I do not often write about Trump because I have never felt there was much purpose to it. We had no leverage, no voice, and hence no effective action to take. Until now.
Retake Our Democracy on KSFR 101.1 FM, 8:30 Saturday, TODAY, December 21, with Lyla June Johnston, newly announced challenger to NM State Speaker of the House Brian Egolf. While the radio show is only 30 minutes, the full interview extended for an hour, so I will post a link to the full podcast in the Tuesday post. Listen in.
Republicans Rebel
For months, there has been virtually no erosion of Republican political support for trump. But while the poll numbers on support for impeachment continue to fluctuate around 50% for or against, leadership in the party and conservative leaders have remained silent. Until now.
I am heartened to find a growing number of non-partisan and Republican groups and individuals stepping up.
Republican Leaders Launch the Lincoln Project
George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson are prominent Republicans who have supported and worked on numerous Republican campaigns. They are launching a campaign they feel is necessary to save the nation and the Republican Party. They are saying what no one in the GOP leadership is saying: the President has grossly abused his powers and obstructed justice and the Party leadership is choosing to turn a blind eye to what is obviously a series of impeachable offenses. From the Lincoln Project:
This effort asks all Americans of all places, creeds and ways of life to join in the seminal task of our generation: restoring to this nation leadership and governance that respects the rule of law, recognizes the dignity of all people and defends the Constitution and American values at home and abroad.”
We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated, NY Times
and:
Indeed, national Republicans have done far worse than simply march along to Mr. Trump’s beat. Their defense of him is imbued with an ugliness, a meanness and a willingness to attack and slander those who have shed blood for our country, who have dedicated their lives and careers to its defense and its security, and whose job is to preserve the nation’s status as a beacon of hope.
Congressional Republicans have embraced and copied Mr. Trump’s cruelty and defended and even adopted his corruption. Mr. Trump and his enablers have abandoned conservatism and longstanding Republican principles and replaced it with Trumpism, an empty faith led by a bogus prophet. In a recent survey, a majority of Republican voters reported that they consider Mr. Trump a better president than Lincoln.”
We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated, NY Times
Republicans for the Rule of Law
On Thursday, on Fox & Friends, Republicans For the Rule of Law launched their media campaign with an ad designed to press GOP Senators to not cravenly succumb to Trump pressure. (See video below.) With Sen. McConnell leading Senate Republicans, I am not optimistic that this campaign will succeed, but it will shine a very bright light on elected officials who, instead of acting as unbiased jurors and defenders of democracy, have become sycophants who appear to be about to abdicate their constitutional responsibilities. How can these Republicans even begin to claim weighing evidence and acting independently when the proceedings begin with their leadership guaranteeing that Trump will not be removed from office?
A group of more than 700 non-partisan historians has petitioned for Trump’s removal
The development of the historians’ letter was coordinated by Project Democracy, an advocacy group that last month released a similar letter signed by more than 500 law professors. Click here read their letter.
“His attempts to justify that obstruction on the grounds that the executive enjoys absolute immunity, a fictitious doctrine that, if tolerated, would turn the president into an elected monarch above the law.”
Christianity Today Published a Scathing Editorial Calling for Trump’s Removal
Christianity Today, founded by Rev. Billy Graham, and the largest evangelical publication in the US, published Trump Should be Removed from Office, an editorial stating:
The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”
The editorial went even further in condemning the president, saying that support from Christians was tarnishing the Gospel:
The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.”
Trump Should be Removed From Office, Christianity Today
What Can We Do?
Certainly, the most rabid of Trump supporters are not going to be receptive to anything other than his rhetoric, but with responsible Republican and Christian leadership beginning to speak out, we have evidence that the impeachment is not simply a partisan ploy.
We all know Republicans who may have had misgivings about Trump, but who felt that as an outsider he might “drain the swamp.” As the citations above reveal, he has become the perfect manifestation of the swamp. Many of those Republicans who held their noses and voted for Trump may now have serious misgivings. They may applaud his Supreme Court nominees, but they also may no longer be able to accept his behavior. It is time for us to begin to communicate with these Republican friends and family.
The Senate will almost certainly exonerate Trump, although if Trump were to begin to see an erosion in the polls, even GOP Senators might begin to buckle. But assuming they don’t, we simply can’t wake up on November 4, 2020 facing the same headlines we faced in 2016. To ensure that does not occur, we must get out the Democratic and Independent vote, but we must also hedge our bets and educate those we know who might vote for him again but who could also respond to testimonials from those they respect: the sources cited above and, as importantly, YOU.
My thinking is that those Republican legislators who doggedly support the president do so more out of fear than allegiance. Whatever you or they may think about President Trump’s Ukrainian actions and lack of cooperation with the investigation, there are so many other things this President has done that may not warrant impeachment, but certainly are an embarrassment to our nation. The citations above focus mostly on the Ukrainian call and cover up, but I could write 100 pages of bullets listing his moral offenses, which to me are far more repulsive.
- It is not presidential to denigrate anyone who disagrees with you, and Trump routinely calls journalists or anyone who offers any criticism “scum,” encourages violence against protesters at his rallies (2 days ago in Michigan he commented that he wished security had roughed up a female protester), and routinely uses slanderous labels like “Sleepy Joe” and “Lyin’ Hillary.” No president in our history has ever done anything like this. Never.
- It is not presidential to proudly proclaim that when you are powerful women love it when you grab their “pussy.”
- It is not presidential to state that leadership from the opposing party are committing treason by conducting an entirely constitutional impeachment inquiry.
- It is not presidential (or legal) for a President to refuse to cooperate with an impeachment inquiry. There have been three other impeachment inquiries and none of those presidents refused to cooperate.
- It is not presidential to invite to a White House Hanukkah party a fundamentalist Christian leader who has publicly stated that all Jews will rot in hell.
- It is not presidential to lie 10-20 times every single day, a habit that began well before he announced to run for office, persisted throughout his campaign, and continues hourly, with most of his lies evincing a very loose hold on reality. We can begin with his election where he claimed he really did win the popular vote, despite losing by a mere 3 million votes while claiming rampant voter fraud, despite abundant evidence that voter fraud is a very rare event. On Oct 19, 2019, the Washington Post published an article estimating that Trump had made 14,335 lies since taking office. This is simply weird.
- It is not presidential for a president to unleash a torrent of tweets daily with misspellings, lies and incoherent commentary.
- It is not presidential to do this:
That Donald Trump actually tweeted this himself is simply not normal presidential behavior. It is not even mature adult behavior. Nor is this:
Seriously. These are behaviors of a morally destitute, insecure, and mentally unstable adult. For months, I’ve wondered when someone from the GOP would reach a tipping point, and as the excerpts and video above describe, apparently we have reached that point. That Republican leaders above have broken the silence suggests that other Republicans we know may be harboring concerns.
Roxanne and I have friends who voted for Trump but who would have voted for Bernie had he been the nominee. I suspect there were many tens of thousands who felt the same way. It is incumbent upon all of us to reach out to those folks and make sure Jan 20, 2021 is the end. It is even possible that with the impeachment order being held in the House until the GOP leadership in the Senate shows signs of wanting to conduct a real trial, that we could see the beginning of the erosion in Republican polling support, a trend that could trigger a few and then many GOP Senators to jump ship. There have been dozens of reports that these Senators have no love for Trump and toe the line more out of fear than respect.
Once you’ve watched the video and reviewed one or two of the links above, please reach out to your Republican friends and share this post with them or simply ask if they would be willing to get together and discuss this. Right now polls show 90% of Republicans still support Trump. While with high voter turnout we can overcome that voting bloc, it would be far easier if we erode that number. There is simply no way we can suffer another November catastrophe.
In solidarity,
Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Uncategorized
It may help to identify the lies and propaganda, not only in our media, but across the tech platforms bunch of foreign actors were exposed by a journalist, that had hundreds of propaganda pages. Our national security apparatus failed to identify any of this, and good old zuck acted after the fact, and removed them. No one is talking about this and we do not see any of our elected officials acting in any way. As long as media and the tech platforms are allowed to spread misinformation and lies, and our local media acts as a marketing platform, toning down the facts as they present both sides.
Breaking the thrall of corporate media and the propagandists is going to be difficult, people are not listening to reason or facts. No one identified this prior to the 2016 election, and as long as they believe they are going to benefit somehow, none of this will change. People are invested in these lies and manipulations. It was very clear our democracy or what was left of it was over, when they buried Sanders the candidate that would beat trump. Our local dems are still at it, and even Obama has weighed in, proving his agenda all along. There has been no examination of their roles in helping trump get elected. They have their own set of sycophants just like trump.
They continue to cover for the poverty ,despair and hopelessness in this community. The formula has been profitable. Clever corporate think tank distractions and distortions of facts are more acceptable than considering the number of homeless that died in our community. There was no massive Philanthropy after the trump tax cuts, that was another gas light. There are plenty of non profits and charities, getting media attention yet the number so people in despair is growing. So much of the poverty and despair is located outside the city limits, and easy to ignore. The paper freely prints rants about the homeless, the poor, and goes out of their way to stigmatize then while misleading he public, with salient exemplars.
I can only control my first impulse of disgust, and then remember that they just can’t help it. They have been lied to manipulated and their anger has been channeled in the wrong direction. No local politicians or others were aware of the anger and despair here in our community and others across the state. They can’t see the angry signs on the interstate or the dilapidated mobile homes. They did not pay attention when voters in certain areas where herded into livestock barns or evangelical churches. They all took money form the same institutions that prey on the poverty and despair. In Santa Fe, they ignored what was going on in the courts, and allowed them to mislead us with their uncollected, by design, statistics. No one said anything when local lost their homes, due to collusion between the courts, and the realtors.
No one in our state government observed how the insurance industry was allowed to fleece, confuse and mislead seniors and other seeking medical coverage. They have made a lot of money ignoring the deceptive marketing lies and distorted statistics in healthcare. They are just as brainwashed as the trumpsters, with a glazed over look in their eyes. Their corporate handlers do not tell them that people can and will die, if their insurance company figures how to profit at their expense. Fact based coverage of our healthcare disaster is considered political or inconvenient. After all if people had the facts, they might realize the horror of people in our community. The healthcare for the poor, and low income, is not what the media reports, it is a deadly mix of horror extortion, and lies, delivered with a smile. Just like the “help” the homeless, the addicted or the sick. Homeless women who leave abusive relationships are told to “find a man any man,” it is better than being on the streets. This kind of faith based nonsense perpetrated across all of the charities, they present as more than enough for the “worthy poor.”
This turned my stomach, as they stressed over and over again how, they spend a lot of time, ensuring the people who have cast aside their dignity to grovel for help, truly deserve it. They ran the same false narrative about “philanthropy” again. Once again it is the poor who have been there who give a bigger percentage of what they have to charity. Some clever people use the publication of their names as free advertising for whatever exploitative industry they are in. They all own stock in the same corporations that drove our nation to this point. None of the “giving” reflected trumps tax breaks for the rich. Of course the lie about “trickling down” is still regurgitated the same lie we hear local official repeat about philanthropy. They can run this propaganda as people lose their homes, get sick without healthcare, and are exploited by low wage employers. The lies just don’t stop, it is no wonder the trumpsters are angry, confused, and resistant to facts. They just got a different version of the lies and propaganda.
When some human being dies in a ditch in agony, or at the local nursing home, as they are dehumanized, no one sees it. That is all by design, as if it never happened. There are homeless on every street corner, but they are portrayed as happy go lucky and all they need is a minimum wages job, where even if they worked three of them, they would never afford a roof over their heads. Our politicians are still subsidizing the same low wage, community destroying out of state corporations, that contributed to our crime rates, death rates, epidemic of despair, and the deaths of children.
On the bright side, Eddy Murphy is back! We missed him so much. His skit was the best laugh I have had in years. https://mashable.com/video/eddie-murphy-snl-sonic-hedgehog-cake-sketch/