Donald Trump is a corrupt leader but maga Republicans line up in lock step formation to defend his immoral administration

It's unfortunate our nation's 250th anniversary occurred with corrupt Donald Trump in office. His approval rating is 32%. 

Echo opinion letter published in the Lexington Herald-Leader, a Kentucky newspaper:

Impeach the evil bastard❗

Any objective layman who doesn't agree with this assessment has a cognitive impairment.

Donald Trump is the worst president ever, devoid of any moral compass. Any objective layman who doesn't agree with this has a cognitive impairment. A 34-time convicted felon and accused violator of the emoluments clause, he must be expelled from office. What about the crypto scheme❓ After midterm elections, Congress must use the 25th Amendment. Democrats likely will control the House and Senate. Trump's revenge campaign is demented.

The rioting January 6 anarchists were pardoned, a black eye in our history. We are welcoming only White South African immigrants, with them being eligible for 💲4,500 in initial federal aid, clearly a racist agenda.

ICE and its racially evil profiling are disgusting. Soon, they'll be wearing shock gloves. Pre-election Trump stated there will be "no new wars." About 70% of Americans say the Iran war has hurt the U.S. What is the bloodshed's purpose? What is the exit strategy❓ The war has cost the U.S. 💲43.6 billion as of September. Casualties are at least 18 U.S. soldiers dead, over 800 U.S. soldiers injured, and around 3,600 Iranians killed, including more than 100 schoolchildren in a February bombing. The runaway freight train of national debt is $40 trillion, with a 💲4 trillion (BTW that's a number with 12 zeros❗) increase in the last year and a half. 

Like Trump's six bankruptcies, he is trashing the economy. His terrible tariffs have led to unchecked inflation and economic hardship. Grocery prices and the Consumer Price Index have continued to increase. Gas is about 💲4.50 per gallon, up from about 💲3.10 at the start of Trump's second term.

The rioting January 6th anarchists were pardoned, a black eye in our history. We are welcoming only White South African immigrants, with them being eligible for 💲4,500 in initial federal aid, clearly a racist agenda.

From Scott Riemenschneider, in Meyers Lake, Ohio

(Maine Writer post script:  Senator Susan Collins must read this letter.)

Donald Trump continues to spew a litany of lies without every showing proof for his fake news and evil accusations

On the long playlist of Donald Trump’s self-pitying complaints, one tune has blared louder than any other: Elections are rigged — against Republicans generally and him specifically.

The Most Laughable of Trump’s Many Lies

Echo opinion by Frank Bruni published in The New York Times

In 2016, he sang that song in advance of the actual voting, to discredit the Hillary Clinton victory that most polls and pundits predicted. In 2018, he sang it with an extra note of fear, no doubt realizing that Democrats’ takeover of the House meant trouble — which soon came in the form of two impeachments. 

In 2020, he sang it operatically, a Pavarotti of paranoia, and it served as the menacing soundtrack for the unconscionable violence of Jan. 6, 2021.

He has never given it a rest, and with the midterms almost upon us, it has been roaring from speakers here, there and everywhere. Although the Supreme Court stymied him, Donald Trump sought to limit mail-in voting, claiming that it wasn’t a vehicle for broader participation in elections but a scheme by which Democrats stole them. 

Trump's evil administration sued states for their voter rolls. His sycophantic F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, suggested a potential need for federal agents at polling sites to ensure “election security.”

What nonsense. And our saturation familiarity with it often numbs us to the revealing perversity of it. As much as anything else that Trump says or does, his insistence on corrupted elections reflects his dedication to fiction; his discipline and stamina in the service of a self-promoting lie; the willful gullibility of many of his supporters; and the inability of logic or evidence to pierce the armor of his and their delusions.

Go back to 2016, when it looked as if Hillary Clinton would defeat him. Trump keened that nothing about the election had been fair and nothing about its results could be trusted. Then something miraculous happened. He won. And what do you know? That outcome could be trusted.

Well, not exactly: Clinton’s advantage of nearly three million ballots in the popular vote was bogus, fraudulent, the rotten fruit of illegal voting and Democratic chicanery. But a party crooked and potent enough to tilt that tally that far in her favor somehow failed to master the more important math of the Electoral College, in which Trump’s victory was of course legitimate and righteous.

Got it. Makes exquisite sense.

Trump didn’t merely spout gibberish; he convened a panel to validate it. Anyone remember the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, better known as the “voter fraud commission”❓ Kris Kobach, then the Kansas secretary of state, took the wheel and proceeded to steer the effort absolutely nowhere. It never found the proof of fraud that it promised, and it sputtered to a stop less than a year after it theatrically revved its engine.

Evidence (or the lack thereof) is no match for Trump’s and his supporters’ persecution complexes. The astonishing sum of 💲787.5 million that Fox (Fake❗) News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems in 2023, to settle a defamation lawsuit was tantamount to an admission that the networks’ anchors and executives knew or suspected the bogusness of the stolen-election conspiracy theories, such as the corruption of Dominion’s machines, that (Fake❗) Fox promoted after Joe Biden’s 2020, victory. But did that quiet Trump’s protestations that he’d beaten Biden❓ Nope. Nor did his supporters seem any less receptive to being told that they’d been wronged.

They know what they know: The establishment is out to get them. And they never bother to explain how that establishment is at once so insidious and so inept. They never address the now-you-rig-it, now-you-don’t inconstancy of Democrats, who apparently steal certain elections but nap through others. 

Instead, the Republicans retained or won majorities in both chambers of Congress in 2016, one chamber in 2018, one in 2022, and both in 2024, when of course Trump also prevailed, beating Vice President Kamala Harris in the popular vote and the Electoral College.

I’d have to ask Donald Trump: How and why did Democrats and the Deep State let that happen❓ And, if voter rolls are a mess, voting sites are poorly monitored and mail-in voting (which you use) is thievery’s handmaiden, isn’t your victory in 2024, every bit as suspicious as Biden’s in 2020❓ Or, will you tell me it’s not, because you and your fellow Republicans are so much more ethical than Democrats❓

Readers, feel free to take a pause to control your laughter.

Laughable is what all of this would be if it weren’t such an ugly reflection of the state of American politics. Trump’s persistence in attacking the voting process and all his related hooey, such as calling January 6 a “day of love,” suggest the extent to which truth now matters less than the ardor, creativity and endless repetition of lies🤥🤥🤥. Say something consistently enough, with a thick enough air of conviction, and it will sound true to those inclined to receive it that way.

That’s partly because more and more Americans choose to believe whatever the leaders of their tribe tell them and whatever justifies their prejudices or bolsters their sense of victimization or entitlement. Such convenient credulity is especially pronounced in the MAGA movement, where any drubbing Republicans take in these midterms will almost certainly be dismissed as a hoax.

That leaves us in a dangerous place. ⚠ Partisanship with blinders this thick threatens the health of a society, which depends on a measure of grace in losing and on voters as invested in democratic processes as in getting exactly what they want. Trump’s chorus of “rigged” and “fraud” pulls them in the opposite direction. 

And the volume of that wretched music will only increase between now and the first Tuesday in November. #VoteBlue❕

Senator Susan Collins was given protection from criminal prosecution by Donald Trump's justice department

 Susan Collins’ fundraising tactics sure look crooked to me | Steve Collins

Echo opinion published in the Portland Press Herald by Steve Collins

New reporting suggests our senior senator promoted a shady contractor in return for campaign cash. More investigation is urgently needed.

Senator Susan Collins has been bribed to keep silent about Donald Trump. She has been pandering for money for several years and has been corrupted by power.

Opinion:  Back in 2019, I received many invitations to head to University of Maine to see a nifty new boat created by the world’s largest 3D printer.

How I wish I’d gone.

That outing might have provided a clue that while Senator Susan Collins sometimes hauls truckloads of federal cash to Maine, it comes with a price.

As a shocking and deft investigation by ProPublica this week showed, the company behind the boat, a little-known Hawaiian venture named Navatek, got Collins’ help after its top executive wrote a 💲150,000 check to a super PAC helping Collins with her 2020, reelection bid.

At the boat unveiling event in 2019, Collins and other dignitaries saw “a 25-foot patrol boat with a hull form developed by Navatek, a leader in ship design and a UMaine Composites Center industrial partner” in 3D printing the 5,000-pound vessel.

Collins told the crowd, “Just think of the implications for our military if they could print two prototypes of new, fast boats. I know Navatek is working on that right now. That’s going to be good for both taxpayers as well as our military service members who will ultimately benefit from this technology.”
Except, guess what❓ That wasn’t the case. The project, funded by a budget provision pushed by Collins, may have helped UMaine and Navatek — but didn’t mean anything to our Navy, the ostensible beneficiary.

Drop by the Corner Bakery on Capitol Hill and you can pick up an Uptown Turkey-Avocado Sandwich served on ‘Harvest Toast’ for 💲13.49.

But going there can prove a lot more costly if you’re angling to get help from Collins.

Two months after the lunch, the super PAC boss, Scott Reed, told Navatek officials that Collins would get the company 💲32 million in Navy contracts, according to the nonprofit news organization, which said it reviewed a trove of emails and legal documents.

A cheap lunch led to millions of taxpayer dollars for a shady contractor that ultimately had little to offer the Navy. Collins raked in hundreds of thousands to promote her campaign. Par for the course in the nation’s capital, perhaps, but it stinks.

We’ve known for years that Navatek ran a crooked operation — its former CEO is in federal prison — and that it had ties to Collins.

What ProPublica added to the tale are stunning details that paint Collins and her staff as in on the action and the confirmation the FBI had launched an investigation into her connections to Navatek — an investigation that died when Donald Trump took office and he fired nearly everyone who had a hand in it.

Collins’ camp insists the five-term senator did nothing wrong. Her Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson, said Collins’ actions as chronicled by ProPublica amounted to “corruption of the highest order.”

Trump arguably does much worse in full view of the public nearly every day.

Suddenly, though, we have a plausible explanation for the reluctance of Maine’s senior senator to stand up to Trump’s tyrannical moves: The president protected her reputation by eliminating personnel behind the FBI probe. At most, he may have shielded Collins from facing federal criminal charges.

Everybody, and that includes Sen. Collins, should agree that further investigation is needed now.

#VoteBlue❕

Donald Trump knows absolutely nothing about Canadian history so a literate person in the White House can read this to him

Donald Trump must tear down this (tariff) wall | Opinion

Echo opinion published in the Portland Press Herald by Roger W. Bowen:

Our Canadian neighbors deserve an apology from America’s leaders.
Roger W. Bowen is a political scientist who has published two books about Canadian affairs and the country’s relationship with the United States.

Since 1775 the U.S. has invaded Canada three times and has “won” only once. Planned but not undertaken, on at least two separate occasions America’s foreign policy makers developed two different “contingency plans” to invade Canada.

If Donald Trump, who wants Canada to become America’s 51st state, tries to have his way, he’ll likely rely on one of these plans.

In 1775, both Lower Canada (Quebec) and America were British colonies whose subjects were outraged by the wrongs they were forced to endure at the hands of their imperialist overlord.

Very aware of the growing anti- British sentiment among the people of Quebec and America’s 13 colonies, Britain focused on how to keep the angry North American colonists on both sides of the border from joining forces.

The decisive Battle of Quebec (City) forced an American retreat. Similarly, the United States had at best mixed results in the War of 1812, but did not win. Our one “military” victory against Canada happened in the late 1830s in the so-called “Aroostook War.” It in fact was a series of skirmishes between lumbermen on both sides of the Maine-Canada border that came to an end with a negotiated treaty setting the boundaries of the Maine-New Brunswick border.

Actual armed conflict between the two neighbors has been rare. “War Plan Red” of 1930, was a contingency plan for the American army and navy to work together in order to stop an invasion of the homeland by Britain. This plan assumed that British troops would invade America primarily from Canada, and that the British navy would ship war materiel through Halifax, Nova Scotia.

War Plan Red called for seizing Halifax, even using poison gas, and occupying all major Canadian cities and its electrical power infrastructure.

A second untested plan was instigated by American war planners based on real events in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

French President Charles de Gaulle had visited Quebec in 1967 and famously uttered “Vive le Quebec libre,” effectively telling French Canadians that Quebec should separate from Canada.

Quebecois leaders responded. Rene Levesque quit the Liberal Party and formed the Parti Quebecois and soon thereafter issued a “manifesto” that would require a referendum on Quebec’s future. From the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa one confidential cablegram to Rufus Smith of the U.S. Department of State predicted that an independent Quebec “might try to throw a line over to Louisiana, Maine, etc.” in the event of a separatist upheaval.

A young political scientist who was a strong supporter of America “projecting” power in Southeast Asia/Vietnam was Zbigniew Brzezinski. At Columbia University Brzezinski developed an institute to study communism and wrote a well-received book about Soviet totalitarianism that caught the attention first of John F. Kennedy, then President Johnson on whose State Department’s Policy Planning Council Brzezinski participated and to which he offered his considered yet alarming view that de Gaulle’s entry into Canada and Levesque’s separatism might well destabilize Canada and harm the United States. That view was based on a detailed, inter-agency analysis that became National Security Staff Memorandum # 9, portions of which remain classified today.

Brzezinski’s concerns expressed in 1967, seemed prescient just three years later during the FLQ Crisis when Prime Minister Eliot Trudeau suspended the civil liberties of Canadians following the Front for the Liberation of Quebec (FLQ) kidnapping British Trade Commissioner James Cross and Quebecois official Pierre LaPorte, whom they later murdered.

Trudeau made the case that many Canadians “apprehended insurrection” due to the “climate of terror and violence” perpetrated by the radical wing of the FLQ. Its radicalism went continental once American Black Panther Stokley Carmichael called for Canadian Blacks to “get all the guns you can” and “be prepared to kill for your people in the long period of armed struggle against white society.”

Mark Rudd and Jerry Rubin, both American anti-Vietnam War radicals, allegedly encouraged rioting by separatists in Vancouver.

By 1971, the FBI concluded that the FLQ is not “just another bourgeois movement” but instead had the effect of turning Quebec into a bastion of rebellion against all central authorities.

Enter Donald Trump. The trade war that he started in order to force Canada to kowtow has hurt America’s reputation more than Canada’s so far. U.S. polls show that 80% of all Americans continue to give Canada high favorable ratings, while 80% of Canadians view Trump unfavorably and 75% do not trust U.S. negotiators to play fair. Canadians are boycotting many American manufactured goods and American travel destinations in order to show their contempt toward the bully south of its border.

Canada deserves an apology from America’s leaders.

Treating neighbors as you wish to be treated is an honorable notion in democratic civil society. 

Trump seems not to understand this basic norm, so it must be left to the Congress to issue an apology to Canada (That means you Senator Susan Collins❗) when the tariffs are finally suspended and the saber-rattling ends. The official apology might end with a “thank you”🙏 for responding quickly and forcefully with military assistance following the tragedy of 9/11.

Senator Susan Collins is a partisan Donald Trump loyalist who accepted huge amounts of GOP political money to support the Trumpian evil agenda

Susan Collins Delivered Maine Up to Trump

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Michelle Cottle

“I deliver for the state of Maine.” 🙄🤥💥

(Maine Writer:  Senator Susan Collins needs to know what our first heating oil bill is for the upcoming winter.  $598.96 including a 1% veterans discount. This oil tank will have to be refilled in December.  Maine people cannot afford this high cost to stay warm with heating oil. People will die. They will suffer frostbite, hypothermia, even freeze to death because Senator Collins voted to support the One Big Beautiful - Ugly- Bill, many lost access to health insurance and Medicaid.  But, in the political ads, we are supposed to say, "Thank you Senator Collins"❓  For what❓ )

These seven words, uttered by Senator Susan Collins in a recent sit-down with Politico, are the heart of her re-election pitch this election. Every election, really.

The sole Republican senator still hanging on in a blue state, Collins, running for her sixth term, has for decades defied political gravity by selling herself as a moderate, independent, bipartisan pragmatist focused on getting stuff done for Mainers — a voice of political sanity amid the growing din of polarization and dysfunction. It is an above-the-fray appeal that feels designed to flatter voters as much as herself.

But here’s the thing. However moderate or pragmatic or pleasant she may be, Collins has a limited ability to influence what happens in today’s Senate, a starkly polarized chamber dominated by leadership and currently functioning mostly as a rubber stamp for an authoritarian president. Too often she is left scrambling to do damage control in response to the chaos created by her own party. In this environment, her national-vibes-versus-local-results construct is, at best, outmoded. These days, Collins is not delivering for Maine so much as she is delivering up Maine to the Trump agenda.

Serving in the Senate is a team sport, now more than ever. Party leaders keep a tight grip on how the chamber functions, what legislation proceeds and how key pools of campaign cash get distributed among members. (Maine Writer:  In other words, politics has become obsessed like never before with money.)

Ideological heterodoxy (definition: any opinion, belief or practice that strays from official, traditional or accepted standards) is frowned upon. Cross-aisle cooperation is discouraged. As rank-and-file senators will grumpily tell you, gone are the days when iconoclasts and independent thinkers held serious sway. The chamber is increasingly dominated by a “maximalist partisan position,” as Senator Michael Bennet, the Colorado Democrat, put it to me last year.  Inside this polarized Thunderdome, Collins’s chief influence is as one more warm body giving her team the majority, and by extension the team leadership control over the agenda.

Also, respecting norms does not automatically make for moderate, sensible outcomes. Collins has cast some of her more upsetting votes in recent years under this banner. Her belief in granting as much deference as possible to presidential nominees, for instance, led her to support the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the head of health and human services, Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Last year, Collins supported a procedural motion to allow the president’s big signature bill — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — to come up for debate on the Senate floor. The senator did so, she explained, out of respect for the authority of her conference’s leadership.

Ms. Collins sometimes scores wins that a blue-state electorate would appreciate. Over the years, she joined Democrats in passing a host of bills, and she has provided a key vote to block measures backed by her party. During the first Trump administration, she was one of three Republicans who helped kill the push for the so-called skinny repeal of Obamacare.

On the campaign trail, Collins makes much of her focus on real results for her home state, putting her relationships and institutional knowledge to productive use. She and her campaign team can tick through numerous examples in which she secured federal investment in this business or protected funding for that public program. Forget the national vibes; she is all about getting stuff done for Mainers.

Except that, in recent years, this often involves merely undoing sweeping damage done by Donald Trump — getting grants restored to the University of Maine or preserving funding to hire seasonal workers at Acadia National Park. This summer, she won tariff exemptions for Canadian road salt and cement.

While Collins might be commended for calculated actions, like scoring road-salt relief — and for her outspoken criticism of tariffs more broadly — the Trump’s feud with Canada will still kick her state in the teeth. 

Winning seasonal workers for Acadia pales next to the pain caused her constituents by the administration taking a sledgehammer to the federal government. 

Whatever targeted funding she secures to sustain rural hospitals in Maine seems unlikely to make up for the harm inflicted by the Medicaid cuts in Republicans’ big, beautiful bill. And on it goes.

Collins’s electoral endurance has long driven the Democrats batty. This year, with the political winds blowing hard against the G.O.P., the blue team is more desperate than ever to crack the senator’s image as a different kind of Republican. They point out that she votes with Trump 95 percent of the time. They dismiss her breaks with her party as political theater likely coordinated with the White House. Her 2018, support of Mr. Kavanaugh is a hot line of attack.

But the real issue may be that it no longer much matters what kind of Republican Collins is. With Trump running amok, and congressional Republicans loath to stand up to him, Ms. Collins’s presence in the Senate is, on balance, costing her state far more than it is contributing. This cycle, the only way to really deliver for Maine is for its voters to reject Ms. Collins’s long-running yet increasingly specious argument that she is somehow above the political fray.

Senator Susan Collins called to give accountability for fraud accusations that were buried by Trump's justice department- WWWTP?

It’s Maine’s turn to be concerned about Susan Collins | Editorial
The senator’s complacent response to open allegations of bribery sends voters a very clear and disrespectful message.

Echo editorial board opinion published in the Maine Sunday Telegram.

The words “fraud, waste and abuse” have formed part of a popular Republican Party slogan in recent years. The party’s most prominent figures obsess publicly about the ferreting out of wrongdoing they insist is rampant in government, at the federal level as well as here in Maine.

Against this intolerant backdrop, one might think that last week’s reporting by ProPublica on the killing off, in 2025, of a federal investigation into allegations of bribery by Sen. Susan Collins and staff would be met with a degree of solemnity if not humility. Think again.

The Collins campaign’s emphasis on the events taking place “seven years ago” cynically attempts to detract from the crux of the story, which hinges on the collapse of the investigation — reportedly active until the beginning of last year — due to a newly insufficiently staffed and uninterested FBI.

This editorial board isn’t about to make fun or light of the name of the made-up LLC used on the scan of the $150,000 check presented by ProPublica (“the Society of Young Women Scientist [sic] and Engineers”) which sought to exploit the white-hot cause of women in STEM.

Nor are we going to attempt to adjudicate on what the emails between Kao and political operative Scott Reed suggest or reveal.

In a functioning and properly resourced government, that’s a job that falls squarely to the Department of Justice. It’s a process that, once commenced, ought to have been followed to its logical administrative and legal end.

So let’s keep the focus on the demise of the probe and the conditions that led to its abandonment. Whether or not there are 3D-printed vessels to show for this tortured bit of negotiating, as Collins’ staffers were at pains to highlight with flashcards at a Portland press conference last week, becomes irrelevant in that light.

In the absence of anything approaching law enforcement as usual — an expectation reasonably held by the public, a basic check on congressional power — it’s audacious to insist on innocence and stoke conspiratorial lines of thinking by reaching for terms like “partisan hit job.”

Collins was quick to set the mood, labeling the exhaustive and level reporting a “a partisan hit job” and questioning why “anyone would take the word of a felon who’s been convicted twice” and “a convicted liar.”  (OMG this is beyond ludicrous❗)

That this particular felon — a Hawaii-based military contracting executive named Michael Kao — was found guilty of money laundering and fraud would seem to some to increase his credibility on such matters. For many of the claims made by Kao, the reporting referred to corresponding emails and other materials.

“Shame on ProPublica,” Collins told the Wall Street Journal, having said she was “offended” by the reporting — “so offensive” and “disgraceful.”

It is extremely disappointing to watch Collins and members of her staff move to immediately discredit a thorough and fair piece of investigative journalism on political and personal grounds.

The Trump administration has wailed about fraud while studiously dismantling the apparatus that’s in place to catch it. Borrowing straight from ProPublica: “Trump’s Justice Department no longer takes on public corruption in any meaningful fashion, former officials said. The investigation sparked by Kao’s revelations is dead. And the government is no longer talking to an informant who had offered a road map to corruption in Congress.”

This is just one of many unsettling paradoxes of this second presidential term.

Voters are bothered by this appearance of wrongdoing — it would be hard not to be. To be satisfied that this is best we can do, a voter would need to be disillusioned with the executive branch to the point of defeat.

There’s a world in which Sen. Collins, her staffers and supporters could confidently and respectfully acknowledge that widespread disquiet. That hasn’t happened. We’re not at all hopeful that it will.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans like Senator Susan Collins caused Ukaranians enormous stress by showing support for evil Vladimir Putin

The war in Ukraine is becoming very inconvenient for Trump
One of the challenges with writing about the war in — and on — Ukraine is that so little changes. (Senator Susan Collins of Maine,  chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, should hold Donald Trump accountable for withholding Ukrainian military aid allocations❗)

Russian-Ukraine War 😢

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Johan Goldberg

I don’t mean the fighting on the ground, though even there, when viewed from a distance, it doesn’t look as though much has shifted in a long while. Russia has gained very little territory in the last year (even as it has suffered an estimated half-million Russian casualties over the last 12 months). All of that to gain 0.3% of Ukrainian territory (and net zero gains in the last six months). Though distance can be deceiving, the fighting on the ground has actually been far more dynamic, with evolving tactics, strategies, technologies and geopolitics.

What I mean about so little changing are the moral considerations. Ukraine is the victim of a lawless, brutal, unprovoked invasion by a politically backward and dysfunctional would-be empire ruled by a murderous autocrat. That assessment was obvious on February 24, 2022, when the full-scale invasion was launched, and it was obvious in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.

The challenge of writing about the war is that once you’ve said that, saying it again just feels repetitive. This is a bigger problem than one columnist’s selfish desire to say something new. The longer the war has dragged on, the more the war just seems like part of the status quo, the background noise of our politics. This is cruelly unfair to the Ukrainians, because what seems like the “normal” state of things is anything but. Russia targets civilians as a matter of policy. It murders old women in their beds, children in playgrounds, young couples in cafes. And it does this almost daily and it tries to do it almost hourly.

Which is why recent comments by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and his unofficial personal envoy, are so infuriating. “President Putin laid out his line of what he wants to achieve,” Kushner said at the Yalta European Strategy conference on September 5. “If Ukraine wanted to withdraw to that line, then obviously, you know, we have the rest of the deal set up and put together. Ukraine right now does not want to do that.”

Kushner further said he was, as a U.S.-backed mediator, looking for “creative solutions” to the war. He wants to downplay the importance of territory in exchange for potential economic deals that benefit everybody — including presumably the United States and, I assume, Kushner and others in the Trump orbit.

Put aside the grotesque suggestion that Ukrainians are the stumbling block for not wanting to give up yet more territory Russians have failed to win on the battlefield, land that countless Ukrainians have given their lives to defend. Strategically, such a concession would be close to an invitation to suicide. It would require pulling back some 45 miles and forfeiting a Ukrainian “fortress belt” of fortified cities that form the spine of their forward defenses. It would put the rest of Ukraine that much closer to Russian artillery and drones, and force the Ukrainians to defend less defensible ground.

Proponents of such a “deal” argue that it would be worth it for peace. But if you think Russia honors such deals, you haven’t been paying attention. And if you think the Ukrainians have reason to trust Putin, well, I don’t know what to say to you.

The idea that Ukraine is the stumbling block to peace suffuses (i.e., spreads thru) this administration. Vice President (former Marine Corporal)  JD Vance, who has never meaningfully changed his view that he “doesn’t really care” what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other” is evidence of that. But so is Donald Trump.

Just this week, Trump excoriated Ukraine for targeting Russia’s oil infrastructure because it’s creating problems for him. “Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing,” Trump said. “He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel.”

Trump — who endlessly insisted on the campaign trail that he could “end the war in Ukraine in one day”  — doesn’t demand Putin stop murdering Ukrainians. He instead demands that Ukrainians not fight back in a way that inconveniences Trump amid a surge in oil prices overwhelmingly caused by the war Trump started with Iran.

It is victim-blaming on a geopolitical scale and utterly dishonorable.💢

Honor matters in foreign policy, regardless of what supposed foreign policy “realists” claim. Iranian honor, twisted and fanatical though it may be, is why Iran hasn’t bowed to Trump. And Ukrainian national honor is why the Ukrainians don’t want to be erased by a bullying neighbor that says they shouldn’t exist. And it should matter for America, even if it doesn’t matter to the coterie of “dealmakers” who care more about profit.  And that is worth repeating.

X: @JonahDispatch

Donald Trump is a failure. Republicans have a moral responsibility to remove him from office: Senator Susan Collins

Trump’s Failure to Lead Is Costing America and the World
"The world is facing at least three crises today that cannot be resolved by any one country."

Echo New York Times Editorial 

Does Senator Susan Collins know this❓

The world is facing at least three crises today that cannot be resolved by any one country. Two are longer-term and arguably existential: the threat of uncontrolled artificial intelligence and the growing impact of climate change. One is shorter-term and damaging the global economy: the disruption of shipping lanes in the Middle East. All three require the kind of high-level international cooperation that helped manage other challenges, like the threat of nuclear warfare during the Cold War and the damage to the ozone layer.

Yet almost nobody expects meaningful progress during this week’s meetings in Washington between the leaders of the two most powerful countries, President Xi Jinping of China and President Trump. Beneath the pomp of Mr. Xi’s visit, the agenda appears notably unambitious. At most, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled that America can hope for commercial deals and modest A.I. safety progress.

The low expectations for the visit underline the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to American influence and global well-being. He is an undisciplined politician who puts his personal interests above the nation’s, running an administration that has no coherent strategy for solving major problems. He is instead often exacerbating the world’s biggest problems.

No matter who was president, negotiations with China would be difficult. Mr. Xi is an autocrat who has centralized authority, oppressed his country’s citizens and built partnerships with the world’s most repressive regimes. Mr. Xi does tend to be a ruthless tactician. But China and the United States do have overlapping interests on several major issues, including A.I., climate change and Middle Eastern shipping lanes.

The world is facing at least three crises today that cannot be resolved by any one country. Two are longer-term and arguably existential: the threat of uncontrolled artificial intelligence and the growing impact of climate change. One is shorter-term and damaging the global economy: the disruption of shipping lanes in the Middle East. All three require the kind of high-level international cooperation that helped manage other challenges, like the threat of nuclear warfare during the Cold War and the damage to the ozone layer.

Yet almost nobody expects meaningful progress during this week’s meetings in Washington between the leaders of the two most powerful countries, President Xi Jinping of China and Trump. Beneath the pomp of Mr. Xi’s visit, the agenda appears notably unambitious. 

At most, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled that America can hope for commercial deals and modest A.I. safety progress.

The low expectations for the visit underline the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to American influence and global well-being. He is an undisciplined politician who puts his personal interests above the nation’s, running an administration that has no coherent strategy for solving major problems. He is instead often exacerbating the world’s biggest problems.

No matter who was president, negotiations with China would be difficult. Mr. Xi is an autocrat who has centralized authority, oppressed his country’s citizens and built partnerships with the world’s most repressive regimes. Mr. Xi does tend to be a ruthless tactician. But China and the United States do have overlapping interests on several major issues, including A.I., climate change and Middle Eastern shipping lanes.

The notion that Donald Trump can effectively represent America’s interests on these issues seems ludicrous at this point. Even on his own terms, his signature second-term actions, like the tariffs and the war in Iran, are failing. No wonder that China’s leaders reportedly see his presidency as a gift to their ambitions for greater global influence. Americans are left to imagine the progress we could have been attempted this week with a different U.S. president.

The first area of potential cooperation is A.I. safety. The rapid advancement of A.I. capabilities requires government regulation to limit the possibility that such tools could become uncontrollable and destructive. No one country can assure its own safety from these dangers. International cooperation is needed to mitigate the threat.

American A.I. models pose great risks because they are the most powerful. But China’s models are not far behind and pose their own risks because they tend to be open-weight, with their internal rules available for other users to alter. Fortunately, China has reasons to want safeguards. Its spy chief recently warned that A.I. threatens one-party control there. China, like every country, also fears biological weapons.

Mr. Trump evinces little concern about the risks posed by A.I. and little interest in regulating it. He has said that the United States must beat China in the A.I. race, without regard for safety. That race does matter, but there are ways for the United States both to compete with China and to work together on the risks. The right policy is a mix of competition and cooperation, as this country pursued with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Today, the United States should make the scientific investments to remain ahead of China while negotiating over shared threats like bioweapons and A.I. systems that escape human control.

A second issue on which America urgently needs China’s help is in the Middle East.

In response to Trump’s reckless war, Iran restricted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, while the Houthis, a terrorist group allied with Iran, have expanded their disruption of traffic through the Red Sea. The price of oil has risen worldwide as a result.

Persuading Mr. Xi to pressure Iran to reopen the strait would not be easy. In fact, Trump is damaging America’s international status so badly that the Chinese leader can follow the dictum attributed to Napoleon: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” 

Still, China has an interest in the free flow of oil and lower energy prices. China’s economic growth has weakened in recent years, and higher oil prices do not help. The government’s stated position in talks with Iran is that it should reopen the strait. China certainly has the leverage to push Iran for a deal: It has been Iran’s largest customer for oil, buying 90 percent of its exports in recent years.

If anything, the third issue — climate change — is the one on which U.S.-China talks could offer the most promise if Trump were not president. China once was an obstacle to climate progress, complicating the attempts of the Obama administration to negotiate a global framework. Over the past decade, though, China has increasingly been willing to address climate change. Its world-leading renewable energy industry would benefit from international agreements that increase reliance on batteries and electric cars.

These three issues obviously do not represent a complete agenda for an ideal U.S.-China summit. Several others would be even trickier, including China’s support for Iran’s and Russia’s militaries and China’s increasing aggression toward Taiwan and several Asian countries. Realistically, any one meeting would probably not make much progress on the thorniest issues. But the United States and China are not merely rivals for international power; they also have shared interests in global stability.

American presidents going back more than 100 years have believed that their country had an interest in taking a leading role in the world. America is far from perfect. But when it led, the world often benefited through expanded prosperity, security and democracy. The progress enhanced this country’s global prestige and influence along the way.

Mr. Trump shows little care for these benefits. He uses international relations to seek personal enrichment, praise from sycophants and equal standing with authoritarians. Trump's flailing leadership leaves Americans with the thinnest of hopes for this week’s summit: that he does not further damage the national interest.

Donald Trump hardly knows how to read but he call the media "Enemy of the People", when he does not read what is reported

Echo opinion letter published in New Castle News, Pennsylvania:

Trump called the free press the “Enemy of the People.” 

(Maine Writer- If Donald Trump knew how to read, he would figure out how to get along with the media instead of calling names.)

The free press and our fair, free elections are the foundations of democracy.

Stating that the free press is “false news” from a president who has told over 4,200 falsehoods since he took office is the height of hypocrisy. Moreover, the free press is the only profession protected in the Constitution.

Trump held a private conversation with Putin, a master of lies. Trump feels it is better to talk to despots while maligning and debasing America’s allies.

Chamberlain and others met with Hitler in September 1938, and Chamberlain returned to England with a paper from Hitler that he held high and stated “it is peace in our time.” 

But, as we know now, within a few days, Czechoslovakia fell to Germany. Perhaps the Ukraine will go to Russia after Trump’s conversation.

Trump’s demagoguery and constant lies against refugees have led him to take children from their parents, which could end with over 400 orphaned children. All of this is done to obtain money for the wall on Mexico’s border, of which he promised Mexico would provide the funds.

Trump blames everyone but himself for problems. In “Julius Caesar,” Cassius stated “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.” 

Republicans must stand up to Donald Trump and stop being subordinate. (Trump) even used George Orwell’s “1984” when he told listeners at a rally, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

The United States will move on to new presidents and will be stronger for all past experiences. Decades from now, when historians write about Trump, many will recall the words of William Shakespeare's Macbeth: “Out, out, brief candle. Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Vince Scialabba in New Castle

Donald Trump has a huge negativity problem and it is showing up in all news media I scan for my blogs

The sad legacy of Donald Trump.

Echo opinion letter published in The Citizens Voice
Maine Writer comment: During my years as a blogger, I have never seen such a national ground swell of negativity as are currently published about the President of the United States, being expressed in practically every print media source I scan for my news blogs. Donald Trump wants to stop negative reporting he claims is coming from CNN, MSNowNews and Politico, but the truth is, his negative coverage is in every newspaper I read. 

To the Editor: Trump has failed America with his forever war and is the cause of diesel fuel high prices along with gas prices. 

Trump’s latest outrageous statement was telling Ukraine to stop bombing Russian oil refineries, claiming that is what’s causing higher costs world wide at the pumps.

I would like MAGA cult to reread my first paragraph. MAGAs, if you have any common sense, the first thought would be Trump is lying and he should be telling Putin to stop bombing Ukraine but that will not happen because he is in bed with Putin.

Sadly, his tariffs, especially against Canada, our closest ally, are despicable, to say the least.

Sadly, we are not as safe as a nation today because of Trump.

Sadly, now most Americans don’t feel the pride that they had for 250 previous years because of Trump.

Ukraine is holding their own but sadly without the offensive and defensive weapons they asked for but did not receive because of Trump and that made his buddy Putin very happy.

In closing, Trump said at the Republican (fake) mid-term convention on September 10, about voting, and I quote, “ Cheat like hell.” A despicable thing to say about the most sacred thing about our democracy.

From Steve Oliveri, in Carbondale, in Lackawanna County Pennsylvania

https://www.citizensvoice.com/opinion/

A psychiatrist's point of view about Donald Trump and his crazy "fake news" media ban

Donald Trump’s explanation for barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House is telling. He complains that the news media ​is writing “purposely negative stories,” which he equates with “fake news.” Bad news is “fake news.”❓

He is incapable of tolerating reality, especially when it reflects poorly on him. Consider that the most powerful person on the planet is so mentally compromised that the problem he wishes to solve is the media rather than the news itself. This is a form of insanity.

Many of Donald Trump’s maga cult supporters, including self-serving Republican politicians, have been in a state of denial regarding his unfitness to serve.

Over time, his enablers will have to carry the burden of their complicity in the debacle that is Donald Trump.

From Larry S. Sandberg M.D., in New York
New York
The writer is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.