Sunday, May 07, 2017

Deconstructing Trump

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank on Trump’s fantasyland. "...What does [Trump] do now that he is in a job that is so hard, running a government that is so big? He pretends. He has developed an elaborate fantasyland in which everything goes according to plan." While Trump is fooling himself is he also fooling us? Or is he just making us look like fools?

From CNN: What if Hillary were a fraction as corrupt as Donald Trump? What if she funneled millions in taxpayer dollars into her own pocket via resorts she owned? Trump's corruptions are hard to count, there are so many and so massive Americans seem unable to process what is happening. ...but Hillary's emails.

Brexit was a rehearsal for what happened here. A big part of the coup there and here was achieved by a big data company owned by the Mercer family who, like the Russians, found a useful stooge in Trump. From The Guardian.

Golf writer James Dodson accepted a golf invitation from Trump and son. From WBUR.

“As we were setting off, I said, 'Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks — because of the recession, the Great Recession — have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.' And this is what he said. He said, 'Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.' I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’"

The Palmer Report is out on the far leading edge of the reporting on this, so its content is sometimes short on substantiation. But this is a very interesting post from the other day, drawing a set of connections between Trump and Betsy DeVos’s money machine, a Russian server located in Trump Tower, and the possible hacking of thousands of voting machines in swing states. It will be interesting to see if this story emerges in more substantiated form in the NYTimes and Washington Post.

The Atlantic, a far more reliable journal (believe me, I’ve undergone the Atlantic’s rigorous fact-checking on a story) gives a summary of the unfolding Kremlingate treason (calling it a mere scandal doesn’t indicate its scope and significance) with individual segments about the persons involved.

Also from The Atlantic: Trump has been spinning his wheels for 100 days, but the House passing the repeal of ObamaCare may indicate that he’s finally getting traction. Repealing not just a fairer healthcare system but repealing the centuries-old principle of America as a nation that cares about its people, where the people give a damn about each other. The rise of TV evangelism marked the rise of a new kind of pseudo-Christianity, one that preached wealth as proof of godliness, and poverty as a sign of sinfulness. As if Jesus preferred rich people and damned the poor to Hell.

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