Post date • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4
He said, “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
He said he knows a lot about hacking.
He said he knows about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other computer systems, “things that other people don’t know.”
“What do you know,” he was asked, Saturday night, “that other people don’t know?”
“You’ll find out,” he said confidently, “on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
But Tuesday night he tweeted that the intelligence briefing on Russian hacking—he put insult quotes around “intelligence” and “Russian hacking”—had been delayed until Friday, positing “perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!”
Later Tuesday night, CNN reported that there had been no hacking review scheduled for Trump by the CIA director nor the director of national intelligence.
NBC reported that there was one . . . but it had always been scheduled for Friday.
Independent journalist Marc Ambinder reported that there was a scheduled briefing that was delayed from last week by the family emergency of one of the intelligence officials, that the White House would get it Wednesday, congressional leaders Thursday, and Trump Friday—and it was identical to what he would have heard last week.
Trump has said nothing except to again attack other Americans and to again pretend he knows everything, and Wednesday morning to—incredibly—again take sides with Julian Assange, who is an enemy to this country and an enemy to democracy everywhere and at best a de facto Russian agent.
“Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’—why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!”
And quoting Fox News: “Julian Assange on U.S. media coverage: ‘It’s very dishonest.’ #Hannity More dishonest than anyone knows.”
The dishonesty here is all Trump’s—with the criminal Assange and the cretin Hannity as fellow travelers.
*
We—the American people, the victims of Trump’s disloyalty and his deranged attempt to position himself as the only person who knows the truth—have found out nothing in the four days since Trump began to play his ridiculous, dangerous, un-American game.
We still have no idea what those things are that he supposedly knows, that other people don’t, nor who told them to him.
And we are waiting.
*
This was not just his usual boast, not just his usual dismissal of this country’s intelligence services, not just his usual lie about the intelligence community and the Iraq weapons of mass destruction—which was not failed intelligence, but rather intelligence manipulated and altered and falsified and turned on its head by the Bush administration.
This was a man, not three weeks before taking power, insisting that this country should not investigate what the Russian dictator did to our election, a man demanding that the rest of us, from John McCain to me, need to “get on with our lives,” a man suggesting—again (he also said it in July)—that the best response to hacking that might have altered the course of history was to stop using computers and go back to using messengers.
This is a man, on the eve of ultimate power in our country, still insisting that Russia is right and America is wrong, and that he knows “a lot about hacking” and he knows “things that other people don’t know” and “you’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
Trump’s silence through Tuesday and then Wednesday and now—based on his tweet—presumably through Friday leaves him very few ways out of his ludicrous boasting . . .
Unless by Friday you have forgotten this.
His incoming press secretary—Sean Spicer—already so far in over his head that he needs a scuba suit—flailed around the other day trying to walk back Trump’s boast and suggest that the tinpot-tyrant-elect was really talking about conclusions he had reached from classified briefings. This excuse might have worked if Trump had not spent so much time explaining that he doesn’t attend, need, nor worry about classified briefings.
“You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
Well, we haven’t.
*
Of course, even if we had found out, even if we yet do find out, Trump will still have painted himself into an impossible corner—just a different corner.
About the hacking: “I know things that other people don’t know.”
Who told you, Trump?
If it’s from American intelligence briefers—you said you didn’t believe them.
If it’s from American intelligence briefers—why are you revealing, or merely referencing, secret classified information weeks before you are legally permitted to do so?
If it’s not from American intelligence briefers—who was it?
Was it Vladimir Putin?
Did he tell you that Russia didn’t hack the DNC and try to swing the election so it would have you in office?
How long did Putin know?
How long has it been since he told you?
Did he tell you this before the election?
Why have you not told America?
Why did you not tell America even last Saturday night? Or Tuesday, instead of another tweet worthy of a snot-nosed teenage boy?
Did Putin tell you not to tell us?
Why did you agree to conspire with Putin to conceal this evidence, even if it’s only been since last Saturday?
Did you inform American intelligence of what Putin told you?
If so, how quickly?
*
What if the things you know that other people don’t, Trump, were not told to you by American intelligence or by Putin?
Who . . . then?
How do they know?
Who told them?
Why have you not told America what they knew?
*
Is your hacking source General Michael Flynn?
Who reads and believes and disseminates conspiracy theories—bluntly, insane conspiracy theories—about pedophilia and Sharia law and Democrats ritually drinking body fluids?
Is your hacking source Julian Assange, who is a thief and an anti-American operative, and has long since lost any credibility among conservatives or liberals?
Is your hacking source Alex Jones, the radio nut? Who believes Sandy Hook never happened? And the dead bodies were child actors?
Is your hacking source the National Enquirer? Which you quoted when it claimed that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination?
Is your hacking source the individual you have repeatedly cited as a computer expert? Your ten-year-old son?
*
Or—your hacking source, and the things you know that other people don’t know, and the part about Tuesday or Wednesday, and the part of a delayed briefing that was reportedly never scheduled—did you just make them up because you thought we were all too stupid to expect you to deliver?
*
In the summer, Trump insisted the election was rigged.
In the autumn, the intelligence community revealed conclusions that maybe he was right.
In the winter, Trump insists we must not have hearings to see whether the Russians subverted our freedoms by remote control.
In a tux on New Year’s Eve, Trump insists about the hacking that “I know things that other people don’t know” and “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
In a peevish tweet on Tuesday night, he describes a briefing that may or may not have ever been scheduled being delayed—when it may very well have been delayed by him—and throws up another accusatory smoke screen by writing, “Perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!”
So now we need to have not just hearings about the hacking. We need hearings about what Trump meant last Saturday night, what he knew, why he promised to reveal it, and why he is concealing it now.
In short, to revise a great question from history: What did Donald Trump know—and when did he stop knowing it?
Post date • THURSDAY, JANUARY 5
So you support Donald Trump.
I’m not going to yell.
I’m not going to say you’re wrong.
I’m not going to talk about his policies.
I’m not going to talk about his promises.
*
I’m not going to talk about whether he’s going to cut your taxes or raise them.
I’m not going to talk about whether he’s going to make America great again or crash it and burn it.
*
And unlike what you probably think, I’m not trying to get the election overturned.
I’m not trying to get Hillary Clinton into the White House.
I’m not claiming the Republican Party won’t be there for at least the next four years.
*
No. This is about . . . him.
And you.
And the respect for you I start with, because you’re following this.
You are thoughtful enough to have gotten this far . . .
So let’s go in on the assumption that you’re smarter than I am . . .
In which case you already know what my point is.
*
I don’t know who the political figure would be if our places were reversed.
I guess the time I got the closest to the position you’re in was with John Edwards, who had a problem, and I didn’t see it, and while he wasn’t my first choice, I would’ve supported him for president.
He had what I thought was a great, humane set of policies, and a wife who was so smart and had been through so much in life that she probably should have been the candidate instead of him. And then it turned out John Edwards was a con man who not only had fooled me—he had fooled her, too.
If Edwards wasn’t my version of this, it would have to be Anthony Weiner. I used to have him on my show a lot. He gave straightforward, damn-the-torpedoes kinds of answers you never get from politicians; he disliked the same Republicans I disliked, and he hated the same Democrats I hated.
And even after he crashed and burned the first time, and then tried to run for mayor of New York, I thought, Well, he has to have gotten his problem fixed, and he might be a really good mayor, and then it happened again. In fact, it had barely stopped.
And the next time I saw him, a year ago, I literally was afraid to shake his hand, in case (a) somebody took a picture of it or (b) whatever he had, it was catching.
*
So I haven’t been where you are right now—but . . . close.
And you are in a terrible position.
A man whose opinions you agree with has been elected president and is about to be sworn in.
And yet—I’m pretty sure you know the problem.
You’re smart, and generally speaking, the only person who can fool you is you.
You’re smart enough to recognize something I saw when I first met this man, thirty-three years ago.
And that is this: there’s something really, really wrong with him.
*
Who does this on Christmas Eve?
His tweet was a plug for a documentary.
A documentary about him.
Not even a new one.
A repeat!
Who does this on Christmas Eve?
His Christmas greeting on Twitter was just a photo of himself.
Not the family.
Not the wife.
Not even the vice president.
Not Santa.
Not Jesus.
Just him.
Who does this?
Two days later—meaning sixty days after the election—the election is still all he’s tweeting about.
“President Obama campaigned hard (and personally) in the very important swing states and lost.”
What kind of man does this?
You win, you act like you’ve won before; you don’t waste your energy on the guy who’s gone in a month anyway.
Maybe, maybe, if you’re a good guy, you’re gracious in victory, you’re a good winner—at least during the holidays.
“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”
Would you . . . write that?
Would you write that—when you got votes from fewer people than the other candidate?
Would you call everybody else . . . your enemy?
*
Okay. Maybe just because when I interviewed him when I was twenty-five and he owned a football team and I came away muttering to my producer, “What’s wrong with that guy?”—maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s nothing really dangerous about a man who has to tell you how much he won by. Again and again. And again. When he actually didn’t win by very much.
Maybe that doesn’t matter.
Maybe from where you sit, it’s only about “Make America Great Again” and “America First” and always defending this country because we are right and we need to be loyal to our great nation.
“Vladimir Putin said today about Hillary and Dems: ‘In my opinion, it is humiliating. One must be able to lose with dignity.’ So true!”
“Great move on delay (by V. Putin)—I always knew he was very smart!”
Who defends a Russian dictator, ahead of an American president, or an American politician, or half of the people in America?
I mean, when he was president, as much as I hated George W. Bush, I never took Vladimir Putin’s side against him!
Would you do that?
*
Maybe you would. I said I wouldn’t yell, and I’m not going to. To my mind, it is possible for you to agree with Donald Trump and still be a good person. I just disagree with you. I don’t think you’re my enemy.
But let me run one last pair of tweets past you and ask you if you think they were written by a normal guy.
“Various media outlets and pundits say that I thought I was going to lose the election. Wrong, it all came together in the last week and . . . I thought and felt I would win big, easily over the fabled 270 (306). When they cancelled fireworks, they knew, and so did I.”
So those tweets are from last Monday.
That means it was only three weeks since he got up at one of those victory tour stops—this was in West Allis, Wisconsin, on December 13—and he said . . . he thought he was going to lose the election . . . and he thought so on the night of the election.
“I went to see my wife. I say, ‘Baby, I tell you what. We’re not going to win tonight.’ The polls are coming out—I always used to believe in those things. I don’t believe them anymore. I said if we’re going to lose I don’t want a big ballroom.”
There aren’t a lot of choices here, are there?
He either lied—in the tweets, or at the tour stop in Wisconsin, or to his wife that night—or he forgot that he said it, or . . .
There’s something wrong with him.
*
To pretend that there isn’t . . . you have to pretend really hard.
I know you can’t say it, I know you don’t want to believe it, and I know you won’t believe this, either, but I wish it weren’t true . . .
But we’ve elected a man . . . who is not all there.
And that cannot end happily.
His illness—it’s an illness—is putting you at risk. And your family. And your kids. And my family. And everybody we know, the ones we like—and the ones we don’t.
Don’t say anything, don’t do anything—I don’t even want you to admit anything to anybody except yourself.
But you know that someday, probably soon, something bad will happen, and whatever he does will make it worse, and it’ll all be clear that he’s not healthy enough to be president, and they’ll have to remove him.
And, by the way, it’ll be the Republicans who will have to remove him—either the vice president and the Speaker of the House using the Twenty-fifth Amendment, or the Republican congressmen and the Republican senators impeaching him.
Because this isn’t about what he believes in.
This is about the fact that he’s . . . not . . . well.
So all I’m asking—all that this has been about—is for you to just think about it, for when the time comes. Because when the Republicans really need to remove him as president, they’ll need to do it in a hurry, and as a Republican or a conservative or a Democrat or as an American, or whichever way you describe yourself, it’ll be a lot easier—and a lot safer for all of us—if you’ve prepared yourself, and you help them remove him.
Because he’s not well.
Post date • TUESDAY, JANUARY 10
Any essential distinction between Donald Trump being merely an idiot marionette belonging to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump being an active Russian agent has been fully erased in the course of just over a week.
And it has been erased by . . . Donald Trump.
*
When the damning stain of illegitimacy grows on this presidency, week by week—hour by hour—when every moment of the political discourse of this nation becomes consumed by a debate over not whether he has been placed in office by the efforts of a foreign power, but over how much of that subversion he knew in advance—he will have no one to blame but himself.
Because he cannot . . . leave it . . . alone.
Because every move Donald Trump has made this year has been politically tone-deaf. He could not make it look more like he is covering up something—something horrifying—if he hung a sign around his neck reading COVER-UP. He reeks of cover-up.
And in his neurosis, unsatisfied with having fooled some of the people some of the time, he has not merely ignored the option a real president would take—invite a full investigation—he has also waited weeks before trying the option a skilled traitor would take: to shut up and change the subject to, say, Meryl Streep.
And still, like a desperate child, he has to keep bringing the subject up, keep shouting those key words that he should never speak again—Russia, hacking, Assange, Putin—until he can presumably convince himself that he has convinced everyone everywhere that none of it is true, and until he can convince himself that everyone now agrees with him about how strong and powerful he is—and how he has now . . . won.
*
It is madness. And it will destroy him.
December 29: “I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of the computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on.”
But saying that “nobody knows exactly what’s going on” means . . . even he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on.
And he can’t let anybody believe that:
December 31: “I know a lot about hacking, and hacking is a very hard thing to prove, so it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so, they cannot be sure of this situation.”
Pool reporter: “What do you know that other people don’t know?”
Trump: “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
All we found out Tuesday was . . . his willingness to publicly advertise his own paranoia.
Tuesday, January 3, 8:14 p.m.: “The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!”
The delay was for a family emergency.
The delay was of an intelligence briefing, the likes of which he has reportedly been skipping for two months.
Wednesday, January 4, 7:22 a.m.: “Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’—why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!”
Trump has here cited—and given credibility to—Assange of WikiLeaks, about whose activities Trump said in December 2010, “I think it’s disgraceful, I think there should be like death penalty or something.”
Wednesday, January 4, 8:27 a.m.: “Somebody hacked the DNC but why did they not have ‘hacking defense’ like the RNC has and why have they not responded to the terrible things they did and said (like giving the questions to the debate to H). A total double standard! Media, as usual, gave them a pass.”
Trump has now justified international espionage against Americans, provided they are guilty of something—or provided he merely thinks they are guilty of something—especially if the espionage involves Julian Assange.
Thursday, January 5, 8:25 a.m.: “The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange—wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against ‘Intelligence’ when in fact I am a big fan!”
He cannot . . . leave it . . . alone!
He must not only erase what he himself has just done . . . He must also find a new scapegoat.
Thursday, January 5, 7:24 p.m.: “How did NBC get ‘an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?’ Who gave them this report and why? Politics!”
He asks about NBC, but does so in his standard way of scapegoating the media: politically, scornfully—not seriously, not officially, not ominously.
The next morning . . . somebody else does all that for him.
The tweet from WikiLeaks: “The Obama admin/CIA is illegally funneling TOP SECRET//COMINT information to NBC for political reasons before PEOTUS even gets to read it.”
That tweet was from 5:48 a.m. on January 6.
The next tweet is from 11:51 a.m. on January 6:
Trump: “I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it.”
He is now desperate enough to try change the subject from his connection to WikiLeaks that he doesn’t even seem to realize he has just . . . connected himself to WikiLeaks!
Perhaps somebody pointed that out to him, because next, by phone to The New York Times:
“China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names. How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt.”
Then comes the briefing on the hacking: a briefing he had avoided, on hacking he had dismissed, from an intelligence community he had undermined.
And after it, a very, very cleverly phrased written statement: “I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the Intelligence Community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation.
“While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines . . .”
Do you see what he did there? Merely through juxtaposition?
The first paragraph describes a meeting with the intelligence community and its work . . .
The second paragraph describes the conclusion that cyberattacks had no effect on the outcome of the election.
Composed that way, it seems as if the intelligence community had concluded the hacking had no effect.
But the conclusion . . . is Trump’s.
The intelligence community’s report doesn’t merely offer a different conclusion—it makes Trump’s written statement even more deceptive and malicious.
“We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.”
When that real version of what the report did not conclude was officially released, Trump looked like a liar.
So, that night, back to blaming the victim.
Friday, January 6, 10:53 p.m.: “Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place. The Republican National Committee had strong defense!”
But the intelligence briefing actually concluded the Republicans were also hacked by Russia. Russia just didn’t distribute its RNC data.
So: change the story again.
Saturday, January 7, 6:56 a.m.: “Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results. Voting machines not touched!”
He has just erased the subtle deception and misdirection in his Friday statement—and replaced it with a flat-out, transparent, childish lie.
He. Cannot. Leave It. Alone.
Saturday, January 7, 7:03 a.m.: “Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!”
And here Trump’s story spirals out of anything resembling his own control.
It has gone from Russian espionage to him invoking the hacking of voting machines to him disparaging half the country thirteen days before his inauguration . . . to:
Saturday, January 7, 10:02 a.m.: “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!”
In three hours and twenty-eight minutes, Trump has gone from espionage to hacking voting machines to calling tens of millions of Americans “fools” and “stupid” to a promise of cooperation with Russia that reads as if it were written in response to instructions from a blackmailer saying, “You better fix this, Trump. You better make us look good, Trump.”
*
And so the desperation escalates, still further.
Sunday, January 8, 1:56 p.m.: “Before I, or anyone, saw the classified and/or highly confidential hacking intelligence report, it was leaked out to @NBC News. So serious!”
The hacking itself? We ought to move on with our lives. It’s only being discussed because he beat the Democrats.
The possible leak about the hacking? “So serious.”
And then Meryl Streep changes the topic for him on Sunday night at the Golden Globes—and the last of his campaign managers changes it right back, because . . . he . . . cannot . . . leave it . . . alone.
“The fact is,” Conway said Monday, dismissing the need for a Russian hack investigation and suggesting that Trump may roll back both President Obama’s punishments of them and U.S. sanctions against Russia, “the Democrats became super-duper interested in this entire issue after the election did not go the way they, quote, wanted and the way they expected.”
Trump . . . himself, or his mouthpieces . . . cannot . . . leave it . . . alone.
Neither can he alter his personal connection to WikiLeaks.
Again, the Saturday morning tweet: “Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results . . .”
But even without the Russian element—the hacking . . . is WikiLeaks.
And as a review of his speeches by ThinkProgress.org showed, in the last thirty days of the campaign, Trump invoked WikiLeaks at least once . . . every day . . . for a total of at least . . . 164 times in one month.
October 10, 2016, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania: “WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks. And I said, ‘Write a couple of them down.’ Let’s see. During a speech, crooked Hillary Clinton . . . Oh, she’s crooked, folks. She’s crooked as a three-dollar bill. Okay, here’s one. Just came out . . .”
Trump is interrupted by a chant of “Lock her up” . . .
“‘Lock her up’ is right,” he says.
He brought up WikiLeaks in a debate.
He claimed that the WikiLeaks product meant Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be “allowed” to run for president.
He complained—in speeches and on Twitter, and it still sits there on his feed—that there wasn’t enough coverage of WikiLeaks.
October 12, 9:46 a.m.: “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”
But now Trump says . . . the hacking that produced WikiLeaks . . . had no effect on the election.
And of course, there’s no way an American leader could ever compromise himself and suddenly be at Russia’s beck and call.
September 6, 2013, 9:02 a.m.:
“I wonder how much our ‘leaders’ have promised, or given, Russia in order for them to behave and not make the U.S. look even worse?”
How do we resist this monster?
Just keep quoting him.
Just keep mentioning it.
Just keep remembering: he cannot . . . leave it . . . alone.
WikiLeaks is the hacking.
The hacking . . . is Russia . . .
And Trump . . . is . . . WikiLeaks.
Post date • THURSDAY, JANUARY 12
In the wake of last Friday’s terrorist attack, by another American against Americans at an American airport. At least five dead. At least six wounded. Guns. Gun terrorism.
And a reminder of all the things getting worse in this country that Trump will not even think of, let alone act against, in defense of the American people.
His question would not be: How on earth have we let our country deteriorate to the point that the last three high-profile mass public shootings in this country—San Bernardino, the Orlando nightclub, the Fort Lauderdale airport—have been accomplished with legal weapons, with legal transportation of those weapons, with impunity?
His question would not be: How do we have a system by which anybody—international terrorist or nondenominational psychotic—who wants to kill a lot of people at an airport can have the airline essentially deliver the guns and the ammunition to them as if they were ordering a pizza?
His first question would be—in office, his first question will be—Is it Muslims?
His second question would be—in office, his second question will be—How can he exploit it to increase his power?
His last question would be—in office, his last question will be—How can we make sure this latest nightmare doesn’t infringe upon the holy Second Amendment?
*
The Constitution, with all the amendments, is a patriotic 7,676 words long. 76-76. Two of its clauses mention an exact value in cash and merchandise. And the word “money” appears six times in the Constitution. And “coin” five times. There are ten references to taxes. Eight times you read “duty” or “duties.” The word “debt” appears seven times. Four uses of the word “compensation.” Two “imports.” Two “exports.”
And the rest of it, with the non-ownership parts stripped away—the rest of the United States Constitution and its amendments reads: Profit, paid, Treasury, Emoluments, Revenue, Imposts, Excises, Imposts, Excises, credit, Commerce, Bankruptcies, Securities, Exclusive Right, purchased, Capitation, Commerce, Revenue, Treasury, Appropriations, Receipts, Expenditures, Profit, Emolument, Credit, gold, silver.
Tender, Payment, Imposts, Imposts, Treasury, Profit, Emolument, Bribery, Lands, Grants, Forfeiture, fines, equity, payment, pensions, bounties, pay, obligation, obligations, incomes, manufacture, sale, pay, value, owner, Property, property . . . Private property.
*
Our Constitution . . . is a property document.
Our Constitution is about ownership. Those references just to dollars, money, coin, taxes, duties, debt, compensation, and other ownership? One hundred three of them, all told. In the Constitution, the words “vote,” “votes,” and “voting” appear only . . . thirty-seven times. The words “right” and “rights” . . . fifteen times.
Money and ownership: 103 times.
Our Constitution is, first and foremost, a property contract. What the government can own and must own and pay for; what the people can own and must own and pay for.
*
It is noble, and most of it has held up flawlessly since 1787, and in some places it is sublime. But it does not read like the Declaration of Independence. Its closest relative is the contract you sign when you buy a car.
So isn’t it funny that in the Second Amendment, the second of all of them ever passed, the one about guns, it doesn’t say anything . . . about owning guns?
Dollars, money, coin, taxes, duties, debt, compensation, import, export, pay, value, owner, Property, property, Private property. A Constitution with as much fine print as a mortgage—a Constitution that mentions ten dollars, and twenty dollars—and yet there isn’t one of those ownership or property or value words in the part about guns.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Which one of those words means “own”?
None of them.
Which words in the part stating that the Second Amendment is about the well-regulated militia in a free state—are unclear?
None of them.
The Second Amendment is there to keep state militias legal.
It does this by keeping legal the rights of private citizens to bear arms. For use in a militia. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to your state National Guard. Doesn’t say a thing about prohibiting gun control.
The Second Amendment is gun control. It may say you can bear one. It may even say you can keep one, in your own home—if you’re using it as part of a well-regulated militia. But it does not say you can own one, and if you don’t own that gun you’re keeping and bearing, necessarily somebody else does own it, and that somebody has got to be the government, and therefore the Constitution starts with the idea that the government controls the guns. All the guns.
And, by the way, the “arms” in the Second Amendment? Those are muskets. Not repeating rifles. Not machine guns. Not automatic killing devices. Saying that the Founding Fathers wanted to protect your right to own an assault rifle is as stupid as saying that they wanted to protect your right to own nuclear weapons.
And we have a history of government gun control that stretches back to the nineteenth century, back to when the musket began the process of evolving into an Uzi. The so-called Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881—the epitome of the Wild West—was about . . . gun control. To prevent gun terrorism, it was illegal to carry a gun in Tombstone. And the Clantons and the McLaurys were ignoring gun control, and the town marshals, the Earp brothers, were enforcing it.
*
But of course, what does that matter?
A man elected president dog-whistled throughout his campaign to the “Second Amendment people.” He claims to carry a gun at all times. He is fighting to keep a private bodyguard instead of relying on the Secret Service.
His son, as reported last weekend in The Washington Post, is advocating for legislation to end the nine-month waiting period . . . for silencers on guns and rifles.
Oh, and the Second Amendment? This is settled law. The Supreme Court ruled in the Heller case, in 2008, that it doesn’t matter if the words used are “keep and bear Arms” rather than “keep and own Arms” or “own and bear Arms.”
Supreme Court!
“The Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being . . . While some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and surrender to the false god of judicial supremacy, I refuse to light a match to our Constitution. We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat.”
Former Arkansas governor and frequent presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee wrote that.
“We’ve had too many examples in recent years of courts and judges legislating. They’re not interpreting what the law says and whether someone has violated it or not. In too many instances, they have been actually legislating by legal decree what they think the law should be, and that I don’t go for.”
Speaking? The fortieth president of the United States, Ronald Reagan.
They said it. I didn’t.
*
Oh, and one more quote about the Supreme Court and the Second Amendment, this one from Parade magazine in January 1990:
“The Gun Lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies—the militia—would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.”
The writer added, “The Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee the right to have firearms at all.”
Who wrote that?
Warren Burger, chief justice of the United States from 1969 until 1986. Appointed by Richard Nixon. Believed that homosexual behavior could be prohibited by law. Thought that sending a man to prison for life for writing a bad hundred-dollar check was just fine. Believed in a strict constructionist reading of the Constitution.
“The Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee the right to have firearms at all,” he said.
*
The excuses are: hunting, protection against governmental tyranny, and the rights of responsible gun owners.
Bluntly, if you need thirteen guns, or an automatic weapon of some kind, to kill any animal smaller than a kraken, you’re no good at hunting. Take up another pastime.
And about protection against governmental tyranny. Ask the interned Japanese Americans of World War II how well that worked.
And “responsible gun owners.” I’m sorry for them. But at this point, too many gun terrorists have committed too many gun massacres in this country. And these figures do not include the nearly 10 percent of all the presidents in our history who have been assassinated with guns, or the fifth who was wounded, or the sixth who was wounded while running for reelection, or seven others who survived significant assassination attempts—by guns. That’s thirteen out of forty-four presidents. Nearly a third of them.
The BBC noted that on Christmas Day of 2015, we had twenty-seven non-suicide gun deaths in this country. For the entire year of 2015, England had . . . twenty-four.
“Responsible gun ownership?” That ship sailed long ago.
*
And Trump will, actively or passively, call it back to port.
To paraphrase Professor Laurens P. Hickok, of Western Reserve College, speaking of slavery a century and a half ago: The question now before the American citizens is no longer, alone, “Can the schools and public places be made free of the risk of gun massacres?” but “Are we free, or are we slaves under gun mob law?”
Mob law—in which the man seizing the power of the government dog-whistles to that mob, “Remember to bring your guns.”
Or have the airline ship them for you.
Post date • TUESDAY, JANUARY 17
“Thank you, Mr. President-elect. Can you stand here today, once and for all, and say that no one connected to you or your campaign had any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign?”
The essential question.
The world-turning question.
The impeachment question.
And then the reporter . . . kept talking. “And if you do indeed believe that Russia was behind the hacking, what is your message to Vladimir Putin right now?”
And the ball game was over.
Trump got to filibuster for 323 words about how Russia would respect America when he’s “leading” and Hillary’s reset button and the legal folder props and more of the poisoned word salad constantly being spun, tableside, in that addled mind of his.
And he never answered the question.
And his first news conference in six months . . . ended.
*
If the answer is yes, even in the slightest degree, his presidency is over before it has begun, although it will linger indefinitely as the Republicans continue to put power ahead of country or democracy or even independence as a nation.
And since Trump chose not to say whether anyone connected to him or his campaign had—as implied in the independent dossier—any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign . . . we will have to answer it for him, by circumstantial evidence.
Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Fired in 2014. Within months he was being paid to appear on a Kremlin-sponsored television network, and the next year he was paid to appear at the network’s gala in Moscow and to sit next to . . . Vladimir Putin.
The New York Times reports that Flynn spoke to Russia’s ambassador to this country this past December 28, the day before this country’s sanctions against Russia for its hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
The Washington Post says Flynn and the ambassador spoke “several times” on the twenty-ninth.
The international news agency Reuters says they spoke five times.
There is a law in this country against individuals—even individuals who are soon to be part of a government—contradicting U.S. government foreign policy or dealing directly with enemy nations, and all we know about these calls is the Trump Gang’s claim that Flynn was setting up another phone call for Trump with Vladimir Putin, and unfortunately the Trump Gang has been handing out lies in carload lots.
In December, three veteran intelligence professionals resigned from the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, at Cambridge University in England, amid “concerns” that the seminar was funded, through intermediaries, by the Kremlin. One of its past speakers was . . . Michael Flynn.
Also that month, Bloomberg News reported that Flynn had partnered with a technology company, one of whose chiefs was “once convicted of trying to sell stolen biotech material to the Russian KGB espionage agency.”
And the head of Austria’s far-right “Freedom Party”—founded in the 1950s by former Nazis—signed what he has described as a “cooperation agreement” . . . with Vladimir Putin’s political party. The Austrian said that a few weeks earlier he had met with Michael Flynn in New York.
*
And then there’s Flynn’s boss.
Separating the United States and Germany has been an avowed policy—perhaps the foremost foreign policy—of Russia since 1945.
In a joint interview with The Times of London and the German newspaper Bild over the weekend, Trump called NATO obsolete and said that German chancellor Angela Merkel had made a catastrophic mistake by letting in “illegals,” and he threatened Germany with huge tariffs.
Meanwhile, a variety of sources report that the Israelis might not share intelligence with the Trump administration, after American intelligence said, in essence: Don’t give them anything you don’t want to see end up in the hands of Iran, via the Kremlin.
After the revelation of the Trump dossier last week, BuzzFeed News quoted two Israeli intelligence officers saying that their nation and at least one European country are separately investigating Trump’s ties to—or compromised vulnerability to—Russia.
But—wait—you’re not sure about BuzzFeed’s reporting now, right?
Because they published the full Trump dossier, mistakes and false leads included, last week?
A question: If that dossier had been about Bill Clinton—lurid details and all—and Donald Trump had a copy of it, and Trump had read it aloud at his campaign rallies—who would have complained about all the networks televising those rallies live?
What news organizations refused to publish or broadcast Trump’s wildest accusations, or the material he read from WikiLeaks? Who waited until it could prove they were all true?
Correct—none.
In our new world in which reporters seek facts and let the truth fall where it may, BuzzFeed was entirely right to publish the dossier.
*
Besides which, the key to the dossier is not the perversions and the pee jokes.
It’s the money.
To quote the impeccable BBC reporter Paul Wood:
“Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was—allegedly—a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.”
This eventually led the Department of Justice to get a warrant from the FISA Court, last October.
“They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks. . . .
“Ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony offence.
“A lawyer—outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case—told me that three of Mr Trump’s associates were the subject of the inquiry. ‘But it’s clear this is about Trump,’ he said.”
And Trump still defends Russia, or lumps it in with China, or just ignores the question.
*
There is a hawkish, Blue Dog Democrat, seven-term former California congresswoman, and ex–undersecretary of state named Ellen Tauscher. Seven years ago, she negotiated the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians. On January 7, she summed this up on Twitter: “PEOTUS is either traitorously ignoring Russia hacks and provocations or simply naive and weak Com.-in Chief to be.”
So, Mr. Trump, let us ask you once again.
Can you stand here today, once and for all, and say that no one connected to you or your campaign had any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign?
And if you again choose not to answer . . .
Perhaps you should begin to formulate your answer . . . for the impeachment trial. Or the one for espionage.
Post date • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18
Trump’s Banana Republicans have proposed that White House press briefings be moved out of the presidential mansion and held “next door” at the Old Executive Office Building, and why should you care for one damned minute?
Reince Priebus says it’s a great thing, because the result would be “about quadrupling the amount of reporters that can cover the White House,” and certainly that sounds like a wonderful intensification of the bright, shining light of a democratic free press on the operation of the commander in chief and his staff.
The more the better, right?
Just the way it works in Russia.
A giant crowd of reporters, screaming for the leader’s attention, making signs indicating what organization they belong to, and even signs and props indicating what questions they intend to ask . . .
Some of them showing exactly the kind of objectivity and respectful skepticism a free press is supposed to bring to the coverage of government at its highest levels, and, yes, she’s a self-described journalist at a Putin news conference holding a picture of Putin ripping off his shirt to indicate that he’s actually Superman.
Just a few steps removed from the contestants trying to get emcee Monty Hall’s attention during a taping of the old game show Let’s Make a Deal.
Though I would never want to insult anybody in a comparison among Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Monty Hall.
I have respect for Monty Hall.
*
Look, I don’t know the last time anything at a White House news conference, or anything done by a White House correspondent, actually contributed anything measurable to the coverage of a president—not since Sam Donaldson used to make news by bellowing questions at Ronald Reagan and Reagan would condemn himself by refusing to answer.
I also think that if traditional journalism contributes in any way to the prevention of dictatorship here, it will be by grunt work: fact-checking the White House news conferences and revealing legislation and departmental orders and checking legalities and confronting an administration’s lies with facts. The next Woodward and Bernstein will get there not at the news conferences but through their skill at filing Freedom of Information Act requests.
But the idea of “quadrupling the amount of reporters that can cover the White House” is a Trojan horse with a lot of Trojans in it.
First, there is the Putin-like spectacle. The bigger the room, the more room for staffers and hangers-on and, for want of a better term, Trump plants.
Trump gave this stunt away at last week’s news conference. He packed the place with people applauding for him, and they have as much right to be at a presidential news conference as would people booing him, and that amount of people is: none.
Quadruple the number of so-called reporters at the news conferences and you have suddenly created another stop on the Trump perpetual campaign rally tour.
Quadruple the number of so-called reporters at the news conferences and you suddenly make it easier to ignore the reporters with actual questions—as opposed to the ones carrying signs showing Trump wearing a Superman shirt.
Quadruple the number of so-called reporters at the news conferences and you suddenly change from difficult to impossible any coordinated action to prevent Trump repeating the stunt he used in New York last week: singling out and attacking one reporter the way the bully picks one kid out of the crowd to beat up while the others say, “Thank goodness it wasn’t me,” and continue to participate in the farce.
The press corps should’ve walked out, then and there—but all that would’ve happened then would have been more questions from Trump staffers.
Quadruple the number of so-called reporters at the news conferences and you lose any sense of who is asking the questions and what their motivations are. You may abhor Fox News as Fox News viewers abhor me, but you don’t have any doubts as to why we are asking what we are asking.
And you don’t have any doubts about whether or not . . . we have been planted there.
*
It is, in retrospect, so absurd as to be almost unbelievable, and almost forgotten.
His name was Jeff Gannon—or so he said—and he represented something called Talon News, and on February 28, 2003, the Bush White House press office began issuing him day passes to its news conferences.
But then, on January 26, 2005, President Bush held his own news conference, and there was Gannon of Talon News, asking him about Senate Democratic leaders: “How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”
Within two weeks the whole stunt had collapsed.
“Jeff Gannon” was actually James Guckert, and the closest thing he’d come to journalism before he began asking friendly questions at the White House was having his naked pictures appear on a series of gay escort websites.
Gannon shuttered his website. The White House never gave him another press credential. His “Talon News” organization tracked back to the owner of the website GOPUSA, and then the Talon site was shuttered. It was also later revealed, but never explained, how Gannon/Guckert had learned of an internal government memo about the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Just as this was playing out, federal records were revealed showing that the Bush administration had paid a man named Armstrong Williams $240,000. Williams had a syndicated newspaper column, and in exchange for the money, he was supposed to write positive articles about Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program—and to try to convince other African American journalists to do the same.
*
The Bush administration’s attempt at media manipulation—including literally buying good coverage—was amateurish compared with what we can expect from Trump and his White House chief strategist, former campaign boss and head of the Breitbart Propaganda site, Steve Bannon.
Why was it that the Gannon and Williams scams didn’t work?
They didn’t work because they were too easy to spot in a crowd.
Solution: make the crowd bigger.
Move the White House press briefings next door and, as Reince Priebus says, you can quadruple “the amount of reporters that can cover the White House.”
So what if you don’t know if they’re being paid to ask softball questions or to cheer, or just to serve as more useful idiots at a Trump rally? It’s only the end of the First Amendment.
*
Oh, and by the way, the guy the Bushies paid for positive newspaper columns, Armstrong Williams? He’s still around. He works with a Dr. Ben Carson, and when that nominee for secretary of housing endorsed Trump in March 2016, the endorsement was confirmed by . . . Armstrong Williams.
Post date • THURSDAY, JANUARY 19
Boycott the inauguration.
It’s very simple.
Don’t go, don’t watch, don’t tweet, don’t respond, don’t spend money on it, don’t spend one brain cell on it.
Depend upon this: if the Bible leaps from his touch or the authorities arrest him for violating the Logan Act, you’ll hear about it. I’m headed for Los Angeles to be on Bill Maher’s show inauguration night—we’ll give you the info.
And if you’re an elected Democratic official, under no circumstances attend—I don’t want to hear about you working with him, unless you’re working with him to move to the Caymans. I want to hear about your plans to impeach him or force him to resign.
An exception is offered to President Obama, though later, sir, you will regret having had anything to do with this man.
“I believe in forgiveness,” Congressman John Lewis said. “I believe in trying to work with people. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be very difficult: I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president.
“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. I don’t plan to attend the inauguration. It will be the first one that I’ll miss since I’ve been in Congress.
“You cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong.
“I think there was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians and others to help him get elected. That’s not right, that’s not fair. That’s not the open democratic process.”
Correct.
“To John Lewis, one of my heroes,” wrote Nebraska senator Ben Sasse. “Please come to the Inauguration. It isn’t about a man. It is a celebration of peaceful transfer of power.”
Bullshit.
If you think, Senator, that handing over this country to the puppet of Vladimir Putin should be celebrated and should be a peaceful transfer of power, not only are you not loyal to this country, but you know nothing . . . about John Lewis.
If you think, Senator, that we will let you or anybody else normalize the transfer of power to a racist, psychotic Russian plant, perhaps you should look again at how heroes like John Lewis responded the last time the white supremacists of this country insisted that this was about power and that we must all accept its use—and its misuse—“peacefully.”
“John Lewis once did very noble things,” tweeted the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review, “but that shouldn’t give him a pass for poor judgment now.”
Irony. Poor judgment. A Wall Street Journal idiot invokes the language of apartheid. John Lewis—“we shouldn’t give him a pass.”
And of course:
“Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk—no action or results. Sad!”
That’s right: a hero who in the sixties literally put his skull where his mouth was, attacked by a clown who on a daily basis puts his foot where his mouth is.
If you ever needed evidence that Trump—not just some of his followers, not just some of his nominees—evidence that Trump was himself personally, always, and unchangeably racist and in tune with true white supremacy—he just confessed to it.
To racist scum like Trump, because Lewis is African American, his district must be in horrible shape and falling apart. In fact, his district contains Georgia Tech, Emory University, the busiest airport in the world, the Centers for Disease Control, and parts of the wealthy, 80-percent-white suburb of Buckhead, which likes to style itself as Beverly Hills East.
What a stupid, weak man Trump really is.
Bluntly, these tweets were written by a pig.
Boycott this pig’s inauguration.
*
Actually . . . that’s not fair.
Pigs are supposedly as intelligent as three-year-olds.
*
Lost in all this is that the true operative part of John Lewis’s remarks is not his words about the Russian Conspiracy.
The Russian Conspiracy is obvious to everybody from this nation’s true patriotic conservatives and Republicans to this nation’s intelligence infrastructure to everybody but this crazy man Trump and his gullible supporters, even the smarter ones who are coming out of their trance and, according to the polls, beginning to understand that he has already fleeced them.
But that’s not the key right this minute.
Nor is the key what Congressman Lewis said about Trump’s illegitimacy. He is an illegitimate president; his name will someday appear with an asterisk, or it will be wiped from our history altogether.
No. This sentence is the key.
“You cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong.”
There’s your rule.
Thank you again, John Lewis.
You do not open your door to the man, the thought, the act . . . that you know is wrong.
And you don’t go to his home, to his speech, to his parade.
Happily, this message is getting across.
See this?
This is the Gallup poll on how Americans of all shapes, sizes, and parties are reacting to how Trump is handling the transition. And congratulations, Russia, he’s now officially in the red . . . 51 percent disapproval, up from 48 percent disapproval the month before.
At this time in 2009, Obama—some of whose opponents believed he was the Antichrist—was at a disapproval of . . . 12 percent.
And Trump got to majority disapproval because of . . . the so-called independents who put us into this nightmare in the first place.
In December, 46 percent of independents approved his handling of the transition.
Now? 33 percent.
A quarter of his support among independents, gone in a month.
They have been seeing something with new eyes that the rest of us either concluded months or years ago or were standing too close to see.
They looked at the snot-nosed punk at the news conference, with the props, and the terrified woman from the winner of the Russian Law Firm of the Year award . . .
And they looked at those gratuitous, stupid, raving tweets about John Lewis on the weekend before Martin Luther King Day.
And maybe they saw a full-fledged racist, and maybe they didn’t . . .
And maybe they saw a psychopath, and maybe they didn’t.
And maybe they saw a Russian mole, and maybe they didn’t.
But you know what they didn’t see?
They didn’t see . . . a president.
*
Boycott the inauguration.
Thank you.
Incidentally, when you come up here, you actually hear crickets. I just wanted to mention that before we start.
It is an honor to be here, it is an honor to see many old friends and to meet many new ones.
And now that my affable remarks are over, let me get down to the raw meat.
Let me begin with the worst-case scenario—or one of them, in any event. Imagine it is not January 19, 2017, but instead January 19, 2018. You and I are here, in these same circumstances, right here, and I repeat to you then what I am going to say to you now.
And as I finish, or earlier, or even as I begin, I am arrested. Or I am detained. Or I am put on a watch list. Or I am audited. Or I am denounced somewhere. Or I am who knows what happens to me. One year—and that is just an estimate; your punishment may vary. It could be two years from now, it could be two months from now, it could be tomorrow afternoon after the inauguration. And of course—if and when it happens—it will not be me alone. For the act of listening to me, you could be arrested. Or detained. Or who knows what.
I see some concern on some faces. “Political science fiction.” “Hyperbole.” “A paranoid dystopian view of January 19, 2018?” “A work of fiction.” If, one year ago tonight, we had been here on January 19, 2016, and I had told you that in one year’s time, a deranged, infantile, imbecilic, paranoid, sexist, racist, militaristic, fascist, perverted, vulgar, stupid, paper-thin-skinned man-baby would not merely be nominated for president by a major political party, in this country, but would swamp all of his rivals, including the brother and son of one former president, and if I then told you that, after unleashing all that is worst in America, he would be able to conjure the perfect electoral storm in the Electoral College to defeat, in the election, the wife of another president, who won 2,900,000 more popular votes than he did. And if I told you, further, that in one year’s time, all we would be left asking here was not whether or not the Russians had tampered with our sacred election, but how much they had tampered with it—would you have called that political science fiction? Because I would have. And I like to think I’m smarter than I have turned out to have been on this.
So it’s important—it’s not happy, but it’s important—to remember that we need to not assume that the nightmare ends in some way when Donald John Trump puts his hand on the Bible tomorrow and John Roberts says, “Do you solemnly swear that you will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and—presuming the Bible does not leap from his hand or spontaneously combust—Trump replies to this call of our history and our democracy by answering, “Whatevah.” This is not the last scene of The Manchurian Candidate, nor Seven Days in May, nor It Can’t Happen Here. There are countless possible nightmare scenarios ahead of all of us. We have seen some of them before, the last time we let the antiquated math of the Founders elect a Republican president in defiance of the will of the people.
We have seen a terrorist act and flames and collapses and ashes and pyres, and the immediate exploitation of that act by Republicans who demanded that we should do what they called “patriotic bipartisanship,” which was in fact mono-partisanship, in which they were to make all the decisions and our role was to acquiesce to them or be branded disloyal. We know what they will do if the opportunity presents itself again. And we know, from a year of his lies and calumnies and gaslighting, and Orwell-grade perversions of light into dark and fiction into fact, that they are all now practiced and prepared and ready to create an opportunity if none presents itself—a phony threat that requires a curtailment of liberties. Some plot “he and he alone” could stop. And we must be prepared to call such a stunt exactly what it is, and to be patriots, and to wrap ourselves in the flag that we love, and shout from the hills why what has happened to this country—two months from now, six months from now, two years from now—why that has happened because there is a Donald John Trump.
And we know that this time they have tilted the playing field against us in advance in these areas: they have spent eight years delegitimizing a president, so that we might look foolish delegitimizing an actual illegitimate president. They have spent the length of a campaign refusing to promise to recognize a defeat, on the premise that it could have been obtained only by chicanery and dishonesty, so that we might look foolish refusing to honor a defeat that was actually obtained by actual chicanery and dishonesty. They have spent month after month insisting that the election, the media, the opinion polls, and now the polls about the transition are rigged and fixed, so that we might look foolish insisting that an election, the media, and the opinion polls are actually rigged and fixed. And we know that now we will and must play by rules that sicken us, against which our souls cry out. But we must. Our moral force, our moral high ground, our patriotic self-defense is simple. We did not seek any of these rules. We did not seek this battle. We did not seek this treachery. The rules, the battle, the treachery—are Trump’s. We will fight him on his terms. And we will defeat him. And we will restore democracy.
And we will defeat Trump’s Russian masters. Some of us have been warning since the beginning of the presidential campaign that Trump’s connection and the connection of those around him to a dictator who has had the foresight to replace expensive, very complicated human war with the far more efficient cyberwar—invasion by remote control—we have noted that Trump’s connection was not mere admiration, nor the perverted envy of a sick American monster gazing at a sick Russian monster. And we were right. The Russians did this. All we need to learn, and we will learn it, is how much they did. How many acts of war they directed against this country. How much they had on Trump. How much they expect him to deliver. How many of the mainstream Republicans will remain loyal not to the Constitution of the United States but to Vladimir Goddamned Putin!
*
I wish to quote three men and only three men tonight: Sidney A. Chayefsky, John Lewis, and, first, Winston Churchill. Churchill, speaking after what was, in his time, in his country, in his context, his Trump election. We know it in history as Munich. And from the wilderness of his Parliament, with a coalition government cheering itself deafeningly for having averted war, with the formal leadership of his nation shunning him and marginalizing him and giggling at him, when everybody roared how well they had done, Churchill began, in almost a whisper.
“Our loyal, brave people,” Churchill said, “should know that we have sustained a defeat, without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road. . . . They should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history”—and here I will briefly update Churchill’s words, if I may make that offense—“when the whole equilibrium of the free world has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the American democracy: Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.
“And don’t suppose,” Churchill said, “that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us, year by year, unless, by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”
Churchill.
*
Tonight, in our country, which we all love in words and in ways that we cannot express—tonight is the end of the “olden time,” in comparison to what Churchill said in 1938. Tonight is the night before the disaster. Tonight is the night that we will look back at, with some longing and some nostalgia. Tonight is the night to which the whole of our beings, and all of our priorities, and all of our efforts must now be focused, on getting our country back. Democracy, as we have known it, with the rules by which we have played, ends at noon. The fight—our fight—begins one second later.
*
And it begins—as you will hear this weekend—on a series of fronts.
The fight can begin in the media. You, everybody here, can confront anybody—reporter, anchor, spokesman, shill—who tries to publicly characterize all this as just some sort of political swing, as if it was not the seizure of power by the worst possible person to be found to serve as president, as if that person had not appointed the worst possible candidate to run each agency, as if Betsy DeVos was just some sort of an alternative to traditional education, when she is really an alternative to traditional education in the same way that stupidity is an alternative to traditional education. This weekend will show you ways to make this clear to the media, and it will introduce you to people whose job it will be to shine a constant, daily light on every broken promise, every shady nominee, every awful policy—and everything you can do to help directly.
The fight can also begin in the courts. Trump will come as close to privatizing the presidency as anybody in history, before sunset tomorrow, and whether he believes it or not, much of what he will try to do is actually illegal, and there are still laws, and this weekend will show you ways to pursue him and to have at the head of this fight—a cliché—Justice with her Shining Sword.
Or you can look at it more practically. Trump is coming for your money. You might as well spend some of it to prevent him taking all of your money.
And the fight certainly begins with a state of mind.
More than nine years ago, I ran into John Kerry in line to pick up World Series tickets at Fenway Park, in Boston. And as we came past each other, he congratulated me and he said thanks to me, and I said, “You’re welcome—for what, by the way?” He said, “It was you who decided to run headfirst into the brick wall of the Bush administration. You said the terror color-code system was uncomfortably in sync with Bush’s political needs. And then you said, ‘I think they may be doing this,’ just enough of that wall fell down, and the rest of us could storm through and start talking about it, and that’s what turned around the 2006 midterms.” And I said, “I doubt it, but I will defer to you, Senator.” So never think, no matter what has happened in the last few months, that you individually don’t matter. Or that an opportunity for you to prevail will not arise. Or that your state of mind does not matter. Or that even an act of symbolism by you doesn’t matter.
To that point: John Lewis. I will contend that something he did on January 13, 2017, was just as important, or nearly so, and certainly just as dangerous, and will in the end prove just as saving and redemptive as was his agony on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As you know, Congressman Lewis was asked if he planned to try to forge a relationship with Trump. And he said: “I believe in forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be very difficult: I don’t see the president-elect as a legitimate president. I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected, and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. I don’t plan to attend the inauguration. You cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong.”
The questioner was stunned. “That’s going to send a big message,” my friend Chuck Todd said, “to a lot of people in this country that you don’t believe he’s a legitimate president.”
And John Lewis—as always—would not back down, would not equivocate, would not protect himself. “I think it was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians and others to help him get elected. That’s not right, that’s not fair. That’s not the open democratic process.” And John Lewis, in thirty seconds, moved “legitimacy” center stage. In the week since he said that, more than sixty elected Democrats have followed him. It should have been all of them. John Lewis leads us yet again—and there is the organizing principle of resistance.
It is simple: As hard as it may be to believe and to put into proper historical context, and just because none of us have seen it before, does not mean it cannot be true. It is simple: this is not a legitimate president. This was a conspiracy involving, to a great or small degree, another country! This is not the open democratic process. And you, as John Lewis said perfectly, cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong.
Every day, we bring up Russia.
Every day, we shout Russia!
Every day, we SCREAM Russia!
Never do we speak this man’s name without invoking what Churchill called the defeat without a war. Never do we criticize or discuss or analyze his actions—or those of his White House, filled with the crew of a pirate ship—without reminding everyone that the Russians put him there and that the Republicans who enable him to stay there are passively collaborating with a foreign enemy of the United States of America. At the other end of the extreme in terms of simplicity versus complexity: Never, ever do we refer to Donald Trump as “President.” He is “Trump.” Certainly that is sufficient, and accurate. And it is also easier for when it is time for us to erase his name from history. For now—we will erase what’s left of his legitimacy. “I don’t see the president-elect as a legitimate president,” John Lewis said. “You cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong,” John Lewis said. Wise words stand the test of time, and the test of struggle, and these words from John Lewis are wise.
This weekend will be devoted to many means, practical and philosophical, with which we can fight this nightmare, on the terms the Republicans and their coalition partners the American fascists and the neo-Nazis have chosen. And to consider the first of the Republican hammers, which we can grab from their hands and which we can then use to chase them to hell, this weekend will be devoted to many means, practical and philosophical, with which we can resist Trump, reproach Trump, and ultimately “repeal and replace” Trump. Already we see the outlines of this: the boycott against the Breitbart advertisers was a spectacular success. It can easily be repeated, and it’s fun for the entire family.
There are other media inroads to make: my GQ series just crossed 100 million views. A network—I don’t know if this is a pipe dream of mine—that is largely liberal in its orientation, that I could speak to you from every night, would be a nice thing to have, but I don’t know if we could ever see that. Why does it sound so vaguely familiar? But practically, again, with or without networks, we now know we are under no obligation to be nice, or cooperative, or Vichy, or bipartisan—that we can fight just as dirty and just as viciously, and we will beat them at their own game, because, as I have observed many times in my commentaries, democracy has survived not so much through the efforts of those who would protect it, as because of the stupidity of those who would destroy it—and this time the side that would destroy it includes Rudy Giuliani. We know the 2018 midterms must be fought on a wedge issue: “You, Congressman Rohrabacher; you, Congressman Chaffetz; you, Congressman Ryan—do you believe in democracy, or do you support Russia and Generalissimo Francisco Trump?” (You can tone it down as the circumstances warrant, district by district.)
We also know those midterms are of an importance that cannot be overstated, because while the Republicans may realize, sooner or later, maybe by this time tomorrow night, that they themselves may have to impeach Trump, or more likely use the Twenty-fifth Amendment on him because he’s crazy, we must take no chances—we must have a Democratic Congress to impeach him two years from tonight. And we know that in the interim we must adopt the fighting style of Muhammad Ali. Yes, they will hit us. Yes, it will hurt. It has already begun to hurt. But each time they come in to land a blow—hit them back. As Richard Pryor phrased it, voicing Ali’s inner dialogue during a fight, “Boom—and there you go, you take that with you.” And we know that, yes, that means that Trump, the man-baby, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man whose psychosis can be inflamed by trolling him on Twitter, must hear the words and phrases weak, soft, lost the popular vote, no mandate, Russia, Putin, Assange, disloyal, treachery, videotape every time he turns around. And we know that, yes, that means we shall actually have to learn from what we watched them do to Barack Obama.
So never again should Trump, or this Russian operative guy of his, Michael Flynn, or the native of the country of Exxon, Mr. Tillerson, or Kellyanne Con Job, or any of them—never again will they get to speak in public without somebody rising and yelling, not necessarily rudely, to interrupt them, although you can do that if you want, but somebody rising somewhere when they say these things and respond with every fiber in their being—before, during, or after they speak—“You lie!” And yes, we know that nothing has ever changed for the good in the history of man without men and women rising up and saying—whether they whisper or yell—but starting by saying “This is wrong!”
However: behind all of this, behind every strategy, behind every plan made this weekend, behind everything we can do and everything we must do—to restore our bloodied democracy, there must be one emotion with which our side of the political pendulum is seldom associated. This emotion must now in some ways become our animating principle. And about that animating principle (and penultimately in my remarks), having already quoted Churchill and Lewis, I want to now quote—again with revisions, permissible I hope—Sidney Chayefsky. You may know him by his nickname, “Paddy,” or you may know the name of the character he wrote for the movie Network, a Mr. Beale:
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a coup d’etat. Everybody’s out of hope or scared of losing their freedom.
Foreign governments buy influence at the White House, businesses are terrified of a Twitter account, shopkeepers keep a Klan hood under the counter, white supremacists are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do—and there’s no end to it! We know Trump is unfit to pass a sanity test and his enablers are unfit to lead. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen attacks on Obamacare and sixty-three racist bills, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
We all know things are bad—worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere has gone crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my steady income and my sanctuary cities and my warm Obama memories and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.” Well, I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I want you to protest. I want you to write. I want you to call a Republican congressman, because we all know exactly what you should say to him. I know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the corporate graft in the street. And I know that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say: “I’m an American citizen, goddammit! My! Democracy! Has! Value!”
So . . .
The rest of it—about going to the window, opening it, and sticking your head out and yelling—the rest of it you know. But to keep you motivated, and to keep you mad, and to keep you unwilling to take it anymore, as Howard Beale said, let me close by noting one overarching fact that has occasionally gotten lost since November 8, and that is the essence of everything, to my mind. Even with this nightmare that comes at sunrise. And even with the temporary end of much of our democratic experience in this country. Even with a gold dollar sign spray-painted on every American flag and spit on the grave of every patriot. Even with the confluence of Comey and the Russians and the lies and the greatest grifter in the history of this country. Even with the worst possible outcome that all that could produce. Even with the greatest possible grief. No matter what we have to face. No matter what we have to do. No matter how long the trip back is from tomorrow. Remember—and take strength from—and remind all those who forget—and remind all those who deny—and remind all those who lie—remember one thing.
We are the majority!
Post date • MONDAY, JANUARY 23
It’s time for Donald Trump to resign as president.
Admittedly, it’s been an interesting couple of days.
But for any patriotic American capable of adding two and two and not getting one and a half million, this is enough.
If you voted for Trump or you support him now or are saying, “Give him a chance”—again, I’m not going to yell at you or call you names. I’m not going to try to argue policies. I’m not going to debate the size of his crowds, nor your conclusions about Saturday’s marches. In fact, I’m going to compliment you on your generosity toward him, and the sincerity of your belief in his promises, and your natural and commendable desire to see him—and thus our country—succeed.
But this man is not of sound mind.
In office, faster and more frighteningly than at any point in the campaign—over the span of just a long weekend, really—Trump has proved that not only will he lie to America about anything big or small, but that, just as important, he will lie to himself about anything big or small. And more troubling yet, he will compel men weaker even than himself to lie on his behalf about anything big or small.
And worst of all, the lies will convince some people, and they will convince one especially dangerous person in particular: himself.
Because what Trump does not believe cannot be true.
And this way lies madness, and every evil imaginable, including the end of this country, in a literal sense—and perhaps the end of civilization, because, like somebody strung out on drugs or somebody living in a complete dreamlike state caused by profound, pulsating narcissism, he will not believe that the outcome of any of his actions could be failure or disaster or even something that could be harmful to himself.
A man who could accuse the Central Intelligence Agency of trying to undermine him and ask rhetorically of the conduct of that agency, “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” . . . a man who could do that and then, ten days later, go and stand in front of the shrine of its fallen agents and insist, with a straight face, with every word he said and motion he made suggesting he really believes this: “They sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number-one stop is exactly the opposite—exactly.”
A man who could insist—to those same men and women at the CIA—that it got sunny the moment he started to give his inaugural address, when you saw the rain falling on him . . .
That is the kind of man who could convince himself that it would be fine to start a nuclear war, because of course he would survive the retaliatory attack, and so would his family, and so would whatever people he thinks are his friends—or, to use his word, his “fans”—of course they would all survive the retaliatory attack . . . because he’s Donald Trump, and bad things cannot happen to Donald Trump.
*
At the CIA, Trump told the agents there that he has “a running war with the media.”
He does not have a running war with the media.
He has a running war with reality.
His reality is what he says it is.
He has an adviser who came out and said Sunday that the opposites of factual truths aren’t lies or deceptions but, quoting her, “alternative facts.”
You try “alternative facts” in your life, for one hour.
Drive on whichever side of the road you want to. Stop wearing the safety glasses. Let the kids use the stove and the power tools. Write checks against money you don’t have. Because ignoring the warnings and instructions isn’t courting disaster—it’s just a set of “alternative facts.”
This is . . . crazy.
And even if—God willing—it never gets to the point where this kind of delusional thinking is employed during an international crisis, or here at home during some kind of threat or disaster—even if Trump’s ability to turn off reality like a light switch never actually threatens us and our children and all we know . . .
What does it mean about the key promise that he made to you?
To unrig the system?
To level the playing field?
To defeat the candidate from Goldman Sachs?
Like he promised.
Like he seemed to promise.
Before he hired three people from Goldman Sachs and one from Wells Fargo and one from Rothschild Investments.
*
You knew this before that speech at the CIA or this crazy argument about how big the crowds at his inauguration were, or whether it was sunny and only he could see that it was sunny.
You may have even known this before you voted for him, and just hoped it was going to go away when he took over.
But it isn’t going away.
It’s getting worse.
He’s. Crazy!
We will all be lucky to survive having had him in charge.
Even if we do survive, it will still be the greatest crisis of our lives. All our lives.
*
Look—I don’t want a President Pence.
But I’ll take him. And his policies. And I’ll fight the policies. But the man? We can debate that in 2020. In the election. This isn’t about policies or conservative or liberal or rigged systems or marches or making America great again.
This is about a man not in his right mind . . . who has nuclear weapons.
It is the greatest crisis of our lives, right now.
But together we can fix it, peacefully.
He just has to resign, or, if he won’t, there are provisions for the Republicans to remove him because he is so sick.
We can fix it.
And then we can sleep at night again.
And you and I can go back to yelling at each other and enjoying ourselves again.
Thank you for listening.
Post date • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25
Kellyanne Con Job says if the media continues to call the press secretary’s lies “lies”—and, by extension, if it continues to call the president’s lies “lies”—“we’re going to have to rethink our relationship here.”
Fine.
Do not interview Kellyanne Con Job.
*
Press Secretary Spicer comes out for what is allegedly a White House press briefing and shouts a bitter, angry statement at the media, then refuses to take questions?
Stop carrying his press briefings live on television.
*
Trump says the media “are among the most dishonest human beings on earth, right?”
Stop covering his speeches live.
Use a delay, employ a team of fact-checkers, play his rants, and each time he lies, stop the tape and state the facts. Resume the tape, wait for the next lie, stop the tape again, state the facts again.
*
Do not participate in Trump’s propaganda game.
And do not reply that you are obligated to, because otherwise you could be accused of delegitimizing the presidency.
It is impossible to “delegitimize” something that was never legitimate in the first place.
And do not reply that you must cover these liars because of the marketplace of ideas, or because of commercial competition. In short order, nobody who believes Trump or Conway or Spicer or any of the other gangsters will be watching ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, BBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN, or anything similar anyway.
*
In a time when democracy is being rapidly sabotaged by a lunatic president and his amoral flying monkeys, like Conway and Spicer, your market—and, incidentally, your obligation as citizens in that bleeding democracy—your market and your obligation are identical: to identify the lies and refute them, twice as often as they are told.
The hard-core Trump crowd—the fascists, corporatists, racists, and authoritarians—they are going to watch Fox News and read Breitbart and watch and read the new ones, Worse-Than-Fox and Worse-Than-Breitbart, that are going to pop up in the weeks to come, and there isn’t eff-all you can do about it.
This was the exact scenario in the bygone days when George W. Bush was still widely believed about Iraq and every television news operation decided it was going to wave the flag just like Fox News—or try to outdo Fox; one of them put Michael Savage on TV!—and every one of them got smoked in the ratings, and then some guy at MSNBC said, “The emperor is not wearing any clothes,” and all of a sudden the truth started pouring out and the hundreds of millions of dollars of profit started pouring in.
The danger to the society of for-profit journalism, especially in television, has been evident ever since the FCC equal-time rule—and, more important, the community-service provision—were repealed. That was when you could begin to say as much as you wanted on TV or radio, about any controversial topic, without ever being obligated to offer Floyd R. Turbo two minutes of airtime to give an editorial reply.
But the blessing to the society of for-profit journalism, especially in television, has been evident ever since the backlash against Bush a decade ago. Being state-run television is profitable. Being anti-state-run television is nearly as profitable.
To paraphrase the immortal Bill Hicks: The Gaslight Channel? Oh, they’re going for that Gaslight marketing dollar. That’s a good market. They’re very smart . . . Wait . . . the Anti-Gaslight Channel? “Ooh, you know what Keith’s doing now? He’s going for the righteous-indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research—huge market. He’s doing a good thing.”
*
It would take a conscious—and conscientious—decision to leave those news consumers who believe an administration elected on, built on, and trading on nothing but lies.
But it is also practice for a worse time.
The previous Republican administration exploited a terrorist attack. It took the natural tendency of liberals at times of crisis to put aside party divisions and the natural tendency of conservatives at times of crisis to exacerbate them, and then multiplied it by their Fox-led Republican media echo chamber, and they insisted on something they branded “patriotic bipartisanship” but which was in fact mono-partisanship in which they were to make all the decisions and the role of Democrats was to acquiesce to them or be branded disloyal—and if they are given or they fabricate another such crisis, they will play the same card. You know, something, to quote Trump, that “I alone can fix.”
Thus, now and especially later, there must be channels and sites and newspapers that devote huge swaths of their resources to blasting back the truth, toward the Trump Lies Factory. It must report the lies about health care, the release of tax returns, the inevitable attempts to use the mighty mechanisms of government against Trump’s critics. It must report the truths about broken promises to release tax returns, and falsified government statistics, and passive-aggressive influence peddling.
It must learn, and it will learn, how much the Russians swung the election, even if it takes four years to learn it. And: how many acts of war the Russians directed against us and how much they had on Trump and how much they expect him to deliver and how many of the mainstream Republicans will remain loyal not to the Constitution of the United States but to Vladimir Goddamned Putin!
And until all that is found out, it can simply report all day—every day—that the investigation is still ongoing. Exactly the way Fox News spent nearly three years—all day, every day—insisting that Obama’s birth certificate was an open question.
*
Those who own the news media—especially in television—are timid types and by nature conservative . . . until being either threatens their investments. Well, fellas, Trump has decided to destroy your investments. If you tell the absolute truth, he will try to bury you. If you tell his version and give airtime to his supporters but you also have others there to fact-check him . . . he will still try to bury you.
Appeasement will produce what appeasement always produces: the victims’ wasting the resources and time that they should have used defending themselves.
The good news for the news media is, in fact, this little garage-band kinda series right here.
As of this one, we will have done sixty-five commentaries under the banner of either The Closer or The Resistance, and as of number sixty-three, last week, we had crossed the threshold of a hundred million views. That’s a minimum of around 1.6 million views per commentary. And 1.6 million views of anything suggests there is a ready audience for the product in question, whether it’s anti-Trump politics or learning how to tie your shoes; an average audience of 1.6 million is larger than the average audience at CNN or MSNBC.
So remember that thing before the election? “Trump TV”?
Well, it is now time for Anti-Trump TV.
It’ll make somebody at least half a billion dollars in profits in the next four years—if he lasts four years.
And, yeah, oh, by the way, it also might be one of the few chances we have to stop the United States of America from descending fully into fascism.
*
You know. In case that still matters to anybody.
Post date • MONDAY, JANUARY 30
To the people of Syria and Iraq . . .
And France and Germany . . .
And Mexico and Canada and . . . the world . . .
Permit me to apologize, on behalf of the citizens of the United States of America, for the unforgivable actions of the man who has assumed power here.
I speak for those of us who—unlike Trump, unlike the sycophants who surround him, unlike the hate-filled souls and conscience-optional bigots who applaud him, unlike the Russian puppeteers who manipulate him—I speak for those of us who have not forgotten and will not forget that we are the descendants of the immigrants—often the refugees. We are the modern equivalents of those whom this pig Trump has just banished and degraded and, in many cases, likely literally sentenced to death.
Our greatness and, more important, our goodness have, since the cliché of the arrival at Plymouth Rock, stemmed entirely from people who came here from elsewhere. The only true “natives” of this continent have been the victims of persecution and marginalization and genocide. If this gargoyle Trump really believed in “America First,” he would lead the deportation of those who brutally stole these lands from their rightful inhabitants.
Indeed, if there is anything this country can offer as mitigating evidence against our original sin, it is that the land our forefathers invaded became a place of freedom, a destination for those who literally had no other place to turn. We became great and greater and greatest because to these shores came a world of brave men and women who could not be certain it would be better here but who knew it could not be worse than where they were.
They gained a sanctuary, and we gained their courage and their dedication and their hard work, and their belief that if life would not be better for them, it would be better for their children. In us, in this place, they saw the light of the world. And because of them . . . we became that light.
And now Trump . . . has extinguished it.
He has extinguished the light of the world not because it was necessary, not because it was protective—because it will indeed prove the opposite—but because many of those who support him cried out for scapegoats, and for people to hate because they believe a different religion, and for people to blame because they look different. And he, without conscience, soul, morality . . . he saw in their hate—his power.
He has extinguished the light of the world not because he wanted to prevent terrorism, nor reduce the flow of would-be terrorists, but because the political currency of twenty-first-century America is making the gullible afraid. Of convincing them that a foreigner lurks around every corner, when the risk of death to Americans is other Americans who have guns. Period.
The seven countries to whose residents visas will not be issued are Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. From data researched by the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute: the number of Americans killed in terrorism on American soil by people from those countries from 1975 through 2016 was . . . none.
The countries of the Middle East against which Trump did not act include the home nations of all the 9/11 hijackers, and those of the San Bernardino attackers—Pakistan and the United States—and, most cynically of all, those countries in which Trump has business dealings.
*
None of Donald Trump’s grandparents were born in this country. Virtually none of his supporters who style themselves as “real Americans” are not the descendants of immigrants or refugees. The nation they know, the things here that have given them life—all of this has been built, entirely, by the children and grandchildren of exactly the kind of people whose banishment and punishment they now cheer.
My great-great-grandfather was a blacksmith, and he came here from Hamburg, Germany, and became a naturalized American citizen in 1854.
Donald Trump’s grandfather was a scared teenager, and he came here from Bremen, Germany—sixty miles from Hamburg—in 1885.
Trump’s grandfather was born with the name Friedrich and, once here, changed it to Frederick.
My great-great-grandfather was born with the name . . . Friedrich, and, once here, he changed it to Frederick.
A hundred twenty-five years after Frederick Olbermann got here, I became the first of his direct descendants to be able to afford to go to and graduate from college, and this is with me daily, and I consider myself the child of immigrants, and my eyes well with prideful tears that transcend time when I think of his sacrifices and efforts and the abuse he bore and the fact that I got to enjoy the fruits of his struggle.
A hundred thirty-two years after Frederick Trump got here, his grandson betrayed him. Friday, he changed the law in such a way that today, his own grandfather would not have been certain to get a visa waiver to get into this country.
And even if Frederick Trump had gotten here, and gotten a green card, he might not have been safe. For his own grandson—and his chief of staff, the son of a woman from Sudan—went after the green-card holders, locked out legal residents of this country, in what may very well be interpreted as the early, passive-aggressive stage of ethnic cleansing.
And this Trump also betrayed every other immigrant, and every other refugee, and every other man or woman the world over who looked to us then—or who looks to us now—and believed we were who we said we were.
I’m sorry.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name:
Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
*
Donald Trump has branded himself a traitor to everything this country has ever stood for.
We have already acted against him in the streets, and in the courts.
We will remove him.
We will welcome you again.
We will even again let you think that you are getting more from us, even though history proves, in generation after generation, with nationality after nationality, that it is us who are getting everything from you.
And until that day . . .
We, the citizens of the United States, beg your forgiveness.