Donald Trump begins his reign of fear as described by The New York Times Editorial Board

“Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word —😱😨 fear.”
An echo editorial opinion published in The New York Times by the editorial board. What my own opinion is worth, The New York Times contributed to the Donald Trump reign of fear, because when the editorial board had the chance to support President Joe Biden they newspaer decided to cave to political perceptions rather than defend Biden's many accomplishments.m

Mara Gay, with The New York Times, is complicit in the editorial opinions creating doubt about President Joe Bidens competence and his ability to lead.  At some point in Ms. Mara Gay's life, she will also be challenged by her own age and competence. You can count on it. 

In my opinion, editorial board member Mara Gay was a leader in this wrong minded decision.  So, here we are.....an editorial in the January 17, newspaper.  Who knew? 

Trump's reign of fear begins indoors, inside the Capitol during his inauguration on January 20th.....because the weather is too cold for him to face the nation, the one he intending to destroy.👿

Donald Trump made that remark to the journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in March 2016. Fear is, of course, a favorite tool of the president-elect. He has used it for decades to intimidate opponents, critics and allies to give up, give in or give way. He built his real estate empire through lawsuits and threats against rivals and partners.

He cowed and demolished political opponents through humiliation and invective. He consolidated control of the Republican Party and silenced G.O.P. detractors with pressure tactics and threats to end careers. And as president, he used the power of the office and the power of social media to make life miserable for anyone he chose.

His goal in these efforts has been to push people to check themselves rather than check his power. Now, as he prepares to re-enter the Oval Office, Trump is using fear not only with Congress but also with other essential independent institutions such as courts, business, higher education and the news media. The goal is broadly the same: to deter elected officials, judges, executives and others from exercising their duties in ways that challenge him or hold him accountable. He wants to make dissent so painful as to be intolerable.

America’s leaders and institutions must remain undeterred. They will need to show courage and resilience in the face of Trump’s efforts as they continue to play their unique roles in our democracy. Vigilance is everything: If institutions surrender to the fear and coercion — by bending the knee or by rationalizing that the next right actions aren’t worth the fight, stress or risk — they not only embolden future abuses; they are also complicit in undermining their own power and influence.

The early results suggest reason for concern.

Trump put forward several selections for his cabinet who are unacceptable (❗— Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — yet there are precious few senators, defense experts, military and intelligence leaders and other principled statesmen on the right who are willing to stand up to the president-elect’s insistence on confirmation.

When one did — Senator Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican who voiced reasonable concern about Mr. Hegseth’s qualifications to be defense secretary — Trump allies besieged her until getting both of the outcomes Mr. Trump sought: She issued positive comments about Mr. Hegseth and, in doing so, discouraged others from standing up to him in the future.

Chief executives of tech companies seem to have learned the same lesson: After challenging misinformation, hate speech and criticism from Trump and his allies in the first term, several leaders have showered him with public praise and million-dollar donations for his inauguration, with Mark Zuckerberg going as far as nixing Meta’s fact-checking program while shilling for the president-elect by branding the election as a “cultural tipping point.” Ford, G.M., Boeing and other companies have sent money and fleets of cars for the inaugural, hoping to stay on Trump’s good side ahead of his threatened trade wars.

Some of this can be chalked up to people jockeying for personal advantage with a highly transactional president. Some may reflect genuine acceptance that the country has elected a flawed leader to disrupt the status quo. But those sentiments cannot be fully disentangled from the threat posed by Mr. Trump: his determination to get his way by all means necessary, including abusing powers at his disposal to take revenge on those he thinks have crossed him or even just failed to support him in critical moments.

That threat is real: Trump has selected people for top legal and law enforcement positions who have threatened in the past to retaliate against some of those who challenged him. And that is to say nothing of his informal ability to direct troll armies to harass critics. In the absence of leaders across civic life continuing to play their roles — including standing up against illegal and immoral actions when necessary — the acquiescence to fear will free Trump further from the checks and balances that have served our nation so well.

If legislators, for instance, don’t cut back on climate-related spending, he threatened to initiate a constitutional showdown by rescinding the money. His running mate, JD Vance, once suggested that if courts overrule such actions, they may be ignored altogether.💢😓❗ “The chief justice has made his ruling,” Mr. Vance said in 2021, imagining a confrontation with the Supreme Court and quoting a line that Andrew Jackson might or might not have said. “Now let him enforce it.”

Corporate giants with media divisions, such as those controlled by Disney, Comcast and Jeff Bezos, have been distancing themselves from their media assets rather than making a case for traditional accountability journalism that could invite Trumpian retaliation against their broader financial interests. For smaller, less financially secure news organizations, the expense of defending themselves in lawsuits from Mr. Trump and his allies may be enough to encourage self-censorship.

He has picked Pam Bondi to be attorney general and Mr. Patel to lead the F.B.I. and other candidates for positions that are critical to the rule of law — yet who have spoken to varying degrees about prosecuting people who cross Trump. “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Ms. Bondi said on Fox News in 2023. (In her confirmation hearing this week, Ms. Bondi insisted that “politics will not play a part” in prosecutorial decisions.) Mr. Patel has an enemies list of the so-called deep state and has vowed to “come after” members of the news media “who lied about American citizens.”

Business will face pressure, too. As president, Trump will once again wield enormous influence over regulation, mergers, industrial policy, licensing, tax enforcement and a host of business waivers and outcomes. Chief executives will be under pressure to get with the program on tariff, tax and spending policies rather than speak truth to power about potentially damaging short- or long-term fiscal decisions. Business leaders, economists and academics who were once counted on for expertise and warnings to Congress and in the news media about deficits, trade wars, sanctions and the broad exercise of government power on the economy will be expected to sing from the Trump hymnal.

Trump also used this approach in his engagement with the rest of the world, going beyond his previous declarations that he would no longer fulfill various treaties and international commitments, including those plainly in the American interest, if he doesn’t win concessions. He acts like a bully rather than a constructive leader, threatening allies like Canada and Mexico with heavy tariffs if they don’t stop the flow of drugs and migrants and warning developing nations they would be shut out of the U.S. market if they create a currency to threaten the dollar. He has demanded that Denmark and Panama allow Greenland and the Panama Canal to become American property.

Those actions only undermine our reputation as a trustworthy ally, leading other nations to wonder if they need to hedge against an unpredictable superpower, which would almost certainly undermine our economy, security and cultural influence.

For institutions facing this kind of pressure, we’d urge them to meet the moment with three thoughts in mind.

First, is simply demonstrating conviction by identifying the right thing to do, then showing the courage to pursue that path, even in the face of pressure.

Second is remembering that despite Trump’s transactional nature, no one can count on remaining in his good graces without continued unconditional fealty. (Ask those in his own inner circle who justified or turned a blind eye to misbehavior again and again, only to be cast out for a single episode of standing up to his excesses.) Any advantage gained may be fleeting; any risk overcome may return.

Third is demonstrating faith in the American system, with its remarkable series of checks and balances, with its strong set of rights, with its promise of equal justice.

Sometimes, it means overriding the president’s worst impulses. Republican senators, for example, will probably confirm a vast majority of Trump’s nominees. But that tradition of deference shouldn’t keep them from using their constitutional power to reject those who are dangerous, extreme or unqualified. It was a promising sign that those senators set aside Mr. Trump’s threat to make recess appointments and told him that Matt Gaetz could not be confirmed as attorney general, leading to his withdrawal from consideration. They should take the same stand on Mr. Hegseth, Ms. Gabbard, Mr. Patel and Mr. Kennedy.

Sometimes resiliency will mean going to court and being forced to spend money to resist improper directives from the administration.

That’s what publishers and news executives have to do to continue investigative and accountability reporting when it draws legal action from Trump. (Small and nonprofit news organizations will need help finding the resources to fight government challenges and complex defamation suits.) When Trump files baseless lawsuits out of pure vengeance, as he did recently against The Des Moines Register over a poll showing him trailing Kamala Harris in Iowa, publishers will have to summon every resource to fight such abuses of the legal system.

That’s what governors will have to do if a federal official or agency demands their state use local law enforcement to round up migrants for deportation through illegal or unconstitutional means or reduce access to voting in ways that violate voting rights, civil rights or other laws. And if state prosecutors find that federal officials are violating the law, they shouldn’t hesitate to file criminal charges.

Challenging Trump in federal court proved to be a useful tactic during his first term. Federal courts routinely blocked some of his first administration’s worst policies; one study showed that he lost nearly 80 percent of the time when civil lawsuits were filed against his agencies’ rule making. For example, when he ordered an end in 2020 to the diversity-visa lottery program, he was sued by immigrant-rights lawyers, and a federal judge upheld the program, which stayed in place past Joe Biden’s election.

Even as leaders prepare to hold fast under pressure, they would benefit from some meditation on the anger and mistrust that helped make the Trump era possible.

Americans have lost their patience with the status quo and their faith in the ability of many institutions — including public health agencies, financial and business institutions, the Democratic Party, the courts, elite universities and, yes, the news media — to improve their lives and communities. In playing their unique roles in our democracy, institutions should also be wary of falling into a reflexive resistance posture, in which everything Mr. Trump proposes is implicitly wrong or dangerous or in which any tactics to oppose him are implicitly right and virtuous.

During Trump’s four years in office, the country saw that many of his fulminations fell apart when brave politicians or lawyers or ordinary citizens simply said no. America must see through the fear again. This is not the time to feel resigned to the old Trump tactics or be cowed by his threats and insinuations.

This country and its principles are too vital to sacrifice anything in the interest of going along when Trump huffs and puffs. 

America will stand strong as long as people stand up for it. There’s no reason to surrender or get a foreign passport or move to Canada. Those on his so-called enemies list shouldn’t be begging for pre-emptive pardons. Such moves only reward his abuses and even legitimize them.

Americans must wake up to the seditious reality about the dangerous events on January 6th

Richard Nixon was president from January 20, 1969 – August 9, 1974, when he resigned. His time in office was defined corruption. But, then along came Trump!

Thank you to The Washington Post for allowing a "gifting" of this important article, echoed here, written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  As the columnist Eugene Robinson said on the MSNBC Morning Joe, "The most famous double name by-line in journalism".

George Washington was the 1st president of the United States from 1789 to 1797

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President George Washington, in his celebrated 1796 Farewell Address, cautioned that American democracy was fragile. “Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government,” he warned.

Two of his successors — Richard Nixon and Donald Trump — demonstrate the shocking genius of our first president’s foresight.

As reporters, we had studied Nixon and written about him for nearly half a century, during which we believed with great conviction that never again would America have a president who would trample the national interest and undermine democracy through the audacious pursuit of personal and political self-interest.

And then along came Trump.

Trump is a historic loser

The heart of Nixon’s criminality was his successful subversion of the electoral process — the most fundamental element of American democracy. He accomplished it through a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and disinformation that enabled him to literally determine who his opponent would be in the presidential election of 1972.

With a covert budget of just $250,000, a team of undercover Nixon operatives derailed the presidential campaign of Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, the Democrats’ most electable candidate.

Nixon then ran against Sen. George McGovern, a South Dakota Democrat widely viewed as the much weaker candidate, and won in a historic landslide with 61 percent of the vote and carrying 49 states.

Over the next two years, Nixon’s illegal conduct was gradually exposed by the news media, the Senate Watergate Committee, special prosecutors, a House impeachment investigation and finally by the Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, the court ordered Nixon to turn over his secret tape recordings, which doomed his presidency.

These instruments of American democracy finally stopped Nixon dead in his tracks, forcing the only resignation of a president in American history.

The Riverdale Press: The peaceful transfer of power is not a game. It’s not leverage in negotiation. It’s not even an option. It’s clearly defined in the U.S. Constitution — the same Constitution each and every President of the United States swears an oath to before they are allowed to sit behind the Resolute Desk.

Donald Trump not only sought to destroy the electoral system through false claims of voter fraud and unprecedented public intimidation of state election officials, but he also then attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to his duly elected successor, for the first time in American history.

Fifty years earlier, Nixon was intent on undermining and subverting the American system of free elections, the keystone that holds our democracy together.

In 1971, Howard Hunt, a former CIA operative, and G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, were hired to work for the White House in a “Special Investigations Unit” — known there as the “Plumbers.” Their initial mission: to plug leaks from Nixon administration officials to the news media.

One of the most notorious undertakings of the Nixon Plumbers was the burglary of the psychiatrist for Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington Post. Hunt and Liddy ran the burglary. The hope, unfulfilled, was to find dirt on Ellsberg or show that he had communist ties.

With the onset of the campaign, Hunt and Liddy were moved to the Nixon reelection committee to quarterback spying and sabotage operations.

Memos discovered during the Watergate investigations identified Muskie as “Target A,” with the goal “to visit upon him some political wounds that will not only reduce his chances for nomination — but damage him as a candidate, should he be nominated.”

In one of the strongest and most effective espionage efforts, Elmer Wyatt, a Nixon campaign operative, was planted in Muskie’s campaign, where he became the senator’s chauffeur. 

Wyatt was paid $1,000 a month to deliver copies of sensitive documents he transported between Muskie’s Senate office and his presidential campaign headquarters. It was a spectacular yield. The volume was so great that Wyatt, code-named “Ruby I,” rented an apartment midway between the two offices, equipped with a photocopying machine.

Copies of Muskie’s documents were ferried to the Nixon reelection headquarters, where campaign manager John Mitchell, the former attorney general, took advantage of the almost total visibility the documents provided into the Muskie campaign: “itineraries, internal memoranda, drafts of speeches and position papers,” according to the Senate Watergate Committee’s final report in 1974. The Nixon campaign also received papers on campaign strategy debates, fundraising, personnel, media operations and internal disputes.

Meanwhile Gordon Strachan, the top political aide to White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, and Dwight Chapin, Nixon’s appointments secretary, who was like a son to the president, hired Donald Segretti, an old college friend and former Army lawyer, to implement sabotage efforts.

Segretti in turn hired 22 individuals to inflict these “political wounds” and was paid $77,000 in checks and cash. Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon’s personal lawyer, secretly made the payments from leftover campaign funds.

In March 1972 one Segretti operative circulated a counterfeit letter on Muskie stationery with allegations of sexual improprieties involving rival Democratic candidates Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Hubert Humphrey. The letterhead cost only $20 to reproduce, but Chapin told Segretti that the $20 was a sensational investment and had obtained “$10,000 to $20,000 worth of benefit for the President’s reelection campaign,” according to the Senate Watergate Committee report.

Over the months of the Democratic primary race, heckling, pickets and “M-U-S-K-I-E spells Loser” signs trailed Muskie. Segretti and his operatives stole shoes left by the candidate and his staff outside hotel room doors for polishing before campaign events. Keys were surreptitiously snatched from campaign motorcades while the drivers stepped away for a smoke. Shoes and keys were then deposited in dumpsters outside town, making it impossible for the campaign to stay on schedule and function smoothly. Segretti’s operatives reported, “We did grandly piss off his staff and rattled him considerably.”

Muskie and his staffers were spooked. At a rally in New Hampshire, standing on the back of a truck, the candidate expressed how upset he was by published slurs on his wife, Jane. A gossipy editorial published by conservative William Loebin the Manchester Union Leader, headlined “Big Daddy’s Jane,” had suggested that the senator’s wife drank, smoked and liked to tell dirty jokes. The story was also published in Newsweek. Around the same time, Muskie had appeared to condone the use of the word “Canuck,” a derogatory term for Canadians, in a forged letter drafted by a Nixon White House aide.

Under assault, Muskie openly cried at the New Hampshire campaign stop. David Broder, The Washington Post’s senior political reporter, wrote in a front-page story that Muskie broke down three times, “with tears streaming down his face.”

Drip by drip, all this added to the implosion of the Muskie candidacy. Later, Muskie said, “Our campaign was constantly plagued by leaks and disruptions and fabrications, but we could never pinpoint who was doing it.”

“There were many players in the Watergate drama,” Nixon’s chief of staff, Haldeman, wrote in his 1978 book, “The Ends of Power,” “and behind them all lurks the ever-present shadow of the President of the United States.”

Haldeman added, “This tendency to strike too hard … reflected a belief in, and too great a willingness to accept, the concept that the end justifies the means.” In other words, Nixon believed that his political survival was a “greater good,” worth subverting the will of the people.

“A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits,” Nixon wrote in a note to himself in 1969. It was a classically Nixonian adage — embraced by Trump, who had been defeated in the 2020 election but, armed with falsehoods and a scheme to hold on to power, refused to quit.

Even before the election, Trump relentlessly tried to maneuver and claim that the electoral process was rigged against him, laying the groundwork for an assault on the legitimacy of its outcome, which he continues to this day.

On June 22, 2020, for example, nearly five months before Election Day, he tweeted: “MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!”

At 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 4, as the presidential vote count solidified Biden’s path to victory in the electoral college, Trump told the nation and the world: “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”

Three days later the Associated Press and the rest of the media declared Biden the victor. Trump, however, said: “We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed. The simple fact is this election is far from over. …

“Our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court. …

“I will not rest until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands.”

Unlike Nixon, Trump accomplished his subversion largely in public. He pursued attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election process from campaign rally podiums, the White House and his popular Twitter feed. Nonetheless, he lost 61 of his court challenges, even from judges he had appointed.

Trump’s attack on Biden’s legitimacy included a stream of public statements, legal deceptions and a constant focus on disruption of the Jan. 6 certification in Congress.

In a two-page “privileged and confidential” memo, dated Jan. 2, ultraconservative lawyer John Eastman set out in six points how Trump would be declared the winner. It was a blueprint for a coup. The memo said, “7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors.”

If even a single state had dual slates of electors, that could cause havoc in the congressional certification.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, one of Trump’s strongest supporters, was shocked when he read the memo that the White House had sent to him. Alternative electors would be major national news if it were true. He had heard of none. Lee had launched his own investigation, and spent two months talking to Trump and White House officials and calling representatives in Republican-controlled legislatures. There were zero alternate slates. Lee was surprised that the deceptive memo had come from Eastman, a law school professor and former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Lee eventually went to the Senate floor and, holding up a copy of the Constitution, said he had spent an enormous amount of time looking into the matter and found “not even one” example of an alternate elector.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, Trump lawyer and confidant, made similar allegations of a rigged election and massive voter fraud. Giuliani wrote his claims in long memos that he sent to Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump insider. When Graham investigated the claims, he found nothing. “Count me out,” Graham said dramatically on the Senate floor.After Election Day, Trump began another, more deadly assault on the electoral process.

“JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” he tweeted on Dec. 30, 2020, from Mar-a-Lago, where he was spending the holidays.

Longtime chief strategist Steve Bannon, who had been in and out of Trump’s favor, picked up the thread in a phone conversation with Trump that same day.

“You’ve got to return to Washington and make a dramatic return today,” Bannon told him, according to reporting in Woodward and Robert Costa’s book, “Peril.”

“You’ve got to call Pence off the f---ing ski slopes and get him back here today. This is a crisis,” Bannon said, referring to the vice president, who was vacationing in Vail, Colo.

“We’re going to bury Biden on January 6th,” Bannon said.

If Republicans could cast enough of a shadow on Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, Bannon said, it would be hard for him to govern. Millions of Americans would consider him illegitimate.

“We are going to kill it in the crib. Kill the Biden presidency in the crib,” Bannon said.

Trump’s attack on Biden’s legitimacy included a stream of public statements, legal deceptions and a constant focus on disruption of the Jan. 6 certification in Congress.

In a two-page “privileged and confidential” memo, dated Jan. 2, ultraconservative lawyer John Eastman set out in six points how Trump would be declared the winner. It was a blueprint for a coup. The memo said, “7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors.”

If even a single state had dual slates of electors, that could cause havoc in the congressional certification.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, one of Trump’s strongest supporters, was shocked when he read the memo that the White House had sent to him. Alternative electors would be major national news if it were true. He had heard of none. Lee had launched his own investigation, and spent two months talking to Trump and White House officials and calling representatives in Republican-controlled legislatures. There were zero alternate slates. Lee was surprised that the deceptive memo had come from Eastman, a law school professor and former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Lee eventually went to the Senate floor and, holding up a copy of the Constitution, said he had spent an enormous amount of time looking into the matter and found “not even one” example of an alternate elector.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, Trump lawyer and confidant, made similar allegations of a rigged election and massive voter fraud. Giuliani wrote his claims in long memos that he sent to Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump insider. When Graham investigated the claims, he found nothing. “Count me out,” Graham said dramatically on the Senate floor.

The evening of Jan. 5, the day before the formal certification process, Trump met with Pence. He urged Pence as the presiding officer at the certification session to throw Biden’s electors out.

Pence said he didn’t have the power.

“What if these people say you do?” Trump asked. He gestured outside, where a massive crowd of his supporters had gathered. Their cheering and bullhorns could be heard through the Oval Office windows.

“I wouldn’t want any one person to have that authority,” Pence said.

“But wouldn’t it almost be cool to have that power?” asked the president of the United States.

“No,” Pence said. “I’m just there to open the envelopes.”

“You don’t understand, Mike, you can do this. I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.” Trump’s voice became louder, and he grew threatening. “You’ve betrayed us. I made you. You were nothing,” he said. “Your career is over if you do this.”

After Pence departed that evening, Trump invited a group of his press aides into the Oval Office. He had opened a door near the Resolute Desk. It was about 31 degrees outside, and cold air streamed in. Trump was oblivious to his shivering aides and instead seemed to bask in the cheers of his supporters outside.

“Isn’t that great?” he said. “Tomorrow is going to be a big day. It’s so cold, and they’re out there by the thousands. There is a lot of anger out there right now.”

Trump threatened to encourage primary challenges against those in Congress who supported Biden’s certification as president.

At 1 a.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump tweeted: “If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency … Mike can send it back!”

Twitter and social media posts lit up with threats of violence. I’m going to kill this person. Shoot this person. Hang this guy.

In a 10 a.m. call to Pence, Trump gave it one more try. “Mike, you can do this. I’m counting on you to do it. If you don’t do it, I picked the wrong man four years ago.”

At Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally that morning, several thousand people gathered on the Ellipse in the cold. “Let’s have trial by combat,” Giuliani said as the crowd cheered their approval.

Trump followed. “We will never give up. We will never concede. … You’ll never take back our country with weakness,” he yelled to the crowd from the stage.

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said.

A determined crowd of more than 1,000 descended on the Capitol. Soon after 2 p.m. the mob became violent. Glass began to shatter, doors were forced open. An unprecedented assault and insurrection were in full progress. “Hang Mike Pence,” they chanted, while roaming the halls of Congress. Some were dressed in garish costumes. Outside, a makeshift gallows was erected to hang Pence.

In the White House, Trump watched the riot on television.

A year later, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was far along in its investigation: It had issued 86 subpoenas, interviewed more than 500 witnesses and obtained 60,000 pages of records. As of this writing, the committee had an abundance of evidence that the insurrection was a Trump operation — and committee members have vowed to push further.

Both Nixon and Trump created a conspiratorial world in which the U.S. Constitution, laws and fragile democratic traditions were to be manipulated or ignored, political opponents and the media were “enemies,” and there were few or no restraints on the powers entrusted to presidents.

Both Nixon and Trump had been outsiders, given to paranoia, relentless in their ambition, carrying chips on their shoulders.

Trump from the outer boroughs of New York City, not Manhattan. Nixon from Yorba Linda, Calif., not San Francisco or Los Angeles. Even after achieving the most powerful office in the world, these two men harbored deep insecurities.

Our conclusions come from covering Nixon and Watergate for half a century. And from reporting on Trump for more than six years — Woodward in three books (“Fear” in 2018, “Rage” in 2020 and “Peril” with Robert Costa in 2021); Bernstein as a CNN reporter and commentator, analyzing Trump, his behavior and its meaning from 2016 through this year. Bernstein reported in November 2020 that 21 Republican senators were contemptuous and disdainful of Trump in private, despite regularly voicing their support for the president in public. After the story ran on CNN — which named the 21 senators — another senior Republican senator said that the number was closer to 40.

Watergate began for us when we were called to work with a team of Washington Post reporters the day after five burglars were arrested during a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building on June 17, 1972.

Though it took us months to establish, Nixon, his White House staff and his reelection campaign immediately began an unprecedented attack on the justice system, launching a comprehensive coverup involving lies, hush-money payments and offers of presidential pardons to conceal their crimes.

In a June 23, 1972, tape recording, six days after the burglars’ arrest at the Watergate, chief of staff Haldeman told Nixon, “The FBI is not under control … their investigation is now leading into some productive areas, because they’ve been able to trace the money.”

Haldeman said he and Mitchell had a plan for the CIA to claim that national security secrets would be jeopardized if the FBI did not halt its Watergate investigation.

Nixon approved the plan and ordered Haldeman to call in the CIA director and his deputy. “Play it tough,” the president directed. “That’s the way they play it, and that’s the way we are going to play it.”

This was the tape that was released on Aug. 5, 1974, and was unfortunately called the “smoking gun.” It was really no worse than some of the other tapes that had been previously disclosed. By then Congress and the public had grown weary and disgusted with Nixon.

John Dean, the Nixon White House counsel, was initially in charge of the containment and coverup of Watergate activities. He found a willing participant in Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen, the head of the Justice Department criminal division, a powerful post. Petersen agreed to ensure that Earl Silbert, the U.S. attorney in charge of investigating Watergate, did not investigate Segretti and others.

According to the Senate Watergate report, “Petersen directed Silbert not to probe the relationships between Segretti and Kalmbach, Chapin, and Strachan because he ‘didn’t want him getting into the relationships between the President and his lawyer or the fact that the President’s lawyer might be involved in somewhat, I thought, illegitimate campaign activities on behalf of the President.’”

The coverup could proceed with what — in practical terms — amounted to an official blessing.

In his memoir, Haldeman, five years after his resignation from the White House, said Nixon was behind all the subterfuge.

“I realized that many problems in our administration arose not solely from the outside, but from inside the Oval Office — and even deeper, from inside the character of Richard Nixon,” wrote Haldeman.

“I soon realized that this President had to be protected from himself. Time and again I would receive petty vindictive orders,” Haldeman wrote about Nixon. One was, “All the press is barred from Air Force One … Or, after a Senator made an anti-Vietnam War speech: ‘Put a 24-hour surveillance on the bastard.’ And on and on and on.”

In one of the interviews Woodward conducted with Trump for his book “Rage,” he asked, “What have you learned about yourself?”

Trump sighed audibly. “I can handle more than other people can handle.”

“People don’t want me to succeed … Even the RINOs, even the RINOs don’t want me to succeed.” (RINOs are “Republicans in name only.”)

“I have opposition like nobody has. And that’s okay. I’ve had that all my life. I’ve always had it. And this has been — my whole life has been like this.”

Nixon, too, felt beset by enemies.

“Remember we’re gonna be around and outlive our enemies,” Nixon said in the Oval Office on Dec. 14, 1972, the month after his reelection. “And also, never forget: The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”

Watergate at 50

As is so well known, Trump publicly said the press was the enemy and an enemy of the state. He even once told Woodward during an interview, “In my opinion you’re the enemy of the people.” After Bernstein disclosed one of Trump’s secret meetings, Trump called him “sloppy” and a “degenerate fool.”

The question hovers: Why would two men who held the highest office in the land engage in these assaults on democracy?

Fear of losing and being considered a loser was a common thread for Nixon and Trump.

In an interview with The Washington Post in 2015, Trump explained that he thought he had always been successful with his real estate, his books, his TV show and his golf.

Asked if he was afraid of losing someday, Trump said, “I’m not afraid of it, but I hate the concept of it.”

“What do you hate about it?”

“I hate the fact that it’s a total unknown,” he said, giving a classic Trumpian response of total confidence, and adding, “If there is a fear at all, it is a fear of the unknown because I’ve never been there before.”

In a March 31, 2016, interview as Trump was about to secure the Republican nomination for president, the question of how he would define power arose.

Trump said, “Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.”


After Nixon resigned and we embarked on our second book, “The Final Days,” on Nixon’s last year as president, we went to interview Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the 1964 Republican nominee for president. Goldwater was often thought of as the conscience of the Republican Party.

In his apartment, he offered us whiskey and pulled out his daily diary that he had dictated for years to his secretary. He began reading his entry for Aug. 7, 1974. The so-called smoking gun tape had been released two days before that date, showing that Nixon had asked the CIA to have the FBI curtail its Watergate investigation on bogus national security grounds. It was clear that Nixon was going to be impeached and formally charged by the House of Representatives. The question was the Senate.

Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, House Republican Leader John Rhodes of Arizona and Goldwater were invited to meet at the White House with Nixon. They would be alone with the president in the Oval Office. No Nixon aides or lawyers were present that evening.

Goldwater was seated directly across from Nixon, who sat at his desk. He later dictated that Nixon seemed at ease, almost serene. He thought the president looked as though he had just shot a hole in one. Disappointment was audible, however, in Nixon’s voice.

“We’ve asked Barry to be our spokesman,” Scott said.

“Mr. President, this isn’t pleasant, but you want to know the situation and it isn’t good,” Goldwater said.

“How many would you say would be with me — a half-dozen?” Nixon asked.

Goldwater had dictated that he wondered if there was sarcasm in the president’s voice, because Nixon would need 34 votes in a Senate trial to stay in office. A two-thirds majority, or 67, was needed to remove him, according to the Constitution.

“Sixteen to 18,” Goldwater said, still well short of the needed 34.

“I’d say maybe 15,” Scott said. “But it’s grim, and they’re not very firm.”

“Damn grim,” the president shot back.

In a Senate trial, Goldwater said, “There aren’t many who would support you if it comes to that.”

Goldwater told us that he had decided at that moment to be absolutely blunt in his message. “I took kind of a nose count today, and I couldn’t find more than four very firm votes, and those would be from older Southerners. Some are very worried about what’s been going on, and are undecided, and I’m one of them.”

It was over.

The next night Nixon appeared on national television and announced that he would resign the following day at noon, Friday, Aug. 9, 1974.

More than a year earlier, the Senate launched an extraordinary bipartisan investigation of Watergate, voting 77 to 0 to set up an investigative committee.

Forty-eight years later, the political climate had changed radically. Only two House Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) — joined all Democrats in voting 222 to 190 to establish a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The Republican National Committee officially declared the events that led to the attack “legitimate political discourse” and voted to censure Cheney and Kinzinger.

Another dominating personal trait binds Nixon and Trump together: Each viewed the world through the prism of hate.

Woodward visited Trump on Dec. 30, 2019, at Mar-a-Lago to interview the president. The Democratic-controlled House had voted to impeach him for withholding military aid to Ukraine at the same time he was asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.

After an hour of Trump defending his request to Zelensky, Trump’s media director, Dan Scavino, joined the interview. Trump asked that Scavino open his laptop and show a clip of the president’s 2019 State of the Union speech. Instead of Trump’s words, hyped-up elevator music played as the camera panned for extended shots of members of Congress watching and listening to the president.

The first shot was of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who looked bored.

Trump was watching over Woodward’s shoulder and was agitated.

“They hate me,” the president said. “You’re seeing hate!”

The camera stopped on Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts liberal. She was listening and had a bland, unemotional look on her face.

“Hate!” Trump said.

A shot of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was next. She had no expression on her face.

“Hate! See the hate!” Trump said.

Maine Writer- what I want to know is how these insurrectionists knew to rock climb the Capitol walls on January 6? They obviously practiced!

The camera lingered a long time on Sen. Kamala Harris. She would be chosen as Biden’s running mate the next year. She had a bland, polite look on her face.

“Hate!” Trump said loudly within inches of Woodward’s neck. “See the hate! See the hate!”

It was a remarkable moment. A psychiatrist might say it was a projection of his own hatred of Democrats. But it was so intense that it did not resemble the subdued reaction of the Democrats. His insistence that it was “Hate!” was unsupported by the images on Scavino’s computer. Many Democrats, of course, did hate him. They were vocal and angry opponents of his presidency. But this Trump spectacle was unforgettable and bizarre.

The day Nixon resigned the presidency, Aug. 9, 1974, he gave his farewell address in the East Room of the White House. He had no script. His wife, Pat, his two daughters and their husbands stood behind him. Nixon spoke of how his mother and father were misunderstood and proceeded to unleash more grievances.

Then suddenly, as if he had found a larger message, he smiled gently and offered his final counsel to all. “Always remember, others may hate you — but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

It seemed a blinding moment of self-understanding. Hate had been the trademark of his presidency. But in the end he had come to realize that hate was the poison, the engine that had destroyed him.

Nixon accepted the full Watergate pardon from President Gerald Ford 30 days after his resignation. Whenever anyone asked Ford why he had not insisted on an explicit admission from Nixon that he had committed crimes, Ford confidently said he had the answer.

“I’ve got it in my wallet here,” he would reply, pulling out a folded, dog-eared piece of paper summarizing the Supreme Court decision Burdick v. United States in 1915. The justices had ruled that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it.”

Nixon confessed by accepting the pardon, Ford said. “That was always very reassuring to me.”

In 1977, just three years out of office, Nixon gave a series of televised interviews to the British journalist David Frost.

Nixon was paid $600,000. The first broadcast interview on Watergate drew 45 million television viewers — a record for a political interview that stands to this day.

Nixon said he had “let the American people down” but had not obstructed justice. “I didn’t think of it as a coverup. I didn’t intend it to cover up. Let me say, if I intended to cover up, believe me, I’d have done it.”

A year later, in his memoir “RN,” he continued his war on history. “My actions and omissions, while regrettable and possibly indefensible, were not impeachable.”

A president, he added in the Frost interview, has broad authority and cannot break the law. “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” Nixon said.

In a later book in 1990, “In the Arena,” Nixon intensified his denials, claiming it was a myth that he had ordered hush-money payments.

A tape of his March 21, 1973, meeting, however, shows that he ordered John Dean to get the money 12 times.

Sen. Sam Ervin, the chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, offered a final diagnosis. Nixon and his aides were driven by “a lust for political power.”

Though Ervin died 32 years before Trump became president, the label “lust for political power” applies.

Never a coherent strategist, Trump can be a powerful propagandist. He has woven together a series of assertions that he won in 2020, though there is no evidence to support it.

More than a year after Joe Biden’s inauguration, polling shows that only 21 percent of Republicans say they believe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States.

Their reasoning shows how the Trump rhetoric and playbook have convinced them. Between 74 and 83 percent of the Republicans who denied Biden’s victory were swayed by Trump’s false claims of massive voter fraud.

Trump’s claims have always been presented with unwavering, emotional consistency, revealing little or no self-doubt. As the 2024 election approaches, Trump seems on the verge of once again seeking the presidency.

Both Nixon and Trump have been willing prisoners of their compulsions to dominate, and to gain and hold political power through virtually any means. In leaning so heavily on these dark impulses, they defined two of the most dangerous and troubling eras in American history.

As Washington warned in his Farewell Address more than 225 years ago, unprincipled leaders could create “permanent despotism,” “the ruins of public liberty,” and “riot and insurrection.”

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward are co-authors of “All the President’s Men” and “The Final Days.” The above article appears as a new foreward to the 50th anniversary edition of “All the President’s Men.”

Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1971. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first in 1973, for the coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, and second in 2003, as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Carl Bernstein is the co-author of “All the President’s Men” and “The Final Days.” His latest book is “Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.” He is also a political analyst for CNN.

Ginni Thomas is morally vile: More dangerous than I could have imagined

Virginia Thomas, wife of the Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, urged the White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020, election, revealed in texts released by TFG's chief of staff Mark Meadows.

(Check two Twitter messages about Ginni Thomas I cut and pasted into the end of this blog.)

January 6 committee has text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows

In messages to TFG's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after the 2020 Election Day, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called Biden’s victory “the greatest Heist of our History”, and she told him that former Donald Trump should not concede.- By Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in The Washington Post.

Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a series of urgent text exchanges in the critical weeks after the vote, according to copies of the messages obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.

The messages — 29 in all — reveal an extraordinary pipeline between Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni, and former President Donald Trump’s top aide during a period when Trump and his allies were vowing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to negate the election results.

On Nov. 10, after news organizations had projected Joe Biden the winner based on state vote totals, Thomas wrote to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!...You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”

When Meadows wrote to Thomas on Nov. 24, the White House chief of staff invoked God to describe the effort to overturn the election. “This is a fight of good versus evil,” Meadows wrote. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”

Thomas replied: “Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!”

It is unclear to whom Thomas was referring.

The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful Meadows said he was to receive her advice. Among Thomas’s stated goals in the messages was for lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted incendiary and unsupported claims about the election, to be “the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team.

The text messages were among 2,320 that Meadows provided to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The content of messages between Thomas and Meadows — 21 sent by her, eight by him – has not previously been reported. They were reviewed by The Post and CBS News and then confirmed by five people who have seen the committee’s documents.

Meadows’s attorney, George Terwilliger III, confirmed the existence of the 29 messages between his client and Thomas. In reviewing the substance of the messages Wednesday, he said that neither he nor Meadows would comment on individual texts. But, Terwilliger added, “nothing about the text messages presents any legal issues.”

Ginni Thomas did not respond to multiple requests for comment made Thursday by email and phone. Justice Thomas, who has been hospitalized for treatment of an infection, did not respond to a request for comment made through the Supreme Court’s public information office.

It is unknown whether Ginni Thomas and Meadows exchanged additional messages between the election and Biden’s inauguration beyond the 29 received by the committee. Shortly after providing the 2,320 messages, Meadows ceased cooperating with the committee, arguing that any further engagement could violate Trump’s claims of executive privilege. Committee members and aides said they believe the messages may be just a portion of the pair’s total exchanges.

A spokesman for the committee declined to comment. The revelation of Thomas’s messages with Meadows comes three weeks after lawyers for the committee said in a court filing that the panel has “a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States” and obstruct the counting of electoral votes by Congress.

Trump spoke publicly during this period about his intent to contest the election results in the Supreme Court. “This is a major fraud on our nation,” the president said in a speech at 2:30 the morning after the election. “We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Clarence Thomas fell asleep during oral arguments at the Supreme Court

Thomas has publicly denied any conflict of interest between her activism and her husband’s work on the Supreme Court. “Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet, for an article published March 14.

Ginni Thomas, in that interview, also acknowledged that she had attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, but said that she left early because it was too cold and that she did not have any role in planning the event.

Justice Thomas, 73, is the Supreme Court’s longest-serving current justice and has missed oral arguments this week because of his hospitalization. He has made few public comments about the 2020 election. In February 2021, when the Supreme Court rejected election challenges filed by Trump and his allies, Thomas wrote in a dissent that it was “baffling” and “inexplicable” that the majority had decided against hearing the cases because he believed the Supreme Court should provide states with guidance for future elections.

In her text messages to Meadows, Ginni Thomas spread false theories, commented on cable news segments and advocated with urgency and fervor that the president and his team take action to reverse the outcome of the election. She urged that they take a hard line with Trump staffers and congressional Republicans who had resisted arguments that the election was stolen.

In the messages, Thomas and Meadows each assert a belief that the election was stolen and seem to share a solidarity of purpose and faith, though they occasionally express differences on tactics.

“The intense pressures you and our President are now experiencing are more intense than Anything Experienced (but I only felt a fraction of it in 1991),” Thomas wrote to Meadows on Nov. 19, an apparent reference to Justice Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings in which lawyer Anita Hill testified that he had made unwanted sexual comments when he was her boss. Thomas strongly denied the accusations.

The first of the 29 messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows was sent on Nov. 5, two days after the election.

She sent him a link to a YouTube video labeled “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN.”

Pieczenik, a former State Department official, is a far-right commentator who has falsely claimed that the 2012, massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a “false-flag” operation to push a gun-control agenda.

The video Thomas shared with Meadows is no longer available on YouTube. But Thomas wrote to Meadows, “I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible???”

“Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states,” she wrote.

During that period, supporters of the QAnon extremist ideology embraced a false theory that Trump had watermarked mail-in ballots so he could track potential fraud. “Watch the water” was a refrain in QAnon circles at the time.

In the Nov. 5 message to Meadows, Thomas went on to quote a passage that had circulated on right-wing websites: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”

The text messages received by the House select committee do not include a response from Meadows.

The next day, Nov. 6, Thomas sent a follow-up to Meadows: “Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”

It is unclear if Meadows responded.

On Nov. 10, Thomas drew a reply from Meadows. She wrote, “Mark, I wanted to text you and tell you for days you are in my prayers!!” She continued by urging him to “Help This Great President stand firm” and invoking “the greatest Heist of our History.”

Thomas added in the message that Meadows should “Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta” — appearing to refer to conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, as well as lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who was involved in Trump’s push to claim victory in Georgia despite Biden’s certified win there.

One minute later, Meadows responded: “I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.”

Nine minutes after that, Thomas replied, “Tearing up and praying for you guys!!!!! So proud to know you!!”

Later that night, Ginni Thomas messaged Meadows seeming to react to a cable news segment. “Van Jones spins interestingly, but shows us the balls being juggled too,” Thomas said, referring to the prominent CNN commentator.

Thomas then turned to her frustrations with congressional Republicans and said she wished more of them were rallying behind Trump and being more active with his base voters, who were furious about the election.

She wrote, “House and Senate guys are pathetic too... only 4 GOP

House members seen out in street rallies with grassroots... Gohmert, Jordan, Gosar, and Roy.” She appeared to be referring to Republican House members Louie Gohmert of Texas, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Paul A. Gosar of Arizona and Chip Roy of Texas.

This was a troubled time for Trump. News organizations had declared Biden the winner on Nov. 7, after a review of vote totals in each state and the electoral count. Trump’s legal operation was divided between his campaign’s official lawyers and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s confidant and personal attorney who was fast asserting control of his campaign’s legal strategy. While many Republicans supported Trump’s filing of legal challenges in several states, his lawyers stumbled in court and many allies by mid-November were privately confiding that Trump’s legal battle would be short-lived.

Yet Thomas urged Meadows to plow ahead, rally Republicans around Trump and remind them of his enduring political capital.

“Where the heck are all those who benefited by Presidents coattails?!!!” she wrote in her text message to him late on Nov. 10. She then told him to watch a YouTube video about the power of never conceding.

Meadows might not have been Thomas’s only contact inside the Trump White House that week. On Nov. 13, she texted Meadows about her outreach to “Jared,” potentially a reference to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser. She wrote, “Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am. Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved.” The messages provided to the House select committee do not show a response by Meadows.

Kushner did not respond to a request for comment.

Powell was becoming ubiquitous on television — and winning the president’s favor, according to several Trump advisers — as she claimed without evidence that electronic voting systems had stolen the election from Trump by switching millions of ballots in Biden’s favor. She claimed, again without evidence, that hundreds of thousands of ballots were appearing out of nowhere and that a global communist conspiracy was afoot involving Venezuela, Cuba, and probably China.

Still, while Trump cheered some of Powell’s commentary, she was a polarizing figure in his orbit. Her views were considered so extreme and unsupported by evidence that David Bossie, a longtime Trump supporter, told others that she was peddling “concocted B.S.” After Fox News host Tucker Carlson contacted Powell about her claim that electronic voting machines had switched ballots to Biden, he told his viewers that he found her answers evasive and that she had shown no evidence to support her assertion. He stopped having her on his program.

Ginni Thomas stood by her. “Don’t let her and your assets be marginalized instead...help her be the lead and the face,” she wrote to Meadows on Nov. 13.

The following day, Nov. 14, Thomas sent Meadows material she said was from Connie Hair, chief of staff to Gohmert. (Gohmert is a Republican and was part of the Tea Party movement). It is not clear if she was passing on a message from Hair or sharing Hair’s perspective as guidance for Meadows. The text message seems to quote Hair’s belief that “the most important thing you can realize right now is that there are no rules in war.”

“This war is psychological. PSYOP*,” the text from Thomas states.
Hair said Thursday that she did not have any specific recollection of that text message.

On Nov. 19, which would be a crucial day for Powell as she spoke at a news conference at the Republican National Committee, Thomas continued to bolster Powell’s standing in a text to Meadows.

“Mark (don’t want to wake you)… ” Thomas wrote. “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”

*Psychological operations are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.

Tweets:
Maggie McGlothin
@MaggieMcglothin
·Mar 25

If I were a betting woman, I’d bet Ginni Thomas knows the identity of the pipe bomber.

Agolf Twitler Slayer
@bblock29
·Mar 25

Ginni Thomas does not discuss overturning the election with Her husband but texts Mark Meadows and Jared Kushner. Does anyone believe this?

White House is in continuous disarray - pathological lying

Donald Trump is the worst president in modern times.

Burlington Free Press newspaper, opinion, published in Burlington Vermont.

Donald Trump's administration is cruel and oblivious to the concept of truth. 

"For the good of our country, the like-minded administration colleagues must come out of the shadows and publicly share their eyewitness accounts to White House chaos. Republicans in Congress must summon the courage to call out Donald Trump for the damage he is inflicting on the institution of the presidency, our nation, and our standing in the world.” Quote by an unnamed Trump administration official

Indeed, journalist Bob Woodard;s credibility was validated when All the President's Men revealed how Richard Nixon was complicit in criminal activity against the Democrats in the 1972 presidential election. It was Bob Woodward and his journalism colleague Carl Bernstein who revealed the truth in the Watergate investigation that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Therefore, this essay by Woodward is particularly significant:

Washington is rocked by sketches of a White House in disarray.

Specifically, members of Donald Trump's staff appear to be working to contain his worst impulses, even going behind his back in the name of what staff members see as the national interest.

First came the coverage of "Fear: Trump in the White House," the behind-the-scenes book by Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The Washington Post, most famous for his coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein.

Senator Bernie Sanders has said, "....we have seen more and more evidence of Donald Trump’s dangerous disregard for the democratic norms of America, and stunning revelations about his erratic, and misguided policy decisions and his pathological lying," said Sanders.

"We live in dangerous and unprecedented times. Our job now is to energize people, revitalize American democracy and fight for a government that will work for all of us, and not the wealthy few," Sanders said.

Stockholm Syndrome in the Donald Trump administration

Donald Trump's behavior
Echo opinion letter from Missouri published in the Southeast Missourian

The recently published anonymous Op-Ed letter published in the New York Times coupled with Bob Woodward’s book, “Fear,” subtitled “Trump in the White House,” further adds to the “Red lights are blinking”, warning, issued by Dan Coats, director of National Intelligence. 

As Woodward noted, the real threat to America’s security comes not just from Russia, but also from Donald Trump himself.

During the course of the presidential campaign, we witnessed Trump’s erratic and impulsive behaviors; his “volcanic eruptions” and “verbal whacking” of his adversaries. 

Since becoming president, we have witnessed his reckless decisions based on monumental ignorance and his total lack of humanity in his decision to separate innocent little children from immigrant parents.

However, what is even more dangerous is the cowardly behavior of Trump’s cabinet secretaries as well as Republican lawmakers. Every one of them seems to be terrorized by his “verbal whacking.” Sen. McConnell has been compromised by virtue of his wife being a cabinet member. Fearful of being “whacked,” Speaker Paul Ryan simply decided to run away from the political arena.

Trump’s steadfast refusal to criticize Vladimir Putin, and his blatantly obsequious behavior toward him in Helsinki make us suspicious that Putin is blackmailing him. The fact that he convinced a handful of Republican lawmakers to go to Moscow as his surrogates to pay homage to Putin, further supports this suspicion.

It appears as though both Trump and his Republican minions suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological state of mind in which terrorized victims collude with terrorists.

K.P.S. KAMATH, Cape Girardeau

Yale University opinion about the cognitive "inability" of Donald Trump

Trump’s dangerousness 

Brandy X. Lee an Assistant Clinical Professor at Yale University

An echo opinion published in the on-line news letter The Conversation

Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear,” describes a “nervous breakdown of Trump’s presidency.” Earlier this year, Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” offered a similar portrayal.

Now, an op-ed in The New York Times by an anonymous “senior White House official” describes how deeply the troubles in this administration run and what effort is required to protect the nation.

None of this is a surprise to those of us who, 18 months ago, put together our own public service book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”

My focus as the volume’s editor was on Trump’s dangerousness because of my area of expertise in violence prevention. Approaching violence as a public health issue, I have consulted with governments and international organizations, in addition to 20 years of engaging in the individual assessment and treatment of violent offenders.

The book proceeded from an ethics conference I held at Yale, my home institution. At that meeting, my psychiatrist colleagues and I discussed balancing two essential duties of our profession. First is the duty to speak responsibly about public officials, especially as outlined in “the Goldwater rule,” which requires that we refrain from diagnosing without a personal examination and without authorization. Second is our responsibility to protect public health and safety, or our “duty to warn” in cases of danger, which usually supersedes other rules.

Our conclusion was overwhelmingly that our responsibility to society and its safety, as outlined in our ethical guidelines, overrode any etiquette owed to a public figure. That decision led to the collection of essays in the book, which includes some of the most prominent thinkers of the field including Robert J. Lifton, Judith Herman, Philip Zimbardo and two dozen others. That decision was controversial among some members of our field.

We already know a great deal about Trump’s mental state based on the voluminous information he has given through his tweets and his responses to real situations in real time. Now, this week’s credible reports support the concerns we articulated in the book beyond any doubt.

These reports are also consistent with the account I received from two White House staff members who called me in October 2017 because the president was behaving in a manner that “scared” them, and they believed he was “unraveling”. They were calling because of the book I edited.

Once I confirmed that they did not perceive the situation as an imminent danger, I referred them to the emergency room, in order not to be bound by confidentiality rules that would apply if I engaged with them as a treating physician. That would have compromised my role of educating the public.
The psychology behind the chaos

The author of the New York Times op-ed makes clear that the conflict in the White House is not about Trump’s ideology.

The problem, the author sees, is the lack of “any discernible first principles that guide his decision making … his impulsiveness [that] results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back, and there being literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next.”

These are obviously psychological symptoms reflective of emotional compulsion, impulsivity, poor concentration, narcissism and recklessness. They are identical to those that Woodward describes in numerous examples, which he writes were met with the “stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters.”

They are also consistent with the course we foresaw early in Trump’s presidency, which concerned us enough to outline it in our book. We tried to warn that his condition was worse than it appeared, would grow worse over time and would eventually become uncontainable.

What we observed were signs of mental instability – signs that would eventually play out not only in the White House, as these accounts report, but in domestic situations and in the geopolitical sphere.

There is a strong connection between immediate dangerousness – the likelihood of waging a war or launching nuclear weapons – and extended societal dangerousness – policies that force separation of children from families or the restructuring of global relations in a way that would destabilize the world.
Getting worse

My current concern is that we are already witnessing a further unraveling of the president’s mental state, especially as the frequency of his lying increases and the fervor of his rallies intensifies.

I am concerned that his mental challenges could cause him to take unpredictable and potentially extreme and dangerous measures to distract from his legal problems.

Mental health professionals have standard procedures for evaluating dangerousness. More than a personal interview, violence potential is best assessed through past history and a structured checklist of a person’s characteristics.

These characteristics include a history of cruelty to animals or other people, risk taking, behavior suggesting loss of control or impulsivity, narcissistic personality and current mental instability. Also of concern are noncompliance or unwillingness to undergo tests or treatment, access to weapons, poor relationship with significant other or spouse, seeing oneself as a victim, lack of compassion or empathy, and lack of concern over consequences of harmful acts.

The Woodward book and the New York Times op-ed confirm many of these characteristics. The rest have been evident in Trump’s behavior outside the White House and prior to his tenure.

That the president has met not just some but all these criteria should be reason for alarm.

Other ways in which a president could be dangerous are through cognitive symptoms or lapses, since functions such as reasoning, memory, attention, language and learning are critical to the duties of a president. He has exhibited signs of decline here, too.

Furthermore, when someone displays a propensity for large-scale violence, such as by advocating violence against protesters or immigrant families, calling perpetrators of violence such as white supremacists “very fine people” or showing oneself vulnerable to manipulation by hostile foreign powers, then these things can promote a much more widespread culture of violence.

The president has already shown an alarming escalation of irrational behavior during times of distress. Others have observed him to be “unstable,” “losing a step” and “unraveling.” He is likely to enter such a state again.

Violent acts are not random events. They are end products of a long process that follow recognizable patterns. As mental health experts, we make predictions in terms of unacceptable levels of probability rather than on the basis of what is certain to happen.

Trump’s impairment is a familiar pattern to a violence expert such as myself, but given his level of severity, one does not need to be a specialist to know that he is dangerous.
What next?

I believe Woodward’s book and the revelations in the New York Times op-ed have placed great pressure on the president. We are now entering a period when the stresses of the presidency could accelerate because of the advancing special counsel’s investigations.

The degree of Trump’s denial and resistance to the unfolding revelations, as expressed in a recent Fox interview, are telling of his fragility.

From my observations of the president over extended time via his public presentations, direct thoughts through tweets and accounts of his close associates, I believe that the question is not whether he will look for distractions, but how soon and to what degree.

At least several thousands of mental health professionals who are members of the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Expertsshare the view that the nuclear launch codes should not be in the hands of someone who exhibits such levels of mental instability.

Just as suspicion of crime should lead to an investigation, the severity of impairment that we see should lead to an evaluation, preferably with the president’s consent.

Mental impairment should be evaluated independently from criminal investigations, using medical criteria and standardized measures. A sitting president may be immune to indictments, but he is subject to the law, which is strict about public safety and the right to treatment when an individual poses a danger to the public because of mental instability. In the case of danger, the patient does not have the right to refuse, nor does the physician have the right not to take the person as a patient.

This evaluation may have been delayed, but it is still not too late. And mental health professionals have extensive experience assessing, restraining and treating individuals much like Trump – it is almost routine.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on September 7, 2018; it reflects new information about the author’s contact with White House staff.