A Tragedy of Errors (A New Play By Donald J. Trump)

The great Charlie Pierce: “It simply comes down to money: the Russians, the meetings that mysteriously slipped everyone's minds when they were testifying before Congress or filling out disclosure forms, the vanishing tax returns, the emoluments mess, the bizarre attraction to wealthy overseas authoritarians, the unshakable presence of Michael Flynn. All of it, simple American greed magnified by a culture of celebrity and, through a fluke presidential election, dropped like a dead squirrel in a chimney into the world's greatest democracy—and, as a result, stinking up the entire joint."


From The New Republic, a summary of how Trump is destroying the US's global standing. It begins with the rich irony of House Speaker Paul Ryan's demanding the American intelligence services cut Hillary Clinton off from classified briefings while the Trump campaign was known to be welcoming the aid of the Russian spy services.

“Today I am writing to formally request that you refrain from providing any classified information to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the duration of her candidacy for president,” Ryan wrote last July to James Clapper, who was then the director of national intelligence, after then-FBI Director James Comey described Clinton’s handling of classified information as “extremely careless.”
“I firmly believe,” Ryan added, that “this is necessary to reassure the public that our nation’s secrets are secure.”

The Republicans expressed no worries about Trump’s blabbermouth tendencies, and a truckload of gaffes and blurts and lapses later they are still not too worried about the Traitor-In-Chief…

From Newsweek we learn the reason the Russian scheme to corrupt the US presidential election worked was because the Trump campaign worked with them, adopted their techniques, targeted their attacks and fully utilized their stolen data. The GOP and the Russians were full partners. The most crucial participant in the US appears to have been Jared Kushner.

Since the election it’s been all hands on deck, trying to prevent the American public from learning what happened. From SLATE a report on GOP obstruction of justice.

From VOX, a chart showing the various ways Trump and his proxies have obstructed justice. (These are just the obstructions we knew about a week ago. A lot has been disclosed since.)

From The Nation: Conservatives are complaining that a majority of the news coverage of President Trump is negative. "The obvious response is that the vast majority of stories about famine, natural disasters, and genital warts are negative, and that doesn’t imply a bias on the part of those writing them.”

From the UK's The Independent we learn how our chief executive appeared to our allies (former allies?)

“When it comes to diplomacy, President Trump is a drunk tourist. Loud and tacky, shoving his way around the dance floor. He steps on others without realising it. It’s ineffectual.” ~unnamed State Dept official

From the LATimes: While great harm is being done to the US’s global standing, great harm is also being done here at home. But there are powerful interest groups who complain not enough harm is being done.