Emoluments Clause is pseudonym for Grand Grift: Donald Trump violates the Constitution on a daily basis

The Sky-High Corruption of Donald Trump

Echo report published in The Nation by Chris Lehmann.

The Democrats missed their first chance to spotlight Trump’s repeated violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. They shouldn’t miss their second.

Back when outrage over Donald Trump’s blatant Oval Office corruption was still a novelty, a group of former national security officials filed an amicus brief in a 2019, lawsuit Democratic congressional leaders brought over Trump’s repeated violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. They cited one scenario as a clear and present threat to US national security interests: “A nation that plays a central role in the balance of power in the Middle East, one of the most fraught regions for U.S. national security in the world [could] curry favor with the President by purchasing real estate from one of his companies.”

Like much of the grim constitutional prophesying of that bygone era, this hypothetical illustration now looks laughably naive. 

Like much of the grim constitutional prophesying of that bygone era, this hypothetical illustration now looks laughably naive. 

Trump-branded real-estate conflicts in the Middle East still abound, of course—most notoriously via Trump’s son-in-law and erstwhile Middle East envoy Jared Kushner’s billion-dollar dealings with the Saudis. Yet Trump’s own newly announced deal with the Qatari royal family to deliver him a new Air Force One jet worth $400 million marks a breathtaking new level of presidential corruption. Indeed, the transaction, which has been hastily packaged as a “gift” from the Qatari government to the Pentagon, is a textbook illustration of the imperial corruption that the founders targeted in drafting the Emoluments Clause, which forbids the president from using his office for personal enrichment. Trump announced the deal on the eve of his first Middle East junket in his second term. The president’s visit to Qatar is bound to be steeped in superlative appreciations of his customized Boeing 747-8, which its original owners have quaintly dubbed “a palace in the sky.”

You can instantly gauge the depth of the self-dealing here by Trump’s overheated defense of the transaction. 

In an X post, the president announced, “The fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT (grand grift❗), FREE OF CHARGE of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist that we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane. 

Anybody can do that! The Democrats are World Class Losers!!! MAGA.” Yet Trump’s own newly announced deal with the Qatari royal family to deliver him a new Air Force One jet worth $400 million marks a breathtaking new level of presidential corruption. Indeed, the transaction, which has been hastily packaged as a “gift” from the Qatari government to the Pentagon, is a textbook illustration of the imperial corruption that the founders targeted in drafting the Emoluments Clause, which forbids the president from using his office for personal enrichment. Trump announced the deal on the eve of his first Middle East junket in his second term. The president’s visit to Qatar is bound to be steeped in superlative appreciations of his customized Boeing 747-8, which its original owners have quaintly dubbed “a palace in the sky.”

Republican grand grift and Donald Trump's violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause

You can instantly gauge the depth of the self-dealing here by Trump’s overheated defense of the transaction. In an X post, the president announced, “The fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT (grand grift❗), FREE OF CHARGE of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist that we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane. Anybody can do that! The Democrats are World Class Losers!!! MAGA.”

This outburst showcases every element of the Trumpian defense of corruption, starting with the mind-bending assertion that insulating the presidency from foreign financial influence is somehow a “Crooked” political maneuver, as opposed to a central plank of constitutional governance. There’s also the ludicrous notion that the Qatari emolument is a savvy piece of deal-making, and not a quid-pro-quo arrangement to benefit the donor. The tell here is Trump’s adverbial stipulation that the deal is temporary; if it were such a self-evident boon to the country, shouldn’t it be permanent? 

In reality, of course, ownership of the airborne decadent palace will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation at the end of his term—the deal employs the federal government as a dummy corporation that’s hosting a pass-through arrangement to land the aircraft safely in Trump’s gilded empire of grand grift❗

The Qatari payoff also defies Trump’s bogus image as the heroic savior of American industry, as he’s gone out of his way to engineer a disastrous global trade war in order to preside over a “golden age” in US manufacturing. The American aerospace giant Boeing has an existing $5 billion contract to replace both Air Force One jets—a project that’s now five years behind its delivery date with reported company losses of more than $2.5 billion. 

$400 million 💲Donald Trump's BribeJet

Part of that overrun is due to the technical challenges of outfitting a plane with the basic security and communications safeguards required in a presidential aircraft—indeed, the economies Trump boasts he’s achieving in the Qatari “GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE” will soon evaporate when the government will have to essentially disassemble and rebuild the craft to ensure that it operates free of foreign surveillance.

Beyond that, though, Boeing has become a purveyor of hazardous and performance-challenged aircraft thanks to a regime of financialized corporate governance that scorns basic engineering protocols and safeguards. 

In other words, Trump is scurrying to a foreign monarchy to meet his air travel demands because the American contractor originally charged with producing a pair of Air Force Ones has failed to meet its obligations under a Trumpian model of commerce that privileges stock buybacks over performance fundamentals. 

Small wonder, then, that Trump’s own tirade trails off into a phoned-in show of rancor: “Anybody can do that! The Democrats are World Class Losers!!! MAGA”

But, alas, Trump isn’t wrong to call out Democratic fecklessness. During Trump’s first term, Democratic congressional leaders failed to bring emoluments charges in their impeachment actions against the president. That’s why national security advisers were reduced to weighing in on a civil suit against Trump for his many emoluments violations, which ranged from trademark deals with China for the Trump Organization to the proposed use of his Doral golf compound for a G-7 meeting to his doubling of the Mar-a-Lago initiation fee to $200,000 shortly after his election. 

And the civil suit eventually ran aground once it reached the US Supreme Court, which predictably declared the issue moot after Trump completed his first term. (Indeed, the Trump-stacked right-wing court is itself a plain instance of executive branch corruption run amok, but that is a sermon for another occasion.)

The timorousness of Democratic leaders in the face of such blatant abuse of power failed to exploit a political opportunity. 

At the time, Trump was using the Oval Office to benefit himself on a scale unseen in the annals of presidential corruption—and exposing his fraudulent business practices would upend the chief basis of his demagogic appeal as a master dealmaker. 

Instead, Democrats first homed in on the effort to bribe Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a military aid package and then sought to impeach Trump for fomenting the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Both of those shameful criminal episodes were founded in Trump’s bedrock conviction that he’s an unparalleled gamer of the governing racket, and the effort to police them in Congress would have been greatly advanced by emoluments charges undercutting Trump’s phony standing as a maestro of the deal.

The same core dynamic holds true today—there’s nothing stopping Democrats from stressing the ways in which Trump’s corruption is integral to how he rules and to his transformation of the federal government into a transactional mob syndicate enforced by goons such as Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, and Kash Patel. 

Indeed, the impeachment resolution introduced last month by Michigan Democratic Representative Shri Thanedar includes an article on “bribery and corruption” that cites the Emoluments Clause. A Democratic Party serious about combating MAGA authoritarianism and graft could start by reversing its policy of treating Thanedar like a fringe pariah.

Instead, Congress’s functional silence on emoluments has further enabled the posture of MAGA impunity in Trump’s second term, which has, among other things, transformed January 6 into a model of right-wing governance. Congress’s dilatory treatment of Trumpian corruption is also why, for all Trump’s whining over the Qatar deal, Democratic responses somehow manage to be worse. “Nothing says ‘America First’ like Air Force One, brought to you by Qatar,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement on X. “It’s not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with legroom.” No, Chuck—nothing says “failing to do your job” like thinking you can combat executive-branch influence-peddling with some staffer’s pathetic idea of a social media zinger.

Chris Lehmann is the DC Bureau chief for The Nation and a contributing editor at The Baffler. He is the author, most recently, of The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream (Melville House, 2016).

Stop the Big Lie! Truth meter: Trump lost the 2020 election

Although the Former Guy is no longer in the White House, he and his cult continue to promote The Big Lie. Believe it or not, truth is at risk for being truncated by this evil lie. In fact, Donald Trump lost in the election of 2020, and his failed one term presidency was caused by the ineptness of the entire Trump administration.

This short essay is as important to read today as it was when it was published, because of this intractable and blind belief by those who are sucked into the Trumpziism myth about the legitimate outcome of the 2020 presidential election. 

In fact, in my opinion, this essay is one for the "best of 2020", because it puts perspective  behind the headlines details.

The Big Lie and Trump's inept motley crew: 

The New Yorker (This essay is an excellent autopsy describing the continuing and pernicious Big Lie.  OMG!!) This essay was written by Lizzie Widdicombe and published in the November 20, 2020 The New Yorker.  

(Legal stupidity "is as stupidity does"!)

So, (ugh!) Jared Kushner wanted a “James Baker-like” figure, but he ended up with a ragtag bunch of lawyers, led by a raving (OMG! the stupid!) Rudolph Giuliani, who made his first appearance in federal court in this 21st century.

When it began to look like Joe Biden was winning the Presidential election, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, picked up the phone. He feverishly called around, looking for a “James Baker-like” figure to oversee the campaign’s legal challenges to the election results. Baker, a former Secretary of State, led George W. Bush’s recount effort in Florida, in 2000, managing a dream team of lawyers that included the Supreme Court litigator Ted Olson and three future Supreme Court Justices. Kushner hoped to assemble a similar A-team for his father-in-law, who, on entering office, had vowed to surround himself with only “the best” people.

(Jared Kushner and James Baker?  I don't think so....)

On November 7th, Trump tweeted that his squad would be unveiled at a press conference “at Four Seasons, Philadelphia. 11:00 a.m.” Minutes later, he deleted the post and wrote another, clarifying that the venue was a small business called Four Seasons Total Landscaping. The blooper proved prescient: the legal eagles drafted to help the President had as much relation to James Baker as Four Seasons Total Landscaping has to the luxury hotel. At the press conference, there were many familiar faces: not white-shoe veterans of Bush v. Gore but, rather, ghosts of impeachments past. Trump’s personal lawyer, (idiot!) Rudolph Giuliani, was there. So was Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general (and registered foreign agent for Qatar), and a smattering of angry poll watchers, one of whom turned out to be a convicted sex offender.

The campaign announced that the legal effort would be headed up by the conservative activist David Bossie (not to be confused with David Boies), who is neither a lawyer nor a college graduate. (He is an author of “Let Trump Be Trump,” a memoir co-written with Corey Lewandowski, another member of the new legal team.) Within days, Bossie tested positive for Covid-19 and went into quarantine. Then Lewandowski tested positive. Two down. The campaign turned to Giuliani, who agreed to serve as its new general for the reported asking price of twenty thousand dollars a day.

It wasn’t the most auspicious (less favorable) start, but, as the campaign initiated a flurry of lawsuits in swing states, it kept up a modicum of respectability.

Lawyers from Jones Day, a prominent international law firm, were contesting an extended ballot deadline in Pennsylvania, where Trump’s lead was shrinking by the day. The largest firm in Arizona, Snell & Wilmer, was representing the R.N.C. in a case that it had brought alongside the Trump campaign. Soon enough, both firms backed out or backtracked. Jones Day issued a statement claiming that the firm “is not representing President Trump, his campaign, or any affiliated party in any litigation alleging voter fraud.” James Bopp, the lawyer known as the architect of the Citizens United case, dropped the election lawsuits he’d filed in four states on behalf of his conservative group, True the Vote, without explanation.

This left Trump with a motley crew of helpers. Scanning the dockets that the campaign has filed around the country, one sees a lot of local lone-ranger types. There’s the St. Louis-based Mark Hearne (nickname: Thor), who filed one of the Trump lawsuits in the wrong court. Kory Langhofer, in Arizona, was once fined for filing a frivolous medical-marijuana-related lawsuit against the town of Snowflake. In Georgia, the campaign retained Lin Wood, a former medical-malpractice lawyer whose clients have included Richard Jewell and Kyle Rittenhouse. (His former colleagues are suing him, claiming that he left them abusive messages, in which he referred to himself as “Almighty Lin” and said that he was taking orders from God.)

In Pennsylvania, lawyers from Porter Wright Morris & Arthur filed a suit seeking to stop the certification of the state’s vote count. Then they withdrew. Next up was a local divorce lawyer named Linda A. Kerns, working with two Texas attorneys. Days later, all three quit. They handed the reins to a new lead lawyer: Marc Scaringi, a Pennsylvania radio host, who was once featured in a GQ article titled “A Field Guide to Bad Conservative Hair.” (Perhaps the campaign missed that Scaringi had discussed Trump’s lawsuits on his show, predicting, “At the end of the day, the litigation will not work. It will not reverse this election.”) Then, hours before the hearing, Giuliani announced that he would step in personally. It would be his first time appearing in a federal court in this century.

The hearing took place last week, in Williamsport. “May it please the court,” Giuliani said, thanking the judge for “allowing me to be admitted pro hac vice.” He described a “nationwide voter fraud” scheme, insisting that the case “is exactly Bush v. Gore!” He alleged that treatment of Republican poll watchers “got nasty” in Philadelphia. “This doesn’t happen in an honest place,” he said.

The (inept!) Trump team  brought in still more lawyers, including Jenna Ellis, who in 2016, called her new client an “idiot” and a “criminal dirtbag.” At a press conference on Thursday, she referred to the new group of lawyers as “an élite, strike-force team.” Giuliani, dark rivulets of hair dye dripping down his cheeks, like Dirk Bogarde in the final scene of “Death in Venice,” made dozens more unfounded and unhinged-sounding fraud claims. He even reënacted a scene from the Joe Pesci vehicle “My Cousin Vinny” before the networks cut away. But the effort—to overturn an election that the candidate lost by nearly six million votes—seems foolhardy. The election-law expert Edward Foley said, “I don’t think even James Baker could be successful with what they have to work with.” 

Trump has survived impeachment, twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations, and thousands of lawsuits. His luck may well end now that Joe Biden has been elected the next President.

With litigation unlikely to change the outcome of the election, (indeed, The Big Lie failed in all courts) Republicans are looking to strategies that might remain, even after rebuffs both at the polls and in court.

We have to talk about what happened under Trump's failed presidency and how we can prevent it from happening again.

Former guy blames others for the looser 2020 election

So, the former guy is turning on his son-in-law. 

Is anyone surprised?

Echo report published in Raw Story by Brad Reed: 

Two sources tell CNN that Trump "has been telling those in his inner circle he is angry with Jared Kushner. Although these sources didn't give Trump's exact reasons for his displeasure, there are some signs that he blames Kushner for his humiliating loss in the 2020 presidential election.

"We know the boss isn't going to blame himself," one source said of Trump's ongoing bitterness over losing the 2020, election.

In fact, the biggest sign of Trump's frustration with Kushner is the fact that Kushner was not present at a recent political strategy meeting to discuss the 2022 midterm elections and a possible 2024 presidential run.

The former President Trump has reportedly been badmouthing his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has been missing in action in recent weeks despite being one of Trump's most trusted advisers for years.

"He was an 'expert' in everything," the former White House official said, pointing to Kushner's failed efforts to contain the novel coronavirus pandemic and broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

A source more sympathetic to Kushner, however, indicated that he's simply exhausted (!) by dealing with his father-in-law. (Ya think?OMG! Trump is an "fucking moron!" - ref: Rex Tillerson)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/trump-tillerson-feud-over-who-is-dumber-than-a-rock

"The drama of politics wore him down," he said. "Eventually, Trump wears everyone down."

Donald Trump and his family are out of touch with COVID suffering Americans

Echo article published in The Guardian 

#VoteBlue  #VoteBidenHarris2020

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump threaten to sue Lincoln Project

A billboard in New York City's Times Square, by The Lincoln Project, depicts Ivanka Trump presenting the number of New Yorkers and Americans who have died of COVID-19 and Jared Kushner next to a Vanity Fair quote.

Anti-Trump Republicans’ Times Square billboards accuse advisers of showing ‘indifference’ to Americans suffering amid pandemic

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have threatened to sue the Lincoln Project, if the anti-Trump Republicans do not remove two huge billboards from Times Square in New York City, in which they accuse the senior White House advisers of showing “indifference” to Americans suffering and dying under Covid-19.

Saying the billboards would stay up, the group called Kushner and Trump “entitled, out-of-touch bullies, who have never given the slightest indication they have any regard for the American people”.

More than 8.4m cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in the US, according to Johns Hopkins University, with a record high of 83,757 on Friday. As the virus surges, with the presidential election only 10 days away, the death toll has passed 223,000.

Last month, the virus reached the White House, infecting Donald Trump, his wife Melania Trump, their son Barron and senior members of staff. The president spent time in hospital. Kushner and Ivanka Trump did not announce positive tests.

The Lincoln Project is staffed by Republican operatives who are supporting Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee. It announced itself in February at Cooper Union in New York, where Abraham Lincoln gave a famous speech in 1860. Then, group member Rick Wilson cited “the great political philosopher Liam Neeson” when he said those on stage had “a particular set of skills, skills that make us a nightmare for people like Donald Trump”.

In August, Sarah Lenti, executive director of the Lincoln Project, told the Guardian a key aim was simply to distract the president.

“Some of these ads have an audience of one,” she said.

“That’s always been part of the strategy. Because every time he gets off message, spewing grievances, he’s not campaigning. The idea is to get him off message again and again and again.”

With 10 days to go until the election, Trump is staging rallies at which coronavirus mitigation measures are not observed, and claiming the US is “rounding the turn” in containing the surging pandemic.

But with its billboards in Times Square, a stone’s throw from Trump Tower, it seems the Lincoln Project may have succeeded in distracting the president’s daughter and son-in-law. On Friday, the Project posted to Twitter a letter from Marc Kasowitz, an attorney who has represented Donald Trump in cases involving allegations of fraud and sexual assault, in which he spelled out the billboards’ message.

“I am writing concerning the false, malicious and defamatory ads that the Lincoln Project is displaying on billboards in Times Square,” Kasowitz wrote. “Those ads show Ms Trump smiling and gesturing toward a death count of Americans and New Yorkers, and attribute to Mr Kushner the statement that ‘[New Yorkers] are going to suffer and that’s their problem’ … with body bags underneath.”

In September, Vanity Fair reported that at a meeting on 20 March, as the pandemic accelerated and with New York reeling, Kushner railed against New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, and said: “His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”

Ivanka Trump'’s gesture on the billboard appears to be taken from a controversial picture, tweeted in July, in which she promoted Goya black beans.

Kasowitz wrote: “Of course, Mr Kushner never made any such statement, Ms Trump never made any such gesture, and the Lincoln Project’s representation that they did are an outrageous and shameful libel. If these billboard ads are not immediately removed, we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages.”

The Lincoln Project’s response was typically pugnacious.

“The level of indignant outrage Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump have shown towards the Lincoln Project for exposing their indifference for the more than 223,000 people who have lost their lives due to the reckless mismanagement of Covid-19 is comical,” a statement said.

“While we truly enjoy living rent-free in their heads, their empty threats will not be taken any more seriously than we take Ivanka and Jared. It is unsurprising that an administration that has never had any regard or understanding of our constitution would try to trample on our first amendment rights. But we fully intend on making this civics lesson as painful as possible.

“Jared and Ivanka have always been entitled, out-of-touch bullies, who have never given the slightest indication they have any regard for the American people. We plan on showing them the same level of respect. The billboards will stay up. We consider it important that in Times Square, the crossroads of the world, people are continuously reminded of the cruelty or density and staggering lack of empathy the Trumps and the Kushners have displayed towards the American people.”

America faces an epic choice ...

... in the coming weeks, and the results will define the country for a generation. These are perilous times. Over the last four years, much of what the Guardian holds dear has been threatened – democracy, civility, truth.



The country is at a crossroads. The Supreme Court hangs in the balance – and with it, the future of abortion and voting rights, healthcare, climate policy and much more. Science is in a battle with conjecture and instinct to determine policy in the middle of a pandemic. At the same time, the US is reckoning with centuries of racial injustice – as the White House stokes division along racial lines. At a time like this, an independent news organization that fights for truth and holds power to account is not just optional. It is essential.

Like many news organizations, the Guardian has been significantly impacted by the pandemic. We rely to an ever greater extent on our readers, both for the moral force to continue doing journalism at a time like this and for the financial strength to facilitate that reporting.

Russia if you are listening - Donald Trump is still deaf to the Russia threat

Echo opinion published in the Idaho State Journal by columnist Jim Jones (In my opinion, Donald Trump's teenage crush on Vladimir Putin is unpatriotic and his behavior towards Russia's dictator is disgusting. I have already warned Russian bots, who are now reappearing on my Twitter feed, they will be "blocked" and reported to @Twitter)

Christopher A. Wray is the current Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Opinion echo from Idaho:  Christopher Wray, the FBI director, warned on April 26 that Russian interference in the 2020 election presents a “significant counterintelligence threat.” His warning followed the Worldwide Threat Assessment issued by U.S. intelligence agencies in January.

The WTA predicted that in 2020, “Moscow may employ additional influence tool kits —such as spreading disinformation, conducting hack-and-leak operations or manipulating data — in a more targeted fashion to influence U.S. policy, actions and elections.” Wray characterized Russia’s malign cyber-warfare as “pretty much a 365-day-a-year threat.”

Despite Robert Mueller’s detailed and chilling report on the extent of Russian efforts to manipulate the 2016 election, President Trump remains unconvinced and unconcerned. He has not taken it upon himself to rally Americans against this serious threat, nor has he taken decisive punitive action against the aggressors.

Instead, Trump has either ignored or downplayed the malevolent Russian attack on our country. When the former Homeland Security Secretary tried to organize a coordinated defense of our 2020 election, she was discouraged by Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s chief of staff. Mulvaney reportedly told her that the Russian interference issue “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below (Trump’s) level.

Trump’s son-in-law, apparently taking his cue from the top, blew off the Russian election attack as “a couple of Facebook ads (?!).” 

Trumpzi-in-law should read the 199 pages of Volume One of the Mueller Report, where (Jared) Kushner appears with some regularity. Mueller details a concerted Russian effort to influence the 2016 election by illegal hacking of computers, distribution of hacked documents, and sophisticated targeting of social media.

Some congressional Republicans have urged a much more muscular response to Putin’s aggression and have worked with Democrats to put a stop to it. The President has gone along grudgingly but nowhere near sufficiently. I fervently pray it is not because he hopes to once again benefit from Russian help.

Trump seems to think that acknowledging the wide-ranging nature of the Russian influence operation and its potential impact on the election result is a threat to his legitimacy in office.

Get over it, Trump! You won the electoral college vote and nobody is going to be able to dislodge you from office simply because of Putin’s handiwork. 

But, the Russian influence operation may have been sufficient to swing the election in your direction, or that could have been accomplished by Jim Comey’s blundering efforts, but it is water under the bridge.

What is critical at this juncture is to put the election behind and govern — protect the country from its enemies, rebuild our infrastructure, try to solve the growing income equality in the country, work to reform the immigration system, try to preserve the American dream, combat the existential threat of climate change and so much more.

The President reminds me of some clients I had during my 25 years of private law practice. Instead of moving forward with their lives, they insisted on re-litigating the past — dwelling upon past mistreatment and slights, rather than living to make a better life in the present and future. It is a losing strategy, both for that person and for those around the disgruntled person.

It’s high time to move past the 2016 election and focus on the future. Whether or not the election result was questionable, there is a future to deal with, problems to address, lives to productively live. A bruised presidential ego does not take priority over the security of the United States.

Jim Jones served as an Army artillery officer in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969 and received an Army Commendation Medal for his work with an orphanage there. He served for eight years as Idaho Attorney General and was a justice on the Idaho Supreme Court for 12 years. He currently resides in Boise.

Split screen in Jerusalem ~ Trumpzi induced violence

Here’s a split-screen for our times:

Nothing says ‘peace’ like 58 dead Palestinians ~ Echo opinion published in The Washington Post by columnist Dana Milbank

While Israeli troops were killing dozens of Palestinian protesters (and deliberately injuring thousands of others) in Gaza on Monday, Trump administration representatives were 50 miles away in Jerusalem, celebrating with Israeli officials the opening of the U.S. Embassy there and praising their mutual devotion to peace.

“Moving the U.S. embassy,” Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan declared, is “a step toward advancing peace.”

President Trump himself, in a video message, pledged his commitment to a “lasting peace agreement.”

His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said “peace is within reach.”

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared it “a great day for peace.”

Because nothing says “peace” like 58 Palestinians killed, 2,700 wounded, renewed hostilities between Iran and Israel, the entire region aflame and U.S. allies reeling.

Kushner, who reminded the audience that he’s in charge of Trump’s “efforts to bring peace,” used his remarks to denounce the Palestinians. “As we have seen from the protests of the last month and even today, those provoking violence are part of the problem and not part of the solution,” he said. Back in Washington, a White House spokesman declined to join allies urging Israel to exercise restraint.

The move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv could have been a moment of unity and brotherhood. Instead, as with most everything Trump touches, it became a symbol of division and bitterness. It could have been the capstone of a peace deal, as Republican and Democratic administrations alike had hoped. Instead, it all but dashed hope for a two-state solution.

Most European allies skipped the event. And only 14 members of Congress were on hand for the celebration — all Republican and only one Jewish. Republicans scolded Democrats for their absence; Democrats said they weren’t invited. “I would have loved to have participated in this historic and moving embassy dedication,” Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), who supported the embassy move, said in a statement. “Despite reaching out to the administration, I was not invited to be a part of the official American delegation.”

Here’s who was invited:

Robert Jeffress, the pastor who gave the opening prayer, who has said that both Islam and Mormonism are “heresy from the pit of hell” — and that Jews are bound for that same destination. “You can’t be saved being a Jew,” he said in a 2010 interview.

John Hagee, an evangelical Christian leader who gave a closing prayer, who is known for, among other things, once saying God allowed the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed, to happen “because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who was standing at Trump’s side last year when the president said there were “very fine people” among neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville and later defended Trump’s handling of the situation.

And Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who spoke at a reception for the U.S. delegation, after which Kushner and Ivanka Trump asked for Yosef’s blessing. The rabbi made waves recently for comparing black people to monkeys and proposed blessing only “a person with a white father and mother.”

Given the lineup, this was less a diplomatic ceremony than a campaign event. David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, praised “the vision, the courage and the moral clarity of one person to whom we owe an enormous and eternal debt of gratitude, President Donald J. Trump.”

Moral clarity! And that’s not all: “I think President Lincoln is smiling today as another great Republican, Donald J. Trump, opens our embassy.”

Netanyahu dutifully declared that Trump “made history,” Hagee thanked God “for President Donald Trump’s courage,” and Jeffress praised Trump’s leadership, determination, resolve and courage and offered his view to God that Trump “stands on the right side of You.”

Kushner got applause for reminding the crowd of Trump’s decision to “exit the dangerous, flawed and one-sided Iran deal.”

The bipartisan unity toward Israel had begun to break down even before Trump, as Netanyahu, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, clashed with President Barack Obama. 

Trump has further driven the partisan wedge over Israel, and it’s splitting not just Democrats from Republicans, but American Jews from Netanyahu’s government.

A poll last year by the American Jewish Committee found that American Jews, only 21 percent of whom view Trump favorably, were overwhelmingly (68 percent) opposed to an immediate move of the embassy.

Perhaps American Jews recognize that Trump, and the messianic Christians driving his policy, are leading Israel away from democracy and security. And perhaps they don’t trust claims of “peace” when their own eyes see the opposite.

Twitter: @Milbank

Isolated in the West Wing

Katy Bar the Door!   Prophesy in idiom.

(From a book of poems called King's Tragedy by D. G. Rossetti published in 1881. It tells of an attempt by one Catherine to save the life of Scotland's James I by throwing her arm across a doorway to bar his enemies.)

Hope Hicks resigns: The Trump administration officials who have left since he took office ~ Departure of communications chief Hope Hicks underscores Trump administration's unusually high rate of turnover.

In the White House, it's becoming increasingly obvious how the failed Donald Trump administration needs the equivalent of a Katy, but for a reason that's opposite from the idiom's meaning. 

What's needed is the proverbial and brave "Katy" to save Donald Trump from the damage he is doing to himself, while he's becoming increasingly isolated in the White House West Wing.

Surely, the Oval Office is getting lonelier as the requiem of the litany of departures is becoming more somber.  Hope Hick's is the fourth communications person to be let go. Trying to keep up with the style of incoming, as one after another leaves, must cause the surviving staffs to be sharing Xanax for their anxiety disorders.

Donald Trump can no longer talk to his son Jared Kushner because the family adviser has lost his top secret security clearance.  

There's only one reason for this downgrade to have happened and that's because of Kushner's business dealings with foreign countries.  

In other words, in Russian, it's what' called "kompromat" or blackmail. 

Here's who shut the door behind them:

Steve Bannon~ An architect of Trump’s presidential campaign, the former Breitbart (aka "barfcart) news head cast himself as the guardian of Mr Trump’s populist platform. While the White House cast Bannon’s August 2017 decision to leave the administration as amicable, the relationship between Trump and Bannon disintegrated upon publication of a book that quoted Bannon disparaging the President’s family. 

Reince Priebus ~ Trump's decision to make this former Republican National Committee chair his chief of staff was seen as building a bridge to a Republican establishment. But, Trump was said to chafe at Priebus, who resigned in July of 2017.

Michael Flynn ~ Trump’s initial National Security Adviser lasted less than a month.  Retired Lt. Gen. Flynn resigned after it emerged he had lied about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the US. In fact, Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about discussions with then Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Anthony Scaramucci ~ Blink and you might have missed Scaramucci’s brief tenure. He was fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly in July of 2018, days after he launched into a profanity-laced tirade blasting other administration members during a phone call with a reporter.

Sean Spicer ~ The Trump administration’s first Press Secretary resigned in July of 2017, about a week before the ouster of Priebus, after objecting to the appointment of Scaramucci.

Michael Dubke ~ Yet another former member of the Trump White House’s communications team, Dubke resigned from his post as communications director in May of 2017.

"Katy bar the door" to keep Donald Trump isolated from causing his own misbehavior.

And the list continues at this link reported in The Indpendent by Jeremy B. White.