't, (within that context of only winning or losing, black or white, against him or not) then they are made a scapegoat and victim of tweets and verbal abuse from the President - not that it matters.
We must further keep in context that this President is being propped up (temporarily) by a republican party that has sole focus on putting judges on benches (in particular the Supreme Court), tax theft (cuts for billionaires and corporations) , and rolling back as many roadblocks to polluting and profit as they can. They are also too busy keeping their jobs and don't want the fight with the President.
If the blue wave does indeed come, then the President will have lost that base, and all of the long knives will come out blaming him squarely for their electoral losses.
If the President reacts further by firing people in regards to the Mueller inquiry (or it coming out with irrefutable evidence of treason or a conspiracy), then republicans will join in on impeachment - it will be game over.
The coalition then, will be the entire country vs. the President
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@FunkyIrishman
unfortunately if there is a blue wave, there will be a red tide of reactionaries who may destroy any reasonable outcome.
thanks for the optimism, tho.
2
It’s now showdown at the Corral the love song
And Trump’s without an unflipped Pal,
He feels he is slipping
With untrammeled flipping
Because of that darn Stormy gal.
Grotesque Rudy’s doing his best
With conspiracies and all the rest
But he’d love to start firing
Of Sessions he’s tiring
And Mueller’s a persistent pest.
The lone bright spot is Manafort
Although with the cash he’s been short,
He’s trustworthy, loyal,
Unflippable foil,
With Ostrich skin coats, what a sport!
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@Larry Eisenberg I love the verse about Grotesque Rudy. Thank you for making me laugh even as I cry and cringe.
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@Larry Eisenberg
Love it, although there needs to be another verse containing “Manafort” and “presidential pardon”. T-Rump has been telling him that he’s a brave, strong guy. It’s probably already been drafted and awaiting signature after the mid-terms and the DC trial.
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@Larry Eisenberg: Indeed, Rudy is grotesque, reminiscent of Klaus Kinski in "Nosferatu", or a Mike Meyers parody thereof. But he is just one of the many distorted figures reflected in Trump's funhouse mirrors. They range from the bizzare to downright eerie, including Sarah H. Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Devin Nunes and the dozens of talking heads, spin doctors and Trump-cult voodoo priests that appear on Fox to aid and abet the treasonous criminality currently passing as leadership. I agree that eventually Trump will reap the fruit of his demon seed, but may try to skate by reason of mental defect or disease. It won't work, because his petard is state level charges of mundane felonies which should hoist him and his entire cohort into the great sand trap in the sky. As of now, Allen Weisselberg and David Pecker are providing a small window into the workings of the Trump organization, but that reveals a trove of evidence now open in plain view to prosecutors. Said evidence will cascade upon the public consciousness like so many brooms carrying water for an errant mouse in a pointy hat (speaking of witches). Trump is cut from the cloth of one who can't help but memorialize his sleaziest, most weaselly crimes, and like Robert Durst or Col. Nathan Jessup, will ultimately crucify himself, believing the ratings are worth it. He'll take la famiglia and the inner circle with him, for whom I shed no tears. It's too bad we'll be shoveling out of this effluent storm for years to come.
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