Tag: Russian Investigation

SCORING HELSINKI: DEEP STATE 1, TRUMP 0

We now have four, not three, branches of government: legislative, judicial, executive and, last – and most assuredly least – Donald-I-Alone-Can-Fix-It-Trump. Yes, our Constitution places the president in the executive branch. The Donald, however, disregards all instruction manuals and briefing memos, preferring to roll instead as his own unattached entity, a government of himself, by himself and for himself.

This unique bifurcation had been in the works since Inauguration Day, but reached full gestation in Helsinki last week when Trump pulled away from his own administration in a nauseating, groveling embrace of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The president not only rejected his advisors’ advice against having such a meeting with Putin, but he was sharply critical of his own government’s findings that the Russian leader had ordered an attack on our country’s elections.

As a result, the “Deep State” that Trump so vigorously campaigned against moved quickly and decisively to right the sinking ship of state. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, a Trump appointee, issued a statement contradicting the president’s remarks that let Russia off the hook for its election interference. Later that week, FBI Director Christopher Wray, the guy Trump appointed after he fired James Comey, pushed back on the president’s claim that the Mueller investigation is a “witch hunt”, insisting that “Russia attempted to intervene with the last election, and . . . continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day.”

So much happens so quickly these days, it is difficult to sit back and take measure, to process what is happening to our country. It is virtually unheard of for high level presidential appointees to publicly disagree with the president. But it gets even more bizarre than that. More than a week has passed since Trump and Putin spent two hours talking to each other with only themselves and their interpreters in the room. Russia has alluded to agreements reached in that meeting, but nobody in our intelligence agencies knows what they are because Trump hasn’t told them. As a result, both the New York Times and Politico have reported that U.S. spies are attempting to tap into Russian intelligence in order to learn what the President of the United States said in that meeting. No reputable publisher would ever accept a spy thriller manuscript with that story line. It’s beyond belief.

If there is a silver lining in this absurdity, it resides in the Deep State. The term loosely refers to knowledgeable government professionals who keep the country running, apart from – and sometimes in spite of – elected leaders. At various times, the Deep State has been scorned by the left and the right. In the 1960s, it was known as the “Industrial Military Complex”, and was deeply eschewed by those protesting the Vietnam War. Decades later, Edward Snowden attributed secret surveillance of U.S. citizens to the inertia of the Deep State. On the other end of the spectrum, the predicate for making America great again was the abolition of the Deep State, which the Trump campaign saw as a swamp in need of draining.

Ideology aside, the Deep State, like most governments, is neither monolithic nor inherently good or evil. It all depends on how it is used. Under our current circumstances, it has proven to be an effective safety net against the autocratic ravages of an unfit president, a “sad, embarrassing wreck of a man,” in the words of conservative columnist George Will. So loudly, confidently and unanimously was the Deep State’s repudiation of Trump’s Helsinki performance that Trump was forced to offer a rare, if lame, correction, allowing that Russia may have interfered with our election, but it “. . . could have been other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.”

While the Helsinki summit was the most dramatic presentation of the divide between Trump and the rest of the executive branch, it was by no means the first. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went on Fox News immediately after the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville to say that Trump “speaks for himself” on his values, and that the State Department remains committed to “equal treatment of people the world over.”

Minutes after the president disparaged NATO allies at the recent Brussels conference, even questioning whether the United States should continue to participate, current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared on Twitter that “NATO is the most successful alliance in history”. According to news reports, Defense Secretary James Mattis deliberately kept a low profile during the NATO meeting and Trump’s European tour to better position himself to help repair the damage later.

Nowhere is the divide between the president and the rest of the executive branch more pronounced than in North Korea. Trump was in an euphoric glow after his smoke-and-mirrors spectacular in Singapore, insisting that nuclear peace is now in hand, thanks to his diplomatic powwow with Kim Jong-un. Pompeo, and the other deep-staters, do not expect the regime to give up their nukes easily, and see nothing but a long slog ahead, as has always been the case with North Korea.

Federal bureaucrats have long been fodder for punchlines. They symbolize what cynics see as a bloated and broken government. And they have a point, particularly when a Social Security deposit is late, or FEMA botches a hurricane recovery, or the SEC fails to stop a Bernie Madoff scheme. Yet, this Deep State also includes bureaucrats who have caught and removed defective medications, recalled dangerous motor vehicles and discovered major breakthroughs in fighting deadly diseases. It includes at least 69 Nobel Prize winners, mostly little known scientists.

Federal servants are bound by a code of loyalty that is very different than the one Trump attempted to extract from James Comey. They pledge “loyalty to country above loyalty to persons, party or government department”. That some cabinet secretaries and intelligence personnel have adhered to that oath and chosen to follow the facts, rather than an unhinged, fact-free president, is an amazing show of patriotism. Long live the Deep State.

FORGET STORMY, COMEY & MUELLER, TRUMP IS TRASHING AMERICA

President Trump should be grateful for the Mueller investigation. Thanks to the special counsel’s work, news producers and consumers are obsessed with the daily minutia of Russian collusion and obstruction of justice theories, not to mention the deeply profound question of who paid Stormy and why. Easily missed is the most important story of this administration: Donald Trump is making America terrible again.

Yes, Russia’s interference in our elections is a big deal. So are alleged presidential attempts to interfere in the investigation of that foreign intrusion. But the daily bombardment of speculation, Trump attorney churn and bizarre Rudy Giuliani proclamations seems to have crafted a useful, even if inadvertent, cover for the severe damage the 45th president is doing to our country.

We desperately need an end to this American nightmare. Yet, unless a Nixonian-like smoking gun tumbles out of Mueller’s shop, impeachment is a longshot. A two-thirds Senate vote is needed to remove a president. That’s never happened, and it’s unlikely to any time soon, absent blockbuster evidence that would pull Republican senators away from a president who remains dismayingly popular with his party. A shoot-and-miss runs the risk of burnishing Trump’s outside martyr credentials for a 2020 reelection campaign. Six-and-a-half more years of Trump shredding America’s values is unthinkable.

That’s why Democrats need to march into the midterm elections with a substantive agenda for truly turning this country around. That means quantifying the damage done these past 16 months and offering a plan to reverse it, not merely running on an impeachment promise.

Here’s just some of the ways Trump’s administration has reversed decades, if not centuries, of American progress:

BIGOTRY RUNS RAMPANT. Emboldened by their president, bigots have come out from under their rocks, openly spewing their hate at anyone who is not an American-born white male. Every published study shows dramatic increases in hate crimes against blacks, Latinos, Muslims, women, and the LGBTQ community. One source pegged such incidents at 250,000 a year. Another study showed that one in five hate crimes was committed by people using Trump’s name. For example, this letter sent to at least 10 mosques across the country in 2017: “To the children of Satan, you Muslims are vile and filthy people. . .There’s a new sheriff in town – President Donald Trump. He’s going to cleanse America and make it shine again. . .You Muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge.”

SEGREGATED NEIGHBORHOODS are encouraged. The Trump administration suspended a rule requiring communities receiving federal housing funds to assess patterns of segregation and barriers to fair housing and devise plans to combat them. HUD Secretary Ben Carson called such desegregation goals “failed socialist experiments”.

SICK CHILDREN are shortchanged. Just this week, Trump asked Congress to cut more than $7 billion out of already approved funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program in order to demonstrate fiscal constraint in the wake of huge budget deficits brought on by tax cuts for the rich.

MIGRANT CHILDREN are being separated from their parents. Trump’s Justice Department announced Monday that it will prosecute every migrant fleeing violence in Central America who crosses illegally into the United States. That means children will be taken away from their parents who will be immediately incarcerated. The previous practice was to treat such migrants as asylum seekers, not criminals, and allow the families to remain together in this country while their asylum request was considered.

HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUMS are soaring. Insurers say Trump’s successful push to end the individual mandate that required everyone to be insured has created a “death spiral” for the market. Insurance executives predict that premiums will increase by steep double-digits in 2019 as a result of healthy people stopping their coverage.

CONSUMER PROTECTION has been gutted. Trump has brought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to a virtual standstill. Investigations into questionable business practices have ended. Hiring is frozen. No data is being collected and a database of consumer complaints is in the process of being dismantled. Existing cases against companies are being closed or put on indefinite hold. The department is expected to drop a major case against Navient, the student loan company accused of cheating borrowers.

The list of hits to the American people goes on and on. Trump’s much ballyhooed tax bill did zilch for the working class. Corporations, for the most part, used their enormous windfalls to repurchase about $800 billion of their own stock. Meanwhile, worker pay has barely moved. Close to a million immigrants, most with black or brown skin, are subject to deportation under Trump’s policies. This includes hundreds of thousands of young people brought here as children and who know no other home. The environment has been devastated by such Trumpian moves as eliminating regulations on carbon emissions from coal-based power plants, opening vast swaths of Alaskan wilderness to new oil and gas drilling and the reversal of another 29 environmental regulations.

Never has this country fallen so quickly from its core values. That’s why Democrats need to make the midterm elections all about truly restoring America’s greatness – without the red hats. As despicable as this president has been, this campaign cycle has to be about more than just Trump. We’ve been in an All-Trump-All-The-Time world since November 8, 2016. We need to focus now on the specific ways we can disengage from this dystopia and take our country back.

That means talking about true tax reform and a fair redistribution of wealth that will provide meaningful help to the poor and middle class. It means finding a way to let every kid who wants a college education to have one, without crippling student loans. It means having a sensible, fair and compassionate immigration policy, one that never closes our borders on the basis of race or religion. It means taking reasonable steps to protect our planet. It means renouncing every form of bigotry, and unabashedly protecting human rights whenever, and wherever, they may be endangered. This, after all, is what America is all about. As Trump mania blasts at us 24-7, let us never lose sight of that fact.

(Scheduling note: Due to a long-planned retirement trip in honor of my wife and editor, Melissa, this space will remain dark for a couple weeks. We will be back shortly after Memorial Day.)

TRUMP’S GUIDE TO LEADERSHIP: THE ART OF THE HEEL

Donald The Swamp Drainer is now fully enmeshed in the morass of governance, but none of the ensuing noise and chaos has led to a single dollop of drainage. If this guy has anything even remotely resembling a strategy, on any issue, it has to be the best kept secret in Washington. All we’ve seen in the first 200 days of this presidency is a bizarre jumble of impulsive, sophomoric tactics that have done absolutely nothing to advance his agenda.

A theory emerged during the 2016 campaign that, instead of being loony, Trump was a brilliant four-dimensional chess player, always strategizing multiple moves ahead of his opponents. The concept has the same level of evidentiary support as the flat earth and faked moon landing propositions. Take a quick look at the Donald’s recent chessboard navigation.

Trump:

• Publicly threatened a number of Republican senators with various forms of retaliation if they didn’t vote to repeal Obamacare. Not surprisingly, Trump didn’t win their votes and the bill went down in flames. Senators’ job security rests with voters in their home state. Caving in to a public threat is not an image that curries favor with the electorate.

• Said the Senate healthcare vote made Republican leaders “look like fools” and promised to stop funding the lawmakers’ own medical insurance if they didn’t cancel their August recess and try again to repeal Obamacare. The Senate recessed and left town within 48 hours of the president’s threat and name-calling.

• Announced suddenly via Twitter that transgender people will no longer be allowed to serve in the armed forces. This was supposedly a Trump “strategy” to end a squabble over whether the military should pay for trans-related medical costs. That disagreement, which reportedly was well on its way to resolution, is holding up a spending bill that includes funds for Trump’s Mexican wall. Paralysis quickly ensued from the president’s transgender ban tweet, and nothing has moved since – on either the ban or the wall.

• Attacked, loudly and repeatedly, the Russian sanctions imposed by the Obama administration for Moscow’s interference in last year’s election. Congress, controlled by Trump’s own party, responded by passing veto-proof legislation enhancing the sanctions and specifically prohibiting the president from altering them.

• Ridiculed and demeaned his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in an attempt to get him to resign so he could replace him with someone who would either control or fire Robert Mueller III, the special counsel investigating possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia’s election tampering. Sessions refused to resign. The Senate initiated a parliamentary maneuver that prevents Trump from making a recess appointment during the current congressional break. There is also a bipartisan push for legislation that would allow Mueller’s removal only on approval of a federal judge.

Every day – every tweet – brings more examples. There isn’t a single strategy to be found in Trump’s arsenal, only a limited repertoire of tired, angry, bullying tactics, the same kind of shtick he used to throw at Rosie O’Donnell and Cher. A very prophetic 5th century BC military strategist, Sun Tzu, wrote, “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Trump likes to announce phony victories – initial passage of healthcare in the House, release of his own budget that has gone nowhere, etc. – with the phrase, “This is what winning looks like.” Well, Mr. President, right now, this is what losing looks like: all tactics and no strategy; the noise before defeat.

I came across Sun Tzu’s wisdom early in my career as a union negotiator. I had just verbally pulverized an opponent at the bargaining table. I had done my research and really had the goods on this guy. I let everything fly, humiliating and embarrassing him in front of his peers. Before I could take a bow, my mentor whispered into my ear, “Now what? You just destroyed him, but how is that going to help us reach a contract settlement?” That’s when I first read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. My insults were an empty tactic, totally lacking any strategic connection to the goal of negotiating a decent agreement. That painful memory came rushing back yesterday, after it was reported that the president warned his unhinged North Korean counterpart that “threats will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” So, now what? What’s the next move on the road to world peace?

And so it goes with Trump. He knows no art of the deal when it comes to leading our country. Other than the late Don Rickles, nobody has ever achieved success by lobbing insults at people. Yes, the president’s hard core base loves it. They adore Trump for his anger, and his total disregard for civility and respect in dealing with the swamp dwellers. They cheer him for it at his rallies, and then chant, “lock her up,” and other golden oldies. Some of them will stay with their angry guy all the way to the end, even if the swamp is never drained. To them, Trump is like a country-western crooner, singing the same old sad songs that somehow make them feel better, even though their lives are no less wretched when the concert ends.

Yet, polls show that Trump’s ineffectiveness in enacting his promised swamp drain is bringing his numbers down in every category, including his treasured demographic of white men without a college education. The New York Times reported Sunday that many key Republicans are already maneuvering for the 2020 presidential election with the belief that Trump will not be the party’s candidate. Regardless of what happens three years from now, it’s hard to see how this president can hope to successfully govern with no strategy beyond a string of angry tweets. A devoted and enraged base, in the low 20% range, screaming “fake news” at an occasional rally, is neither a strategy nor a mandate to govern.

JUNIOR’S RUSSIAN TALE: DOSTOYEVSKY IT’S NOT

As we soaked up this week’s news of Donald Junior’s induced transparency, and his eagerness for the Russian government’s promised Hillary dirt, we were treated to a music video link featuring beauty pageant contestants, a Russian pop singer and a cameo appearance by Donald Senior. This is what happens when we elect a president whose only experience in foreign affairs was running the Miss Universe competition.

Watergate never produced this kind of entertainment. Oh, it had its share of amusing characters; Bebe Reboso and Donald Segretti come to mind. But neither could have held a candle to Rob Goldstone, the rotund tabloid-journalist-turned-music-publicist, who has the face of a disgruntled carnival worker. The Daily Beast once described Goldstone as a frequent host of “vodka-soaked parties (for) younger acquaintances” at New York’s Russian Tea Room. His credentials were just upgraded from the Tea Room to the Russian election tampering investigation that has transfixed all of American politics.

(Since tracking the characters in this emerging melodrama can be as confusing as trying to follow a Chekhov play, here’s a quick cheat sheet: Goldstone represents Emin Agalarov, the Russian pop singer. Aras Agalarov, a Russian oligarch, is Emin’s father. He helped sponsor the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, held in Russia and then owned by Donald Trump. Aras also partnered with the Donald on plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow, a project currently on hold, a rare Trumpian nod to optics.)

So in this week’s episode, Junior, after insisting that he never once, in his capacity of working on his father’s presidential campaign, had contact with the Russians, changed his tune a bit and told the New York Times that he had, in fact, met with a Russian lawyer in June of 2016,but insisted it was about adoptions. The next day, Junior altered his story again and acknowledged that Goldstone had offered him a meeting on Emin’s behalf, with a Russian lawyer who had dirt on Hillary Clinton. But, he insisted, the information was not from the Russian government and didn’t amount to anything. By the next day, the Times had obtained copies of an email string between Junior and Goldstone. In it, Goldstone laid out the narrative: Aras received word from the Russian prosecutor that he wanted to get incriminating information about Clinton to Trump. Junior said “love it” and set up the meeting. He tweeted copies of the emails as soon as the Times told him they were going with the story. That got Junior an attaboy from Senior, who congratulated his first born for being so transparent.

All of this, of course, has inevitably dusted off that old Watergate term, “smoking gun”. There were, after all, numerous false or premature sightings of that mythical weapon before Nixon threw in the towel and helicoptered out of the White House for the last time. Most historians say the real smoke didn’t leave the revolver until Nixon was caught on tape ordering the CIA to get the FBI to drop the investigation of the break in. In the current case, several media outlets (here, here and here) declared the imbroglio over Junior’s Russian email exchange a “smoking gun.” Others ran it with a question mark (here and here).

The only smoking gun I see right now is the one Junior used to shoot himself in the foot. As for Senior, don’t count him out just yet. It’s way too early. I respect the legal scholars who found inferences of a criminal conspiracy and violation of campaign finance laws in the emails. But we are talking about a guy who was elected president after admitting on tape that he sexually assaulted women. Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Yet, the landscape of this scandal changed dramatically with the email reveal. At a bare minimum, the reference to the Russian “government’s support for Mr. Trump” objectively decimates the President’s characterization of the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

I suspect there are more smoking guns to come, with or without a question mark. What’s needed to end this madness is not necessarily definitive proof that Trump and the Russians cooked the votes and stole the election. The endgame is far more likely to accrue on the basis of cumulative disgust with an out-of-control whack job of a president who represents a clear and present danger to the Republican Party. The out-of-control and whack job standards were met some time ago. The Republicans, unfortunately, need to feel a little more Trump pain before reaching the cut-your-losses stage.

Yet, the needle seems to be moving, slowly but surely, in that direction. Congressional Republicans have stopped trying to defend Trump. That’s a huge change from the early days of this administration. Their default position is to say nothing, except in those outlandish instances where the president, in words or deeds, goes more bonkers than normal.

The Donald’s strategy, if it can be called that, seems aimed exclusively at holding his hardcore fan base, the folks who believe the New York Times isn’t real and that Junior’s transparency is. In the end, that will not be enough to save him. As personally gratifying as cult worship is for a maniacal leader, it rarely ends well for them. (See Jim Jones and David Koresh.) Sooner or later, Congressional Republican leaders will see this president as a pariah, to their cause and to their political futures. That’s what will trigger the endgame, and build an exit strategy for the 45th president. That is the ultimate smoking gun. Disposing of it will be the closest this Congress ever gets to gun control.

HOMELAND INSECURITY: A RUSSIAN ATTACK & A PRESIDENT WHO WON’T STOP IT

Remember that old salty story about a kid trying to shovel his way through a towering pile of horse manure, convinced there had to be a pony in there somewhere? It really captures the whole Russia/Trump/FBI brouhaha. Peel away the layers of dung – the Comey memos, the dueling claims of obstruction and vindication, the etymology of “hope” as a command – and there lies the nearly forgotten source of this mess: a foreign adversary’s attempt to sabotage our democracy.

A daily barrage of Trumpian subplots is distracting us from the compelling and frightening antecedent that started everything. That is mind boggling for those of us who grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when, as kids, we were less concerned with the bogeyman than we were with a shoe-pounding Nikita Khrushchev and his promise to bury us. Fifty-some years later, Russia is caught screwing with our elections and the country gets all wrapped up in peripheral stuff, like whether the fired FBI director is a leaker.

Every U.S. intelligence agency has been unequivocal: Russia executed an extensive and elaborate plot to interfere with last year’s election. Not one cabinet secretary or member of Congress has disputed that assertion. In fact, most of them, including the Republican House speaker and Senate majority leader, have publically acknowledged Russia’s tampering. There is only one office holder in Washington who refuses to accept this reality: President Donald J. Trump. This president has not only consistently pooh-poohed the growing mountain of evidence that Russia interfered in our election, he has denigrated all of the Congressional and FBI investigations on the matter, calling them “witch hunts”.

Asha Rangappa is a former FBI agent and currently an associate dean at Yale Law School. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, she offered a singularly unique take on James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The real bombshell, she wrote, had nothing to do with Trump’s attempt to stop an investigation or Comey releasing his notes to the media. Instead, Rangappa argued, it was the president’s unwillingness “to preserve, protect and defend” the country from Russia’s attack on our free elections.

“In the nine times Trump met with or called Comey,” she wrote, “it was always to discuss how the investigation into Russia’s election interference was affecting him personally, rather than the security of the country. He apparently cared little about understanding either the magnitude of the Russian intelligence threat, or how the FBI might be able to prevent another attack in future elections.”

This is a president who has not lifted a finger to protect our democratic elections from an outside attack. This is huge, and we should never, for a moment, lose sight of it. The accusation of Trump campaign collusion with the Russians is speculative and unproven right now. Thanks to Comey’s testimony and recent news reports, we know a little more about a possible obstruction of justice charge against Trump, but it remains a close and unsettled question. Yet, by refusing to even acknowledge a foreign adversary’s interference in our election, the president has placed his personal ego needs above his sworn duty to protect this country.

Trump’s repeated refusal to deal constructively with the Russian election threat grows more acute with every revelation of the depth and breadth of the 2016 intrusion. Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that Russia’s cyber-attacks on our electoral system were much more extensive than originally thought. According to that reporting, Russian hackers made their way into the official voting records of 39 states. Bloomerg quoted a senior intelligence official who expressed fear that the 2016 foray into local election systems gives the Russians three years to use that knowledge in plotting an attack for 2020. Comey echoed that concern in his testimony last week. “They’re coming after America,” he said. “They will be back.”

Donald Trump is doing absolutely nothing to protect us from that attack. That, it seems to me, needs to be part of the Resistance’s messaging in the days ahead. There is no need to prove collusion or obstruction to make this patently obvious charge stick. The Russians are coming after us, and our president is doing nothing about it. If any of the pending investigations subsequently reveal evidence of collusion or obstruction, then his despicable nonfeasance becomes all the more aggravated.

Trump’s obstinate insistence on giving Russia a pass on its attack on our electoral system has the potential to transcend partisanship, even in this bitterly divided country. Just yesterday, in a remarkable rebuke of the White House, the Senate voted 97 to 2 to block any efforts by Trump to scale back sanctions against Russia. That a Republican-controlled Senate doesn’t trust this president on a critical matter of national security is a ready-made lightening rod for changing some minds in Trumpville.

If this nightmare is going to end before 2020, those minds need to be changed. Forget all that nuanced legal analysis about grounds for impeachment. The process is political, not legal. Even if Democrats won back the House and Senate in 2018, an incredibly heavy lift, a two-thirds Senate vote is required for removing a president. An impeachment has to be bipartisan. Congressional Republicans have never been comfortable with Trump, but they have no appetite for incurring the wrath of his base in their own elections. As that base deflates, however, the whole dynamic changes. Trump’s approval rating has been slipping by a percent or two each week and is currently at 37 percent. Since February, a third of that group downgraded from “strongly supports” to “supports”. The momentum is slow but steady. All the more reason to shine the spotlight on the unassailable narrative of Russia’s plot to sabotage America’s elections, and Trump’s refusal to do anything about it. After all, protecting the country from an enemy attack has always been a bedrock value of conservatism.

WHEN TRUMP TALKS, ENGLISH TEACHERS TRY NOT TO LISTEN

The first review of our 45th president’s verbal skills came seconds after he finished his inaugural address. According to New York Magazine, the 43rd president, George W. Bush, turned to those next to him and said, “That was some weird shit.” This from the guy who once said, “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.” Clearly, the torch of presidential inarticulateness has been passed.

Donald Trump makes Bush look like a master wordsmith. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, here’s how the Donald responded to a question about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election: “ . . . there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself – and the Russians, zero.” Weird shit, indeed.

Trump’s difficulty in constructing a compound sentence without merging two disparate thoughts, mixed with a propensity to drain meaning from words through overuse, has been analyzed by a host of academicians. Linguists used something called the Flesch-Kincaid readability test to place his speeches at a fourth grade level. Psychologists compared transcripts of Trump interviews in the 1980s with those from the last four months and concluded that there has been significant cognitive decline. All this must be pleasing the president in some perverse way. The very elites who Trump thought were ignoring him are now giving him the kind of rapt attention that Jane Goodall bestowed on her chimps.

As for this expert analysis, I’m inclined to heed the cautionary observation of New York Times columnist David Brooks: “We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.”

And beep they do. Responding to the Manchester concert bombing this week, Trump told the world that, from this day forward, he will refer to terrorists not as “monsters, which they would like,” but as “losers.” This nomenclature upgrade, as the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted, puts suicide bombers in an eclectic grouping. Here are just a few of the prior inductees in Trump’s Loser Hall of Shame: Rosie O’Donnell, Cher, Rihanna, Mark Cuban, George Will, an astrologer in Cleveland, Gwyneth Paltrow, John McCain and the Huffington Post. Using the same description for Rihanna and a terrorist empties the word of all meaning.

Yet, this limited vocabulary is not the biggest impediment in deciphering the president’s messages. That prize goes to an attention span that frequently changes subjects multiple times in the same sentence. In the AP interview, for example, Trump was asked about the funding of his proposed wall along the Mexican border. His answer: “People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it – you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. . .The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”

Trump’s unofficial record for a run-on sentence came during the Republican primaries when he once managed to utter 285 words on more than 15 subjects, all without ever taking a breath or using a period. Slate posted the monstrosity on its website and invited readers to take a crack at diagramming it with the Reed-Kellogg method, the bane of many an English class back in the old days. In lieu of cluttering this space with a 285-word Trump sentence, here’s the link, if you are up for a challenge. Like most of his off-the cuff soliloquies, it is peppered with repetitive words and phrases, like: “very good, very smart”, “oh, do they do a number” and “who would have thought?” Linguists, reported Slate’s Katy Waldman, have suggested that Trump’s overuse of such semantically non-meaningful words implies that he is “too distracted by the pleasure and theater of vocalizing to deliver any actual substance.”

Emphasizing theatrics over substance, may be an acceptable rhetorical device in sales, but a lot of folks expect meaningful and understandable content from the leader of the free world. Imagine the shock this week when Trump, after flying from Saudi Arabia to Tel Aviv, told a room of Israeli leaders that, “We just got back from the Middle East.” The smiling president thought he’d just delivered an applause line, but instead got a stunned reaction from an audience wondering how the guy who wants to broker a regional peace deal has no idea that Israel is in the Middle East.

In reporting on advance work for the president’s first trip abroad, Foreign Affairs said White House staff took precautions to protect their boss from verbal stumbles. Heads of state were advised to limit themselves to two-to-four minutes of discussion time, knowing how difficult it would be to hold Trump’s interest past that point. In an effort to keep him on script, Washington Monthly reported that aides tried to limit briefing notes to one page and inserted Trump’s name in every paragraph because, said a staffer, “he keeps reading it if he’s mentioned.”

Say what you want about George W. Bush, and there is a lot to say. Yet, nobody ever had to childproof his foreign trips.

THE WHITE HOUSE HELL WEEK THAT DOESN’T END

Even in a four month presidency that made Alice’s rabbit hole adventures look normal, last week was extraordinarily bizarre. The entire White House staff now understands what it was like in 1969 for those Woodstock revelers who ignored the warnings about the brown blotter acid.

Any other week, Vladimir Putin’s offer to share with Congress state secrets gleaned in an Oval Office meeting would have been hot, above-the-fold, front page news. But not last week. There was way too much competition. It started with the revelation that Trump disclosed highly confidential intelligence while showing off to Russian envoys. Then came the report that the Donald attempted to pull the FBI off its investigation of his former national security advisor, followed by a scoop about 18 undisclosed contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

By week’s end, we were reading about the appointment of a special prosecutor, a possible subpoena for a “person of interest” in the top echelon of the White House, and my personal favorite: Trump telling his Russian visitors that he fired the FBI director because he was “a real nut job”. Depending on the interpreter’s adeptness with pronouns, the Russian officials may have left the Oval Office a tad confused over who the nut job was, the president or the fired FBI guy. Alas, it didn’t really matter. In the context of last week’s totality, they, like the rest of us, were quite capable of figuring it out for themselves.

To quote a favorite cliché of Washington speech writers, “Make no mistake about it.” Last week was some kind of turning point for this country’s 45th president. The New York Times Roger Cohen: “All this is right out of Despotism 101.” The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent: “Trump’s conduct further devolves into truly unhinged autocratic madness.” Conservative blogger Erick Erickson: “The sad reality is that the greatest defense of the president available at this point is one his team could never give on the record: He is an idiot who does not know any better.”

After such a dystopian week, it’s easy to fixate on the darkness, finding sweet solace only in thoughts of an impending impeachment. To that I offer two notes, one of caution and the other, oddly, of guarded optimism.

Here’s the caution part: Yes, the White House staff is pulling out the procedural files on impeachment. Most media outlets are running thumb-suckers on the subject. Still, it would be unwise to plan any Trump farewell parties just yet. Donald Trump does not possess the propensity to go gentle into Dylan Thomas’ good night. Most of us counted him out at least a dozen times before the election. His base is still chugging the Kool Aid. More importantly, Republicans control both houses of Congress. They may be disgusted and disheartened by Trump. They may even privately accept that he is brain dead. But they won’t take him off life support until they are certain such a move serves their political interests. Besides, impeachment hardly takes us out of dystopia. It merely gives us Mike Pence, a functioning-but-rabid right winger who has never met a human right he likes (here, here and here).

As for optimism, as guarded as it may be, the architecture of our 241-year-old democracy has so far succeeded admirably in restraining a severe assault from the first authoritarian strongman to hold the presidency. Trump’s election pumped new life into a long forgotten novel by Sinclair Lewis, “It Can’t Happen Here.” Written in 1935, as fascism was slowly taking its hold in Europe, Lewis wanted to wake up sanguine Americans to the realization that they were not immune to such a totalitarian takeover. Against the backdrop of a populist uprising called the “Forgotten Men,” Lewis’s antagonist, Berzelius Windrip, was elected president, largely on the Trump-like premise that he, alone, could solve the problems of the forgotten. Once in office, Windrip made three immediate moves that would have left Trump drooling. He strong-armed Congress into turning all decision-making power over to the president. Then he abolished the courts. Finally, he imprisoned reporters who wrote bad things about him.

Trump would trade Mar a Largo for that kind of power. As it stands, the Art of the Deal president hasn’t gotten one substantive bill through Congress. He has repeatedly railed at all the judges who have dared to block his travel ban and other executive orders. Among the morass of last week’s news stories was the revelation that Trump told the former FBI director that he wants to put journalists in jail. He has had one bromance after another with foreign authoritarian despots who have jailed or killed anyone who dared get in their way, including Russia’s Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte.

Thanks to our constitutional underpinnings, Donald Trump is only a wannabe dictator. Last week’s crazy chain of events showed that the system is working. As much as he’d like the Russian influence investigation to go away, it’s here to stay, complete with grand jury and subpoena powers. As much as he’d like to take over Congress, there are 535 ego-driven members there worrying much more about their reelections than his. And despite his fantasy of locking up reporters, Trump’s antics have fueled a revival in journalism that defies the business models of the struggling news outlets that employ them.

Although it is always reassuring to get even part way through a hurricane without the roof caving in, this storm is by no means over. Let us remain ever vigilant until the all-clear signal is given. Sinclair Lewis was right: it can happen here. We need to do everything possible to see that it doesn’t.

TRUMP’S FORGOTTEN PEOPLE ARE STILL FORGOTTEN

After a five-day binge of all things Trump and Comey, along comes this story about bad teeth to poignantly capture the essence of our current quagmire. Don’t get me wrong. The coverage of the White House’s latest cataclysmic adventure in governance has been compellingly entertaining. It’s not every day you get to watch the president’s aides frantically scramble to assemble a cover story for firing the FBI director, only to be upstaged by their boss’s declaration that he canned the guy because of the Russia investigation.

But a cracked molar brought it all home, a dental narrative that sadly and succinctly depicted a leaderless America that has lost its way. The Sunday Washington Post ran a front page story on the chronic tooth decay facing millions of the working poor who have neither the necessary insurance nor disposable income to maintain their dental health. The piece described a scene on a cold March morning on Maryland’s eastern shore. More than 1,000 people had huddled in blankets for up to 12 hours, waiting for a chance to get free dental care.

Dee Matello was in that line. She’s a small business owner, but has neither insurance nor budget for dentist bills. She told Post reporters that she’s had a cracked tooth for years. It causes constant pain, forcing her to chew on only one side of her mouth. She also said she was a strong Trump supporter because politicians stopped caring about people who work hard but can’t afford to take care of themselves.

“The country is way too divided between well-off people and people struggling for everything – even to see the dentist,” Matello told the Post. “And the worst part is, I don’t see a bridge to cross over to be one of those rich people.”

Trump, she said, was the only person talking about “the forgotten men and women of our country, people who work hard but don’t have a voice.” It was Trump, Matello recalled, who repeatedly said that he was running to be a voice for those people. She was particularly taken with his assurance that he would create a “wonderful” health care plan that would cost less and provide far more services than Obamacare.

As she shivered in line, waiting to get her tooth fixed, Matello shared her deep political disappointment with the Post. “I am hearing about a number of people who will lose their coverage under the new plan,” she said. “Is Trump the wolf in grandma’s clothes? My husband and I are now saying to each other, ‘Did we really vote for him?’”

More than any story since Trump’s inauguration, this rotting teeth article captures the depth and breadth of last fall’s electoral catastrophe. The daily headlines inundate us with the president’s buffoonery, his never-disappointing adeptness at accessing his ignorance. When I started writing this post, the Comey fiasco was on center stage. It was replaced two paragraphs ago with breaking news about Trump revealing top secret intelligence to Russian officials. But the dental care piece takes us beyond the purview of chaotic stage management, and gives us a direct view into the marrow of a critically wounded American life.

Working adults can’t afford to fix their teeth, and nobody in Washington is doing anything to help them. Those in the investor class, buoyed by a Trump-induced bull market, think nothing of spending thousands a year on cosmetic tooth whitening, while millions of hard-working Americans don’t make enough to pay for basic dentistry. These are the forgotten people, the downtrodden and heartbroken masses left behind by politicians beholden to the moneyed interests that put them in office.

Donald J. Trump was their last hope, an unlikely billionaire hero who took up their cause, spoke their language and promised to drain the swamp of the bought-and-paid-for Washington functionaries catering to the rich and powerful. They voted for him because their anger was his anger. They voted for him because he was wholly different than every slick, smooth-talking, glad-handing politician who came before him. They voted for him because he was going to blow Washington up and get them fantastic jobs and absolutely wonderful health insurance. The forgotten people would never be forgotten again.

Sadly, Trump has only delivered on half the promise. He has, indeed, blown up Washington. He shocked and stunned the FBI, pushed the intelligence community into a state of suspended animation and invoked paralysis on a Republican Congress totally transfixed on the most chaotic White House since Richard Nixon spent long alcoholic nights talking to the portraits of dead presidents.

As for the forgotten people, well, they were promptly forgotten by a president who had something far more important to consider: himself. Donald Trump was absolutely right when he promised never to be tied to special interests and outside influences. This is a man with absolutely no interests outside of himself. He can’t stop talking about his election, how many counties he carried, how remarkable his campaign was, how he got cheated out of the popular vote, how the whole Russian scandal seeks to delegitimize his humungous accomplishment.

The forgotten people? They are still waiting in line to have their teeth fixed. Some 24 million of them will lose health insurance under the House Republican bill that Trump supports but doesn’t understand. Millions more stand to lose job retraining opportunities under his proposed budget. Did he sell them out to special interests? No, not really. It’s just that his whole campaign was about him, not them. It was about his need to be loved and admired, to be seen as a truly remarkable person. He didn’t drain a swamp; he created a new one, a swamp filled with his own insatiable and grandiose ego needs. There is no room there for the forgotten people. Even if there was, this guy doesn’t have the skill or the chops to help them. He is far too busy pretending to be remarkable.