Russia Occupies the White House...How We Got Here...What Comes Next?

From the excellent John Nichols at the Nation we have an article explaining how the Manafort/Gates indictments and the Papadopoulos guilty plea cast a shadow over Trump but also over Vice President Mike Pence.

Pence was the man charged with supervising the assembling of the personnel that filled the Trump administration. Pence was and is the Extreme Vetter In Chief, but of course no vetting took place at all. Everyone came through on the nod, like people entering a speakeasy: “Joe sent me.” So we may get rid of a criminal and traitor president and find he is replaced by a President Doofus, a bland, pious, doltish Sgt. Schultz figure who "knows nothing and hears nahhhh-thing.” (Has Pence been bribed with strudel?) Pence may play stupid to save himself, but he has continued a relationship with Manafort beyond the campaign after Manafort left under a cloud. There is now discussion of Pence and the cabinet using the 25th amendment to oust the president. The remaining conspirators would be joined in a serious pact of inter loyalties not resembling any democratic norm we know of. Loyalty is something Trump discusses with people he hires. It isn’t loyalty to the Constitution.

We know that when Trump tweets it is often in the words he just heard on Fox N Friends… but he also follows a narrative set down by Russian bots which are directed by the people in the Kremlin we suspect might be his Russian masters… He acts like a dog on a leash following the order to attack whatever his master tells him to attack. When he lashes out at Clinton and Mueller, how closely do his words echo the words of his master, Putin? Is he even aware of this?

From Newsweek: Russian bots operating Trump's mouth

“I hire the best people!” ~Donald J. Trump

Trump rails about “extreme vetting” for people wishing to enter this country, but he followed no vetting procedures when it came to hiring personnel for the White House or the various critical cabinet posts or appointing people to judicial seats. No vetting, no problem. No resume, no problem. No expertise, that was an actual plus in Trump’s mind.

Sometimes idiocy is a positive asset in a Trump hire. Take Rick Perry. The Hill reports the Sec of Energy recently stated that fossil fuels are vital to prevent sexual assault… I’ll let that sink in for a minute. (We also have a head of EPA who believes his job is to protect the fossil fuel industry from environmentalists.)

A year ago, when Trump hired Manafort, an article appeared in Bloomberg summarizing Manafort’s sleazy and criminal associations. In some quarters he was called the Torture Lobbyist because he specialized in advancing the interests of brutal dictators in Washington. (This may explain why his daughter once characterized her father’s income as “blood money.”)

Here is the Atlantic’s retrospective analysis of the Manafort hiring

The campaign acquired George Papadopoulos on the fly, because no known or accredited foreign policy people would have anything to do with Trump. When asked by a reporter who his foreign policy people were Trump immediately mentioned George Papadopoulos as one, “smart guy,” and also cited Carter Page, who was also already under scrutiny by the FBI for shady associations with Russian spy figures. Extreme vetting? Nothing like that happened in the Trump entourage. Flattery was enough to get in the door. To get into the country Trump demands extreme vetting, but to get access to the highest levels of national security operations all you needed to do was flatter Donald Trump. And be capable of lying big, because that is Trump’s style.

The Daily Beast on the rise of Papadopoulos

Here’s a useful roadmap of Russia-White House connections:from the NYTimes

A handy FYI and FAQ also from the NYTimes

Fear is rippling through the White House staff, which may result in pleas being copped and stories being told to Mueller’s investigators.

Reported by Vanity Fair

The Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross, interestingly enough, co-owned one of the Cypriot banks Paul Manafort and his Russian friends used to launder money. Ross was Vice Chairman of the bank. Will Ross be questioned about this, or about the $2 billion missing from his financial disclosure forms?

Senator Tom Udall asks the $2 billion question about Wilbur Ross

Russian bots and trolls are in the news, but the Mercers, who bought and owned Breitbart and bought and owned the Brietbart subsidiary named Steve Bannon, are themselves heavily invested in troll farming, and election rigging via their massive data crunching firm Cambridge Analytica.

Bill Moyers on the Mercers

There is also a Bizarro version of the Russia conspiracy in which Hillary conspired with Putin (who despised her) to lose the election…

NYMag explains the upside down defense of Trump

And this reporting from VOX, same bizarro topic

Seems ludicrous but it has an enormous press empire pushing it into the public mind. Kind of like how Putin did it.

But even in FoxWorld there are people jumping ship having had enough of lying and treason.

Reported by CNN-Money

Trump Team Knew Flynn Was A Foreign Agent––Didn't Care

Andrea Mitchell's interview with Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, peels another layer of the onion on the Kremlingate treason scandal.

The Trump transition team knew that Michael Flynn was a foreign agent, working on behalf of the Turkish government. They didn't care. Rachel Maddow walks us through what they knew and when they knew it in the second part of her opening segment.

And The Hill newspaper summarizes it here.

A quick look at the Trump White House team members who have already left or been fired gives us a picture of a sloppy, crony-dominated, and unfocused White House. (Reported here in the Washington Post.) The transition team didn’t do its job because they didn’t know what its job was or didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to know which hires were agents of foreign governments, which were guilty of corruption. If you were a friend of a friend that was enough. Depending on the day of the week you ask him, Trump might be friends with anybody. Or he might be lying about knowing him or lying about never having met him, the way Michael Flynn and Carter Page admit and deny their Russian employment in successive sentences in the same interviews.

It was reported in reputable newspapers that Michael Flynn was a paid lobbyist working for a foreign dictator, but Mike Pence claims he had no idea. Pence got a letter telling him Flynn was in the pay of a foreign government and Pence has no recollection. Is he stupid or is he involved in a coverup? Or both?

We’ve since learned that the Turkish lobbying was paid for by the Russians. What is that all about? Does the White House know? Does it care? Is it part of their Secret Plan?

If Donald Trump leaves office because of his collusion with Russia, Pence becomes president. Is it proper that the guy who wasn’t paying attention or knew and didn’t care becomes president? Is cluelessness a qualification for the highest office in the land? What if it’s careful, intentional cluelessness? Sergeant Schultz level cluelessness: “I know naaaah-thing. Naaaaa-thing!”

The real question is this: Why do the guys who fucked up so dangerously (and possibly traitorously) on the transition to this president get to manage the succession of the next president. They did a very bad job 100+ days ago and since, either ignoring warnings of Russian involvement or being absolutely cool with it. And then covering it all up, obstructing the investigations, deceiving the public, misleading the FBI and the Congress.

There are so many crimes here. Crimes, potential crimes, malfeasances, screw ups, incompetence, missteps, etc. Treason? It smells like treason to me. It’s hard to imagine any other president getting away with it.

Serious, qualified, honest presidents get investigated very hard, but silly, unqualified, dishonest ones like Trump get an easy ride because…

Because everybody knows he’s silly, unqualified and dishonest? Also ignorant, delusional, corrupt, and a traitor? "That's cool. We already knew."

Like Mike Pence we are expected to wave it all through. Never mind.

“Forget about it, Jake, it’s Chinatown."

Your Pre Convention Dose of Trump

An Evangelical TV preacher likes Trump better than Jesus...

From RAWSTORY

Donald Trump’s lies are so fast and numerous that fact checking can’t stop them quickly enough. Trump is like a massive infection we can’t fight off.

From VOX

Trump is so dishonest and so corrupt and so self-centered and so contradictory and so inexperienced and immature…. that a number of noted historians have broken their longstanding rule and decided to speak out about a political figure before he is dead.

From the New York Times

There are Republicans who think Trump cannot win. But most of them are hedging their bets by sleeping with Trump occasionally when he phones them and promises to be gentle.

From Vanity Fair

The GOP platform calls for selling off National Forest and National Parks. Come on Big Oil and Big Timber!

From Think Progress

The platform is also saying coal isn’t dirty at all.

From SLATE

Is it possible that Trump is involved in more massive criminal activity than any candidate in history? A huge tax fraud case has just emerged, and his family is involved.

From David Cay Johnston in The Daily Beast

Trump’s and Pence’s tax policies would make every state as backward and decaying as Kansas and all the other low tax states.

From the Tax Policy Center

Some of Mike Pence’s choicest and stupidest newspaper bloviation. (Pence says CO2 from burning fuels can’t be the cause of increased global temperatures because it “is a naturally occurring phenomenon in nature…” And this one: “Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.”)

From BUZZFEED

A thoughtful piece from the New Yorker. As if thoughtful writing will save us from this juggernaut.

From Adam Gopnick

This kind of TV ad might work. It shows kids watching Trump’s various outrageous and obscene moments on camera. Of course the Trump voter doesn’t give a damn about his kids.

From the Hillary campaign, via DailyKos

The ACLU is calling Trump a clear and present danger. (Sounds of cheering from the conservatives who despise the Bill of Rights.)

In the Washington Post

Donald Trump has ended the deplorable dog-whistle racism of Reagan and Bush's Republican Party. He has replaced it with outright racism shouted into a microphone.

From the Guardian

Earlier this week Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke out about Trump and was criticized for violating the sanctity of our non-political Supreme Court. You know the one where Sandra Day O’Connor said a Gore presidency would be a disaster and then overturned his election.

From Dahlia Lithwick at SLATE

(I’m sure there were judges in Weimar Germany who spoke up about Hitler and were criticized for it too.)

Of course Supreme Court Justices have gotten political before. A few cases here:

From NBCNews

Samantha Bee explains what Trump/Pence’s new logo means

Via SALON