Republicans must reject Trump stupid tariffs and help restore confidence in the U.S. economy

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who served as vice president during Trump's first term, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, "The Trump Tariff Tax is the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history."

In facr, the tariffs were almost 10 times the size of those imposed during the Trump-Pence administration and would "cost American families over $3,500 per year."

'Bad Idea' 😕😢: Republicans Raise Alarm Over Donald Trump's Tariffs⚠️❗

#StupidTariffs harm middle class people and those who survive on fixed incomes because the increased taxes caused by tariffs outpace the financial ability for average Americans to keep sustainable revenue.  

Americans will hold back spending because of economc uncertainty.

Echo news report published in Newsweek by Kahleda Rahman.
Several Republicans have raised alarm about Donald Trump's tariffs, warning they will raise prices and derail the economy.

On Wednesday—which he called "Liberation Day"—Trump announced that he would impose higher tariff rates on dozens of nations that run trade surpluses with the United States.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said he would impose a 10 percent baseline tariff on imports from almost all countries and "reciprocal" tariffs on others, unveiling a chart showing higher duties on some of the U.S.'s most significant trading partners.

Trump said the tariffs would boost domestic manufacturing, bring in revenue and restore fairness to global trade.

Nevertheless, many economists warned that the plan can push the economy into a recession and that American consumers would end up shouldering the burden of the tariffs, as importers passed on costs in the form of 💰 higher prices. 

Later on Wednesday, the Senate passed a resolution by a 51-48 vote that would end Trump's emergency declaration on fentanyl trafficking underpinning his tariffs on Canada. Four Republican senators—Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul—voted with Democrats, highlighting cracks in GOP support for Trump's economic plans.

Still, unfortunately,😖😰 the legislation has little chance of passing the Republican-controlled House and being signed by Trump.

#ResistanceNeeded

Donald Trump does not care about America because his obsession is with power and dangerous fealty to himself alone

In the Trumpzi administrtion, morality, ethics and integrity will be archiac concepts.  J.D. Vance, as the Vice-President, who claims to be a Roman Catholic convert, will be forced to lie, whenever Trump commands him to do so.  

John Bolton* opinion: Presidents Expect Loyalty. Trump Demands Fealty. Echo opinion essay published in The New York Times:  Trump Demands Fealty.

Four years ago this Monday, on January 6th, Donald Trump pressured Vice-President Mike Pence to pursue a surreal interpretation of the vice president’s constitutional role in counting the Electoral College’s votes. 

Fortunately, Mr. Pence refused, igniting Trump’s fury for not subordinating either philosophical or constitutional principles in service to him, thereby showing “disloyalty.” Thus ended Mr. Pence’s usefulness to Trumpworld, albeit honorably for Mr. Pence.

Now Trump is selecting key (unqualified) personnel for his second term. Although the prospective appointees vary in philosophy, competence and character, one requirement for them is unfortunately consistent: the likelihood that they will carry out Trump’s orders blind to norms and standards underlying effective governance, or perhaps even to legality.

Trump’s obsessiveness stems purportedly from an unhappy fi, undermining, frustrating, even reversing the president’s decisions and thererst term, when too many senior advisers were not “loyal” to him. These officials had separate agendas, Trump’s advocates sayby illegitimately usurping his power. Such usurpers were considered denizens of the “deep state,” Republicans in Name Only, conspiratorially linked by a desire to cripple Trump’s presidency. 

But, not this time, say his consiglieri, notably his eldest son; they want only loyalists.

So,  what exactly is “loyalty” in the executive branch, and indeed in Congress, where senators have a constitutional advise-and-consent role regarding significant numbers of (but not all) senior officials? To most citizens, loyalty is rightly seen as a virtue. Indeed, a major tenet of first-term veterans of Trump’s administration is that they did what was customary, which was to swear loyalty to our Constitution, not the man. Former officials like Mark Esper and Mark Milley have persuasively made precisely this point, which the Trump transition team conveniently ignores, fearing correctly that asserting personal over constitutional loyalty would produce nuclear-level blowback.

In fact, Trump, whose understanding of the Constitution is sketchy, really wants his appointees to display fealty, a medieval concept implying not mere loyalty but submission. Berating and demeaning cabinet officials before their colleagues, as he did to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, among others, and then keeping them in office is disturbing yet typical for Trump. At Britain’s 2023, coronation of King Charles, Prince William pledged that he would be his father’s “liege man of life and limb.” That’s fealty, publicly affirmed, the kind of personalist link that Trump expects will elide constitutional obligations.

This is indisputably damaging to a free society, but it is a well-established Trump habit. Neither kings nor presidents, nor their countries, are well served if they are surrounded by sycophants and opportunists. Truly strong presidents are not afraid of advisers with strong views.

At his first formal cabinet meeting in June 2017, with the media present, Trump solicited his team’s praise, something even old Washington hands could not recall having seen.

In the current transition, potential Trump appointees say they have been asked whether they believe the 2020, election was stolen (to which there is only one right answer, one contrary to fact) and how they view the events of January 6, 2021. (When Trump finally leaves the political scene, it will be interesting to see how many nominees claim they never believed he won in 2020, or that January 6 was an innocent walk in the park, not an unlawful riot.) Kissing Trump’s ring to gain the highest government ranks is one thing, but the real crunch for the new appointees, especially those without prior government experience, will come after they actually begin work. That is one reason the Constitution checks the president’s appointment power.

The framers strove to make their (our) Constitution lasting. They were not naïve. They had lived through “times that try men’s souls.” Alexander Hamilton, for example, saw the Senate’s advice-and-consent role in the most practical terms. As he wrote in Federalist 76, the idea that the president “could in general purchase the integrity of the whole body would be forced and improbable. A man disposed to view human nature as it is, without either flattering its virtues or exaggerating its vices, will see sufficient ground of confidence in the probity of the Senate, to rest satisfied not only that it will be impracticable to the Executive to corrupt or seduce a majority of its members; but that the necessity of its cooperation in the business of appointments will be a considerable and salutary restraint upon the conduct of that magistrate.”

Asking the Senate to perform as Hamilton envisioned is not hard. Recently, 38 House Republicans dealt Trump his first legislative loss as president-elect by defeating a continuing resolution he backed. Surely senators are at least as independent as House members.

How does fealty work in office? This is the real test of appointees’ personal integrity, evidencing whether their loyalty is to the United States Constitution or to Trump. In the Defense Department, for example, where military officers are obligated not to follow illegal orders, what happens if Trump orders a domestic deployment that violates the Posse Comitatus Act? Will Pete Hegseth, whom Mr. Trump has chosen to be the secretary of defense, urge rescinding the order or just pass it along to the armed services? Will uniformed officers, perhaps advised by government lawyers, demur? How deep into the chain of command could this chaos extend, and what lasting damage might it cause?

Analogous illegal orders could cause significant crises across the intelligence community, which is considered the dark heart of the deep state by many, Mr. Trump among them. But the federal departments and agencies most at risk are law-enforcement agencies, especially the Justice Department. If Trump orders that his choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, prosecute Liz Cheney for potential subornation of perjury before the House’s Jan. 6 committee, what will Ms. Bondi do? She could say there is no prohibition on members of Congress encouraging witnesses to tell the truth in legislative hearings and no evidence that Cassidy Hutchinson or other witnesses perjured themselves.

Or Ms. Bondi could instruct Trump’s pick for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who represented the president-elect in several criminal cases, to investigate not only Ms. Cheney but also Ms. Hutchinson and other witnesses. Mr. Blanche will be an interesting test case. He is a former federal prosecutor. He knows the rules. Will he uncritically follow Ms. Bondi’s order, at the risk of his own legal ethics and possible disciplinary action from the bar association? If Mr. Blanche passes the order down to the assistant attorney general for the criminal or national security division, or directly to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, what then? And once presented to career trial attorneys, what will they do, with their own professionalism at stake? All these questions and decisions also apply to F.B.I. staff members and other investigators, who will face scenarios comparable to those at the Justice Department.

As a result, there could be a Justice Department in continuing crisis. Whatever happens there and at other agencies, however, I believe the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, and especially the trial courts, will not long tolerate the sort of malicious prosecutions Mr. Trump is considering in his retribution campaign. The example of district court judges in the District of Columbia, whether appointed by Republican or Democratic presidents, handling January 6th defendants is instructive, especially their sentencing decisions. They may not all have been like Watergate’s “Maximum John” Sirica, an appointee of President Dwight Eisenhower, but they were tough. There’s nothing like the judiciary’s life tenure, compared with serving “at the pleasure of the president for the time being.”

Of course, just the cost of legal representation during investigations or prosecutions can be daunting, especially since Trump will be using tax dollars if he decides to wage lawfare against political opponents. He may not be expending his personal resources, but his targets will. Nor will they have the extent of official immunity that presidents have, criminally or civilly, something for office seekers to think about in advance.

Trump’s appointees should carefully note his expertise in escaping the consequences of his actions, whereas his loyal supporters often do not. Ask Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani.

*Bolton was the longest-serving national security adviser in the first Trump administration and an assistant attorney general for the civil division at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration. He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened.”

Houston Chronicle endorsement: Vice-President Kamala Harris (Trump leads by exploiting people!)

We endorse Kamala Harris for President of the United States | Editorial By The Editorial Board, Opinions from the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board:

Clawing out of the mud-caked aftermath of a deadly hurricane should be a solemn moment, even in this divided America. Scenes from Helene’s wrath in North Carolina — sedans flung like toy cars, living room couches marinated in floodwaters, towns reduced to war zone rubble — touch a nerve with Houstonians who lived through Harvey and other devastating storms.

These disasters take so much from us, but the aftermath brings hope. 

On a trip to North Carolina and Georgia, Vice President Kamala
Harris worked a hot meal line and remarked at another point: “I think that in these moments of hardship, one of the beauties about who we are as a country is — is people really rally together and show the best of who they are in moments of crisis.”

In Houston, too, neighbors we’ve never met pull up with chainsaws and muck-and-gut gear, Cajun Navy volunteers deploy boats for rooftop rescues. Government makes itself useful, too, and leaders prioritize concern, clear communication and aid to those in need, above everything — including political stumping and tribalism.

Nearly all political leaders — regardless of party, geography or faith tradition — honor this ritual.

Not Donald Trump.

His visit to Helene-devastated areas was a vehicle to spread lies, inflame and divide.

(Maine Writer note 📜: A message sent to my high school alumni from a victim of Helene. He is a reitred army officer living with his wife, who is our classmate, in Bakersfield, North Carolina. "“Federal and State disaster response has been phenomenal. Republican claims otherwise is BS. National Guard and FEMA everywhere. Even with all of the help, the damage is so great that it will take months to see recovery”)

Trump's lies claimed that the Biden administration isn’t helping victims because they’re Republican or that FEMA has run out of money — “It’s all gone. They’ve spent it on illegal migrants.” — are baseless. They’ve been refuted by Republican officials and yet, they’re still stirring fear, anger and distrust that have led to threats against FEMA workers and confusion among vulnerable people about whether help is available and whether it can be trusted.

This is how Trump leads. He doesn’t. Even in a desperate hour of need, 😡 he exploits. Even from people who have lost everything, he takes.

It’s just one in a sea (or an ocean🌊❗) of examples showing why we believe Trump is unfit for a second term in the White House, and why this Houston Chronicle editorial board endorses Kamala Harris to be the president of the United States.

Many who are firmly in Trump’s camp (aka "cult") won’t be swayed, we know. Some are fatigued by dire warnings about his threat to democracy. They’re less concerned in this election with abstract notions of patriotism than with how to pay the rent in a vulturous housing market or how to feed the kids when inflation has eaten the grocery budget. 

Moreover, we understand Trump’s star power, the kernel of truth in some of his outrageous diatribes and the sense of community he's built among Americans who feel their grievances have never been adequately addressed.

But we ask those with a shred of doubt to open your minds to inconvenient truths. We ask you to resist the temptation to dismiss the former president as some kind of redeemable shock jock — erratic, entertaining but not really dangerous.

And understand this: A man who will exploit a deadly hurricane will exploit you. A man with six bankruptcies and millions owed that he may not have the cash to pay is trying to win the White House in part to stay out of the poor house. He will not do any better with our economy. The inflation you’re feeling wasn’t invented by Joe Biden. It’s an aftershock of the global pandemic, it hurt wallets all over the world, and it’s finally easing off. As for Trump’s economy as president, rose-colored glasses are doing a number on us. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts didn’t grow the economy like he promised. He added twice as many trillions to the deficit as Biden, not even counting pandemic spending, and added half as many jobs.

Of course, other folks don’t need another reason to vote against Trump.

For them, January 6th is enough, from the lying beforehand to attempting to overthrow a free and fair election to inciting a riotous insurrection at the Capitol. Protest “peacefully,” he said with one breath, and with the other: “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

For others, it was the two House impeachments. Or cozying up with dictators. Or nominating Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. Or the 34 felony convictions stemming from hush-money payments to a porn star. Or the $540 million in legal judgments largely for fraud and defamation, including a finding that he’s liable for committing sexual assault.

For still others, it’s the threats about what he’ll do with a second term, especially after he lost the trust of many decent people who were willing to serve in his Cabinet the first time. Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, refuses to endorse his former boss after Trump branded him a traitor and turned loose an angry mob that hunted him during the Capitol riot so they could hang him. The distinguished military men Trump called “my generals” — including John Kelly, homeland security secretary before becoming Trump’s chief of staff; James Mattis, defense secretary; and Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — are warning voters against his dictatorial tendencies. Milley, whom Trump named the highest-ranking military officer in the nation, told Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.”

But don’t take his word for it. Trump himself said the mythical fraud he alleged in the 2020, election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

Those wondering whether he'll really act on threats to retaliate against political rivals don't have to wonder: he already did in his first term, as The New York Times has reported. 

From Hillary Clinton to former FBI director James Comey, to Trump's own former national security adviser John Bolton, those who crossed Trump found themselves facing costly, grueling IRS audits, Justice Department investigations and in Bolton's case, a criminal probe and lawsuit when he tried to publish a book critical of Trump.

So yes, Harris’ best asset is that she’s not Trump. Beyond her basic qualifications of human decency, self-control and mature leadership skills, her career path from law enforcement to the U.S. Senate to the vice president’s office illustrates independence, drive and a steely spine. And perhaps as important, a propensity to give more than take. Prosecuting child molesters and rapists required patience and compassion to earn the trust of frightened children. Later, prosecuting transnational cartel members required guts.

From prosecutor to district attorney to the state attorney general of California, it wasn’t an obvious trajectory for the daughter of freedom-fighter academics, her Indian-born mother a scientist, her Jamaican-born father an economist. Harris says her mother modeled civic leadership, exposed her to history and the American principles of freedom and equity and took her protests where she had a “stroller’s-eye view” of the civil right’s movement.

In her book, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris said she wanted to fight for justice from the inside, where she hoped to dispel the false choice between being tough on crime and smart on crime: “You can want the police to stop crime in your neighborhood and also want them to stop using excessive force,” she wrote. “…You can believe in the need for consequence and accountability, especially for serious criminals, and also oppose unjust incarceration.” She cites a reentry program for low-level offenders as a success and yet, she’s expressed regret for the unintended consequences of a truancy crackdown that landed some parents in jail.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris prioritized health care and criminal justice, even working with Kentucky Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul on bail reform that would prioritize the risk someone poses to society over their ability to pay. Assertive and clever enough in her prosecutorial style, she turned heads in Senate hearings when she stumped then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with probing questions.

She’s no flame-thrower. She’s no Marxist. Nor is she a superstar able to ace press conference improv or deliver spell-binding speeches that break free of stale scripts. She’s changed her stances on a few things, such as whether to ban fracking; now she says no. But that’s OK.

Magnetism, private jets, four-hour rallies and a lack of self reflection have never been strong predictors of a successful American presidency. She’s fearless and quick on her feet and apparently a quick study, having transformed from a bench warmer VP to a respectable presidential contender in three months. She's a champion of federal protections for abortion rights, desperately needed in Texas where an extreme ban doesn't include exceptions for rape or incest or enough protections for women with severe pregnancy complications.

With little time, she’s come up with some workable policy ideas that would help Americans afford their first homes and provide expanded child tax credits to the parents of newborn babies. On immigration, she's backed a tough bipartisan border bill that Trump undermined for political gain.

And there must be something genuine, and maybe a little magical, about a person who has obtained elite status in one of modern society’s toughest survivor challenges: She seems to be a truly beloved step-parent.

We don’t expect this endorsement to change many minds. We can’t inspire voter participation like Taylor Swift or Beyonce. We won’t buy it like Elon Musk.

We just ask you to consider one question before you cast perhaps the most consequential vote of your lifetime:

If the brown floodwaters were rising around your house and the Cajun Navy could only send a small boat, who would you trust to pick you up: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

We know who we'd trust.💙

"So what?" HELLO! Kamala Harris is on her way to winning in 2024! The economy is strong and America needs a moral leader

‘So what’: Two words that best sum up the nature of Donald Trump
Echo opinion published in The Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness) by columnist Eugene Robinson.

Donald Trump’s alleged January 6th response related to Mike Pence is damning.

With a month to go until the election, voters have been given the perfect distillation of the myriad reasons Donald Trump must never again be president: “So what❓”

That is what Trump said during the shocking and bloody Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when told his vice president was being hustled to safety, according to court papers filed Wednesday by special counsel Jack Smith. So what if the rioters were chanting “hang Mike Pence” as they stalked the halls? 

So what if the mob beat and trampled scores of police officers and forced members of Congress to flee for their lives?

Any decent human being would have been alarmed, or at least concerned. But according to the court filing, Trump’s display of callousness came just minutes after he had egged the mob on, declaring in a tweet that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”

What Trump wanted Pence to do was refuse to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020, election. For the first time in our nation’s history, a president refused to accept the decision of the voters, refused to honor dozens of court rulings confirming his defeat, and for hours refused to lift a finger while a mob of his supporters sacked the Capitol. If this alone does not disqualify Trump from ever again being president, what is wrong with us?

And what is wrong with Trump’s running mate, JD Vance? Does he think Americans are so stupid that they’ll believe him when he says, with Ivy League smoothness and a practiced tone of faux sincerity, that up is down?

“It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on Jan. 20,” the senator from Ohio claimed during the vice-presidential debate Tuesday night, earning himself a chapter in the annals of disingenuousness.

Yes, thankfully, the inauguration of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was peaceful — but Trump never “gave over” anything, since he had already absconded to his Florida estate (taking boxes of highly classified documents with him). Trump was the first modern president to snub his successor’s swearing-in, another departure from our democratic traditions.

To this day, neither Trump nor Vance will forthrightly acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election. And to this day, Trump will not commit to accepting defeat if — hopefully, when — Harris beats him on Election Day.

“So what❓” That has been Trump’s one constant policy position, his North Star: Nothing really matters. He was for abortion rights his whole life, but to win a Republican nomination he had to be antiabortion, so he changed. But then the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, thanks to the three justices he appointed, and he saw how unpopular the ruling was, and so now he shifts back and forth on the issue, depending on the audience.

“EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT,”  🤥😖😡Trump announced this week on social media. This might come as a surprise to antiabortion activists who are counting on a second Trump administration to somehow stop the wave of state-level voter referendums that are guaranteeing the right to an abortion. But so what? Trump will surely tell those activists a different story.

So what if Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts by a New York jury? So what if the charges — falsification of business records — stemmed from the way he illegally disguised the payment of $130,000 in hush money to an adult-film actress for keeping quiet about her sexual liaison with Trump? Who cares?

So what if Trump spent a year obstructing attempts by the National Archives to retrieve the classified documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago? So what if he kept this sensitive material in a gaudy ballroom and a chandeliered bathroom? What’s it to you?

So what if Trump called the top election official in Georgia and pressured him to announce the discovery of just enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory in that state? “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said, in a conversation he cannot deny because it was recorded.

But so what if Trump lies constantly, blatantly, sometimes viciously, even when there is no dispute about the truth? So what if he continues to lie about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, falsely calling them “illegal” and falsely claiming they eat cats and dogs? So what if he lies about crime, about the economy, about kids supposedly having sex reassignment surgeries at their schools?

So what if Trump called the top election official in Georgia and pressured him to announce the discovery of just enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory in that state? “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said, in a conversation he cannot deny because it was recorded.

But, so what if Trump lies constantly, blatantly, sometimes viciously, even when there is no dispute about the truth? So what if he continues to lie about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, falsely calling them “illegal” and falsely claiming they eat cats and dogs? So what if he lies about crime, about the economy, about kids supposedly having sex reassignment surgeries at their schools?

Nothing matters to Trump except Trump❗ As easily as he forsakes truth and as easily as he could forsake Pence,💢 he would forsake the nation. That is the “so what” of this election, which Harris must win❗.

Eugene Robinson writes a column on politics and culture and hosts a weekly online chat with readers.

Pitty the person who inherits the "hang Mike Pence" position in a Trumpzi facist campaign

On Twitter X./ from Mary Trump- niece of Donald Trump (according to her, he hates to be called "Donald")... "While our hysterical friends in the corporate media continue to lose their minds over Joe Biden’s loss of support from the star of Monuments Men, it should be much bigger news that Donald Trump has lost the support of virtually every single person who served with him when he was in the Oval Office--including the vice president his followers, whom he incited, almost murdered on January 6, 2021."

Job Opening: Republican Vice President: Why Donald needs a new running mate

It was on January 6th, 2021, that Donald sent his supporters to attack the Capitol in an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history. That was the day Donald’s most fanatical followers erected gallows outside the Capitol while chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” 

That was the day Donald sat on his ass and watched the attack unfold on television. At the same time, Pence and his family had to be taken to a secure location, barely missing the rioters who were out for his blood.

But Donald had been setting Pence up to be the fall guy all along. Well in advance of January 6th Donald and people in his orbit had been pressuring Pence to reject the Electoral College votes despite the fact that, according to the Constitution, the vice president has no such power.

On January 4, Donald held a rally in Georgia and told the crowd, “I hope Mike Pence comes through for us.”

Early on the morning of the sixth, he tweeted, “If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency.” Later that day he wrote, “All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

I have zero sympathy for Mike Pence, but the pressure brought to bear on him was enormous and, in the end, he actually did his job. And for that he almost lost his life—because of his boss.

During the Republican primaries in March, Pence told Fox News that “it should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.”

Well, yes and no. No, it’s not that surprising that Pence wouldn’t endorse the man who almost got him and his family killed. 

But, it is fairly surprising that a candidate for the presidency lost the endorsement of his vice president. Or at least it should be and it is frankly shocking that the corporate media has moved on from this major story.

“During my presidential campaign I made it clear that there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues, and not just our difference on my Constitutional duties that I exercised on January the 6th,” Pence said at the time.

My memory of Pence during the four impossibly long years of the administration in which he served was that he, as Vice President, was a shameless sycophant who polished my uncle’s boots for four years — abandoning him, refusing to endorse him, and refusing to vote for him seems like a bigger story to me than anything George Clooney has to say.

And it isn’t just Pence—at least 40 of 44 members of Donald’s administration have made it clear they aren’t going to support him. Some of his closest aides go on television every single day to warn the American people that Donald is unfit to hold office.

Mark Esper, Donald’s Secretary of Defense, has stated clearly that Donald is a “threat to democracy.” His former chief of staff, John Kelly said last October that Donald “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” National Security Adviser John Bolton sounds the alarm about Donald almost daily.

I’ve known the man my whole life, and since 2020, I’ve been devoted to trying to keep him from being re-elected.

It’s a truism that a man is judged by the company he keeps, so it’s mystifying to me that Donald isn’t being judged for hosting fascists and Holocaust deniers, cultivating the support of Q-Anon conspiracy theorists, sucking up to autocrats and dictators, declaring his allegiance to Proud Boys and other white supremacists, and hanging out with his fellow racists, misogynists, and insurrectionists.

But we — and the media — should be talking a lot more about the company that Donald can’t keep because even the people who know him best, the people who worked with him, know he’s a cruel, dangerous, and incompetent lunatic who will ignore the Constitution and destroy the country.

When Donald announces his pick for vice president, chosen from a group of men who are proven sycophants, the media and the nation should take a moment and ask what happened to the last one.

And that his new VP pick should ask himself what will happen if he chooses the Constitution, the rule of law, and the American people over his corrupt, despicable boss.

Or he can just ask Mike Pence.

Donald Trump speaks from a dangerous fascist dictionary

Donald Trump is never shy with his language but recently, the editor Alex Kingsbury argues, his violent speech has escalated. 

Opinion echo published in the The New York Times and The Hill:

In the last few weeks alone, Trump suggested his own former general was treasonous, said that shoplifters should be shot and exhorted his followers to “go after” New York’s attorney general. Kingsbury says he understands why voters tune Trump out, but stresses the need to pay attention and take action for the sake of American democracy.

1. The mention of Clinton’s name prompted calls of “lock her up” from the crowd. “Yeah. I agree with you. I used to just be quiet on that. I agree with you 100 percent,” Trump said, endorsing calls to jail his political opponent. Trump, at one point, meandered into attacking his 2016, rival, who is a recurring figure in his speeches even four years later.

2.  Trump chief of staff said the president thought Pence ‘deserves’ chants of ‘hang Mike Pence’ on January 6, ex-aide testifies. The jaw-dropping remarks came during the sixth public hearing by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by a violent pro-Trump mob.

A noose is seen on makeshift gallows as supporters of US President Donald Trump gather on the West side of the US Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.

3.The former guy Donald Trump and Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona suggested that outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Milley was a traitor who deserved to be executed.

Gen. Mark Milley USA-Ret

What former guy Trump said is free speech but what he did is fraud

 https://tdn.com/opinion/letters/letter-to-the-editor-case-is-clear-in-trump-indictment/article_5e441f6a-3d3d-11ee-86da-db68e62faebf.html#:~:text=Case%20is%20clear%20in%20Trump%20indictment

Case is clear in Trump indictment

Echo To the Editor:  The clearest analysis I've heard about the recent Trump fraud indictment came, surprisingly, from an attorney on Fox News.

He explained it's not a crime for you and your spouse to lie and tell everyone you are heirs to Elon Musk's fortune. That's free speech. However, when Musk dies and you two file a fake will with the probate court, it IS a crime as you have conspired to perpetrate fraud.

It's an undisputed fact Trump and his co-conspirators implemented their scheme by having fake elector certificates sent to Congress. Only Mike Pence's refusal to join the conspiracy brought it to a halt. Case closed.

From Jon Brown in Longview, Washington, published in The Daily News.

A forgettable band of Republican rivals that refuse to embrace the truth: Trump is a criminal

Echo essay by Evan Osnos:

How do you campaign against a political rival for whom there is no conceivable precedent? When the Department of Justice indicted Donald Trump, last week, on counts arising from his handling of classified documents, he became not only the first former President in American history to face federal charges but also the most confounding front-runner ever in a Presidential primary. 

Based on the chaotic debate performance of August 23,  in Milwaukee, the eight band of rivals are long shots for voters to consider as the Republican candidate for president in 2024.

Trump is a candidate for Commander-in-Chief, who now faces thirty-seven counts for refusing to return material related, according to the indictment, to “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.” Trump, who first came to power assailing his rival, Hillary Clinton, for her storage of sensitive information, is now accused of urging an attorney to “hide or destroy documents,” and of allowing unqualified civilians to see secret files. In one instance, at his golf club in New Jersey, the former President is alleged to have told visitors about a classified “plan of attack” against Iran, and was recorded on tape admitting that “this is still a secret.”

The federal indictment came two months after Trump was indicted in Manhattan on thirty-four counts related to a hush-money (paid to porn star Stormy Daniels) case. Those charges, which he denied, gave him a boost in the polls. The latest counts, which Trump also denies, could further fortify his grip on the Republican Party or, in the fullness of time, they could blast the race wide open. The effect will depend, in part, on the strategic calculations of his opponents.

In Chris Christie’s 2021, book, “Republican Rescue,” the former governor of New Jersey mapped out a high-toned way for Republicans to escape Trump’s dominance and regain the White House. “The infighting has to end. So does the wallowing in the past,” he wrote. “We need to be the party that embraces the truth even when it’s painful.” It was an incongruous message from Christie. In 2016, he called Trump a “caring, genuine, and decent person,” and, four years later, tried to insure his reëlection by prepping him for debates. Christie eventually balked at the effort to overturn the election, but his publisher nevertheless promoted him as “a key Trump insider and longtime friend.”

Maybe....maybe.....the forgettable band of rivals will start facing reality and tell the truth about Donald Trump.  

When former New Jersey Governor Christie entered the burgeoning field of Republican Presidential contenders, he ely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog.” The market for Christie’s metamorphosis, however, is not clear; he left office in 2018 with a favorability rating of thirteen per cent, and, in a recent CNN poll, sixty per cent of Some (sane) Republicans are saying that they would not vote for him “under any circumstances.” 

So does Christie have the independence and the rhetorical skill to change Republicans attitudes about Trump's fitness for office? He asked to be viewed anew, as a slashing apostate with a unique power to torpedo Trump’s chances. In a kickoff speech in New Hampshire, on June 6th, he condemned the former President.

"Chris Christie is right that Trump’s behavior was ‘beneath the dignity of the office’", reported the Washington Examiner.

Another long-shot Republican candidate, Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, called on Trump to “respect the office and end his campaign,” but Hutchinson barely registers in the polls. 

Will stronger candidates follow suit?

Who will break out of the pack of forgettable band of Republican rivals?

Trump’s former Vice-President, Mike Pence, is, like Christie, hoping that a bout of late-onset honesty  😏can fortify a vaporous level of popularity. Most Republican candidates have avoided talking about the violence of January 6th, but Pence, in his campaign-launch speech last week, outside Des Moines, said that Americans “deserve to know” that Trump “demanded I choose between him and our Constitution.” Voters, he added, now face the same choice: “And anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be President again.”

But Pence also revealed the limits of his principles. When asked at a CNN event the night before Trump’s indictment about the ongoing investigations, he declared that “no one’s above the law,” but also, wincing, urged the Justice Department not to indict his former boss, on the ground that it would be “divisive” and “send a terrible message to the wider world.” 

After the news broke, Pence said that he was “deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward.” His predicament will be familiar to another candidate for whom Trump was a patron, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who served as his Ambassador to the United Nations. She calls for a “new generation” of leadership, and touts her perspective as a daughter of Indian immigrants, but has avoided making a sharp break with Trump and his devoted followers. The taint of Trump is not a problem facing Ron DeSantis, who made his name mostly as governor of Florida; his problem appears to be more personal. 

Following a limp début, on a glitchy Twitter livestream, DeSantis has campaigned heavily in Iowa, but wedded himself to an angry, esoteric culture-war lexicon, as if he were focused primarily on winning support from Elon Musk and very online Republicans.

By early this month, most polls had Trump far out front, supported by at least fifty per cent of Republicans—more than double the number for DeSantis, who remains his closest competitor. And though the field has grown to twelve candidates, none of the others poll above single digits. One of the more interesting of them is Tim Scott, of South Carolina, the first Black Republican from the South to be elected to the Senate since Reconstruction. His earnest, sunny odes to Ronald Reagan and to racial progress are popular with Republican donors, which could make him an attractive Vice-President—or a surprise No. 1, if Trump becomes too encumbered by his legal liabilities and DeSantis flames out. In either case, Scott could give Democrats trouble in a tight general election.

The indictment in the documents case could be followed by others—in Washington, Georgia, or elsewhere. It’s tempting to dismiss the field of long shots for their hypocrisies or their eccentricities, but American elections are long and mercurial, and, with Trump engulfed in legal woes, it’s not inconceivable that one of them could end up in the White House. More immediately, their very presence in the race is shaping it, because they stand to split the opposition to Trump and improve his prospects. For that reason, the most vital question Americans face is not who has the confidence to enter the campaign but who will have the courage to speak frankly about Trump and, ultimately, who will have the sense to exit it. ♦

Published in the print edition of the June 19, 2023, issue of The New Yorker, with the headline “Long Shots.”

The Donald Trump nightmare

This opinion echo by Katherine Miller published in The New York Times reads like a nightmare she had and having trouble waking out of it!  OMG!  What if, God forbid, Trump becomes president again?

Who will be around for that, inside a second Trump administration, when he asks why the military can’t shoot protesters in the legs, or when he wants to withdraw all military dependents from South Korea and throw Asia into an economic crisis?

Nobody, outside his supporters, wants to talk about the eventuality — not probable but definitely not impossible — that Donald Trump will be re-elected. His former cabinet secretaries don’t. The people — the foreign ministers and former national security officials — at the Aspen Security Forum don’t.

And the closer you get to presidential campaign events, elections can become a kind of dreamscape, a contained universe where meta attacks are signaled yet nothing seems that weird about Mr. Trump’s dominance. After Friday night’s Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines — a fund-raiser for the Iowa Republican Party, held in the city’s convention center — the candidates hosted after-parties off a long hallway, producing an animatronicesque gallery effect.

(Dear Kathleen?  Please use "real words"? What is animatronicesque? In other words "weird"?)

In one room, for about an hour, Mr. Trump stood grinning and shaking hands and posing for photos, with an ever-replenishing line of dozens waiting to get in, and dozens wandering out, ice cream in hand and wearing “TRUMP COUNTRY” stickers. In the next room, Senator Tim Scott, a putting green and cornhole game. In the next, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami and a live band, with a foursome playing dominoes, red wine on the table. Through another door, at a more subdued valence, you could see Mike Pence talking to little groups of people, mostly older couples, a father and son, a nod, a hand on a shoulder, a photo. Nikki Haley signed books and posters in the hall, and 20-something aides holding red “DESANTIS 2024” signs roamed, directing people to his room, where Republicans threw baseballs at pyramids of Bud Light cans. Step, repeat.

This looked fun and vaguely normal — like something from the past. In reality, Mr. Pence is disappearing, politically, before our eyes. Mr. Scott says he can hold only the rioters who were violent, and not Mr. Trump, responsible for the events of Jan. 6. The physical distance between all three of them on Friday night was roughly the distance that separated that mob from Mr. Pence, or the mob from the Senate chamber, that day.

That wasn’t that long ago. You can read all about it, across 45 pages in the federal indictment against Mr. Trump for events some of which unfolded in public. We know what happens to people around Mr. Trump. To preserve influence, those hired by him either exist on a total MAGA wavelength, or else have to dodge or lie sometimes to beat back chaos. And in the indictment, the frayed and unnerving interpersonal dynamics abound: Consider the case of Co-conspirator 4, whose description matches Jeffrey Clark, and who prosecutors say kept pressing to send a letter claiming the Justice Department had concerns — or had even found — “significant irregularities” in the 2020 election.

It’s hard not to flash back and then forward, to that surreal period when politicians joined the first administration and to think about the even more uncertain future. Recall the photo of Mitt Romney and Mr. Trump eating dinner after the 2016 election; despite having opposed Mr. Trump’s nomination, there was Mr. Romney, offering himself as secretary of state.

Mr. Romney’s expression captured a strong public sentiment toward people who joined the Trump administration: at best, it was seen as a slightly embarrassing exposure of the pursuit of power and personal ambition.

The last year of the Trump administration concentrated how bad and complex this situation was: The government transformed into a body that had to handle crisis, but also one in which officials’ intentions could not be always known by the public, and one in which the act of joining government service came with deep personal repercussions. The pandemic required, for instance, a massive collaboration across departments and the private sector to produce a vaccine. Things had to stop, or start, with government employees at moments of intense crisis.

"Hang Mike Pence" gallows constructed on January 6. Who paid for this hideous contraption?

Mr. Trump’s first vice president ended up trapped inside the Capitol with a mob calling for his death by hanging. Now people talk about the other Republican presidential candidates as though they might be his running mate this time around, as though all this didn’t just happen. And now, as Mr. Pence runs for president himself, the reward for coming through in a central moment of American history is a kind of surround-sound aversion.

At first, at that dinner in Iowa last week, Mr. Pence talked brightly, in the expectation of applause, which came, sort of, at muted levels, muted even for the kinds of things — like his abortion politics — that resulted in applause for others.

This was tepid, indifferent clapping, a kind of subtle hell worse than booing, where people who knew you have forgotten you. Mr. Pence kept talking, the delivery staying even and polished, the brightness fading, talking about restoring civility. “So I thank you for hearing me out tonight,” he said, almost somber.

On Tuesday evening, Mr. Pence was one of few Republican candidates to put the situation plainly: “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” At the moment, Mr. Pence has not yet qualified for the debates, and is polling badly.

As Mr. Trump told him when he balked at the idea of returning votes to the states, according to the indictment, “You’re too honest.”

A litany of election tampering incidents by Trump who called on Arizona Governor Ducey to change 2020 results

By Kristen Holmes, Alayna Treene and Jeremy Herb

CNN echo report - Following his defeat in the 2020, election, President Donald Trump spoke to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to discuss the results, a source familiar with the call told CNN.

Publicly, Ducey said at the time that the two Republican leaders had spoken, though he did not describe what they had talked about. Behind closed doors, Ducey said that the former president was pressuring him to find fraud in the presidential election in Arizona that would help him overturn his loss in the state, a source with knowledge said. Trump narrowly lost Arizona to Joe Biden by less than 11,000 votes.

There was no recording made of the call between Trump and Governor Ducey, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Trump also repeatedly pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to help him find evidence of fraud and overturn the 2020, election results. Pence told the governor that if there was hard evidence of voter fraud to report it appropriately, one of the sources said.

Pence spoke to Ducey multiple times about the election, though he did not pressure the governor as he was asked, sources familiar with the calls said.

A spokesperson for Pence declined to comment.

The Washington Post first reported on Trump pressuring Ducey on overturning the election results.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey mutes his cell phone when the sound of "Hail to the Chief" rings.  The call was very likely from Donald Trump.

Trump publicly attacked Ducey, a former ally, over the state’s certification of the results. As Ducey was certifying the election results in November 2020, Trump appeared to call the governor – with a “Hail to the Chief” ringtone heard playing on Ducey’s phone. Ducey did not take that call but later said he spoke with Trump, though he did not describe the specifics of the conversation.

A spokesman for Ducey told CNN earlier this week that the former governor had not been contacted by the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 elections.

Those efforts include outreach to various state officials, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Smith has interviewed. In January 2021, Trump told Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win the state, a call that’s at the center of the Fulton County district attorney’s investigation into attempts to overturn the election in Georgia.

The special counsel’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

A Ducey spokesman said Saturday that the former governor “stands by his action to certify the election and considers the issue to be in the rear view mirror – it’s time to move on.”

“This is nothing more than a ‘copy and paste’ of a compilation of articles from the past two years, disguised as something new and relying on shaky and questionable sourcing,” spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said in a statement. “Frankly, nothing here is new nor is it news to anyone following this issue the last two years. Governor Ducey defended the results of Arizona’s 2020 election, he certified the election, and he made it clear that the certification provided a trigger for credible complaints backed by evidence to be brought forward. None were ever brought forward.”

Trump is currently seen as the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination as he seeks a return to the White House.

A Trump spokesperson said in a statement: “These witch-hunts are designed to interfere and meddle in the 2024 election in an attempt to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House to make this country great again. They will fail and President Trump will be re-elected.”

Before his fallout with Trump, Ducey had been seen as a formidable candidate for Senate in 2022, but he ultimately ruled out a bid to challenge Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, who won reelection last year over a Trump-endorsed GOP nominee.

Ducey, who was term-limited as governor last year, endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson, a former member of the Arizona Board of Regents, in the race to succeed him. 

However, Taylor Robson lost the primary to Trump’s pick, Kari Lake, a former television anchor who said she would not have certified Biden’s 2020 win had she been governor. Lake ended up losing the general election to Democrat Katie Hobbs and has continued to promote election falsehoods, including about her own race.

Ducey, a former CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, served a term as Arizona treasurer before winning two elections for governor.

He announced last month he would be leading Citizens for Free Enterprise, which describes itself as a “new national effort to promote and protect free enterprise.”