Everyone but Donald Trump is a Filthy Liar

President* Trump is, at least, consistent in sticking to his lies. His latest tweet:

Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!

Sure. The media and the Democrats, along with all the US intelligence organizations, are in on a massive conspiracy of "historic proportion" to make the entire population of the United States wrongfully believe that you, Donald Trump, are a liar. Makes sense. Totally.

Mr. President*, seriously: This is a talking point taken straight from RT, a Russian state-owned propaganda outlet. The information sources you are choosing to believe are rapidly going into scary territory. Also, RT is not the best source to quote when trying to distance yourself from alleged contacts with, you know, Russia.

Roadkill

Breaking news from the Wall Street Journal.

• Devin Nunes, Republican House representative.
• Michael Ellis, White House attorney.
• Ezra Cohen-Watnick, National Security Council intelligence director.
• John Eisenberg, top lawyer for the National Security Council.

At least four people thrown under the bus, and for what? A botched attempt at providing fake evidence to corroborate a sequence of unhinged morning tweets by President* Donald Trump, accusing his predecessor of criminal conduct without a shred of evidence. Such a weak and obvious attempt at deflection doesn't seem to be worth all that effort.

The accusation was baseless from the start, but the White House appears to have been poring over classified intelligence to find something, anything, that might support the President's outlandish claim. They found nothing suitable, but they decided to go ahead anyway, using some largely inconsequential documents and trying to confuse and dazzle Devin Nunes enough to believe it was relevant. After squirming a bit in response to questions, he said that the surveillance he had seen was probably legal, seemingly incidental, and possibly only referencing people in the Trump campaign rather than involving any of them directly. Even Nunes says that there is still no evidence to support the President's accusations.

The Trump administration is trying very hard to suppress the Russia story, and they don't seem to hesitate to destroy the career and reputation of their pawns in the process. Their problem is that the cover-up is very badly planned, far too obvious and even incriminating in itself. They should have learned from history how a cover-up tends to be a very bad idea for a president.

Fake Reality

Fake news in the real meaning of the word, i.e. fabricated stories having at most a weak connection to reality, being told to make money or promote an agenda, have changed the world in terms of how debates work. Not long ago, a discussion about a problem could go like this:

"We're out of hot water. Again."
"Yeah, I noticed. You take too long showers. Or too hot."
"Actually, I think our neighbor may be the culprit."
"Are we sharing our hot water with him?"
"I think so. The pipe seems to go through the wall here."
"Hmm. We should ask the landlord about this."
"Or a plumber. The landlord probably won't be honest with us."
"But a plumber will cost us. Let's ask the landlord first."
"Okay. But if the landlord dodges the question, I'm calling a plumber."

Statement of fact. Acknowledgment. Attempts at explanation. Alternate suggestion. Inference from evidence. Proposed solution. Alternative ideas. Discussion. Compromise. Agreement. Action. Suggest a Plan B if the action fails. This is an example of problem solving by constructive debate.

Injecting the equivalent of fake news into the conversation, the exchange instead takes a bizarre turn:

"We're out of hot water. Again."
"No, we're not."
"What? Feel this. It's freezing."
"Why? Because you say so?"
"No, because It's a fact. Here, feel it."
"That's your opinion. I disagree."
"Fine. Then take a shower. I dare you."
"I don't need a shower."
"You were waiting outside the bathroom in a bath robe."
"I don't see how that is relevant."
"So you're just going to stand there? In your bath robe?"
"I might. What do you care?"

Statement of fact. Rejection of fact. Confusion. Disbelief. Anger. Resignation. Stall. With one party rejecting the objective reality and denying the problem, even denying that the other party sees a problem, no solution will ever be found, and the conversation can go on forever without getting anywhere. The cold shower of reality which could expose the lies never happens, because the theory that ignores the facts is deliberately withheld from verification.

Treating truth and facts as opinions which you can reject and argue about is terminally destructive to any kind of discussion. Deflection, spin and obvious lies create disrespect for the opposing view and invite to insults. Society will be more stupid because of this, and we will all lose in the long run.

More Evil than Evil Itself

Oil company Exxon Mobil today told President* Trump that it's probably not a great idea to withdraw from the Paris treaty on reducing carbon emissions. When the oil industry, the global poster boy of dirty energy, makes that kind of comment, you should know you've gone too far.

Fact in the matter is that very few, if any, new jobs will be created by this. The coal industry in the US is dying due to a lack of demand, not because of harsh CO2 regulations, and if it should somehow reinvent itself, a significant number of people who are currently employed to design and implement alternative energy solutions like wind and solar energy might lose their high-tech jobs if low-tech coal becomes an option again. The effect could be both a net loss of jobs and increased CO2 emission. Nice move, Mr. President.

Buying Time

President* Trump is finished. There is absolutely no way he is going to get out of the deep hole he has dug for himself. What we are seeing now are his desperate attempts at buying another day, perhaps another week at a time with deflections, spin and more lies to cover up his previous lies.

What's the point? Why cling to an office that is now irrevocably tainted by lies and scandals, to the point where anything he might still succeed in doing will be revoked when he is gone? His brief stay in the Oval Office will be nothing but a shameful footnote in American history:

45th President of the United States: Trump, Donald J., Republican, served 2017-2017. Resigned in disgrace facing impeachment from Congress over charges of corruption, negligence of duty and collusion with a foreign power to tamper with the election process.

Why prolong the pain? He is a disgrace, a laughing stock, a disaster and a fraud. Just get out and get it over with, Mr. President*, and take your incompetent and harmful cabinet picks with you, so that the United States can start patching itself up.

Make America Work Again!

Why, Indeed?

Desperate tweets by President* Trump late last night, lashing out against his old nemesis instead of facing up to his own problems:

Why isn't the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech....

 (9 minutes delay here. He is not a quick writer.)

...money to Bill, the Hillary Russian "reset," praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!

Yes, Mr. President*, why indeed aren't they investigating the Clintons? Because nobody gave them that task? Because these accusations have been debunked long ago as overblown and false? Because YOU are the President and not Bill or Hillary Clinton? Because the Russian hackers helped YOU win the election by throwing dirt on Hillary Clinton? Because these allegations, even if they were true, would be nothing compared to what YOU have done? Because there is an FBI investigation into YOUR ties to Russia? Because a dozen of YOUR associates are being exposed for shady dealings with Russian interests? Because YOU are looking more guilty with every desperate tweet?

Gee, I don't know. Why?

If all the Trump-Russia stories are a hoax, despite strong indications to the contrary, we will find out. However, if it's not a hoax, the President is only making the situation worse by denying it. Trying his old, worn-out trick of deflecting attention from himself to the Clintons shows just how desperate he is, and that he has run out of ideas. With each passing day, it becomes more obvious that the actions of President* Trump and his lackeys are a cover-up of... something. And he thinks we're getting too close.

----

Update: one day later, he addressed the media with the same message:

Why doesn't Fake News talk about Podesta ties to Russia as covered by @FoxNews or money from Russia to Clinton - sale of Uranium?

Yes, why wouldn't media respond favorably to an insult and start parroting your lies? Hmm?

There are many signs of distress here: using his tired slur "fake news", referring to Fox News as a credible source, picking two talking points that have already been dismissed by fact checkers as unfounded speculation based on misconceptions, and making a desperate repeat when he doesn't get the attention he wanted. President* Trump is backed into a corner and has no idea what to do.

An innocent person would not try this hard to distract attention, and people are noticing.

Bureaucrazy Reform

The White House just announced a plan to reform government bureaucracy in the United States. Heading the effort is Jared Kushner, senior adviser to the President, and also his son-in-law by his marriage to the President's favorite daughter Ivanka - who, incidentally, also happens to have an office in the White House, although she has no formal job title and receives no salary.

Details are still being worked out, but the initial statement of intent was that "The US is going to be run like a great American company". This shows a lack of respect for the fact that government and corporations are fundamentally different and need to be treated differently. Corporations have the main goal of turning a profit and making money. A government should focus on the well-being of the country and its citizens, balance the budget to break even and make it possible for people to pursue their own goals, like working for a corporation to make money.

Jared Kushner is only 36 years old, and he has no previous experience in politics or governing. Let's hope he enlists the help of experts, or else we might end up being held hostage to amateur hour again, like with the health care bill that was drafted in a rush and then pulled minutes before the vote in the House.

Government could probably use a reform. The bureaucracy is thick in Washington, and existing political procedures are not always healthy for promoting change and making policy happen. Corruption is not rampant, but it's still a problem which could be handled better. There are far too many strong lobbyists working for wealthy corporations and powerful special interests, and far too much of US policy is being created out of public scrutiny, with little public debate. In many ways, the US is getting old and becoming stale and complacent, and it could probably benefit from a rejuvenation of some sort.

However, literally running the government "like a company" would not cut it. Corporate corruption is very common, a company is more of a plutocracy than a democracy, and companies are far less transparent than what a democratic government needs to be. Far more people are involved in making key decisions for the government than for key decisions in a company, and as a result the decisions take much longer to make, but there are good reasons for that. A government decision can have a direct and profound impact on every citizen in the country (and in the case of the US, potentially for the entire world). Decisions in a company have a much smaller impact outside the company, and therefore the leadership can be more agile and be at liberty to decide company policy more or less on their own. Companies are formally accountable only to their shareholders, not to their employees. A democratic government has no owners, or shouldn't have, and should be held accountable to the entire population of the country. Most employees at a company can choose to quit at any time if they think the company is going down the wrong path, but to quit being a citizen of a country is a lot harder.

Despite the recent mix-up by Donald Trump at a press conference calling the US "a very powerful company... country", how to run a company is not the model for how to run a country. Initial attempts by President* Trump at doing so have failed, often miserably and spectacularly. Bureaucracy reform and some "draining of the swamp" in Washington DC is probably much needed, but this attempt seems to have it all wrong from the outset. Let's hope they educate themselves on the matter, enlist help from experts without being too strongly influenced by them, and get back with a balanced plan.

One happy piece of information is that Kushner is apparently not cooperating with Steve Bannon, the self-proclaimed Leninist and anarchist who has set out to "deconstruct the federal state". He might be pulling some strings from behind the scenes, but he has no formal role in this project. Yet.

Tribal Epistemology

Tribal epistemology is the name for what has emerged as a new norm in the Republican camp and among Trump supporters. It means that people no longer apply objective rules to decide what is real and true. Instead, they narrowly consider what is good for their group, and shield themselves off from reality within a fact-resistant bubble where those values and ideals become a new, alternate reality. This state of mind is very hard to break, but we must find a way.

This is not a new phenomenon. It's an inherent trait of human psychology and human social interaction, and we need to be vigilant about spotting it and fighting it wherever it appears. This time, the bubble is much bigger than before and engulfs a substantial portion of the US population, but that doesn't make it right.

Reality is not an opinion, where every person get to choose their own version of it. Truth is not something to be decided upon by negotiation, or pushed on people by bullying. These are absolute, and without the foundation of an objective reality and an absolute truth, it becomes impossible to hold a meaningful debate about what is right or just.

We simply must keep trying to burst those bubbles.

Facing Reality

Brian Stelter of CNN, host of "Reliable Sources", finally came out and said this straight out:

What happens to a country when a leader’s words are worthless - when their promises are toothless or utterly useless? Is that where we are now with President Trump? 

 Of course that's where we are! It's where we have been since day one of his fake presidency. But still: thank you, Brian, for actually saying it. There are still way too few people in mainstream media who dare say it. President* Trump is not credible in anything he says, ever.

Aggressively Passive

After President* Trump first said that he did not blame Paul Ryan for the humiliating defeat of his absolutely terrible health care bill, and then trying to blame Democrats for not participating in a process they were shut out from, and for none of them voting for a bill that went against more or less everything they stand for, he sent out a tweet to recommend people to watch "Justice with Judge Jeanine" on Fox News Saturday 9PM.

The show opened with a broadside against Paul Ryan, throwing all the blame for the bill's failure on him and urging him to resign. At first, this sent a signal that President* Trump has so little pull in the Republican party that he didn't dare criticize Ryan himself, but instead had a friend at Fox News do it for him. This is if course more convenient, but it makes him sound like a back-stabbing bastard. He probably is, but given the precarious circumstances, even he would probably want to hide that, not flaunt it. Probably. It's also slightly strange that the strongly sexist Donald Trump would have a woman do his bidding for him. Slightly.

Sunday morning, Judge Jeanine Pirro announced that she had no contact with the President before the show, and that he couldn't have known what her message would be for the Saturday show. The White House denied any recent contacts between Pirro and the President as well, repeating that the President maintains his trust in Paul Ryan. However, they didn't deny anyone else in the White House having had contact with Pirro.

Fox News is infamous for being on very friendly terms with the Steve Bannon faction in the White House. (Yes, there are factions within the White House, competing for power). Very few big talking points make it to the high profile Trump-friendly shows on Fox News without someone in the White House giving them a friendly nudge in the right direction. Was there a nudge in this case, and in that case, from whom? Having followed this drama the last couple of months, I would venture a guess that it's Steve Bannon.

Update: Paul Ryan later said that the President had approached him and been "very apologetic" for his tweet. That doesn't rule out the possibility that Bannon played him like a fiddle.

Planning for the Short Term

Dodge, deflect, spin, lie. Live to fight another day. Repeat.

That is President* Trump's way of handling the onslaught of revelations about his constant lies, his possible collusion with Russia and his dodgy personal business. Everything is about getting positive news for the next few days, and he never seems to care about how it affects his reputation. It's all starting to catch up to him.

This president, for his obvious lack of a long term plan, should plan for a short term in the Oval Office.

Omnia Praesumuntur Contra Spoliatorem

The Latin phrase in the headline is an actual historic Roman quote, not a modern phrase translated to Latin to sound serious. It means "A destroyer of evidence will be suspected of everything".

Unsubstantiated but worrying rumors from within the White House give us reason to remind the Trump administration of this saying. Also, willfully tampering with evidence in a federal investigation is a crime in itself which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Train Wreck of Thought

Gobbledygook.

Time Magazine made a 20-minute telephone interview with President* Trump the other day. They chose to publish the transcript unedited. Read it. Seriously. There's no way to describe it, other than saying that it made it painfully obvious that the current president is a madman, living in a crazy bubble of self-aggrandizing alternate reality he has created for himself. The raving, incoherent word salad he produces has been called a "stream of consciousness", but this was more like a "stream of lack of consciousness". Trying to follow his train wreck of thought was painful, but fascinating, and scary.

This man must go.

Robin Hood's Evil Twin

One chart in the analysis of the proposed AHCA bill, supposedly a bill that is about health care, shows what it's actually about:

For a European living in Sweden, a country which is often criticized for being "socialist", this is absolutely unbelievable. Health insurance is now going to require a significant part of the salary from poor people, a smaller and less noticeable amount of the salary from people with middle income, and reduce the costs by some relatively insignificant amount for high income groups. It takes one trillion dollars away from health care altogether to give tax reductions for very rich people. That's the tall blue bar to the far right in the diagram above.

The diagram is a bit misleading, because there are more people around the middle of the scale, and not many people have over $200K annual income. This means that the bars are not proportional to the amount of money being redistributed. Nevertheless, the diagram still looks like a Bizarro-world opposite to me, completely different from how it works in my home country. Instead of taking from the poor (who don't actually have that much because they are, you know, poor), the system could be designed take from those who are well off, the ones who can actually afford paying more, and give the rebates to the people who need it, like, you know, the people who make less than $20K per year?

Increasing the premium for health insurance by $1,420 for those who earn less than $10K means that they need to spend at least another 14% of their salary to maintain their coverage. Giving $600 to those who earn more than $100K saves them at most 0.6% of their salary, which I cannot imagine would make any kind of real world difference whatsoever. Finally, looking at the extreme to the far right (pun intended), reducing the cost by $5,640 for someone earning more than $200K saves them at most 2.8% of their salary. While that might be nice for them, it happens at the expense of low income households.

This is all backwards. This is all wrong. This is a redistribution of wealth as if imagined by Robin Hood's evil twin. Taking from the poor and giving to the rich is not how you create a working bill for universal health care. This bill is first and foremost a tax reduction for the very rich.

We Are Many

Almost every time I read about US politics, I am struck by how polarized and conflict-oriented everything is. Most issues get dumbed down to an overly simplified position of two fundamentally irreconcilable extremes: yes or no, black or white, lovers or haters, north or south, urban or rural, us or them. Even the political scale from left to right tends to be mostly about left or right, which is strange, and it obviously doesn't work that way in practice. The two dominant parties have a wide spectrum of people from left to right, with some overlap, which is obvious from the attempts at rallying the GOP behind the health care bill. Creating a replacement bill for Obamacare that goes down well with both the most liberal and the most conservative Republicans in the House proved a very difficult task.

For almost every conflict, there is at least a scale between two extremes, where a lot of people tend to be more towards the middle and shift a little back and forth over time, rather than stick to one extreme. Furthermore, most issues are not one-dimensional and cannot be plotted on a simple scale like "from left to right". There are no simple answers to complicated questions, and the debate would benefit from admitting that.

This problem certainly isn't unique to the Unites States, but it seems to be particularly pronounced there.

(Disclosure: I'm Swedish, and Swedes are probably the most conflict-averse people in the world. But, hey, not picking fights has worked out extremely well for us for the past few centuries.)

Squirrel!

- I didn't do it.
- We think you did.
- Nobody saw me do it.
- In fact, we have several witnesses.
- You can't prove anything.
- Actually...
- Look! A squirrel!

This mash-up between "The Simpsons" and "Up!" is, figuratively speaking, where the political debate in the US has been going for the past few weeks. Short term crisis management and reporting around scandals have completely overwhelmed more important discussions about whatever long term plans there may have been. Politicians have been swept up into a tornado of "fake politics" and are unable to do their job. The issue is not whether Donald Trump's presidency will survive, because that seems highly unlikely by now, but the White House administration is basically dysfunctional, with no real leadership and far too many vacancies among medium level staff. One of the world's most powerful countries is tied up in a deeply troubling political infight.

While this is playing out, the US has only a weak presence in the international scene, and their internal ruckus is deeply damaging to their reputation, their credibility and their economy. In many ways, this is the best outcome Russia could have hoped for when they started their information attack on the United States. Kremlin's puppets might not last long in the Oval Office, but their legacy of chaos and destruction will taint the United States for years to come.

What's the Rush?

Today, the House of Representatives votes on the American Health Care Act, the Republican attempt at a "repeal and replace" of the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as "Obamacare". The bill put in front of the House is a terrible rush job, haphazardly thrown together almost without any consideration to its consequences. Intense negotiations are making last minute changes to squeeze the vote through, despite significant opposition from Republicans.

Why the rush? Making such a total mess of a law that will affect almost every US citizen is mind-bogglingly reckless. Living in a country (Sweden) where universal health care was introduced in 1955, I can only watch in astonishment. House speaker Paul Ryan might be counting on the bill to fail in the Senate, but if the bill is so bad that nobody really likes it, why rush the vote? Why not do this right?

President Mattis?

With each day, the scandal around the Trump administration and Russia grows. It is now a looming threat over the entire Republican party that could throw a large number of high ranking Republicans into impeachment, resignation, disgrace, or jail. Assuming that an impeachment process is initiated against the President, the US might not have a Vice President who can take over, because Mike Pence might well have been in on the collusion with Russia. In that case, looking at the succession order for the presidency, we see an interesting situation:

Next in line after Mike Pence is House speaker Paul Ryan. However, judging from his recent actions, he seems to be implicated in the cover-up. Senator Orrin Hatch was excluded from the recent closed briefing of the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI, so he seems to be somehow suspect as well. Rex Tillerson is one of the most questionable people in the Trump cabinet with his strong ties to Russian interests, and Steven Mnuchin is a member of Trump's inner circle, so he could be out as well.

The Russia connections now run so deep in the White House and in the Republican side of Congress that in case of an impeachment against Donald Trump, there is at least a remote possibility that we will see James Mattis, sixth in line, being offered the presidency. It's nothing but conjecture at the moment, but it doesn't sound nearly as impossible as it ought to. This says something about how serious the problems are for the Trump presidency.

Republican Defects over Republican Defects

The Republican Party is imploding before our eyes. Today, we saw their first official casualty.

Hawaii's former Republican leader Beth Fukumoto announced her resignation, not from Congress, but from the Republican party. When she announced her decision, by a candid speech on YouTube, she said she wanted to officially join the Democrats, because she could no longer agree with the Republican party line in terms of where they are trying to take her country. She concluded her speech with saying that she wanted to "stand up for something better", and encouraged others to join her.

While her GOP colleagues either run around like headless chicken trying to defend their president or themselves, or try to keep a low profile and wait out the storm, Beth Fukumoto did a very brave thing today and quit. She will not give up her seat in the House of Representatives, which means she is literally defecting and joining the resistance. This is a PR disaster for the GOP.

A Smoking Gun?

Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee, gave a brief interview after an absolutely moronic move by the Republican chairman of the committee, Devin Nunes. Nunes decided to share some special findings about domestic surveillance with the President, who is one of the subjects of the ongoing investigation by his own committee. Nunes' intent was probably to exonerate the President, but instead he ended up incriminating him further.

During Schiff's interview, he dropped a bombshell concerning the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign:

I don’t want to go into specifics, but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial and very much worthy of investigation.

The phrase "evidence that is not circumstantial" can't really mean anything else than "direct evidence", although Schiff declined to use the word "direct". He has a law degree, and he knows he can't say too much without leaking classified information. This is a big revelation, and we expect more detailed information to be revealed over the next few days or weeks.

Incoming! Exiting?

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said in an informal meeting with the press that she thinks President Trump "is going to get himself out", implying that she expects him to resign when we see the results of the investigation into the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. She is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and has seen evidence that most of us have not, so her statement, albeit made in passing, carries some weight. It's likely to be more than just wishful thinking on her behalf.

Then, on March 21, Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), tweeted this:

Get ready for impeachment.

Whoa. Seriously? Yes, apparently, but she did not elaborate further. That was all she wrote: 26 characters. Does she know something, or is this just her trolling of President Trump, perhaps to provoke him to make a mistake?

Note that she didn't even say who was going to be impeached, or who was supposed to get ready. She didn't tweet this at someone in particular. She does seem to think it's imminent, though. Let's see what happens. (I'm making popcorn.)

Reality Check

The current President of the United States, along with an unknown number of the people he has appointed to cabinet and other positions in the White House administration, are under investigation by the FBI for possibly colluding with Russian interests to influence the 2016 presidential election.

The President is literally suspected of collaboration with a hostile foreign power.

These are interesting times.

Nevertheless, he persists

President* Trump's information staff are struggling to alternately defend and downplay the damaging content of his now infamous early morning tweet, where he clearly presented the following accusation as undisputed fact:

President Obama ordered wire tapping of presidential candidate Donald Trump's telephones at his campaign headquarter in Trump Tower, probably to interfere with the election process. Obama is either a bad or sick person. They found nothing, but a good lawyer could probably make a criminal case out of this.

The accusation was made across four tweets and with different wording, but this is the gist of it. There were several parts to his explosive allegation, most of which are easily refutable, but President* Trump refuses to back down on any of it. This is, in eight numbered points, what he said:

1. President Obama gave the order to do this.
2. The action was "wire tapping", listening in on telephone conversations.
3. Donald Trump himself was being wire tapped.
4. The surveillance was done at Trump Tower in New York.
5. Its purpose was probably to interfere with the election process.
6. President Obama is either a bad or sick individual.
7. The investigation did not find anything wrong.
8. The wire tapping was probably illegal, but we should ask a lawyer.

Given the testimony by James Comey from Monday, March 20, what actually might have happened is more like this:

During President Obama's presidency, someone presented a court with enough circumstantial evidence of something damaging enough for the court (1) to approve some sort of surveillance (2) of one or more persons (3) in the Trump presidential campaign organization. The surveillance was done remotely. Donald Trump might have been recorded in "incidental collection" when one of these individuals contacted him, not necessarily at Trump Tower (4), or when he called them. The purpose of the surveillance was not to interfere (5) with the election process, but to keep a low profile and try to assess if the tampering and disinformation had any effect, and whether it could be traced back to Russian interests. President Obama is neither bad nor sick (6), and probably had no hand in this, if it happened. Until the investigation is published, we don't know if anything was found (7), and any actions taken by the FBI were perfectly legal (8).

Some people on team Trump are now trying to claim that what he meant to say was more along these lines. However, that is not what he said, and Trump himself refuses to back down on any of it.

Not a single one of the original eight points are true. In its entirety, Trump's accusation is simply false. And yet, he persists.

Panic Mode

Even before and during the hearing with James Comey before the House Intelligence Committee, the White House went into panic mode. Tweets were sent out, and press secretary Sean Spicer was assigned the thankless task of telling transparent lies that seemed to be invented on the spot.

People were disavowed and discredited without giving much consideration to the credibility of the statements. Michael Flynn, a key operative in the entire campaign, considered for Vice President and finally given the job of National Security Adviser, was referred to as "a volunteer for the campaign", as if he had never been important. About Paul Manafort, manager of the Trump campaign for five months in 2016, it was claimed he "played a very limited role for a very limited time". In a bizarre turn of events, two tweets sent out from the official presidential account @POTUS during the hearing were actually read out to Comey and Rogers, and those tweets were fact checked and discredited in real time. The White House was in shambles trying to distance themselves from a large number of people and deflecting to other issues, failing miserably at it.

However, when Comey and Rogers were asked about the wire tap allegations, and both said that there was no truth to them whatsoever, the President dug in and refused to back down on his claim. According to Donald Trump, President Obama definitely ordered wire tapping of him in Trump Tower in 2016. No evidence of this has turned up, but Sean Spicer said "the investigation is not finished yet" and said that the President stands firmly by his claim.

These desperate, amateurish and badly botched attempts at damage control only makes the people in the White House seem guilty. Sure, they had this coming, but it's still painful to watch.

When fake news repent

Despite their strong right-leaning bias, Fox News still has at least a hint of a soul.

They have now taken judge Andrew Napolitano off the air and made a public retraction of his ludicrous statement that the British intelligence organization GCHQ are responsible for wire tapping of presidential candidate Trump, by order from President Obama.

The allegation emanated from the Russian state sponsored news channel RT, a propaganda source with no credibility whatsoever, and after it was run through the echo chamber of right-wing conspiracy theorists, Napolitano mentioned it on Fox. President* Trump immediately picked up on it and treated it as fact, because he had seen it on Fox, so it must be true. He referred to Napolitano as "a very talented legal mind". Napolitano has had a long and successful career, but after joining Fox in 2006 he has been going downhill and become a run-of-the-mill conspiracy theorist. His recent statement shows that he is prepared to go completely off the rails to defend an indefensible president.

Now that Fox has disavowed Napolitano and debunked his statement about GCHQ, the only source President* Trump can quote for his accusation is RT, Putin's propaganda outlet. A world leader who is that gullible is embarrassing and dangerous.

Double whammy from Comey

The testimony from FBI director James Comey appearing before the House intelligence committee on Monday, March 20, was devastating for President* Trump. First, Comey made the highly unusual move of commenting on an ongoing investigation, by confirming that since June 2016 there is an active FBI investigation into the Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election, including any possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign organization.

Let's repeat that for emphasis: The FBI director confirmed that there is an ongoing FBI investigation into the Russian meddling with the US election process, and into any contacts and collusion between Russian agents and the Trump campaign.

He further said that the FBI would pursue the investigation wherever the evidence takes it. He provided no details on the progress of the investigation, and we should not expect any until it's finished.

Having an FBI director even confirm the existence of an ongoing investigation is highly unusual.

In addition to this absolutely disastrous blow to President* Trump, Comey completely debunked the deceitful accusation that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before the election. Everyone and their uncle have now said that this claim is completely bogus, including a long list of high ranking members from both sides of the aisle in Congress, current and former chiefs of intelligence, current and former members of cabinet, and now even the British intelligence agency GCHQ, which practically never speaks out in public.

President Trump told a huge, stupid and slanderous lie about Obama wire tapping him in Trump Tower. This made him look like a complete idiot, and he made the situation even worse by sticking with the lie after it was exposed. Even after the Monday hearings, he refused to back down and sent his press secretary to once again embarrass himself on TV and have his weak defense torn to shreds. Why the President* thought this would be a good idea is a mystery. The aftermath of the hearing was a last chance for him to admit that he based his accusations on unsubstantiated rumors from nut jobs in fake news. He chose not to seize that opportunity.

President* Trump has now lost all credibility and is going down. It might take a long time for him to actually fall, but it's hard to see any honorable way out of this for him.

The Anti-Press Secretary

Sean Spicer, press secretary to the White House, went on Fox News this weekend to accuse MSNBC:s Rachel Maddow of a crime for exercising her rights under the first amendment. It looks very much like a smear campaign to undermine her credibility in fear of what she might report next.

Recent polls show that a majority of US citizens now think that President Trump should release all his recent tax returns to either sort out any misunderstanding, or provide evidence of wrongdoing. If everything is in order, it should be a simple matter to clear his name. If everything is not in order, it would certainly be of interest for the general public to know.

Someone, somehow, got hold of the first two pages of Trump's tax return for 2005 and mailed them to a reporter, David Cay Johnston, who contacted Maddow. She in turn made sure to have the authenticity of the document confirmed by the White House before commenting on it in public.

The Supreme Court ruled long ago that it is a protected right under the first amendment for a reporter to release factually correct information which is of public interest, as long as no crimes were committed by the reporter in obtaining the information. All these conditions apply here. Either Spicer didn't know this and didn't care enough to find out before he went on the air to accuse Maddow of a crime, or he knew but was instructed to make a wrongful accusation to intimidate Maddow and smear her reputation.

The White House has nothing on Maddow. However, Maddow might very well have something on the White House.

The Fox President

President Trump and Fox News have an unhealthy relation. He barely watches any other channel, and in his Fox interviews he is given complete freedom to spout his lies.

Saturday's edition of Watter's World let the President tell a number of obvious lies without any objections from the host. Among the many falsehoods he told were that the US is "the highest taxed nation", a claim so preposterous it boggles the mind. This has been thoroughly debunked many times, but apparently it's true in his special bubble of alternative reality.

He said that according to recent polls, he was at his "all time high". It was unclear which polls he was referring to, but his popularity started out low and has been dropping significantly since his inauguration. He might have cherry picked an outlier poll, as he usually does when he struggles with reality, but he is definitely not at an all time high in popularity. On the contrary, a Gallup poll made this week shows him at a record low of 37%.

He called CNN "fake news", a tired slur that is now a joke on his expense, and claimed once again that, somehow, he was the one who got CNN:s Jeff Zucker his job. This is a dubious claim at best, but even if that were the case, so what? Would he expect special treatment because of it?

Lashing out both at Alex Baldwin, for his unflattering Trump impersonation on SNL, and the House minority leader Chuck Schumer for his political resistance, as if they were in any way equal in importance, President Trump was left free reign with the narrative, and once again made an appalling mockery of the truth.

Fox news isn't all bad, but in its worst moments it comes across as an unquestioningly loyal state-sponsored television channel in a dictatorship. It's scary to watch how Fox and Trump is heading down a scary path towards totalitarian rule.

Hopefully, there are enough real news media organizations around to sound a loud alarm, and enough checks and balances still in place in the US to stop this. Hopefully.

Untold lies unfold ties

When President Trump dismisses allegations of financial ties to Russian interests, it is worth noting what he doesn't say. This is the exact phrase he has been using at least twice:

“I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don't have any deals in Russia.”

Note what this doesn't say, and what it therefore allows. He denies having property, loans and business "in Russia", but he doesn't deny that Russians have invested in his businesses. It is evident that this is the case. He doesn't deny having loans in non-Russian banks with security from Russian oligarchs, which seems likely. He also doesn't deny having deals with Russians who are not currently in Russia. And, last but not least, he doesn't deny having had deals with Russia in the past, for example to save him from ruin around a decade ago.

Of course, not denying it does not imply a confirmation, but it's a possibility. Listen to exactly what he says. On this particular subject, he appears to be uncharacteristically careful with his choice of words, and his weasel wording is not really a denial of strong business ties to Russian interests, perhaps even a financial dependency on Russia.

Déjà Vu?

Wednesday, March 15, at 5PM, senators Chuck Schumer (D), Mark Warner (D), Diane Feinstein (D) and Chuck Grassley (R) received a briefing on "certain topics" about "highly classified matters" from FBI director James Comey. Coming out of that brefing, Feinstein and Grassley faced the media together, looking extremely grim. Feinstein offered very brief and uninformative comments, saying that she could not comment on highly classified information and telling the press representatives who had been waiting for a comment "I'm sorry, but it's the way life is here right now". Feinstein did all the talking, while Grassley, the chairman of the committee that had repeatedly asked for the briefing, remained silent and looked down. Both were visibly shaken.

We can only guess what they had heard moments before, but a reasonable guess is "nothing good". The requested topic of the briefing was if there were any FBI investigations into collusion and ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. However, we have no idea what was covered, nor what they heard. Notably absent from the invitation-only briefing were Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R) and President pro tempore Orrin Hatch (R). Chuck Grassley was the only Republican invited.

After Feinstein made her one-minute statement, Grassley asked her if she was "ready to go", and the Republican and the Democrat left together in silence. Feinstein's tight-lipped composure was eerily similar to what she looked like in the famous clip from 1978 when she announced that Harvey Milk and Los Angeles mayor George Moscone had been shot to death by Dan White.

This has a rather ominous look to it. Feinstein and Grassley seem to have been treated to information that neither of them was expecting, and that neither of them liked. The public House hearing with director Comey on Monday, March 20, might give us some more information, but it probably won't disclose whatever classified information these senators received.

I will not even venture a guess regarding what this was all about. At least, not in public. We will just have to wait and see.

Losing it

This is it: President Trump is losing his mind. He has been slipping for a long time, but now it looks as if he is over the edge. His most recent interview on Fox showed a paranoid man desperately trying to cling to his pathetic personal bubble of delusions rather than just admit that he misheard a Fox report about a Breitbart article and made some crazy stuff up to fill in the blanks just before he sent out his disastrous tweets about President Obama having ordered a wire tap on him in Trump Tower.

His incoherent ramblings didn't make any kind of sense. His story shifted during the bizarre interview, with President Trump stuttering and hesitating as if he was making things up on the spot. He said he had evidence that was going to be submitted "soon", but he also admitted it was something he saw on TV, and that "certain things" would be revealed over the next couple of weeks. He also claimed he read "something" to support his allegations in the New York Times, which he has been calling a "failing" newspaper. After placing the burden on the Congress Intelligence committee to find proof for his absolutely baseless accusations, he suddenly said "Let's see whether or not I prove it. I just don't choose to do it right now." Apparently, he just needs some time to find the proof he totally has already, and besides, the truth will come out eventually anyway, and he will be proven right. Right? Take that, dishonest leftist media bastards at every news organization except Fox! Everybody but Fox is fake news. And some of Fox is fake as well. You may think he's crazy, but he will be proven right. Soon. It's true. Just you wait and see.

No.

The wait is over, Mr. President, and the truth in the matter, the truth which you are so desperately afraid of telling, is that you don't have any kind of proof other than a Fox News mention of a trashy Breitbart fake news article about an old Mark Levin radio show, a news blurb which you misunderstood and stubbornly refuse to cite as your only source. You could still put this issue to rest with a simple retraction and an apology, and your failure to do so is not just strange - it's sick. If this is a distraction, it's a strange choice of distraction, because it is absolutely devastating to your reputation and your ability to get anything done during whatever remains of your presidency.

President Donald J Trump is mentally ill, suffering from delusions and paranoia, and needs to be forcefully removed from office before he does something rash and hurts people. The United States cannot function properly as long as its highest office is held by a deranged old fool trying to fake it on his job. He was in above his head even before his mental breakdown.

Just to show you how far gone his mind is, here's one exchange from that extremely friendly and soft Fox interview:

Q: Who do you talk to for military advice right now?

A: Well, I watch the shows. I mean, I really see a lot of great — you know, when you watch your show, and all of the other shows, and you have the generals, and you have certain people –.

President Donald Trump claims, seriously, that he gets his military advice from watching TV. Oh, and some generals and whatnot. But first and foremost, from watching TV.

This president is crazy.

Disclaimer: these are my opinions. You can have them if you want, but they are still mine.

"Believe me"

President Trump went to Nashville on March 15 to hold a rally. Yes, the election is over, and the next presidential election is not until 2020, but apparently, Donald Trump needs to have his ego reaffirmed by a cheering crowd. It didn't go down too well, though, and the crowd wasn't large enough by far to fill the 9,700 seats.

The Republican attempt at a health care bill is facing strong opposition and internal debate. The revised version of the Muslim travel ban was blocked just hours before the rally. The President's popularity is historically low and dropping in the polls, his unsubstantiated claim that he was wire tapped by President Obama remains unsubstantiated, his economic ties to foreign powers is being investigated, et cetera. His growing list of setbacks and annoyances rained on his parade in Nashville - figuratively speaking, of course, because rain never falls on parades and speeches by Donald Trump.

In a passage where he whined about having his precious travel ban blocked, for the same reasons as his original travel ban, President Trump said "The ruling makes us look weak" as a country, adding "By the way, we no longer are". And then, to top it off, he couldn't resist adding his verbal tic: "Believe me." Saying "believe me", "it's true" and other similar things is often an indication to the opposite. People who are telling the truth seldom feel the urge to reinforce the fact that they are telling the truth, while liars are often worried, at least subconsciously, that their lies will be exposed.

Well, Mr. President, America not only looks weak, but it is weak. You are a weak president, and you are not leading the country. Instead, you have weakened it by dividing it and pitting its citizens against each other, you have paralyzed the government by your sheer incompetence, you have been focusing on far too many unimportant, petty squabbles, and you have been telling big fat lies instead of doing your job. The world is mocking you, for very good reasons, and your enemies are rejoicing. And, just to make it absolutely clear:

No, Mr. President. We don't believe you.

The Nothing Burger

The term "nothing burger" has been a popular expression for Republicans commenting on the various scandals surrounding the Trump presidency. Their claim that there's nothing to the accusations, that it's just talk and no substance, is becoming harder to defend with any credibility as time passes and new embarrassing facts emerge.

Instead, we see another "nothing burger" take shape: the achievements of the Trump administration.

None of the many lofty promises Donald Trump made during his campaign have materialized. Nothing he has tried to accomplish has worked out. Not even his high profile, urgent executive order on the travel ban has worked. Its second version has now been blocked by a court injunction, much like the first one, and it seems unlikely that it will ever be enacted.

President Trump is a nothing burger, an ignorant man without any real skills and no long term plan, a blabbering fool trying to pretend he has what it takes to be president. His scam is now falling apart, and it will end badly.

Things that make you go "Hmmm"

Yesterday's tweet by Donald Trump Jr, sent out in response to last night's revelation by Rachel Maddow of Donald Trump's tax return from 2005, is interesting:

Thank you Rachel Maddow for proving to your #Trump hating followers how successful @realDonaldTrump is & that he paid $40mm in taxes! #Taxes

True enough, President Trump's taxes have been under scrutiny, with suspicions being raised that he pays no taxes at all because of a huge write-off from a decade ago, and people have suggested that he might no longer be wealthy, but "in the red", his total debt being larger than his assets. It has also been suggested that his business is no longer turning a profit, which puts him at risk of bankruptcy. However, the 2005 tax return doesn't prove nor disprove any of that. What his finances looked like 12 years ago really has nothing to do with what they look like today. For all we know, he could now be losing money at an alarming rate and be bankrupt. If that is the case, a suitable diversion would be to release some partial income and tax information from back when he still turned a profit and paid taxes, and pretend that it came from some mysterious, malicious source rather than from Donald Trump himself.

2005, a few years before his financial troubles allegedly started in 2008, was most likely a particularly good year for Trump. The source behind the leak seems to have cherry-picked this year and released only the unspecific summary part of the tax return. It's actually pretty likely that this is a "fake leak" from Donald Trump himself or one of his close associates. After a few days, he can say "Was this your best shot? Pathetic! (Sad.)", or something to that effect, and hope for the public interest in his tax returns to fade away. I don't think it's going to work, but it's not an entirely bad move. Not very well executed, true, but not completely stupid either.

It was a bit surprising to see Rachel Maddow jump on this, because she and her team seem smarter than that. Perhaps she deliberately took the bait to see what would happen? The response from the White House made an unfounded accusation of her breaking the law. That might not be enough to constitute a formal abuse of authority or intimidation, but at the very least it makes them look bad. Seeing how unusually coordinated and swift their follow-up has been so far is also suspicious, and interesting. She might just be stringing them along to see where it leads, and then drop the bomb about this being a fake leak. The Trump administration has a history of messing up its information management plans rather badly.

In any case, this is probably not the end of this story. If Donald Trump is prepared to put his entire presidency at risk rather than release his recent tax returns, they must surely contain some very juicy secrets. Things like that make people very curious indeed.

Diminishing returns

Yesterday, the first two pages of one of Donald Trump's old tax returns found their way to Rachel Maddow, reporter on MSNBC, and were widely disseminated across the media landscape. The general verdict is "meh". This is most likely just another distraction by Donald Trump and his associates to diminish the relevant news around his business ties and possible vulnerability to foreign interests - possibly even far-reaching allegiances to a foreign power that run deep in his administration.

The tax return is incomplete, it's just the first two pages, so the supplementary information on his creditors and sources of income is missing. The form is from 2005, before the Trump Organization ran into financial trouble around 2008 and started making shady deals with corrupt banks and foreign players suspected of money laundry. The numbers are in no way damaging or embarrassing to Donald Trump - quite the contrary. They merely show that back in 2005, he was still a successful businessman making a $150 million profit and paying a perfectly reasonable amount of income tax. Why anyone would leak this particular document to the press is a mystery.

Or, maybe it isn't such a mystery after all. This could actually be Donald Trump himself leaking an innocuous document of his own choosing to the press. The form is not signed, but says "client copy". This is not a document from the IRS, but Donald Trump's own copy, and only very few people close to him would have access to it. Furthermore, the reaction from the White House was very quick indeed, in the form of a fairly long, well written and correctly spelled official statement. The text contains unmistakable Trump jargon, which indicates that he was involved in writing it, but it was obviously edited, cleaned up and released by someone else. The statement made a point of criticizing the "dishonest press" for being "desperate for ratings" and wrongfully accusing them of "totally illegal" activity, but the White House confirmed the authenticity of the leaked document without any hesitation. Donald Trump Jr also reacted rather too quickly via Twitter in a suspiciously calm and calculated manner, slandering the media and the "Trump haters". Donald Trump himself remained silent, which is highly unusual. We saw no furious Twitter outburst before the official response, which seems carefully premeditated.

All in all, this looks very much like a badly orchestrated and largely ineffective deflection, using a move taken straight out of Donald Trump's playbook from his career as a businessman and celebrity. He used to call journalists under a phony name with a phony voice (which failed to fool anyone) and leak some benign inside information spiced with a few self-aggrandizing lies. This is most likely just another dishonest move from the crooked 45th president to distract reporters from the real issues.

I could say "Nothing to see here. Move along", but Rachel Maddow is no fool. By announcing hours in advance that she was going to show Donald Trump's tax returns, she cried "wolf" before the show, but her scoop failed to impress anyone. She knew that, and it seems unlikely that she would put her reputation at risk for something this small and insignificant. I suspect there is more to come.

The President is naked

"Liar, liar, pants on fire". President* Trump's constant lies have now reached the point where any sane person must realize that he is talking complete nonsense. White House spokespeople are faced with the impossible task of twisting and spinning his ridiculous lies into something that doesn't sound crazy, and they are making a terribly botched job of it. President* Donald Trump is now being ridiculed even by many of his former supporters, and he no longer has any credibility outside of his most hardcore base of fact-resistant voters.

This is not normal, but he is very obviously not going to stop. Therefore, while we are waiting for the investigations into his misconduct to bear fruit and hopefully either impeach him or force him to resign, we need to stop paying any attention to anything he says. Some of us should keep calling him out on his lies, and people with a dark sense of humor might wish to tune in now and then for the bizarre entertainment value, but it is time to stop believing anything that comes out of his mouth. He lies about anything, and he lies all the time. Pay attention to what he is doing, but ignore what he is saying.

The President is naked. He always was, but people are finally noticing. And it's not a pretty sight.

The irony curtain

We were just treated to this amazing Twitter message from President* Trump:

It is amazing how rude much of the media is to my very hard working representatives. Be nice, you will do much better!

I literally laughed out loud. The irony of this is completely off the charts. The most rude and slanderous president in history, the person who recently accused the previous president of a serious crime with absolutely no evidence to back it up, the person who has constantly been spreading lies about anyone opposing him, the person who mocked a disabled reporter and treats women like dirt, the person who thinks he gets to decide what is the truth, who peddles conspiracy theories straight from alt-right fake news sites but calls actual, serious news outlets "fake news", the person who calls media representatives "enemies of the American people" and consistently sends members of his administration to tell manipulative lies to media, that person asks the media to "be nice"? Wow. Let me repeat something from the Twitter comment field, where @realDonaldTrump obviously never looks:

It is amazing how rude President Trump is to our very hard working media representatives. Be nice, you will do much better!

The job of the media representatives is to disseminate information and call BS when they see it. I think they are doing just great. We are way past being nice, and it is a situation entirely of your own making, Mr. President*. Or, to put it in smaller words you can understand: Trump fail, 100%. Sad!

No. Just, no.

Yesterday, the White House press secretary Sean Spicer showed a more relaxed and pleasant side of himself, remarkably different from his usual white-knuckled combative stance at the podium.

He commented on the most recent Labor Department report on employment, which said that in February, 235,000 jobs were added to the US labor market, and unemployment dropped to a mere 4.7 percent. While it's a matter of debate how much of this is due to the current president, and how much is the lasting long term effect of decisions made by the previous president, it certainly is good news. The unemployment remains low, at least for now, after a 7 year streak of consecutive drops under Obama. Sure, just as many jobs were added both in February 2016 and February 2015, but it's not bad. And, well, looking closer at the statistics, the unemployment rate actually increased slightly both in December 2016 and January 2017, so it's still not quite as low as it was in November 2016 at 4.6 percent, before Donald Trump won the election and couldn't reasonably take any credit, but still: the curve hasn't turned immediately and sharply upwards under President* Trump, and that's good, right?

Graph by Ben Moore - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

The problem here for the Trump administration is that President* Trump has always slammed these Labor Department reports as "phony" and claimed that they are "total fabrications" which can't be trusted. On his campaign trail, he consistently tried to muddle the waters by saying that "actual" unemployment numbers were much higher and could be "as much as 28% or 29%, even 35%", or some other number he appeared to make up on the fly. On at least one occasion, he told a particularly whopping lie and claimed that the unemployment was actually 42 percent, which is nothing short of ludicrous. An echo of this insanely inflated figure was still heard in his address to the Congress just a couple of weeks ago, when he claimed that "94 million Americans are out of the labor force". Technically, that's true: 94 million US citizens over the age of 16 are not working. However, most of them are either retired, still in school, or spouses choosing to stay at home. Only about 11 million of those 94 million people are actually looking for a job.

During his campaign, Donald Trump had a political agenda to slam President Obama for creating an "American carnage" with nation-wide unemployment high and on the rise, and therefore he had to ignore the facts that unemployment has been dropping consistently each year since a high mark of 10 percent when President Obama took office in 2009.

Of course, one of the journalists in the press room asked the pertinent question if we should believe the statistics from the Labor Department, considering that the president had called bogus on every single one of these reports for well over a year. Spicer suddenly looked very relieved and offered this response with a broad smile that looked absolutely sincere:

“I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly: They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”

Spicer literally said this with a laugh, and the press corps joined in the laughter. It was a moment of bonding between information worker professionals, finally agreeing over something that had long been a point of unnecessary contention. Adding to the fun was that everybody, quite possibly Spicer included, enjoyed silently mocking the President for his utterly stupid remark. For a moment, the press room seemed a little brighter and the air felt easier to breathe.

And then, unfortunately, they moved on.

I understand. They needed the laugh. It was a moment of much needed comic relief, a rare occasion where Spicer could face the press with some dignity and quote the president word for word on a sensitive issue, instead of having to think of yet another lie to tell on behalf of his delusional boss. I laughed, too. It was a nice, human moment in a room which had been sullied by fights, anger and bizarre lies for much too long. I totally get it. But we must think more carefully about it.

This is not a laughing matter. Not at all. President* Trump does not get to decide when we are to believe in government issued statistics, when we should consider it "real" and when we are to disregard it as "fake news". The Labor Department has used exactly the same methods to generate the data point for February 2017 as it has for every month for many years, and if this month's figures are reliable, they all are. If the unemployment starts to rise, we will surely see President* Trump denouncing the reports as "phony" once again. After all, it was only a month ago when the President said about his declining popularity ratings, apparently in full earnest:

 "Any negative polls are fake."

President* Trump is fickle beyond belief and shows a reckless disregard for the truth whenever he speaks. The fact that we could find a way to laugh at one of his stupid lies this once does not mean that he can get away with it. A person who wants to decide what is true and what is false, in a totally arbitrary manner based on nothing but his own opinions and his own brittle ego, is not a person fit to be the president of a democracy. Only a person with the mindset of a dictator would even try to get a monopoly on the truth. President* Trump is very obviously not fit for his job.

Deflection by reflection, objection by projection

Throughout the Trump campaign, there was a peculiar pattern to Donald Trump's knee-jerk responses and his vile slander of opponents: most of his accusations against others can be interpreted as reflections of himself. His derisive name-calling with puerile attributes include "lying Ted" and "crooked Hillary". He often calls his critics "weak", "fake" and "phony". Looking at how his first term as president has started, most of those attributes which he assigns to others are in fact applicable to himself. Perhaps the most telling moment was when Hillary Clinton, in one of the televised presidential debates, accused Donald Trump outright of being Putin's puppet. Donald Trump interrupted by responding "No puppet. No puppet. You're the puppet". This is a response at the intellectual level of a five-year-old, but let's not dwell on that. Hillary Clinton was certainly not a puppet of Putin, nor of anyone else. Donald Trump, however, has showed time and time again that he refuses to say anything even remotely negative about Putin, for unknown and inexplicable reasons. It's getting difficult to ignore that elephant in the room, and we see a slow but constant trickle of revelations around his alleged ties to Russia.

During his campaign, Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of being mentally unfit for the presidency. Now we see him struggling to even pretend he has what it takes for the job. Republicans built a "psychological profile" of Hillary during the campaign, but the candidate who would really have needed that profiling was Donald Trump.

There are many more examples of this, too numerous to list. Trump's pattern of projection is pervasive and consistent, so much so that it seems like a personality trait. Does this behavior extend to more than personal insults during debates? Shortly after the Russian interference with the election process started, but before it became publicly known, Trump started shouting about how the election was rigged in Hillary's favor. Could that have been an inadvertent admission that he knew it was actually being rigged in his favor?

The incumbent 45th President of the United States is lying more often than he tells the truth. We already knew that, and whenever he says "believe me" or "it's true", experience tells us that his claims are almost certain to be false. However, there could be a lesson here. When Donald Trump accuses someone else of something, we should suspect that those very accusations could apply to himself. It might be suppressed self-criticism, even a subconscious admission of guilt, or it might just be that he lacks enough imagination to make up an accusation from scratch. In any case, whenever he accuses someone of something, we should perhaps consider using the retort of an annoying child:

"I know you are, but what am I?"

Next up: OMG Aliens!!!

Investigative journalists should rightfully be considered heroes for what they have done in recent weeks to dig into the many convoluted mysteries involving Russia and President* Trump. One tell-tale sign that they are on the right track, or at least closing in on something, is that the attempts at misdirection from Trump and his apologists are now rapidly becoming ever more outlandish and desperate.

A week ago, Trump finally realized that his old ghost story about Hillary Clinton being his constant adversary didn't work any more. Therefore, he invented another bogeyman lurking behind every corner: his evil nemesis Barack Obama. When that didn't stick either, he tried to dodge the fallout by asking for a congressional investigation into his baseless allegations, but instead he made matters worse. Congress took him both seriously and literally, and honored his request. The investigation is very unlikely to find any justification for the claims of Obama having ordered wire taps on his phones in Trump Tower, but it's quite likely to turn up even more dirt on Donald Trump, and soon.

Enter the right-wing conspiracy theorists. Sean Hannity, talk show host of Fox News infamy, scrambled to the rescue of a cornered President* Trump. Hannity now hilariously tries to push a fabricated story that the CIA was behind the interference with the 2016 election, and that they shifted the blame on Russia by leaving a false forensic trail. The idea is, of course, completely bonkers when you look at the facts. It's nothing more than a desperate last-ditch attempt to divert attention from a story that's starting to become really inconvenient. The fervent and categorical denials by the Trump administration of any ties whatsoever to Russia have been proven wrong on several points, which only adds to the feeling that they have something to hide.

What's next? The Pope? The UN? The Amish? UFO:s? Look out, liberal alien overlords are hiding behind the Moon, and tapping all the phones in Trump Tower using an army of clones that would all look exactly like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton if they weren't invisible! No, no, no, don't look over there, Russia is a ruse, Donald Trump has no connections to Russia, and neither does any of the people he works with. Well, maybe some of them, but OMG ALIENS!

Hint: it's not working.

Impeachably offensive

At the Philadelphia Convention back in 1787, Benjamin Franklin noted that history had seen undesirable persons in government positions - people who in Franklin's words had "rendered themselves obnoxious". The old school way of removing such persons from office was by assassination, but Franklin wisely suggested making the US Constitution allow for a more civilized method: impeachment. Through this method, it's possible to remove from office the President, Vice President, any member of the cabinet and any federal judge, by votes and due process in Congress.

Valid grounds for impeachment are treason, bribery, or "high crimes and misdemeanors". The last of those three is not entirely well defined, but it's meant to cover acts that might not be criminal offenses as such if committed by an ordinary citizen, but constitute a breach of trust or abuse of power from a high ranking government official with special powers and special obligations. In military courts, such acts include perjury, abuse of authority, intimidation, misuse of assets, failure to supervise, dereliction of duty, unbecoming conduct, and refusal to obey a lawful order, and that definition can reasonably be applied to presidential "high crimes" as well.

An interesting fact about perjury is that it is usually taken to mean "lying under an oath of truth", but when the Constitution was written, it had the wider meaning of violation of any oath. The president and all members of cabinet, in fact any person taking a government job in the US, are sworn in by taking an oath of office, and can reasonably be considered under oath at all times. This means that lying in public about a substantial matter with the purpose of misleading, while holding any position of office for the US government, can be considered perjury.

To initiate the process of impeachment, the House of Representatives is required to first ask the Judiciary Committe to investigate whether such grounds exist, and a majority of the committee needs to decide to proceed with the matter. Formal impeachment then requires a majority vote in the House.

If a majority of the House votes for impeachment, it falls to the Senate to conduct a trial, first considering arguments and evidence from both sides and listening to the witnesses each side chooses to call, and then passing judgment. Conviction requires a two-thirds majority vote by the Senate. If considered guilty, the impeached person is immediately removed from office, while acquittal allows the person to remain. In addition to removal from office, Senate may extend the judgment to include disqualification, which bars the convicted person from holding any future government office.

Only two US presidents have ever been impeached (Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998), and both were acquitted by the Senate. Richard Nixon was heading for impeachment in 1974, but resigned before any impeachment vote was held. For both Nixon and Clinton, the "high crime" was lying in public. Nixon lied to cover up illegal wire taps against his political opponents, and Clinton lied to cover up a sexual relation with a White House intern.

President* Trump lies all the time, about matters great and small, seemingly without any qualms or hesitation, and without remorse or repentance when he is caught and called out for it. That is not normal, and it constitutes a violation of his solemn oath to "well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office".

Will we finally see this section of the Constitution being applied successfully? There appears to be some reasons already. Feel free to use the checklist below as the Trump scandal unfolds.

• Treason
• Bribery
• Perjury
• Abuse of authority
• Intimidation
• Misuse of assets
• Failure to supervise
• Dereliction of duty
• Unbecoming conduct
• Refusal to obey a lawful order

Brace for Impact

The end is near. But, fortunately, only for President* Trump and an unknown number of his associates. The world will keep going, and hopefully we will all come out of this nightmare a little wiser.

Don't Care Act

President* Donald Trump seems determined to champion the proposed Republican health care bill and negotiate it himself with Congress. Republicans are very eager to try to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, popularly referred to as "Obamacare". The official name of the new legislation is "America's Health Care Act".

Judging from how little effort appears to have been spent creating the bill, how even Republicans seem reluctant to embrace it, and how it would make millions of US citizens lose their coverage, a better name would be the "America's Don't Care Act".

Going unchecked

March 7, in an early morning Twitter rant, President* Trump made this claim:

122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!

"Gitmo" refers to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay naval base, "GTMO", that was set up in 2002 to hold terrorist suspects. A simple fact check, one phone call away for the man commanding a small army of intelligence professionals, would have told him something different. His statement is completely false, like so many other statements he has made.

The probable cause for this particular tweet was a passage an hour earlier on Fox News, where they quoted statistics from an old National Intelligence report from September 2016. Trump assumed, without bothering to ask anyone for confirmation, that all of these 122 people must have been released during Obama's presidency. That was implied by Fox by not stating when it happened, but they never said it straight out.

The reason Fox never said it is, of course, that it isn't true. Of those 122 prisoners, 113 were released by the Bush administration, and only 9 were let out under Obama's watch.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, mounted a pathetic first defense a few hours later by trying to claim that "of course the President meant in totality" and referred to prisoners released either by Bush or Obama. That is completely false on its face, because that is not what the President's tweet said. The text reads "released by the Obama administration".

The next day, Spicer instead tried a different approach and said that under the Bush administration, "most of the releases" were court-ordered, while Obama had an agenda to release everybody and close the camp. Obama certainly had that goal, and he was very vocal about it, but once again, Spicer's statement is completely false. Checking the facts, the proportion of court-ordered releases from Gitmo during the Bush presidency was around 4%. Thus, not even a handful of the 113 releases were court ordered. Calling a 4% fraction "most of the releases" is, once again, completely false. Coming from the official spokesperson of the White House, it's nothing short of a deceptive and nefarious lie.

Defending a lie with more lies, and not even bothering to make any of those lies hard to reveal, does not exactly make things better for the deeply troubled Trump administration.

Faulty Trump Towers

Last night, I was reminded of the John Cleese TV series "Fawlty Towers", where the running joke was for the hotel manager, Basil Fawlty, to make some relatively small mistake, and then spend the rest of the episode trying to cover it up, making a huge mess of it. The debacle always ended in total disaster with his complete and utter humiliation. In the next episode, he hadn't learned anything, but did the same mistake all over again.

This is what we are seeing with President* Trump, every week. With John Cleese as a fictional character, it was great and memorable comedy. In real life with the President* of the United States in the lead role, it's not the least bit funny. It's sad, embarrassing, and very, very scary.

Ghosts from the past

In their book "The Final Days", Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein gave a troubling account of the last month of Richard Nixon's presidency in 1974. They described a president suffering from severe paranoia, hiding in the Oval Office during the day and spending his nights walking around drunk in the White House, talking to portraits of previous presidents. The current president of the United States is probably not having conversations aloud with the portrait of his idol Andrew Jackson (perhaps the most controversial of his predecessors), but his behavior signals very clearly that he is becoming increasingly mentally unstable. He literally seems to be coming apart before our eyes, and it's not a pretty sight.

President* Donald Trump has been detached from reality for quite a while, probably since long before he was elected. His wild accusations of massive voter fraud and illegal wire tapping makes it clear that he is now also paranoid and goes all-in on baseless crazy conspiracy theories presented without proof. Paranoia definitely doesn't sit well with being one of the most powerful persons in the world. President* Trump poses a severe security risk to his country, and by extension to the entire world. He must be removed from office as soon as possible, before he does irreparable harm. What he has done so far has been appalling and reckless, but none of his legislation has actually kicked in yet, and there is still time for the Congress to call for support from what few decent people there might be in the current administration, invoke Section 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution and save the world from President* Donald Trump by doing the right thing: removing him from office.

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Having a dangerously insane person like Donald Trump in the Oval Office is disastrous, unsustainable and, frankly, unthinkable.

The rats are leaving the ship

After President* Trump stubbornly refused to back down on his serious accusations, made Saturday morning on Twitter without proof, that his predecessor Barack Obama ordered an unlawful wire tapping of his campaign headquarters in Trump Tower, even his fellow Republicans are dropping support for him.

Their methods differ, but nobody, not even his closest associates, are agreeing with him. Some Republicans voice their doubt and demand more information, and some remain silent or make noncommittal statements. Some, like the White House principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, try in vain to spin what the president actually wrote on Twitter into something less explosive and less embarrassing, but nobody wants to jump on the crazy train, and everybody seems uneasy, ashamed and generally upset over what President* Trump did.

A particularly clever response came from Jason Chaffetz, Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Chaffetz said he hadn't seen any proof, but assumed that President* Trump would not have made the accusation without some piece of evidence:

“Look, it’s a very serious allegation. The president has at his fingertips tens of billions of dollars in intelligence apparatus. I’ve got to believe -- I think he might have something there, but if not, we're going to find out.”

Now, think whatever you want of Chaffetz, but he is obviously not stupid. Read this quote under the reasonable assumption that he knows that the entire accusation is pure hogwash and has no proof whatsoever except for a crazy Breitbart article about one delusional conspiratorial rant made by a kook radio host. This is very clearly not a statement of support. Quite the contrary: this is Jason Chaffetz preparing to denounce Donald Trump and cut all ties with him. He is not alone. Similar responses were heard from high ranking Republicans, including people in Trump's own administration. Even the infamous Kellyanne Conway, otherwise provenly comfortable with lying through her teeth for President* Trump, took this approach, distancing herself from a massive, incriminating false accusation made by her boss.

The ship is sinking, and the rats are leaving. The question is: is there anywhere they can go?

Off to Mar-a-la-la-land

We should seriously question the mental stability of President* Trump. His wild accusations against Barack Obama failed to convince anyone, and he spent his weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Florida fuming and ranting over it. According to the Washington Post, he ran into his old friend Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax, on the golf course, and he vented to him over dinner on Saturday. Ruddy said that Trump told him: “This will be investigated. It will all come out. I will be proven right.” Ruddy further added about Trump that “He was pissed. I haven’t seen him this angry.”

James Comey, director of the FBI, has made a request that the Department of Justice release an official statement to debunk the false claims about Obama wire tapping Trump Tower. When nobody at the DOJ rose to the challenge, Comey didn't wait. Instead, he decided to make his request known to the public. When the director of the FBI feels an urgent need to tell the country that the President* is lying, it spells serious trouble for that President*.

President* Trump has been living in a bubble of denial, and now he seems to be entering a state of outright paranoia. This is not going to end well for him, and I fear he will do more harm before he's done.

Reality refuses to bend to Donald Trump's will

On Sunday morning, the former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, went public on NBC:s "Meet The Press" and clearly denied that any wire tapping took place in Trump Tower during his time in office from 2010 to the end of Obama's presidency. He stated in no uncertain terms that he "would definitely have known about" a FISA warrant, and that it never happened.

There is no longer any doubt that Donald J Trump once again sank to the level of using his unique and strong platform as the President* of the United States to regurgitate an outlandish lie and a conspiracy theory taken straight from crazy right-wing news outlets. However, his request that the Congress Intelligence Committees look into his unfounded accusations remain. Congressman Jim Himes responded via Twitter: "as a member of the committee onto which you've dumped this mess, I look forward to seeing your evidence".

On the bright side, President* Trump asking his secretary to print out a short Breitbart story and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees dismissing that "evidence" shouldn't take long. The toddler-in-chief might use his marker pen to circle the words "Obama" and "silent coup", but that still doesn't make it true.

A business of weasels

President* Donald Trump, or more likely one of his advisors tasked with emergency damage control, found a way of at least postponing the embarrassment from investigating his Saturday morning rage-tweet mentioned in the previous post. President* Trump made careless and most likely groundless accusations that former President Obama personally authorized a "wire tap" in Trump Tower, New York City. Assistants to Mr. Obama have categorically denied the allegations, educating President* Trump about how the surveillance laws in the US work. (The President's executive power does not extend to authorizing surveillance of US citizens. It requires a FISA warrant issued by a federal judge.)

Sean Spicer, the press secretary for the White House, issued this statement later during the day, without presenting any more details or evidence to support the accusations:

"Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling. President Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016. Neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted."

Note the last sentence. Damage control has now put the lid on the story, once again deflecting from a clear sign of President* Trump's ineptitude, ignorance and lack of self control. They don't even have to acknowledge his obvious mistake in confusing the executive branch of power (the President and the cabinet) with the judicial branch (the courts and judges).

This weasel move dodges the calls for elaboration and more evidence, and it softens the blow to the President's heavily tainted reputation. The expected revelation that there is absolutely nothing to the allegations will now be delayed until the outrage has blown over, and it can be hidden away in an inconspicuous report released somewhere down the line. This will also let President* Trump off the hook, at least temporarily, for disclosing his sources. Most likely, his sources are woefully inadequate for such a serious, public accusation. Last but not least, it won't require him to reveal any time soon whether there was in fact a FISA warrant against his campaign. The mere existence of a warrant would raise suspicions that there was something illicit going on. For good reasons, there is a high bar for a prosecutor to get such a warrant.

Of course, this request for an investigation will also divert some of the attention of the Senate and House intelligence committees and make their job slightly more taxing. However, as disingenuous as that move is, it won't be enough to obscure the much more serious issue at hand: the Trump campaign, the Trump transition team and the Trump administration all show troubling signs of collusion with the Russian government.

No matter how hard President* Trump tries to spin, dodge and weasel his way out of this situation, he is running out of time, options and trust to remain in office.

(The phrase "a business of weasels" is one way of referring to a group of weasels, like "a school of fish" or "a pack of rats". Another phrase is "a confusion of weasels". Yes. Honestly. Look it up.)

The Trump who stole the Presidency

Early in the morning on March 4, 2017, President* Donald Trump once again took to Twitter to blow off some steam. He was particularly agitated after a couple of days of serious media fallout surrounding his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. Following the revelation that during his Senate confirmation hearing, he had made misleading or false statements under oath about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, Sessions chose to recuse himself from investigations into related matters and asked to "amend" his sworn testimony to the Senate. (When ordinary people lie under oath and are caught, they are accused of perjury, but when members of the Trump administration do the same, they apparently get a do-over. However, that is beside the point here.)

In a series of tweets, Trump accused former President Barack Obama of "wire tapping" the Trump Tower in New York. He lashed out at his predecessor and called him a "bad (or sick) guy", in his familiar stunted vocabulary. The tweets were probably spurred by a short reference in Fox News to a recent article from Breitbart about a story from angry right-wing radio host Mark Levin, in turn referencing an old allegation from Heat Street that a FISA warrant had been granted in October 2016 for some kind of surveillance of communication at Trump Tower. Fox is a mainstream news outlet, albeit right-leaning and notoriously apologetic towards Donald Trump. Breitbart is an extreme right-wing source founded by Steve Bannon, and Heat Street is a right-wing source of British origin and dubious quality. Mark Levin, who is at the heart of this story, is one of the more notorious "angry white guy" right-wing conspiracy theorists and has absolutely no credibility at all. President* Trump's lack of propensity for checking his sources is infamous by now. The Heat Street article, which has not been independently verified, was published in early November 2016, but Donald Trump treated the entire story as news, and claimed he had "just learned" about the wire tapping, without citing any sources or evidence.

Now, misinterpreting what was just shown on Fox News and ranting about it in public is nothing out of the ordinary for a president who is well known to have a short temper and bad judgment, who constantly lies about issues great and small, has a weak grasp on reality and displays an utter inability to handle setbacks and criticism. People in his own administration were taken by surprise by the tweets, but being numb from several similar incidents in the past, they didn't really bother responding.

Somewhat surprisingly, several mainstream news outlets did respond, though. In fact, they took the allegations seriously, as if Donald Trump was a real president and a grown-up person, and made a story of it. At first, it seemed strange that they would take anything as outlandish seriously, but a pattern emerged after a while. By taking the preposterous allegations at face value, the mainstream media reported about a president literally accusing his predecessor of criminal activity, which is a very serious matter indeed. As a result, President* Trump lost control of the narrative, and within hours the story turned against him and blew up in his face.

It is a fact that a president of the US cannot legally authorize wire tapping of a US citizen. The so-called FISA bill, signed into law in 2008, makes it possible to monitor domestic communications, but for that to happen, a strong case needs to be made by a prosecutor to a special, secret court, and a warrant must be issued. The claim by Trump that he "has been" wire tapped, not that he "might have been", is an outright admission that he thinks that wire tapping took place. If this was done without a FISA warrant, it is highly illegal, which makes the allegations against former President Obama a very serious matter. It would obviously require President* Trump to elaborate and pursue the matter further. During the day following his morning tweets, he was asked to do exactly that, even by Republicans who would be considered his political allies. Calling for this course of action holds President* Trump accountable for his statements, something that should of course be expected of a real president. In any normal presidency, words from the President of the United States would rightfully be respected and acted upon. For President* Trump, not so much. At least not until now.

If, on the other hand, the surveillance had legal footing, it would mean that some government intelligence authority like the FBI made a case to the FISA court and had a warrant issued. This means that they could present a strong case of someone in the Trump Tower being involved in serious criminal activities involving contacts with a foreign hostile power. This would be very damning indeed to Donald Trump and his administration.

By making these public statements, President* Trump has, figuratively speaking, shot himself in the foot. Either he needs to follow through on his accusations against President Obama, or admit to the wire tapping being legal. In that case, it can be argued that his public admission, in his role as the President, of the wire tapping constitutes a de facto declassification of the existence of a FISA warrant, and that this should be formally acknowledged by the government.

Of course, he could just admit that he lied and tweeted baseless claims quoted from a crazy extreme right-wing source without credibility, but that seems to be something which would not come easy to Donald Trump.

The constant stream of nonsense, stupidity and lies from President* Trump is seriously damaging for his public image and his credibility, and he seems unable to act like a responsible adult. The decision by several news organizations to handle his latest tweet-storm as if he wasn't a petulant child shows exactly how he is unfit to serve. A president who can't be taken seriously is ineffective, ridiculous and dangerous. Donald Trump simply cannot be allowed to remain in office.