Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "Face the Nation"
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Back in 2016, Dean said that Trump could easily be the most corrupt presidents ever—and possibly get away with it..
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he could possibly get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, to be unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
Trump and republicans continue to rage against the Constitution in their ongoing war with our democratic republic. They have made it abundantly clear that we must vote them out of office in order for our democracy to survive.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes.
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I'm absolutely sure that Rudy, Trump, and the entire GOP is being PAID by Russia.
Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept 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, Moscow Mitch'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 Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
It's safe to say that Trump and the GOP have been bought and paid for with Russian money.
It's why repubicans are fighting so hard to defend him instead of the Constitution. It's also why Republicans have been repeating the exact same lies and propaganda of the Russian government and Russian security services like the GRU.
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President Obama said that when making a decision, it's helpful not to watch TV or read social media.That's because that "creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment," He also said it's important to "have a team with a diversity of opinion" to help with making decisions and providing context.
President Obama had two important tips for any president to help make good decisions.
First, Obama said, you should "make sure you have a team with a diversity of opinion sitting around you."
"The other thing that's helpful is not watching TV or reading social media," he said. "Those are two things I would advise, if you're our president, not to do. It creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment."
Obama spoke about entering office during the Great Recession, and he said that the presidency is like "drinking out of a fire hose."
"That's doubly true when you're in the middle of a crisis," Obama said.
A president can't absorb all the information on their own when making a decision, so it's important to have teams to provide information and context about the problem, he said.
"Then what you have to do is create a process where you have confidence that whatever data is out there has been sifted and sorted," Obama said.
Obama said that because there's so much information out there now, including "opinion wrapped up as fact" and clickbait, it's important to filter through the noise.
"What it does mean is that if you are susceptible to worrying about what are the polls saying or what might this person say about this topic, or you start mistaking the intensity of the passion of a very small subset of people with a broader sense about your country or people who know something about the topic, that will sway your decision-making in an unhealthy way,"
"I am asking you to hold fast to that faith that is written into our founding documents...that ideal whisper...by slaves and abolitionist, that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders, and those who marched for justice. That creed...reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battle fields, to the surface of the moon. A creed at the core of every American, who's story is not yet written....YES WE CAN!!"
--President Barack Obama
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Trump's Professor, William T. Kelley taught marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence:The Management of Marketing Information...
Professor Kelley stated that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*dd@m student I ever had.” says Psychologist Frank DiPrima.
"Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*dd@m student I ever had.” Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity, but long before he was considered a political figure. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told the story that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything."
Professor Kelley’s view seems to be shared by other University of Pennsylvanians, from the Daily Pennsylvanian, stating:
Biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. The officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy..
Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.
1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don, was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
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We can't even expect Traitor Trump to tell us the truth, about anything, big or small.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can be believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump..
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The wheels have fallen off Republican claims (LIES) that Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating increased growth and government revenues over the next decade. Reminds me of Cheney's claim that the Iraq war would pay for itself. Republican voters fell for that one too.
“Not only will this tax plan pay for itself but it will pay down debt,” Treasury Sec Steven Mnuchin famously boasted (LIED) in September 2017.
The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time last year, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American.
The Treasury Department reported the debt hit $22.012 trillion, a jump of more than $30 billion in just this month.
The national debt has been rising at a faster rate following the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax-cut package after a little more than a year. The nation has added more than $1 trillion in debt in the last 11 months alone.
Trump has quickened the rate at which the debt is growing by widening the deficit to finance his $1.5 trillion package of sweeping tax cuts for himself, his wealthy friends, big banks, and corporations.
Trump promised these tax cuts would pay for themselves by spurring on economic activity, but revenues have since stalled. Federal spending by the Trump administration is around 6.6 percent higher than it was before. In 2017, the national debt grew by 4 percent, according to CBO data, which excludes intragovernmental holdings. By the following year, Trump's second in charge, this had accelerated to 7 percent.
It's a similar story with the deficit. When Trump was elected in 2016, the size of the deficit measured as a portion of GDP was 3.2 percent. By the end of 2018 this had increased to 3.9 percent. The deficit is expected to hit 4.2 percent in 2019. It is on course to reach a nominal value of $1 trillion by the end of the year.
That increase comes despite the economy doing well, so yes, it can be attributed directly to his tax cuts for the wealthy, which clearly aren't paying for themselves, as most professional economists warned. Trump's tax cuts was nothing more than corporate welfare, OR, a tax cut for the swamp.
Trump thinks about the national debt as he does his own personal debt. A 2016 Fortune magazine analysis revealed Trump's business is $1.11 billion in debt. That includes $846 million owed on five properties. This is not surprising considering that Trump famously bragged about being the "King of Debt" along with the fact that Trump has filed for bankruptcy 6 times, and has relied on Saudi Royals, and Russian Oligarchs to come to his rescue and bail him out numerous times over the years.
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