Republican voters must reject Trump because he is a bully guilty of sexual assault and fraud etc

Echo opinion letter published in The Daily News, a Washington state newspaper:

Imagine you meet a man whose behavior proves him to be both a bully and sore loser.

A man who appears devoid of civility and empathy. A man who resorts to name calling and threats of violence/revenge when he doesn't get his way. 

A man who has been found guilty in court of fraud. Would you want him as a friend, co-worker or neighbor?

If you wouldn't want to associate with a person of such low character, how could you possibly want him to be president of the United States? #DumpTrump 

#VoteBlue2024 #VoteBidenHarris2024

From Jon Browne in Longview,  Washington state

Trump falls asleep during his criminal trial so he is incompetement to stay awake in the White House

Trump Is Furious He Got Caught Sleeping in Court
Echo report published in New York Magazine Intelligencer by Margaret Hartman:

Journalist Maggie Haberman is a target of Trump rages 

If a normal person fell asleep during a high-profile trial over hush-money payments they made to cover up an affair with a porn star, how would they react?

It’s a bit hard to say, since a normal person would never be in this scenario. But it seems likely they’d be embarrassed or angry at themselves.

Sleepy Don

Of course, Donald Trump doesn’t experience those emotions. So instead he has “privately raged” at the journalists who informed the public that he’s been unable to keep his eyes open in court, according to three sources who spoke to Rolling Stone.

The magazine reported that Trump has been particularly focused on Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, with whom he’s had a long, complicated relationship. Last Monday, on the Manhattan trial’s first day, she reported, “Trump appears to be sleeping. His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack.” Then she repeated her observation in an interview with CNN. Per Rolling Stone:

The observation immediately went viral, provoking an irate denial from Trump’s campaign and reigniting the former president’s antipathy towards Haberman, who has been reporting on him for years. The resentment lasted the entire week, the sources add.

… In recent conversations with Republican associates, Trump has repeatedly torn into Haberman and her CNN appearances, attacked her journalistic credentials, and bizarrely insisted that she was wrong about him falling asleep. 

Despite his dozing being widely reported, the former president has laid much of the blame for the detail going viral at Haberman’s feet. He was even observed glaring at her on Monday as he exited the courtroom following her CNN appearance.

Haberman was the most prominent journalist to cover Trump’s courtroom naps, but several other reporters backed up her observation. And if Trump was so deeply upset by the accusation, he probably should have channeled that energy into staying awake; multiple journalists saw him sleeping in court two more times last week.

The “Sleepy Don” narrative isn’t the only thing sending Trump over the edge. Rolling Stone reported that he’s also upset about late-night hosts joking about the trial (which explains last week’s incoherent Truth Social rant about Jimmy Kimmel) and how he’s been portrayed by courtroom sketch artists:

Trump has also privately asked people close to him if they agree that the courtroom sketch-artist must be out to get him, two of the sources say. Trump has critiqued the sketches of him that have circulated in the media this week, and insisted some of the images were likely drawn to make fun of him. One such sketch captured Trump snoozing, with his eyes closed and head tilted.

When court broke for lunch on Tuesday, Trump was observed licking his lips as he walked down the middle aisle before flashing a small smile at the courtroom sketch artist as he exited.

So he’s upset about both journalists and sketch artists relaying what they’re seeing with their own eyes. I hate to needle a guy who’s already feeling paranoid, but it seems objective reality is “out to get” Trump.

Freedom of speech means tolerance against dangerous bigotry

Maine Writer opinion: Students who are demonstrating in support of the Palastinians are not providing equal free speech forums for a Jewish response.

NYTimes opinion.....the sad fact of campus life today is that speech and behavior that would be considered scandalous if aimed at other minorities are treated as understandable or even commendable when directed at Jews. The calling card of antisemitism has always been the double standard. How would the Yale administration have reacted if Crispe and Tartak had been Black students who said they were taunted, harassed and assaulted (whatever the ostensible political motive) by a mob of their white peers?

Columnist David French opinion in the New York Times:

On Monday, March 11, roughly 200 Jewish students and supporters marched through the campus at the University of California, Berkeley, but what was newsworthy is that they were not attacked. Local news hailed that they were able to, as one headline noted, “successfully march without confrontation.”

The march came two weeks after violent protests forced the cancellation of an event that was to feature an Israeli speaker and was organized by Jewish students. The event — which had already been moved from another location because of safety concerns — was canceled, and the building evacuated by police, after protesters broke through doors and reportedly assaulted Jewish students. There was no way to ensure safety, universityadministrators explained, “given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence.”

At the time that I read accounts about the violence at Berkeley, I was also reading two legal complaints against Harvard and the other against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Both complaints make for horrifying reading, detailing a cascading series of antisemitic incidents, including acts of violence and physical intimidation. 

The moral and legal injury is compounded by blatant double standards on the part of the universities. As the complaint filed against Harvard states, “Harvard permits students and faculty to advocate, without consequence, the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, the only Jewish country in the world. 

Meanwhile, Harvard requires students to take a training class that warns that they will be disciplined if they engage in sizeism (discrimination on the grounds of a person's size), fatphobia, racism, transphobia, or other disfavored behavior.”

My entire legal career has defended free speech💬  on campus, including the free speech of Muslim students and staff members. 

I’ve also walked through metal detectors at a tense and volatile Columbia University to defend the academic freedom of Jewish students challenging antisemitic statements made by university professors.

And during those decades of litigation and my subsequent years in journalism, I have never seen such comprehensive abuse directed against a vulnerable campus minority group as I’ve seen directed at Jewish students and faculty, since Hamas’s terror attack on October 7, 2023.

Obviously antisemitism isn’t the only hatred afoot in America. Since October 7, there have also been horrifying incidents of anti-Muslim violence. Shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel, the chancellor of the state university system of Florida ordered the deactivation of chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine based on the absurd idea that its written materials provided “material support” for a designated terrorist entity in violation of federal law. (The order has not been enforced.) But what’s happening to Jewish students and faculty at several elite campuses is so comprehensive and all-consuming that it can only be described as systemic antisemitism.

Which brings me to the complaints against M.I.T. and Harvard. 

One should always use caution when evaluating such documents. They represent the allegations of one side. There are times when litigation ultimately proves the accuracy of a complaint’s claims and times when the allegations fall apart under scrutiny. (There are also times when the case grows stronger as the plaintiffs obtain discovery, read internal communications and depose witnesses under oath.) 

Complaints against M.I.T. and Harvard, however, don’t simply ask us to trust them. Time and again they provide screenshots, quotes from emails and photographs that offer visual evidence of their claims.  And make no mistake, the claims are dreadful. At M.I.T., for example, the plaintiffs claim not only that the university allowed pro-Palestinian protesters to hold protests that violated university rules, but, also, that those protests were so threatening that Jewish students were afraid to get near them. M.I.T. Hillel warned students to “not directly engage protesters for your physical safety and well-being” and ideally to avoid the area. This resulted in parts of campus being effectively closed to Jewish students.

The complaint also charges protesters with literally putting a bounty on a Jewish student who had engaged in a physical altercation at a protest, promising an $800 award for identifying the student. According to the complaint, “The student stayed locked up in their dorms for weeks with their friends bringing food, check-ins from the police, and their family terrified for their safety.”

The plaintiffs also claimed that protesters engaged in “targeted protests outside the offices of Jewish professors and the office of M.I.T.’s Israel internship program,” a part of the university’s global experiences program known as MISTI. The complaint quotes a professor who said, “They insistently rattled the door handles of offices that were closed with staff inside …. Their chants included:‘From the river to the sea…’, ‘MISTI, MISTI, you can’t hide,’ and others associating MISTI with genocide.” 

Maine Writer opinion here- It is the Hamas terrorists in Gaza that intends to eliminate the Jews! 

Blood libel*❓ ❗also makes its dreadful appearance.😡💀 The complaint quotes an M.I.T. postdoctoral student (as the complaint notes, postdocs are both students and employees of the university) posting on X, “Zionists not only steal our lands, food, and culture, but our dead bodies as well for organ harvesting.”

*blood libel- the accusation that Jewish people used blood from Christians in rituals....

These incidents represent only a fraction of the claims against M.I.T. The complaint against Harvard likewise details protests that shut down parts of campus, physical assaults against Jewish students and disruptions of classroom instruction so frightening that one caused “Jewish students to flee for their safety, with some removing identifying garb to avoid attack.”

Pervasive fear is a theme of the Harvard complaint. It details an incident at Harvard Law School where campus police allegedly observed passively as a mob of protesters “stormed Harvard Law’s main building, marched down the length of the building’s primary first-floor hallway, and blocked the hallway outside the study room where [Students Against Anti-Semitism and a visiting speaker] were hiding. Fearing a violent attack, students in the study room removed indicia of their Jewishness, such as kippot, or hid under desks.”

Pause and think about that for a moment. In the year 2024, at one of the most prestigious and powerful academic institutions in the world, the plaintiffs claim that Jewish students felt the need to hide under their desks for their physical safety.

Just after I finished reading the complaints against Harvard and M.I.T., I read Franklin Foer’s gut-punch cover story in The Atlantic. Titled “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending,” it begins like this: “Stacey Zolt Hara was in her office in downtown San Francisco when a text from her 16-year-old daughter arrived: ‘I’m scared,’ she wrote.” In the days following October 7, her classmates were staging a walkout to protest Israel, and the atmosphere was tense. “Parents were texting one another ideas about where in the school their children could hide,” Foer wrote. “Zolt Hara placed a call to the dean of students. By her own admission, she was hysterical. She says the dean hung up on her.”

I urge you to read Foer’s entire story, just as I urge you to read both of the legal complaints I’ve described. If you do, you’ll see that there is a certain dreadful sameness to all these stories: Universities and schools demonstrate far greater tolerance for antisemitic speech and behavior than for virtually any other kind of offensive speech or behavior. They bend or break the rules to accommodate pro-Palestinian protests. Jewish students then face intimidation and even assaults.

To defeat systemic antisemitism, universities don’t have to stifle free speech. They simply need to uphold their legal obligations to Jewish students. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires universities that receive public funding to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment and discrimination, and a leading indicator of discrimination is blatantly disparate treatment. If you permit protesters who target Jewish students to break university rules, you’re asking for a lawsuit. If you’ve permitted the campus environment to deteriorate to such a degree that Jewish students reportedly hide under their desks for safety, then you should face catastrophic monetary penalties.

Moreover, no one should excuse the targeting of Jewish students in America as mere “anti-Zionism.” When American Muslims are targeted or persecuted because of the actions of Muslims overseas, we rightly see that as pure, undistilled Islamophobia. The same principle applies to American Jews✡️. When you see the radical left target Jews and then claim they’re merely anti-Zionist, they give the game away — to them, Judaism is Zionism.

I’ve focused on the radical campus left in this newsletter. I know full well that antisemitism is bursting out on the right as well. Foer’s concerns that the hard right and hard left are rendering America less safe for Jews are very well founded. And that should grieve us all.

The story of American Judaism is inseparable from the American story. I think often of the famous exchange between George Washington and the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, R.I. 

We know the soaring promises of the Declaration of Independence, but we also know that the early American republic did not live up to those ideals. Our nation’s slow progress toward fulfilling its promise began in part with that exchange in Newport.

The congregation wrote Washington with both a clear text and a clear subtext. Here is the key sentence: “Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now (with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events) behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People — a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance — but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship.”

George Washington's text was written in 1790, in response to a letter from the Jews in Newport Rhode Island. The letter conveys a deep gratitude for the opportunity to live in a free nation. But, the subtext is equally clear. It’s a question: Do these high values apply to us, your Jewish neighbors? Washington’s response was clear and unequivocal: “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham,” he wrote, “who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

This letter was an indispensable early step in the long and painful process of extending the blessings of liberty to America’s most marginalized and persecuted communities. It would be a grim irony indeed if breaking Washington’s promise to American Jews signaled the beginning of a different kind of American migration, back into the darkness of ancient bigotries.

There is no excuse for hypocrisy. There is no excuse for harassment. It seems clear that M.I.T., Harvard and other campuses have failed to uphold their moral and legal responsibilities. Now it falls upon the engine of American justice to impose its consequences and to prove — to this generation and the ones that follow — that this truly is a government “which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag).

Capitol police taking action to oppose a dangerous Trump re-election

Capitol police officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn are fighting back politically after being attacked as police officers on January 6th insurrection.

Michael Fanone is speaks against voter suppression

Former police officers make foray into political arena, though with different approaches.  Echo report published in Politico by Emily Ngo and Nicholas Wu. 

Policing was what Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone knew. Politics is what they’ve come to learn.

Both men chose to amend their personal missions, turning their January 6 trauma into political action.

“It’s important that every institution in this country, every American, take the responsibility of upholding democracy seriously,” Fanone said in an interview. “And everyone needs to be doing everything that they can to ensure that a) Donald Trump does not succeed and b) the MAGA movement is extinguished.”

Fanone is the face of a six-figure ad campaign to be launched Saturday by an advocacy group opposing what Democrats warn is a voter suppression bill.

Dunn entered the crowded Democratic primary for Congress in Maryland.The former law enforcement officers brutalized at the hands of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol have, for three years, had front-row seats to how Washington responds, shifts and spins with historic events.

Police officers injured during Capitol attack denounce Trump as anti-police. Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump storm the U.S. Capitol, January 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Reported in Spectrum News: At a press conference organized by the Biden campaign on April 1, 2024, a former U.S. Capitol Police sergeant and a current D.C. police officer denounced former guy Trump as anti-law enforcement for praising and working with rioters charged and convicted with crimes for their actions during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Both men suffered injuries during the attack, in which supporters of the former president stormed the building to stop the certification Trump's 2020, election loss. The two are making forays into the political arena. They’re treading different paths, but both could serve as potent forces in the bid to stop former guy Trump from reclaiming the White House in this critical election year.

Fanone and Dunn say they feel compelled to move from protecting the country through policing to now protecting its integrity through politics.

“I like to live by the phrase, ‘Until there’s nothing that can be done, there’s always something that can be done,’” Dunn said in an interview. “As a Capitol Police officer, I did all that I can do in that role to protect, defend and preserve democracy. But that is exhausted now.”

Their names and stories have morphed into brands.

Their visibility was heightened after the attack by Trump supporters by their omnipresence on cable news networks and their testimony before the January 6 select panel. They’ve seen how the riot and its aftermath cleaved the country.

“I have shown one that I am willing and able to fight back against the people that are trying to tear down and destroy our democracy,” he said.

Fanone, a former D.C. Metropolitan officer, is featured in multiple Courage for America TV ads pressuring Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and other House Republicans around the country to abandon their support for legislation impacting how states administer federal elections. The bill is named the “American Confidence in Elections Act,” but opponents call it the “Big Lie Bill.”

The spot in Stefanik’s northern New York district uses footage from the body camera Fanone wore as he responded to the insurrection, during which he was beaten and tased.

Fanone said he has no plans to run for elected office, preferring to live a life of relative seclusion — albeit not without being recognized and even cursed out in public by Trump backers.

Dunn seeks to join the ranks of the House members to whom he’s described the intense and lasting psychological trauma of the attack.

He said he plans to vote for President Joe Biden after backing Trump’s first election. For Fanone, wrestling back the narrative — and holding Trump accountable, including through the judiciary system — is the prerogative.

“It’s everything that happened afterwards,” Fanone said. “Imagine the most traumatic thing that ever happened to you, and then you’ve got to go around for years convincing people what actually happened.”

Fanone and Dunn offer a glimpse into how the some 140 officers physically injured on January 6 as they guarded the Capitol are processing the events as they’ve seen how the country chooses to move on from them.

Many have left Capitol and Metropolitan police forces. Some have published accounts of the political violence they survived.

Fanone’s book is called “Hold the Line;” Dunn’s is “Standing My Ground.” Aquilino Gonell, a now-retired Capitol police officer, has a memoir called “American Shield.”

And Julie Farnam, who was assistant director of intelligence for the Capitol Police on Jan. 6, released “Domestic Darkness” this month and launched a Democratic bid for the Arlington County Board in Virginia last November.

“We saw just how fragile our democracy is and we saw how divided our country is,” Farnam said in an interview, adding that she believes being in elected office “gives you the opportunity to shape how the country and the community will grow into the future.”

Stefanik’s team said Fanone, Courage for America and other detractors are wasting their time and money.

Dunn left the Capitol Police force to run for Congress, for the seat to be vacated by retiring Rep. John Sarbanes.

He said he could count on prominent congressional allies like Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), but he emphasized his decision to run for Congress was his alone: “I have my very strong convictions about why I am running.”

The decision by Sarbanes not to run for reelection last October has kicked off a scramble to succeed him in Maryland’s 3rd District, a solidly liberal amalgam of suburban Baltimore enclaves. Dunn said he is unfazed by the crowded field.

“I spent the last 15 years of my life being around elected officials every single day, having personal relationships with them, talking to them,” Dunn said. “And I pay attention to my surroundings, I pay attention to everything.”

Republicans must reject crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Michelle Cottle:  In our Trump-era politics, there’s always the question of how crazy is too crazy — how disruptive and extreme an elected official can get before becoming so embarrassing that members of her own team feel compelled to abandon her?

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene seems to have reached that outer limit. Again. 

It’s not simply that Ms. Greene has taken such a Putin-pleasing approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine (Ukrainian Nazis❓ Really❓) that the term “useful idiot” feels unavoidable. She has, in very little time, undermined the influence of her party’s entire right flank, driving less unhinged Republicans — most notably the House speaker, Mike Johnson — to brush back her and her ilk like the poo-flinging chaos monkeys they are.

The Humbling of Marjorie Taylor Greene

Just look at what has come to pass in the House in the past several days: Mr. Johnson, a proud ultraconservative, pushed through a $95 billion foreign aid package, including $60 billion for Ukraine, with more Democratic votes than Republican ones. He is now counting on Democrats to save him from the Greene-led extremists’ plan to defenestrate him and install yet another Republican as speaker. There is much buzz about the emergence of a bipartisan governing coalition in the House, albeit one born of desperation. 

Squint hard, 👀😵and Congress almost looks to be functioning as intended, with a majority of members coming together to advance vital legislation. With her special brand of MAGA extremism, Ms. Greene has shifted the House in a bipartisan direction (at least for now) in exactly the way her base loathes.

Can I get two cheers for the art of the possible?!

On a less high-minded note, how delicious was it to see Ms. Greene on the steps of the Capitol on Saturday, raving about Mr. Johnson’s various “betrayals” and proclaiming him “a lame duck,” even as she hemmed and hawed about when she would move to oust him? All in good time, she said, insisting she felt moved to let her colleagues first “go home and hear from their constituents” over this week’s House recess. “I said from the beginning I’m going to be responsible with this,” she said, in what may be her most laughable line in weeks — a high bar for the House member known for her keen insights on Jewish space lasers.

Seriously! How responsible did Ms. Greene look Sunday on Fox News, as she ducked Maria Bartiromo’s questions about her plans for ousting Mr. Johnson? (Short answer: She has no plan.) 

Ms. Bartiromo noted that Ms. Greene was drawing widespread criticism for “creating drama” and that there was concern she was making Republicans look like a bunch of squabbling incompetents unfit to run a neighborhood book club. (Those may not have been the host’s exact words.) Ms. Greene’s crackerjack defense was to insist, “The people criticizing me are not the American people.” 

The American people “are outraged, (ya'think?😟) and what they’re saying is they don’t want to vote for Republicans anymore,” 😆she asserted, adding that “the Republican Party in charge right now, it’s no different than the Democrat Party.”

Trump sends Fascist and Nazi dog whistles to his cult followers

Former GOP Gov. Calls ‘B.S.’ On New Trump Spin With Chilling Hitler Comparison: “Shame on us if we ignore this," said former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/readers/2017/08/17/editorial-cartoon-relating-president-trump-nazi-symbols-deplorable/570652001/

Echo Opinion published in Huffington Post and on Yahoo.com:  Morning Joe's MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Monday insisted Donald Trump meant his warning about a “bloodbath” in America if he’s not elected, despite the Trump campaign’s claims to the contrary he was only talking about the auto industry.

“It was a distinction without a difference,” said Scarborough.

What made it clear what GOP nominee Trump was intending to say, Scarborough continued, was when he added afterward that a “bloodbath” would “be the least of it.”

“Obviously, he’s talking about a bloodbath for America,” he added.

“It’s just bullshit,” Scarborough said of the Trump campaign’s spin that was parroted by other Republicans.

“I’ll say that at 6:15 a.m. It was bullshit,” he added.

Trump “knew what he was doing. We’re not stupid. Americans aren’t stupid,” Scarborough said. “He was talking about a bloodbath. Sometimes a bloodbath means a bloodbath. And when he finishes by saying, ‘And that’s just going to be the least of it.’ Seriously? These people may be stupid, we’re not.”

Scarborough explained, “If you think there’s going to be a bloodbath in the auto industry, even if you take that argument at face value, which, again, given the tone of the rest of the speech, ‘bloodbath’? I’m not sure he’s talking about the niceties of international trade. But let’s just take that argument as is. Then he goes on and he says, ‘That’s going to be the least of it,’ and repeats it. ‘It’s gonna be the least of it.’”

“Obviously, he’s talking about a bloodbath for America,” he added.

“It’s just bullshit,” Scarborough said of the Trump campaign’s spin that was parroted by other Republicans.

“I’ll say that at 6:15 a.m. It was bullshit,” he added.

Trump “knew what he was doing. We’re not stupid. Americans aren’t stupid,” Scarborough said. “He was talking about a bloodbath. Sometimes a bloodbath means a bloodbath. And when he finishes by saying, ‘And that’s just going to be the least of it.’ Seriously? These people may be stupid, we’re not.”

American women must fight against forced to birth and strongly oppose 1864 draconian law

Echo opinion letter published in the Canton Repository newspaper, in Canton Ohio: Stand up against Donald Trump and his cohorts

How Arizona's 1864 abortion ban stayed on the books

Abortion rights demonstrators in Scottsdale on April 15, 2024
The ban was first enacted in 1864, as part of the Howell Code — the original set of laws that governed the Arizona territory.

Wake up, everybody❗ 

No more backward thinking (this ain't 1864❗). Time for thinking ahead (this is 2024). How long will we allow Donald Trump and his cohorts to think they are above the law? No one is. After everything he has done, now he's saying there will be a "bloodbath" if he's not re-elected. So what does he mean? Another "Civil War"? Or he's going to get in the tub and give us what we want? Violence is never the answer.

Whereas we should be judged by the content of our "character" and not the color of our skin, we are all created equal. America is and will always be great, sometimes greater than others, but still great. Americans, show the world are greatness, for they are truly watching. Stand up and do the right thing. "Don't hate − be great."

#Vote Blue 2024 #Vote Biden-Harris 2024 #Vote Democrat

From Percy Keller, in Massillon Ohio

Donald Trump's evil support for Russian Vladimir Putin risks undermining NATO's alliance

Mississippi Free Press Editor and CEO Donna Ladd said that the newspaper should report on Donald Trump saying he would encourage Russia to attack certain American allies. She was right.

Doanld Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland on July 16, 2018.

Several major national media outlets were fumbling the ball and either ignoring those remarks or giving them less weight than they deserve. Mississippi Free Press editor said we should set an example for how national media ought to cover such extreme policy declarations. So we did.

"Trump Encourages Russia to Attack American Allies: ‘Do Whatever the Hell They Want’", Mississippi Free Press.

"We may be a local Mississippi outlet, but this is important. It should be leading every newspaper in the country."

North AtlanticTreaty Organization

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he encourages Russia to attack U.S. allies who he believes does not contribute enough money toward NATO defense costs. 

I can’t express how gratifying it has been to see people around the country, frustrated with many national publications’ treatment of stories like this, embracing our decision.

Although we are a Mississippi publication; local reporting in the Magnolia State is and always will be our primary focus. But, we  believe there is value in ensuring that we’re telling readers about important national stories, too—and drawing attention to news that we believe deserves more attention. 

National stories affect Mississippi, too. “Hell, if a paper called NEW YORK Times 😊can report urgent national news, then a site called MISSISSIPPI Free Press can too,” said our editor.

Donald Trump would encourage Russia to attack U.S. allies whom he claims do not contribute enough to the NATO defense costs, he told a crowd of supporters to (wrongminded❗) cheers at a South Carolina rally.

“One of the presidents of a big country (big country❓) stood up and said, ‘Well sir 😧⍰ 😕, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay❓ You’re delinquent❓’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want,” the Republican frontrunner for his party’s 2024, presidential nomination said.

Dismantling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been a goal of the evil 😈Russian President Vladimir Putin, who orchestrated efforts in 2016, to help Trump and hurt Clinton’s electoral prospects. Members of NATO—which includes the U.S., Canada and 29 European countries—pledge to defend any other nation that gets attacked. (Dismantling NATO is dangerous.)

Mississipi Free Press plans to report more stories about national and state interest in the future, which may even involve a Washington, D.C.-based reporter or collaboration to help better cover Mississippi’s congressional delegation and the policy decisions that affect Mississippians.

#TrumpIsPutinPuppet

Donald Trump is a selfish grifter

Echo opinion letter published in the Holland Sentinel newspaper, in Michigan:

Donald Trump will never change.(Ya' think❓)

Approximately four years ago, I saw Donald Trump in the Oval Office, at the Resolute Desk, with a smarmy grin on his face. He was hawking a donor's products. Since then, I have refused to purchase anything Goya®. Donald Trump always has been and always will be a transactional grifter.

"Do something for me (give me money), and I will do something for you (use the Oval Office to sell for you)."

Do you have a "that's enough" moment? No matter what he tells you, Donald Trump cares about only one person: himself. Nothing has changed. Think carefully on November 5th. (IOW Vote Blue❗)

From Barbara Webbe in West Olive, Michigan

Donald Trump is not interested in supporting democracy but admires dictators

An election choice like no other- democracy or fascism❓

Unlike our current president Joe Biden, the alternative is disasterous.  Trump aims to be a dictator❗

Echo opinion letter published in the Waterbury Connecticut Republican Americans newspaper:

Are we better off now compared to four years ago? (Maine Writer- IMO, the COVID pandemic and Trump are synonomous!)

The answer is a resounding yes, if for no other reason than this: We now have a president who, should he lose the next election, will accept the results graciously and respectfully.

The contrast with the former president is clear. He acted and continues to act in an erratic and dangerous manner when faced with an unfavorable outcome. He did everything in his power to circumvent the will of a country that emphatically rejected him in 2020, going so far as to foment an attack on the Capitol, Congress, and on his own vice president! 

Trump considers the protections enshrined in our Constitution mere suggestions for him to twist, subvert, and defile as he sees fit. And still he claims to be a member of the ‘law and order’ party.

He aspires to be a dictator, there can be no denying that – he said it himself. His idols are Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, and Vikor Orbán. Is that what we want for our country? The American Revolution was fought and won to break free of the shackles of a king. Why would any American be in favor of further eroding our democracy and subjecting the United States to the iron fist of authoritarianism? 😡

“You can’t love your country only when you win.”

#VoteBlue2024  #VoteBidenHarris

From Stephen Tarnowski from Southbury Connecticut

Donald Trump needs an Evangelical reality test: Philander, racist, sexual abuser and Bible heretic

How can evangelicals like Mike Johnson tolerate Trump?
Echo opinion by LZ Granderson published in the Lost Angeles Times newspaper:

At the 2016, Republican National Convention, when I told Donald Trump’s “God whisperer” 😟Paula White that he referred to her as his pastor, she said she was his spiritual advisor — as if that were some sort of “get out of jail free” card for her.

And yet White worked hard in our conversation to convince me that the foul-mouthed person on the campaign trail was godly.
Then came her turn to speak at the convention. Most of the seats were empty when White took the stage, which says a lot about the interest attendees had in the words of Trump’s spiritual advisor.

It was as if their minds were already made up.

This was after Trump referred to a book of the Bible as “Two Corinthians” in a speech at Liberty University, the private Christian college where Jerry Falwell Jr. was president, before a sex scandal forced him to resign later that year. 

This was after Trump mocked a journalist’s disability. This was after he came down the escalator at Trump Tower and kicked off his campaign by bashing Mexico and Latinos before offering “and some, I assume, are good people.” Trump had shown what kind of person he was, and somehow still had evangelical Christians’ support.

But, he must have feared there would be some limit to their capacity for cognitive dissonance, because he did not want evangelical voters to find out about his 2006, affair with Stormy Daniels. 

In fact, Trump paid her money to stay quiet days before the election. I don’t know if that’s what White spiritually advised him to do, but she went on to serve Trump at the White House, so she must have made peace with the deceit.

The reason Trump is on trial in New York isn’t because of President Biden or Democrats. It’s because he wanted to deceive a crucial bloc of voters and in doing so is accused of falsely claiming the hush payment as legal services on business documents. And he is accused of falsifying documents in connection with other crimes.

In other words, it’s not a witch hunt. It’s repercussions.

Now, it appears, it’s House Speaker Mike Johnson’s turn to find some sort of balance between his personal faith and his professional interest. The joint news conference between Trump and Johnson at Mar-A-Lago, will most likely help Johnson keep his job — which was murky after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called his leadership into question — but it does nothing to erase the fact he’s aligned with a thrice-married adulterer who mocked Jimmy Carter the day after Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 77 years, entered hospice.

The image of Johnson standing at the lectern — as Trump stood behind him like a jack-o’-lantern the day after Halloween — was frightening. Unnerving. It was not a show of strength; it was another sign of how far some white evangelicals are willing to drag their faith through the mud just to be next to power.

Christians believe in a thing called grace, and Lord knows I’ve benefited from a lot of it in life. But, Trump doesn’t express remorse for his affair with Daniels or the hush money spent to trick his Christian supporters. He has been found liable for sexual abuse. He’s bragged about grabbing women by their private parts and kissing them without consent.

The fact that Trump could be forgiven is irrelevant if he hasn’t changed or stopped his abuses or given any indication of regret. What we have in Trump is not a story of redemption but a clear account of who he really is and always has been.

In February during a rally, he said this about his opponent Nikki Haley: “Where’s your husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone!”

It was no secret: Haley’s husband was deployed overseas with the South Carolina National Guard, something she discussed openly at campaign events. Trump knew “what happened to her husband.” But he just gambled that some in his audience didn’t know and that he could score cheap political points by smearing a service member.

You don’t have to act surprised. That’s the kind of person Trump has always been, regardless of whether he had a “God whisperer” on staff. This is the kind of person Johnson cozied up to  in a desperate grab at keeping his job. (Maine Writer IMO- Speaker Johnson was no guest at Mar-A-Lago.  Betcha' he paid his own way including getting an invoice for his meals. Wanna' bet?)

I’m not sure what the former president’s current spiritual advisor is whispering in his ear these days, but by now it’s clear he doesn’t need to listen to get reelected.

(P.S. Maine Writer- Hypocricy on steroids!)

Donald Trump is finally on trial in Manhattan!

Echo essay published in Trump On Trial, in Intelligencer by Margaret Hartmann:

April 15, 2024, courtroom photo in Manhattan

“Sleepy Joe” was always a low-energy Trump nickname. Donald Trump’s derisive name for Joe Biden never had the zing of “Crooked Hillary” or “Liddle Marco,” and it was too similar to other Trump nicknames like “Sleepin’ Bob” Casey and “Sleepy Eyes” Chuck Todd. Now there’s a new problem with it that no one anticipated: It’s easy to turn it back on “Sleepy Don” when he nods off — repeatedly! — during a criminal trial over hush-money payments he allegedly made to cover up an affair with a porn star.

In an interview during a break, journalist Maggie Haberman told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump looked sleepy during previous court appearances but this incident was worse:

During day one of Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan — which will determine whether he broke the law by paying off Stormy Daniels just before the 2016, election, then disguising the payments — the former president reportedly fell asleep in the courtroom. Maggie Haberman wrote on the New York Times’ trial liveblog on April 16:

• Trump appeared to be sleeping. His head kept dropping down and his mouth went slack.
• Haberman said Trump was roused a short time later:
• Trump was apparently jolted back awake, noticing the notes his lawyer passed him several minutes ago.

Stewart Bishop, a reporter for Law360 who was in the courtroom, made the same observation: "It very much looks like Trump is dozing off right now." Perhaps Trump was embarrassed — but incredibly, it wasn’t enough to keep him from dozing off again during the proceedings again, the next morning.

Donald Trump gets no support from officials who served in his failed administration

Echo opinion letter published in the Cedar Rapids Iowa newspaper, "The Gazette":

Trump is sleeping during the Manhattan trial

The question Donald Trump’s supporters must ask themselves is how they reconcile their (wrongminded❗) support for him against the damming testimonies coming from those who served him and know him best. The list includes top military advisers, lawyers, economic advisers, some members of his Cabinet, press officials, and campaign aides.

John Kelly, a retired four-star general who served as his chief of staff, criticized Trump as having a “contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” 

Trump, he said, is “[A] person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me’ … and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.” (In fact, Trump referred to Marines buried at cemetery in France in crude and derogatory terms, a former senior official says, reported in CNN by Jim Acosta.)

Maine Veterans Cemetery in Augusta, Maine

Former defense secretary Mark Esper said Trump is not “fit for office because he puts himself first, and I think anybody running for office should put the country first.”

Former White House counsel Ty Cobb claimed, “He never cared about America, its citizens, its future or anything but himself … In fact, as history will show from his divisive lies, as well as from his unrestrained contempt for the rule of law and his related crimes, his conduct and mere existence have hastened the demise of democracy and of the nation.”

These assessments come from conservative Republicans who know the man intimately. Ignoring them risks turning our democracy into an autocracy governed by a lawless and vengeful leader.

From Thomas Hill in Cedar Falls Iowa

P.S. from Maine Writer:  Notice the reticence and "no shows" from Donald Trump's family while he is on trial for 91 indictments. 

Donald Trump owns chaos he created and supported during his administration

Trump’s final year in office proves incompetence an echo opinion letter published in Florida's Orlando Sentinel: 

We don’t examine the effectiveness of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln by excluding the Civil War. We don’t look at George W. Bush’s effectiveness by excluding the financial market meltdown in 2008. Why do supporters of Donald Trump disregard his (chaotic!) fourth year in office?

Since George Washington’s time in office, we have judged a president’s effectiveness based on what shape they left the country in upon exiting the Oval office. Bottom line is, virtually no one was better off four years ago than they are today.

Whether you believe that Trump was a victim of circumstances or a poor administrator, he owns everything that occurred under his presidency. The tax cuts for the rich, the riots, the pandemic. He owns it all. That is what you sign up for when you choose to run for this country’s highest office.

In 1993 (after George H.W. Bush), 2009 (after George W. Bush), and in 2021 (after Trump) the elected presidents (Clinton, Obama and Biden) inherited a country in economic shambles and each of these Democratic presidents had to focus their first years of service restoring the economic wellbeing of this country.

Trump inherited a robust economy but couldn’t successfully drive the car for four short years.  #Vote Blue 2024  #VoteBidenHarris2024

Dan McGarvey in Orlando, Florida

Trump rallies are evidence of his bizarrre cult attraction fueled by delusional ideation

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley gets a broken ⏰clock award for this comment: Nikki Haley argues Donald Trump is always followed by ‘chaos’ before a large South Carolina crowd (AP report). Donald Trump Is His Own Chaos Whisperer

Chaos on steroids❗ Reported in The New York Times by Katherine Miller*- So, Trump opened his Allentown Pennsylvania rally by presenting a delusional fake news lead. He told theMAGA cult crowd that Israel was under attack, adding that “it would not have happened if we were in office — they know that, we know that, everyone knows that.” Onstage, at rallies over the last year, Trump has done these alt-universe loops in which if the election hadn’t been taken from him, nothing bad would have befallen the world — no embarrassing Afghanistan withdrawal, no Hamas attack on Israel, no Russian invasion of Ukraine, no inflation. Sometimes, with the way Trump talks, he can subtly lock more and more people into his inability to process his 2020, defeat. He does this by pairing his personal misfortune with that of the entire globe. (IOW Trump is detached from reality. Moreover, IMO, he should be receiving psychiatric medical care!)

But, in Allentown on Saturday night, these hypotheticals ended someplace else. When talking about the world being ablaze, Trump told the crowd about something Viktor Orban, the illiberal prime minister of Hungary, had said: “Bring Donald Trump back as president and it’ll all stop.” (👀Frank L. Baum wrote a classic story about delusional behavior like "Bring Trump Back😟😓".....like "follow the yellow brick road....OMG❗)  

As Trump put it, “He said something else, and I wouldn’t say it, I wouldn’t really like the word. ‘China was afraid of Donald Trump, Russia was afraid of Donald Trump, everybody was afraid of Donald Trump’ — I don’t want to say that. I want to say they respected me.”
Quantifying chaos is hard to do, but the last eight years have been some of the most chaotic in decades in American politics. And for the last year, Trump talked a lot about ending all this chaos simply through his resumption of the presidency — a kind of leviathan, superman thing. 

Delusional Trumpzi ideation! 

Before the rally, the Trump campaign played a movie-trailer-esque video that warned of nuclear annihilation. 

There is a theory advanced by some Republicans that Trump’s chaos and unpredictability deter others’ impulsive behavior — that other leaders could not quite read how the United States might respond, so the anxiety provoked by that uncertainty stalled out otherwise bigger and more drastic shifts in the world. After she left the administration, Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, framed her and Trump’s approaches to diplomats in the manner of a good-cop-bad-cop routine. “He would, like, ratchet up the rhetoric,” she said in 2018, “and then I would go back to the ambassadors and say, ‘You know, he is pretty upset. I can’t promise you what he is going to do. I’ll tell you, if we do these sanctions, it will keep him from going too far.’”

Trump himself will allude to his own chaos as preventive. Onstage, he sometimes claims he prevented Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine earlier on the strength of personal negotiation in which  Trump threatened a wild action. “‘Vladimir, don’t do it, don’t do it — if you do it, this is what’s going to happen.’ Someday I’ll tell you what I said,” Mr. Trump said at an Iowa rally on October 7. “He said, ‘No way you’ll do that.’ I said, ‘I will. I will; I’ll do it.’ And he didn’t believe me.” (This symptom is like the psychiatric patient who hears voices! There is medication available to treat these delusions.)

Then, in a possibly telling insight into how Trump views politics, he added: “But, he believed me 10 percent! That’s all you needed!” He said the same was true of Xi Jinping and Taiwan — Mr. Xi had believed him 10 percent and “that’s enough.” The idea of Trump injecting just enough creeping doubt or pain into the equation of how a person perceives what he’s saying explains a lot about American political chaos over the last eight years.

When you press on different parts of Trump’s reasoning, you find problems. For one thing, talking to Tucker Carlson last year, Mr. Orban framed his praise the opposite way from what Trump said in Pennsylvania: “The best foreign policy of the recent several decades belongs to him. He did not initiate any new war. He treated nicely the North Koreans and Russia, even the Chinese, you know. He did the policy that was the best one for the Middle East, the Abraham Accords.” And there are real crosscurrents even at Trump rallies: At the Pennsylvania event he opened by saying, “God bless Israel.” But at one point Trump supporters also chanted “Genocide Joe” — the chant about the president’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza and the thousands of Palestinians who’ve died — to which Trump said, “They’re not wrong.”

Since the pandemic began, in particular, it can feel as though we live in a more precarious, interlocking world, where one bad development can threaten even worse ones, like a wider regional conflict in the Middle East. Trump talks a lot about what wouldn’t have happened, but a lot may still happen next year, regardless of whether he or President Biden is elected. (Hey Trumpzi cult❓  Praise Isreal or call their actions Genocide❗ Chaos on steroids.)

Politics involves the art of perception, particularly during campaigns. And Trump (has a Fascist instinct). He knows how perception works — how to build up themes and crush opponents. Those skills have reshaped American politics. But not everything works like that.

One thing he barely talked about on Saturday night was abortion. “Sometimes with Great Events come difficulties,” he posted recently about how he helped end Roe v. Wade, just before announcing that he would leave the issue to the states, rather than pursuing a federal ban. But leaving abortion to the states also doesn’t resolve the issue — one state supreme court can essentially end in vitro fertilization programs, and another can ban abortion in the space of a month.

Indeed, Trump clearly wants this to go away, for people to not talk about it, for voters to just kind of land on a middle ground, quietly. But people have strong beliefs about what abortion law should look like, beliefs that exist outside of Trump, in part because — like war or the pandemic — abortion policy is not one of perception. Abortion is banned or permitted in real life. (Women risk death if they are unable to receive abortion care in emergent pregnancy situations.)

Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in The New York Times Opinion