The Donald Trump Score Card

'Utterly incompetent': Trump names Grenell top intelligence chief
Appointment of US ambassador to Germany draws swift criticism that politically outspoken figure is unsuited for the job.
Aljazeera
Febraury 19, 2020

'Utterly incompetent': Trump names Grenell top intelligence chief

excerpts:

"Grenell was named acting director of national intelligence, a temporary status, which means he will not face a Senate confirmation process unless Trump puts him forward for a permanent position.

He takes over from Joseph Maguire, a retired admiral whose status as acting director was due to expire in March."


"Last year he faced calls for his expulsion, shortly after taking up his post in Germany, when he spoke up in support of right-wing politicians in Europe.

Trump, however, reportedly sees Grenell as a loyalist, helping him to reassert himself following acquittal in his historic impeachment trial in Congress and in advance of the November presidential election.

Samantha Powers, a UN ambassador under Barack Obama's presidency, tweeted that the appointment of someone so openly political to the intelligence post "would be a travesty."

Democratic Senator Mark Warner said in a statement that "the President has selected an individual without any intelligence experience to serve as the leader of the nation's intelligence community in an acting capacity.""

 

In Trump's mind, that's an asset, not a liability.

 

Par for the course then, since Trumpety Trump doesn't have any intelligence either !!!

 

Ah, see, you have to do your homework

Evangel University (EU) is a private Christian university with an embedded seminary in Springfield, Missouri. It is affiliated with the Assemblies of God Christian denomination


Sounds a lot more like Pence and his cronies are behind this appointment.

 

He wants to get around all our laws … typical criminal.

 

He just loves the unintelligent voter

 

Heather Cox Richardson
February 19, 2020 (Wednesday)

The big news today in Washington was that Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, the venue that dumped emails from Democratic officials hacked by Russian intelligence before the 2016 election, claims that the Trump administration offered him a pardon if he would say that Russia was not involved in leaking the stolen emails in 2016.

In London, where Assange is fighting extradition to the United States, Assange’s lawyer says that Assange will prove that former California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange when he was holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2017 to make the offer. The White House has categorically denied this story, although Rohrabacher’s visit to Assange, and his subsequent assertion that the Russians had nothing to do with hacking Democrats, is public record. So, too, is Rohrabacher’s meeting with Trump for 45 minutes before he went to see Assange.

All I can say on this is… maybe. That is, this story is entirely in keeping with what we know of Assange, Trump, and Rohrabacher. It fits the relevant timelines. But does Assange have proof? Maybe.

Assange is a terribly problematic witness, a man who has proven in his seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy that he is all about protecting Julian Assange, and who is now facing 175 years in prison if he is extradited to America and convicted of espionage. Under those circumstances, who wouldn’t try virtually anything?

Still, on June 15, 2016, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), now House Minority Leader, was caught on tape saying: “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” (McCarthy later took Russian money himself, from Lev Parnas.) The obvious way to figure out what really happened is for the House to subpoena Rohrabacher and the other two people allegedly present when Rohrabacher allegedly made the offer: Charles Johnson, a conservative activist, and Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer for Wikileaks. We shall see.

That’s really the big news, as Trump tours the West, so if that’s enough for you today, you can call it quits here with a clear conscience.

But (isn’t it always “but…” with me?) I have wanted to write about the presidential nomination process for ages, and there has never been a good time, as news kept intervening. Tonight seems tailor-made for such a post as the Democratic candidates debate in Nevada, trying to work their way toward a nomination. So here goes:

There are two important pieces to remember before you even think about nomination procedures. First of all, it is states, not the national government, that control voting. That means that each state has its own procedure, even though the parties are national. And second, our political parties are not affiliated with the government. That seems totally weird, I know, but while anyone can declare their allegiance to one party or another, the leadership of those parties is not part of the government. The parties can organize themselves however they wish, so long as they don’t run afoul of federal laws. (There is a totally byzantine procedure for reworking their bylaws, which they do frequently, and which I will spare you.)

In the nineteenth century, presidential candidates were chosen by party leaders, who were far less concerned with electability than they were with malleability: would the candidate do what party leaders wanted? Men (women could not vote) voted by party alone, and you could not “split the ticket.” You literally received a ticket from a party boss, printed by your party with all the party’s candidates for all offices on it, and color coded in case you could not read, and you put that ticket into a box, usually at a place like a saloon. So who was going to be at the head of the ticket wasn’t something leaders took lightly, but pleasing the voters was less important than making sure the presidential candidate was a straight party man.

Often, those candidates were chosen by a group of party regulars, a “caucus,” arguing until they could come up with a candidate they could all live with. Some state parties still use this system, although it is now open to regular voters. Caucuses are overseen by the parties, and now allot delegates to each party's national convention. Today, Iowa holds the first caucuses in the country.

But by the end of the century, voters, and insurgents in the party leadership, were pressuring party elders to listen more closely to the voters. Leaders in a number of states began to let voters have a say in who would lead the party—not the final word, but a say—through primary elections overseen by the local government. These elections determine how many delegates each candidate will get at the party's national convention. Today, New Hampshire has the country’s first primary of the election season.

The idea was to listen to the voice of the people, but the reality was that party leaders still controlled who was nominated to be president. This became painfully obvious in 1968, when the Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey for president despite the fact he had not run in a single primary. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago that August was a horror show, with protestors demonstrating and police spraying them with mace and tear gas.

After the convention, the Democrats put together a commission to figure out a better nominating system. The McGovern-Fraser Commission required all delegate selection to be open and required representation for minorities. More states promptly adopted primaries. Voter participation in primaries skyrocketed, and in 1972, the party nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern (who had a PhD in American history-- just saying) for the presidency. McGovern went down to a spectacular defeat in 1972, winning only Massachusetts and Washington D. C.—he lost even his home state, which is virtually unheard of. Then, in 1976, Democrats nominated the wild card Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, who won after the debacle of Watergate and Nixon’s resignation in 1974, but who lost to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980. Democrats worried that their enthusiastic primary voters were nominating unelectable candidates.

So between August 1981 and February 1982, a 70-person team of Democrats tried to balance the fervor of primary voters with the political experience of party leaders. They added unpledged delegate slots for members of Congress and state party chairs. These are the “superdelegates” you hear about, and while the commission first wanted them to make up 30% of the party’s delegates to the convention, they finally settled on 14%. That number wiggled upward until by 2008 it was 20%; after 2016 it has been revised downward to 16%.

Recently, Republicans have joined the carping that the Democratic nomination is “rigged” because of the superdelegates, but while Republicans don’t really use superdelegates (there are unpledged delegates with different rules in the Republican Party, though), they have their own way for leaders to put a finger on the scales. The first major test for the Republican Party is on Super Tuesday, early in March, when more than a dozen states hold primaries or caucuses. Those states are overwhelmingly southern and conservative, and that early in the season, most voters will not know much about the candidates, so they will vote primarily by name recognition. Unlike the Democrats, many of the Republican delegates are allotted by a modified winner-take-all system, so with Super Tuesday Republican leaders can stop insurgent candidates. They can rest assured that candidates with name recognition will emerge strong… or they could assume that until 2016, when they expected Jeb Bush to lead the pack even though he hadn’t yet campaigned. Unfortunately, there was someone else running that year with greater name recognition than Bush.

This year, a number of Republican state committees have decided not to hold primaries or caucuses but simply to endorse Trump. That is not unheard of: it is a waste of money to hold primaries or caucuses when the party has a strong incumbent. But if an incumbent is weak, the party usually permits challengers, as it did in 1976 when Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford for the nomination. Some Republicans are unhappy that state parties are not permitting challengers to Trump.

It is no wonder people get confused. And this is just the basics. It does seem a crazy way to pick our nation’s leader, doesn’t it? But I hope this makes it all a little clearer.

Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian. She is the author of how the South Won the War

 

Trump has assembled team to recommend and vet candidates for clemency
This comes as speculation swirls around whether Trump will pardon his longtime ally Roger Stone, who is set to be sentenced on Thursday for lying to Congress.
By Rebecca Shabad and Peter Alexander
Feb. 20, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

Trump has assembled team to recommend and vet candidates for clemency

excerpt:

"The Washington Post first reported Wednesday night that Trump had put together this team, which the report said is basically an informal task force of at least a half-dozen allies of the president. According to the report, the group has been meeting since late last year.

This comes as speculation swirls around whether Trump will pardon his longtime ally Roger Stone who is expected to be sentenced by a federal judge on Thursday. Early in the morning, Trump tweeted a video clip from a segment on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News that suggested the president is considering pardoning Stone.

Last week, the Justice Department announced its decision to reduce the recommended sentence for Stone of seven to nine years in prison, asking Judge Amy Berman Jackson of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to reduce the sentence after Trump himself called the proposal "a miscarriage of justice.""

 

Meanwhile in the UK:

Julian Assange’s lawyers say Trump offered pardon in exchange for concealing source of DNC leaks

 

Michael Isikopf has an article on Huffington saying former Congressman Rhorbacher has admitted he delivered Trump's offer of a pardon to Assange.

 

Again he is going around an established office at DOJ which does exactly that kind of work.

 

Trump says Roger Stone has 'very good chance of exoneration' hours after sentencing
The president also attacked the jury forewoman in Stone's criminal case, calling her "totally tainted."
By Dareh Gregorian
Feb. 20, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC / Updated Feb. 20, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

Trump says Roger Stone has 'very good chance of exoneration' hours after sentencing

excerpt:

""It's my strong opinion that the forewoman for the jury is totally tainted," Trump said, calling the woman, whom he didn't mention by name, "an anti-Trump person, totally."

"I don't know if this is a fact, but she had a horrible social media account," he told the crowd and television cameras.

"She's, I guess from what I hear, a very strong woman, a very dominant person, so she can get people to do whatever she wants," he claimed.

"How can you have a jury pool tainted so badly? It's not fair," Trump said."

 

Blago shampoo.



A decade after company created Blago shampoo, conditioner, they’re still on tap
Recognizing a good marketing gimmick and Blagojevich’s helmet of hair, Dennis Fath created Blago shampoo and conditioner. Their slogan is “It’s Bleep’n Golden,” from the infamous wiretap in which the then-governor said Barack Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat was “[Bleepin’] golden.”
By Maureen O'Donnell
Feb 18, 2020, 5:21pm CST

A decade after company created Blago shampoo, conditioner, they’re still on tap

 

Blagojevich and Trump should sell a new product line together: Pardon My Hair

 

Russia once again doing all they can to re-elect Trump because they know he'll do all he can to strengthen Russia and hurt the U.S.

WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected,
five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.

 

Trump is complaining about what he sees as a dominant person with a horrible social media account who can do whatever she wants.

 

Trump whines incessantly for the supposed tough alpha male that he claims to be.

In his mind, he's the brawny billionaire who is constantly a victim of persecution. It's a projection of his that encourages his supporters to cling to him and defend him, especially the actual downtrodden who, unlike Trump, really are at a disadvantage. In the eyes of the people he captivates, the reality of his protected, privileged, thin-skinned, billionaire life fades into oblivion when he uses the persecution victimhood ploy on them.

An article from 2017 summarizing Trump's use of his favorite word 'unfair'.

His second favorite expression is 'witch hunt'.



Trump Calling Everything Unfair Shows Just How Profoundly Privileged He Is
He’s been pirouetting for decades in his golden bubble, grousing and grumbling over anything that doesn’t go his way.
02/09/2017 11:02 am ET Updated Feb 11, 2017

Trump Calling Everything Unfair Shows Just How Profoundly Privileged He Is | HuffPost

 

The way this moron talks is on the junior high level. It truly sounds like 5th grade gossip! The grinning jackasses at his rallies are unbelievably enthralled by his petty bullshit. Lordy, lordy--what have we become????

 

That's the thing. everything that doesn't go his way is unfair. It's part of his mental disorder.

 

For President Trump, Life Is Just Not Fair — And What That Means For The Rest Of Us
Domenico Montanaro
August 4, 2018, 7:00 AM ET

For President Trump, Life Is Just Not Fair — And What That Means For The Rest Of Us

excerpt:

"But the fact that Trump believes it is instructive. His sense of fairness, or unfairness, really, has driven him, his rise in politics — and his priorities for the country. He has capitalized on grievance, especially that of white Americans chafing at the culture of a demographically changing country, and has expressed his view of what is unfair — everything from trade and immigration to the court system, the Affordable Care Act's individual coverage mandate, the IRS, the plight of political allies and, of course, the news media.

Since he announced he was running for president, he has used the word "unfair" 69 times in tweets, and since becoming president, 40 times.

Trump often tweets his unfairness outrage when he is in a defensive crouch. For example, over the last several months, with his back against the wall on his trade policies, two-thirds of his tweets using the word "unfair" have been about trade. It's a topic Trump has talked about for 30 years. In the 1980s, he railed against Japanese trade practices. Now, he is talking about China."