The Trump White House Reaches Byzantine Levels Of Conspiracy And Betrayal

The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky reports on a White House at war with itself.

The White House resembles ancient Rome at its backstabbing worst. They sense their leader has no loyalty to them, which pits them all against each other. In some ways this management by rivalry and betrayal is reminiscent of the management style of the Third Reich, where everyone was in a life or death competition to please the fuhrer.

This McClatchy article goes into why the Russian attack was so devastating, so effective, so well targeted, during the run-up and on election day.

Imagine that we were in a battle with a foreign enemy and one battalion in the US Army was so competitive with other Army battalions that they decided to help the enemy target another battalion on the same side. This is what happened during the 2016 election. A foreign enemy was enlisted by one side to destroy their domestic rival. The Republicans, it appears, or at least the Trump campaign, decided that America’s biggest foreign enemy (Russia) was their friend and the rival Democrats were the real enemy. (Liberal American values: Bad. Fascist Russian values: Good. Most Americans would disagree. But some, around 35 percent seem to think this way. I wish the pollsters who interview the 35% would help unpack their casual acceptance of betrayal and treason and help them confront it.)

The findings of a new study (reported by WGBH Boston) confirm that political polarization is really really bad but that it’s caused mostly by the Right (the guys who think Democrats are evil and foreign enemies are OK).

What seems fishy often is fishy. (From DailyKos) We wondered at the time why Trump fired Preet Bharara. It appears it was more than the fact Bharara had jurisdiction over Trump’s dicier business practices. It appears it was done at the behest of Russians Bharara was prosecuting.

Here is a useful article from the New Republic about the Russian money laundromat that is Trump Tower.

It’s good to hear that the investigators are going into these things. Reported by CNN ("Follow the Money" ~Deep Throat)

The devotion Trump and Kushner show toward the Russians has been shown at the end of a very firm leash. It appears to be either a monetary hold or blackmail, a harness the Trump administration may be fitting around all our necks. Reported by VOX.

A president who has no respect for law or precedent or the customs of our democracy sees all the levers of power as devices for his personal use. The weapons of the state are his weapons. Nixon tried to suborn the FBI and CIA to further his ambitions and cover up his crimes. Trump has the power to let criminals off the hook. The strongest tool law enforcement has to defeat a criminal conspiracy is the power to indict and imprison, and the ability to plea bargain to gain testimony. But (as VOX is reporting) President Trump could potentially let everyone off the hook by pardoning the whole cabal. Nixon wouldn’t do this because he had some respect for history. Trump has no compunction.

"The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee doesn't buy the Trump administration’s spin about the Donald Trump Jr. email scandal. He finds it odd that senior Trump aides keep forgetting they spoke to Russian envoys and officials. And he worries the president might pardon anyone convicted of colluding with Moscow.” (Remember that’s how W rewarded and protected Scooter Libby for exposing a CIA agent and destroying all of her networks because she had the courage to speak honestly about the absence of WMD in Iraq.)

And then there’s this Guardian piece about the Mercer brainwashing and data-manipulating machine. This is more powerful and more malignant than any so-called “deep state”. The deep state they warn us about is in fact made up of many thousands of conscientious public servants working to defend our democracy and make our institutions work for us. Mercer’s system of mass hypnotism and behavior manipulation is operated by armies of algorithms and bots devised to fulfill the designs of one man and a handful of his apparatchiks.