Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "ABC News"
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On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
āDear friends, respected colleagues!ā Nikonov said. āThree minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.ā
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov ā after whom the āMolotov cocktailā was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trumpās victory was, in fact, a victory for Putinās Russia.
Itās well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when American banks stopped loaning Trump it money. It was a win-win for both sides. The Russian mafia is totally different than the American mafia. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor. In an interviewed, Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Putinās boss at one point, was asked about the Russain mafia. He said, āOh, itās part of the KGB. Itās part of the Russian government.ā
Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not.
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. We have this under control. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance, lies, and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, or flag waving. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, unselfishness, and common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. Currently there is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I singlehandedly shutdown MIT. I recognize no one's authority. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I've had success in other countries, but America is making me great again."
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"Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended, by political parties and organized citizens but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not.
This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy ā packing and āweaponizingā the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence) and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracyās assassins use the very institutions of democracy, gradually, subtly, and even legally, eliminate it.
Trumpās presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought weād be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bangāin a revolution or military coupābut with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one."
How Democracies DieĀ --by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you, would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.āĀ
āĀ James Baldwin,Ā The Fire Next Time
āIn a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.āĀ
āĀ Charles Dickens,Ā Great Expectations
This is the state of the Republican party today.
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trumpās orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with thenāCIA 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. āIndividuals who go along a treasonous path,ā he warned, ādo not even realize theyāre along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.ā In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: āI 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.ā
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 Bankās owners had āassumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,ā as a federal courtĀ 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 YorkĀ TimesĀ reporter Eric LichtblauĀ askedĀ 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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