"lies, damned lies and Donald Trump" - encore echo opinion

Kathleen Parker published this opinion in March 2019, but the serial lies spewed out of Donald Trump's mouth without the benefit of using any cognitive reasoning calls for echo attention:

Donald Trump's lying ears by Kathleen Parker

WASHINGTON -- If he were alive today, Mark Twain might say the following: "There's lies, damned lies -- and Donald Trump." The president of the United States not only lies routinely, but he believes other people's lies without a modicum of skepticism.

This past week, the liar in question was North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who claimed to have known nothing about what appears to have been the torture and, ultimately, murder of American college student Otto Warmbier. 

Trump said this after the second nuclear summit (for which Trump was grossly unprepared, this time in Vietnam): 

Trump said Kim "tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word." He added that Kim "felt badly about it. He felt very badly."

Right. Because Kim's empathy and compassion toward his starving countrymen and those he has had killed, allegedly including his half-brother, are legendary.

"There's lies, damned lies -- and Donald Trump."

It is mind-numbing and breathtaking to hear such nonsense from a president, who, if normal, would vindicate the victim through punitive actions rather than side with a violent dictator in some weird, contrived, non-productive chit-chat about nuclear weapons. Warmbier's parents were appropriately outraged by the president's cavalier comments -- especially since he had used the Warmbiers as props during his 2018 State of the Union address -- and they issued a harsh rebuke.

The 21-year-old Warmbier had been touring North Korea when on Jan. 2, 2016, while going through airport security to leave the country, he was detained by North Korean authorities. He was accused of stealing a propaganda poster from the Pyongyang hotel where he was staying. No conclusive evidence was provided that he did so, but he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

After 17 months, Warmbier was sent home in a coma, having suffered severe brain damage from possible multiple beatings, and he died a few days later. His brutal death was surely no accident, as Cindy and Fred Warmbier asserted in their statement rebuking Trump, nor was it likely unknown to Kim, whose Supreme Leadership doesn't leave much wiggle room for independent action. No one familiar with North Korea believes that Kim wasn't well aware of his American captive. How could he not have been after a year-and-a-half of international news coverage and outreach from the U.S. State Department? Thus, make no mistake, Warmbier's death was as much an assault on America as it was on this young American son.

But Trump, who confessed to having a "warm relationship" with Kim, based presumably on whatever pheromones passed between them, said he believed the man he previously called "little rocket man." This is because "Trumpzi" is (a) a useful idiot; (b) a malevolent force in the universe; (c) a small-pawed, big-dog fanboy; (d) a strategic genius.

I think most of us can eliminate option d.

Option c is probable given Trump's strange attraction to tyrants, dictators, murderers and thieves. He has used similar terminology with other strongmen, with whom he has been equally credulous. Trump believed Russian President Vladimir Putin when he denied knowing about Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election. And he believed Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman when he denied knowing anything about the torture, murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

At the same time Trump believed their lies, he disbelieved the conclusions of American intelligence agencies, which, in each case, pointed a finger at the top guys. How could it be otherwise?

Even if we pretend that Trump is a strategic genius who is flattering his foes by faking belief in their lies, one is left to wonder to what end? To win their approval? To soften them for the next round? To charm them into believing he's one of them, that they are essentially the same but for minor differences resolvable through the art of the deal?

If only he were trying to seize a widow's home to make space for a new limo parking lot at one of his casinos. Or negotiating a new Trump tower in Moscow. But the stakes are a little higher now. And Trump, in trying to be a tough guy, has created the opposite perception.

What every foreign ruler, dictator, president or potentate now knows is that every American tourist, journalist, college student or diplomat is fair game for capture, arrest, hostage-taking, torture or murder -- all without consequence. All they have to do is lie to the president, a proven weakling, and the bad thing that happened will just go away.

The American people must not let him get away with it.

Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.

Donald Trump truth meter and his lie surrotages

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker’s count as of Oct. 9, the president had made 13,435 false or misleading claims since taking office. 

Truth itself is distorted under a political lense.  Republicans have turned their back on truth and their oath of office.  Every court of law requires defendents to swear an oath to tell the truth before they testify.  In the Ten Commandments:  Honesty must always characterize our speech and conduct (John 14:6)

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” William Shakespeare

Kathleen Parker opinion echo published in the Goshen News, an Indiana newspaper:

Shakespeare long ago wrote that “truth will out,” meaning that what’s true — by virtue of its basis in fact and logic — eventually will conquer the lie.

Sometimes truth is so eager to be heard that it slips past the speaker’s tongue without his conscious cooperation.

Enter acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. On Thursday, Mulvaney’s cat escaped the bag he had been carrying for Trump during his 10-month-long “acting” tenure.

Yes, yes, yes, we withheld funds to Ukraine in order to obtain help investigating the 2016 hacking of a Democratic National Committee server! You could almost hear the relief of having gotten it out — the truth, that is — so that he could get some REM sleep for a change.

Keeping the lie that there was no quid pro quo, as the official White House narrative went on and on, would have been a burden to the good, which Mulvaney is. If he were otherwise, surely he’d be the non-acting chief of staff by now. It’s the liars and the not-so-good who seem to survive in the Trump administration.

Mick Mulvaney's alternate reality

Mulvaney’s days, on the other hand, are likely numbered. Truth may be the heart’s best friend, but it is not helpful in the sort of presidential politics being played out on Pennsylvania Avenue. This may explain Mulvaney’s near-immediate walk-back of his comments to the press. He issued a statement asserting “there was absolutely no quid pro quo” (because Ukraine didn’t produce anything?) and that the pause on funding was related only to “corruption” in Ukraine and had nothing to do with the fantastical server heist.

Mick Mulvaney tries to put the truth-paste back into the tube

Remember that the Mueller report concluded that Russian operatives did, in fact, hack a DNC server to gain information that might be helpful to Trump’s election. Trump is still so undone by this now-obvious truth that he seems determined to disprove it and has become obsessed with the conspiracy that the server somehow ended up in Ukraine and contains evidence that there was no hacking by the Russians. Even though the special counsel also concluded that there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, the president seemingly has a desperate need to prove that he won by his own genius.

“I want to see the server,” he told reporters in the White House last Wednesday. “I think it’s very important for this country to see the server.” Really? I have bad news for the president: The idea even that a single server exists — and can be hidden somewhere — is ludicrous. Nowadays, a “server” is actually dozens of different interconnected systems.

In other words, Trump has risked everything, inviting impeachment, to prove that he won fair and square. His Ukraine parry was a matter not of national security but of ego. Trump's need for reassurance and public validation is so consuming that he’s apparently blind to consequences, never more obvious than his recent dealings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which led to Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria. In that case, however, people — not reputations — died. What part Trump’s ego played in that transaction hasn’t been discovered yet, but Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s theory that Erdogan issued an ultimatum and Trump caved may be getting warm.

Before we leave the subject of the 2016, election, let’s be very clear: Trump didn’t win so much as the Democrats lost. And, if they’re not very careful starting immediately — that is, if they don’t stop sounding like aliens whose implanted data receivers haven’t yet mastered the code for “Mainstream America” — they could lose again.

Mulvaney’s stab at survival, meanwhile, may have been a smart move. A wise friend once told me: “Always tell the truth as soon as possible.” You may not win friends; you may sacrifice something wanted. But over time, lies will consume the liar, make you crazy, and paranoia usually follows. Mulvaney may lose his job over the truth — the bus under which so many have been cast sits idling outside the West Wing — and it calls for thee.

Granted, he might have skipped his other lines about “Get over it” and “We do that all the time,” but he must feel that a weight has been lifted. Mulvaney, at least, will enjoy an afterlife beyond the White House. As for Trump, his paranoia expands with his prevarications. By The Washington Post’s Fact Checker’s count as of Oct. 9, the president had made 13,435 false or misleading claims since taking office.

If truth ever does slip off his tongue, Congress will have to declare a national holiday.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist who writes for The Washington Post.

Donald Trump - a ruthless & immoral "unjust" man

What does it mean to be human?

An echo opinion by Kathleen Parker published in the West Virginia newspaper the Huntington Herald-Dispatch

An "unjust" person and illegal leader- Donald Trump

WASHINGTON — In his most famous dialogue, "The Republic," Plato, via Socrates, explored the idea that a just state would best function under the leadership of a perfectly just philosopher-king.

That is, an intellectually curious person who pursues knowledge, is intelligent, reliable and wise, and embraces the simple life. 

To test the hypothesis, Socrates is asked by an interlocutor to imagine a competition between a perfectly just man — who would be perceived by an ignorant public as unjust — and a perfectly unjust man, who is ruthless, immoral, gets away with murder, figuratively, but appears to be just.

Though this is more complicated than described here, one unavoidably thinks of Donald Trump, who, apparently seems "just" to — or at least is approved by — 39 percent of the electorate, yet meets the very definition of "unjust." 

Ruthless and immoral, he somehow always escapes accountability.

As we know, Trump doesn't like to read, seems to abhor knowledge, is unreliable from moment to moment and embraces a gaudevillian, as well as vaudevillian, life. He's the opposite of the philosopher-king and, given the pendulum theory of presidential succession, we're now primed and ready for one. But, who?

Does such a person even exist in the land of Twitter and Snapchat? 

Does our narcissistic culture engender the sort of person we last saw strolling along a wooded path lost in thought? 

If such a person were to exist, would he or she stand a chance of attracting voters with the kind of message that urges people to think rather than cajoles them with sophistry?

The Greek sophists were learned men who made clever arguments that were, in fact, false. This also nearly defines our president, who has manipulated people by invoking emotion rather than reason. 

It must be sublime to be unencumbered by conscience, weightlessly bloviating to the cheers of admirers without the burden of truth.

Then again, maybe not. My guess is that a majority of voters know that they deserve better. And the ambient unease people feel is the very real sense that the ship of state is listing and a lunatic mans the helm.

So, let's say we're in the market for a philosopher-king — or queen — who understands the extraordinary challenges ahead because he or she has studied them. Someone who is reliable and won't say one thing today and its opposite the next. Given our dot on the timeline, perhaps he or she might also be a bit witty. We surely wouldn't want to be bored.

The diverse roster of Democratic candidates is testament to how far we've come from the ridiculous era of playboys, fast cars and the bigger-better-richer-than-thou dogma to which Trump has entrusted his flexible faith. Is there a perfectly just philosopher-president among them? We'll find out during the next 19 or so months, as stories are shared about humble origins who has suffered poverty, endured discrimination, or been sexually harassed - or hugged by Joe Biden.

But, which one of them is capable of elevating the dialogue, of inspiring citizens to look beyond their immediate needs to something that unites all? We're not only physical beings with basic needs; we're also soul-filled and spiritually yearning for something greater than ourselves. It is to the latter that our next president should focus some of his or her attention, because we are entering a new age without much guidance.

At this particular time in history, we have to answer an exceedingly tough question: What does it mean to be human?

Technological advances have so overwhelmed us that we may be unable to process their ethical ramifications, which have an increasing impact on our daily lives — from robots and artificial intelligence to synthetic biology. With advances in gene manipulation, we'll soon be creating improved humans, most likely without the bother of mating and pregnancy. Enough of: Who am I? The question now is: Who are we as a species?

Many of these developments are already upon us. 

And though academics and scientists may be well-versed in various consequential scenarios, no one in the public sphere has yet approached the deep philosophical/psychological implications that could lead to circumstances most unpleasant. If you think income inequality is challenging, wait for gene inequality and its companion privileges.

I don't know who our philosopher-president could be, but I feel safe in saying that the country is ready for her — or him.
Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist. Her email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.

But KJU said he didn't do it? Lies, damned lies and Donald Trump

Donald Trump's strange attraction to tyrants - Kathleen Parker

Lies, damned lies and Donald Trump

This echo opinion by Kathleen Parker was published in The Herald-Dispatch, a newspaper published in Huntington, West Virginia.

WASHINGTON — If he were alive today, Mark Twain might say the following: "There's lies, damned lies — and Donald Trump." The president of the United States not only lies routinely, but he believes other people's lies without a modicum of skepticism.

This past week, the liar in question was North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (aka "KJU"), who claimed to have known nothing about what appears to have been the torture and, ultimately, murder of American college student Otto Warmbier. After holding a second nuclear summit for which he was grossly unprepared, this time in Vietnam, Trump said Kim "tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word." He added that Kim "felt badly about it. He felt very badly."

Right. Because Kim's empathy and compassion toward his starving countrymen and those he has had killed, allegedly including his half-brother, are legendary.

It is mind-numbing and breathtaking to hear such nonsense from a president, who, if normal, would vindicate the victim through punitive actions rather than side with a violent dictator in some weird, contrived, non-productive chit-chat about nuclear weapons. Warmbier's parents were appropriately outraged by the president's cavalier comments — especially since he had used the Warmbiers as props during his 2018 State of the Union address -and they issued a harsh rebuke.

The 21-year-old Warmbier had been touring North Korea when on Jan. 2, 2016, while going through airport security to leave the country, he was detained by North Korean authorities. He was accused of stealing a propaganda poster from the Pyongyang hotel where he was staying. No conclusive evidence was provided that he did so, but he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

After 17 months, Warmbier was sent home in a coma, having suffered severe brain damage from possible multiple beatings, and he died a few days later. His brutal death was surely no accident, as Cindy and Fred Warmbier asserted in their statement rebuking Trump, nor was it likely unknown to Kim, whose Supreme Leadership doesn't leave much wiggle room for independent action. No one familiar with North Korea believes that Kim wasn't well aware of his American captive. How could he not have been after a year-and-a-half of international news coverage and outreach from the U.S. State Department? Thus, make no mistake, Warmbier's death was as much an assault on America as it was on this young American son.

But Trump, who confessed to having a "warm relationship" with Kim, based presumably on whatever pheromones* passed between them, said he believed the man he previously called "little rocket man." This is because the president is (a) a useful idiot; (b) a malevolent force in the universe; (c) a small-pawed, big-dog fanboy; (d) a strategic genius.

I think most of us can eliminate option d.

Option c is probable, given Trump's strange attraction to tyrants, dictators, murderers and thieves. He has used similar terminology with other strongmen, with whom he has been equally credulous. Trump believed Russian President Vladimir Putin when he denied knowing about Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election. And he believed Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman when he denied knowing anything about the torture, murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

At the same time Trump believed their lies, he disbelieved the conclusions of American intelligence agencies, which, in each case, pointed a finger at the top guys. How could it be otherwise?

Even if we pretend that Trump is a strategic genius who is flattering his foes by faking belief in their lies, one is left to wonder to what end? To win their approval? To soften them for the next round? To charm them into believing he's one of them, that they are essentially the same but for minor differences resolvable through the art of the deal?

If only he were trying to seize a widow's home to make space for a new limo parking lot at one of his casinos. Or negotiating a new Trump tower in Moscow. But the stakes are a little higher now. And Trump, in trying to be a tough guy, has created the opposite perception.

What every foreign ruler, dictator, president or potentate now knows is that every American tourist, journalist, college student or diplomat is fair game for capture, arrest, hostage-taking, torture or murder — all without consequence. All they have to do is lie to the president, a proven weakling, and the bad thing that happened will just go away.

The American people must not let him get away with it.

Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist.

* Thanks Ms. Parker learned another new word: Pheromones- a chemical substance produced and released into the environment by an animal, especially a mammal or an insect, affecting the behavior or physiology of others of its species. This is obviously Donald Trump's false belief about "how to influence others", misguided theory. He seems to rely on "pheromones".  In my opinion, pheromones, can also be nature's repellent. 

Trump ringmaster for a carnival of lies and crooks

An echo opinion by Kathleen Parker published in The Washington Post 
WASHINGTON — Michael Cohen was Donald Trump's personal attorney. In fact Trump hired Mr. Cohen.  Therefore, Mr. Cohen's guilty plea Thursday, admitting that he lied to Congress about Donald Trump's interests in building a Moscow tower, comes as little surprise — because everyone attached to this corrupt administration seems to lie with ease. 

(IMO, Donald Trump is a repulsive red hatted ring leader for a staff muzzled by loyalty and thereby, they enable his serial lying!)

And yet Cohen's admission is explosive news in the carnival-kingdom of liars, crooks and thieves.

Cohen, who probably knows more than anyone about Trump's (IMO shady and treasonous!) business dealings — excepting, perhaps, special counsel Robert Mueller — admitted having falsely claimed that efforts to build a Trump Tower Moscow ended in January 2016. 

Everyone attached to this corrupt administration seems to lie with ease ~ Kathleen Parker

Aaahah! It turns out that those negotiations actually continued through mid-June of that year.

What's a few months, you say? But, of course, Trump would want to expand his real estate empire to Russia, as he reportedly has been trying to do for 30 years. As for Trump's lying to the American people, we all know how little this matters to the Republican Party base. Simply put, they don't care. The Don's a tycoon, after all — a mogul, a celebrity, a really big deal, let me tell you. Besides, they would contend, little white lies never hurt anybody. Impervious as Trump loyalists are to the behavior of sewer rats, nothing Trump does — including, theoretically, shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, as he once noted with a soupçon of admiration — seems to threaten the moral fibers of the Republican tapestry.

But the littlest of lies can wreak havoc. Just ask Bill Clinton. And Richard Nixon. And, Cohen, and Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman, who recently ended his plea relationship with Mueller. Trump's own lies, which number in the thousands, according to The Washington Post's Fact Checker, haven't yet hurt him enough to perp-walk him out of the White House, but the night is young. Indeed, the president's tangerine-colored, Teflon-coated, tricky-dicky, slick-willie ways just might be running out of legs.

With Cohen's plea, the president has secured a position heretofore reserved for others: He's now officially a person of interest and even has a legal code name — Individual 1. Suffice to say, it could have been much worse. But what a lovely gesture from the FBI — providing a moniker better suited to the subject than "president."

Needless to say, Individual 1, or I-1 for short, has accused Cohen of lying to spare himself. So many pants; so many fires. 

So grows the nose once the first lie is told. When everybody's a liar, is Lady Justice left to weigh whose lies are most credible? Perhaps this is what's taking Mueller so long to create a report. But the number of Trump associates who've left the swamp to sing for Mueller seems by now to outnumber those left for Trump to fire. Surely, a preponderance of evidence can't be far off.

In the meantime, Trump has created a path through this byzantine labyrinth of deceit and betrayal by dropping crumbs of doubt to show the way. Each crumb corresponds to what and whom he considers a threat. For example, Trump detested and, ultimately, fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation. Obviously, he had wanted Sessions to serve as soldier, spy, tinker — and to tailor things to suit the president. (Forgive me if this is too easy.)

For nearly two years, Trump has attacked the FBI and the special counsel. An innocent man need attack no one. From early in his campaign, while privy to ongoing business negotiations with Russia, he was touting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia generally. Just hours after Cohen's plea, Trump canceled his planned meeting with Putin at the G-20 in Argentina this weekend.

One may read the crumbs as one wishes, but facts don't lie — and them's the facts. Even though most legal experts see no grounds for criminal charges (yet), it's clear that Trump (again) lied to the American people and pursued a course he hoped would benefit him personally, contra his America-first trope. 

Emails from this same period show Cohen sought a financial endorsement from Russia for a Trump Tower project. Meanwhile, Putin was saying flattering things about Trump.

Perhaps most telling, I-1 has strategically sown seeds of doubt in American institutions, especially the justice system, while making himself potentially vulnerable with our chief geopolitical foe (H/T Sen. Mitt Romney). Apparently, Trump would rather his supporters lose faith in their country than in the man they elected to disrupt it.

If that's not technically a crime, it is surely criminal. (IMO, it's criminal to betray the trust a leader is given; when the behavior of that leader, in exchange for the trust, is serial lying.)
Kathleen Parker is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. 

Man's capacity to inflict cruelty ! Echo opinion about Trump's dehumanization

Trump’s damaging rhetoric to dehumanize is troubling: an echo opinion by Kathleen Parker published in GoErie.com 

WASHINGTON — No sooner had I ordered the 2011 book “Less Than Human” for a late-summer read than Donald Trump called Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog” and a “lowlife.” 

Those two slurs fit nicely into author David Livingstone Smith’s philosophical study of man’s capacity to inflict cruelty by first dehumanizing the “other.”

Trump’s personal template is familiar. He likes someone, then doesn’t, then reduces the object of his scorn to something less than human. The mononymously known Omarosa, whose friendship with Trump began when she appeared on “The Apprentice,” was fired last year from her job as a White House aide.

In recent days, she has released secretly taped recordings of her firing as well as a later conversation with Trump, just published a tell-all account of her time in the White House, and told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that she’s willing to cooperate with the Robert Mueller investigation. (Whether Mueller is interested in her input isn’t clear.)

All things considered, it sounds as if Trump and Omarosa may deserve each other. Recording people without their knowledge, especially in the White House, is certainly un-kosher if not illegal. On Tuesday, The Trump campaign filed for arbitration against Omarosa for breach of a 2016 nondisclosure agreement. More important, however, is the risk of having exposed top officials to hackers if Omarosa used her cellphone to record these and other conversations.

Whatever her motivations, Omarosa seems set on exposing Trump as a racist. (Congratulations, Omarosa, you’re the last to know. He’s also a misogynist.) Trump may not be an N-word-hurling racist, though Omarosa claims to know of a tape from his reality-show days when he used the term. (Trump denies having used the epithet. But his pattern of speaking about African Americans, among others not of his race or ethnicity, suggests that racism taints his mental processes.)

It’s fair to say that most whites who are racist usually don’t think they are. This is because they don’t use the N-word or actively seek to bring harm to non-whites. But racism is a pernicious, passive plague. You don’t have to burn crosses in people’s yards. All you have to do is see African Americans (or Asians or Latinos) in stereotypically demeaning ways. Thus, when Trump became angry with Omarosa, he didn’t say she was a disgruntled former employee — or make some other dismissively neutral comment. Instead, he tweeted:

“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”

Directing such vitriol toward any woman is repellant. But what makes the president’s remarks especially repugnant is that they were aimed at a minority woman and followed a spate of similar insults targeting African Americans: He recently said that Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, has a low I.Q., “somewhere in the mid-60s.” In a twofer on Aug. 3, he attacked both CNN anchorman Don Lemon and Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James, tweeting: “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.”

Granted, all of the above have been critical of Trump, but so what? Presidents are frequently under fire. Yet, through some strange reasoning, Americans are supposed to accept that, you know, Trump’s a fighter. He always fires back, as though this were justification for the bile he releases into the atmosphere. In the process, he has offered aid to his enemies by displaying a pattern of racially charged commentary.

It’s a simple matter of fact that certain insults have greater or lesser impact when applied to particular individuals or groups of people. Comparing Mitt Romney or Steve Bannon to a dog, as Trump previously did, obviously isn’t the same as calling a black woman a dog. Questioning the intelligence of African Americans is especially blistering.

Did Trump mean for us to treat his comments so literally? 

Who cares? As he's the president of the United States, he should be able to muzzle his schoolyard impulses. 

Also, Trump should also know that dehumanization — or “othering,” to use current vernacular — leads to marginalization, which can lead to cruelty (say, separating young migrant children from their parents), which can lead to far worse.

As Smith explains in his book, it’s much easier to hurt, maim or kill others when you no longer see them as quite human. World history’s catalog of atrocity confirms this. Which is why no one living today should be comfortable with the language of dehumanization, no matter how relatively minor the degree.

Least of all, the nation's leader, the president.

Kathleen Parker is a Washington Post columnist. 

"Russia ~ If You're Listening?" is an oxymoron

Russian operatives are always listening. In fact, Russia may even have put a "bugging chip" in the soccer ball given to Donald Trump by Vladimir Putin at the "Helsinki-knee" kowtow conference. "Where there are Russians, there are also audio 'bugs'". Donald Trump didn't need to ask "Russia, if you're listening?". They were already doing so. Surveillance began in earnest at the 2013, Miss Universe pageant, in Russia, near Moscow.

Echo Opinion published in the Pennsylvania newspaper "The Intelligencer", by Kathleen Parker
Opinion

Vladimir Putin gives a World Cup soccer ball (with a "chip" embedded into it)  to Donald Trump, during a press conference at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, Monday, July 16, 2018.

Kathleen Parker asks:  "... the question has to be: Why, if there’s no concern about collusion, would Trump keep pounding Mueller while defending Putin?"

WASHINGTON — It’s a given that political candidates will target each other with as much oppositional propaganda as they can get away with. But with the Kremlin now playing a third-party shadow role in U.S. elections, the usual game seems to be shifting from blood sport to cold war.

Given Russia’s well-established (and admitted by Vladimir Putin) preference for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016, it’s possible, if not likely, that the next round of election meddling will be geared toward keeping the Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

For Democrats, this added pressure from Russia could easily begin to feel like a threat. Imagine believing that you’re not only running against a Republican but also against a former KGB agent who seems to be in cahoots with your very own president.

What else should one think?

During a rally Thursday evening in Pennsylvania, Trump once again referred to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as the “Russian hoax.” This, amid the intelligence community’s stepped-up warnings about new Russian interference. 

And, let’s not forget the 12 Russians whom Mueller indicted last month for hacking Democratic Party computer networks.

Mueller is not generally known as a hoaxer.

But Trump remains the slick salesman, entertainer and pot stirrer he’s always been. Just hours before his stick-it-to-’em jamboree, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and several national intelligence officials convened a media briefing to address Russian attempts to impact the midterm elections.

That is, with a slight modification. In her statement, Sanders assured gathered media that the administration “will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections from any nation-state or other dangerous actor,” clearly indicating that the focus would not be only on Russia.

As it should be, given that others would also like to meddle in our affairs. But as the gathered officials made clear — including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen — Russia is of central concern here and now. Wray said that Russia “continues to engage in malign influence operations” that target “the integrity of our democratic institutions.” Coats said: “We continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States.”

Then why is the president undermining his own advisers?

Although Trump is referring primarily to Mueller’s core mission — to determine whether the Trump campaign was involved in the Russian interference — he seems more than willing to minimize the importance of what we already know. Thus, the question has to be: Why, if there’s no concern about collusion, would Trump keep pounding Mueller while defending Putin?

One can only conclude that either there’s a little smidge of guilt, a problematic family connection, a dossier embarrassment — or the president of the United States doesn’t care that Russia tried to ruin Clinton so that he could become president. He seems to care so little, in fact, that he’s essentially calling America’s intelligence community a pack of liars and Mueller a hoaxer. Meanwhile, last month in Helsinki, Trump said Putin was an “extremely strong and powerful” denier. (Have these guys exchanged jewelry yet?)

If Putin says he didn’t do it, then Trump takes him at his word? Yet, when teams of skilled, honorable investigators tackle the problem and present indictments based on facts, Trump insinuates that they’re making it up?

This reversal of loyalty to his own people, not to mention the country he is tasked with leading, is so preposterous that normal people are at serious risk of joining lemming colonies. It isn’t possible to use logic with the illogical; it’s futile to explain the obvious to the willfully thick; and when it comes to Trump’s base, witness only the rally last week in Florida where CNN reporter Jim Acosta was the target of dozens of Trumpers extending their middle digits and shouting, among other salutations, “You suck!”

Perhaps, some in Trump’s camp see things like steady job growth and low unemployment and say to themselves, Who cares how he got elected? And if Russia likes Trump, why is that necessarily bad? The president, they would note, has been checking off his list of campaign promises without so much as changing his expression.

One could make such an argument, but this would be a narrow view and an unserious response to other facts. These include what almost any Russian would surely tell you — that Putin is playing Trump like a fiddle — and that something was stinky in Helsinki.

MaineWriter note~  Russia continues to listen. (As a matter of fact, Russians who are reading this echo opinion.)  Donald Trump is counting on them to pull off the shadow election in the fall, like they did when the 2016 campaign was maligned by the cyber attack on American democracy.  "Russia, if you're listening" is a classic oxymoron.  Russians are always listening and now the cyber attackers are also invading our nation.

Kathleen Parker ~ Her email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.

Trump diagnosis ~ "a cancer lives among us, and the good people of this country must be precise in its excision"

Echo opinion column by Kathleen Parker published in The Northern Virginia Daily

WASHINGTON — Surely, now, we can concede that letting Trump be Trump has exhausted itself — even among the smugly credulous.

For a year and a half, we’ve heard his supporters say: Watch what he does, not what he says. Sure, he’s rude and crude, they said, but he’s going to make America great again.

No, he’s not.

Nor was he ever, notwithstanding a column I wrote just before Election Day, saying that America would survive no matter who won. My optimism was based solely on faith in the U.S. Constitution and the inherent checks and balances prescribed therein. To be wrong would mean that the checks aren’t being applied when imbalances occur.

We are there.

President Trump, rather than holding a hard line with Russian President Vladimir Putin at their summit in Helsinki, essentially sided with the enemy by attacking U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies regarding their solidly conclusive finding that Russian hackers interfered with the 2016 presidential election. (Trump tried to backtrack Tuesday afternoon, saying that he does, in fact, accept the intelligence community’s findings on Russian meddling.)

The two leaders all but held hands during a news conference Monday as each dismissed the idea that Russia wants to undermine American democracy — and that the Robert Mueller investigation into possible collusion between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign has no legs to stand on. This despite Mueller having just last Friday issued 12 indictments against Russians believed to be involved in hacking the computer networks of Democratic organizations.

Are we to believe that these two known liars were telling the truth or hadn’t agreed to a script during their private, one-on-one meeting?

On Sunday, Trump, in his usual manner, blamed the Democrats for having a weak defense system against hacking. On Tuesday, he again waved the “fake news” flag, blaming the media for unfavorable summit coverage. The whole experience surely bonded him further with Putin, who favors a state-run media and rules a nation where journalists who become troublesome are often killed.

Between Trump’s antipathy toward the First Amendment, which he previously has expressed wishing to weaken — and his stated desire that “my people” sit up at attention when he speaks, as North Koreans did during his visit with Kim Jong Un — the president has made his dictatorial proclivities clear.

That said, such inclinations may more accurately reflect a severe narcissistic personality disorder than a conscious desire to subjugate the American people. Given Trump’s paltry understanding of world affairs or his role as president, he quite possibly aligns himself with thugs as a means to man-up, as they say, and correct some sense of impotence that persists despite his impressive success.

Consider Trump’s reply when challenged about his dubious posture toward American intelligence agencies: “I have great confidence in my intelligence people,”he said, “but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

Note “my” intelligence people, plus the obvious lie about confidence. And the words “strong,” “powerful” and “denial.” This is Trump in four words: self-absorbed, impressed by authority, and at home in denial. This makes him easily unlikable to a majority of Americans but not necessarily treasonous, as some have charged out of proper outrage. Treason, frankly, sounds a little high-minded for such a reckless, clueless vaude-villain.

Where does this leave us? What might one deduce from the Helsinki summit? Either Trump is too thoroughly inept to continue as president, or his predatory nature, as demonstrated in his business — not to mention his boasting about aggression toward women — has led to his collecting rogues to enhance his own power. Or both. In any case, he has stepped over all lines of acceptable presidential behavior and presents a clear and present danger to the United States.

When our chief executive, whose principal job is to defend both the Constitution and the nation against aggressors, stands alongside our chief geopolitical foe and betrays two of our most important institutions in the service of his own ego, he has dimmed the lights in the shining city on a hill and left the world a far darker place.

It’s often said that America is great because America is good. 

My faith in the institutions and the individuals who conferred upon us a singular role in the history of humankind is yet unshaken. But a cancer lives among us, and the good people of this country must be precise in its excision. If Republicans don’t do it now, Democrats likely will sweep the ballots in November and do it then.

History will note when, and by whose hand, America ceased to be great.  Email: kathleenparker@washpost.com.

Republicans obviously overwhelmed about Donald Trump

"Trump sprinkled 'crap' elsewhere in his 95-minute tirade, saying the word at least three times. He also promised to 'bomb the s---' out of oil fields in Iraq and Syria. And he insisted that the crowd take his word that he knows more about the Islamic State than our generals do,"  (writes Kathleen Parker)

Kathleen Parker writes an opinion about Trump in Iowa

There're no GOP 2016 presidential candidates in the line up who inspire the mainstream party faithful. Among the miserable choices, Donald Trump is probably the least likely to be elected.

Columnist Kathleen Parker usually writes her pro-conservative opinions in intelllectual prose, but not this time. She takes on Trump in his own words.

Perhaps, it's remotely possible that Ms. Parker might consider voting for America's first female president by supporting Mrs. Hillary Clinton. Well, of course, in the universe where everything is possible, Parker always has the annonimity of a voting booth. "What happens in the voting booth, stays in the voting booth!"

Thanks to a Maryland friend, who brought Ms. Parker's The Washington Post column about Donald Trump to my attention.

Opinions
In Iowa, Trump begins his meltdown by Kathleen Parker

DES MOINES
You can’t drive far in these parts without seeing Ben Carson on a billboard, looking more like a man of the cloth than of the operating room.

There’s something vaguely beatific in that face and beaming smile. “Run Ben Run!” reads the text on one sign. The moviegoer’s mind can’t escape the immediate association.

“Run, Forrest, Run!” the little girl cried out to her mentally challenged friend, Forrest Gump, as a group of mean boys taunted and pursued him.

Perhaps this very connection penetrated the barrier reef of Donald Trump’s self-regard when he was in Iowa recently. 

Thursday night, in a riff expressing his puzzlement over Carson’s growing popularity, Trump insinuated that Iowans — and perhaps even some in his audience — are of limited intelligence.

“How stupid are the people of Iowa?” he thundered to about 1,500 Iowans. 

“How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?”

Trump sprinkled “crap” elsewhere in his 95-minute tirade, saying the word at least three times. He also promised to “bomb the s---” out of oil fields in Iraq and Syria. And he insisted that the crowd take his word that he knows more about the Islamic State than our generals do.

“Believe me,” he said.

Trump has never hesitated to insult anyone and everyone, including his audiences. A few months ago in South Carolina, for instance, he wasted no time taking down Sen. Lindsey Graham, who, though also running for president, was polling near the bottom. Trump’s attack not only was gratuitous but also reeked of pure meanness. After all, many in the audience probably put Graham in the Senate. How stupid are the people of South Carolina? Trump might as well have said.

In Fort Dodge on Thursday, he launched into several of his political opponents — calling Marco Rubio “weak like a baby,” and referring to Carly Fiorina as “Carly whatever-the-hell-her-name-is” — but he saved his most toxic remarks for Carson.

Trump couldn’t suggest that the retired pediatric neurosurgeon is dumb, so he turned the insult on Carson’s supporters. In this richly evangelical state, he also chose to ridicule Carson’s personal story of Christian salvation and transformation — from an angry, violence-prone youth to the calm, reserved visage hovering every several miles above the Iowa landscape.

Trump: “He goes into the bathroom for a couple of hours, and he comes out, and now he’s religious. And the people of Iowa believe him. Give me a break. . . . It doesn’t happen that way. . . . Don’t be fools, okay?”


On a roll, Don, on a roll.

Referring to recent media questions about Carson’s self-described pathological temper in his youth, Trump made a comparison to child molesters, saying they are “incurable.”

First, pathological means related to disease or illness — or can mean compulsive/obsessive — but it doesn’t necessarily mean incurable, as a doctor would know but perhaps a reality-star business-mogul might not. Practice what you preach, Brother Trump, and preach what you know.

For comparison purposes, Trump could have picked a number of bad habits, from gambling to boozing, but he went for the most universally repulsive thing he could think of — pedophilia. Maybe his right lobe was firing on the tenuous association between pediatric (neurosurgeon) and child (molester)?

Oh, but I’m stretching, aren’t I? Trying too hard to find an explanation for this meaner, nastier, angrier version of Trump when it’s all too clear.

This is the true Trump.

Fort Dodge was the inevitable meltdown many of us were anticipating far sooner than now. It’s hard even for a showman like Trump to fake for long what you are not.

In a political campaign, as in a courtship, people try to win favor by displaying their most attractive, intelligent, talented persona. But as we all know, you can only consistently project your best self for so long. Eventually, the idealized “you” becomes worn out from the effort, and the real “you” puts on the sweats and grabs the remote. In romance, I put it at about two years.

In politics, the courtship is necessarily, if disastrously, faster — speed dating for the future of humankind.

Trump got tired. His courtship self was the one who insulted only his opponents and women. 

True Trump can’t stand anyone and wonders why he’s wasting time with all these clueless clucks who don’t have enough sense to recognize a charlatan when they see one.

Thursday night in Fort Dodge, I’m betting quite a few did.

Popularity - This Fall's Election is a Virtual Co-opting of High School "The Musical"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-obama-campaigns-popularity-contest/2012/05/15/gIQAOeRISU_story.html

Columnist Kathleen Parker says we should pull out our childish Magic 8-Balls to keep track of who's the most popular candidate we might choose to be president of the United States.

President Barack Obama was more popular a few weeks ago than he appears to be in recent released polls taken since he announced his support for Marriage Equality aka "same sex marriage".

As our US economy improves, the news media, often dominated by entertainment rather than "real news", looks for whatever buzz American voters are responding to, lately.  Given Parker's take on news published in today's Washington Post, the idea that a president might be focused on international policy now impacted by anti-austerity elections in France and Greece, plus an already improving economy, aren't popular enough topics to create news worthy of making President Obama more popular again, or "lately".

A politicians' position on Marriage Equality has nothing to do with the ability to be President of the United States.  In my opinion, this social issue has zero impact on who is qualified to be president. Nonetheless, the "Gay Marriage" subject makes popularity news.

Will news media bravely resist the pressure of publishing such irrelevant news?

Although cynicism and irreverence often goes hand in hand with politics, the business of electing leaders cannot be treated as entertainment.

Personally, I'm weary of the high school musical tone of the presidential election campaign.  Republicans are pulling Romney to the right while House Speaker Boehner panders to this conservative constituency and threatens the important Debt Ceiling vote in the US House.  This is news!

Democrats sometimes act like they live in a bubble about President Obama's re-election chances. They had better wake up and work hard find enough votes to win the fall election, and soon!

Somewhere in the middle, tensions between the two polarized political groups, R's and D's, must subside as running the American government is essential.

Like Disney's High School Musical, somebody must eventually find a solution to political drama.  Compromise, statesmanship and leadership must prevail, or the political ending will surely be something like the Romeo and Juliet story the High School Musical is based on.

But, right now, each political team on the ideological tug of war are singing their same rhetorical tunes, over and over, creating a cacophony, resonating on deaf voters, many of then not paying much attention to what the singing is about.  It's as though our national elections are being co-opted by childish popularity polls.

Electing a President of the United States can't be like producing a high school musical.

Americans need to ask more about how politicians will lead us, rather than be caught up in how popularly their sound bites of the day entertain us. It doesn't matter, at all, what either candidate thinks or says about Marriage Equality, especially when this issue is completely irrelevant to our daily lives!

Moreover, entertainment news should not determine who we politically like today or snub in the polls.

Serious public policies are at stake when leaders are chosen.

Let's demand more real news from our media and resist the Magic 8-Ball analogies.