TBR News June 4, 2020
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. June 4, 2020: Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not
the place to discuss it.
Comment for June 4, 2020: Trump has been frantically trying, once he left the protection of the White House bunker, to get the US military to crack down on any opposition in the United States. He wants, desperately, to stay in the high office he firmly believes God chose him to occupy. Trump is a nut. I daily hear bits and pieces of his lunacy from staff members in the White House and rumor at high levels here in Washington is that Trump will be deposed…very firmly and very permanently. He has created more manic uproar than a bus full of nuts armed with machineguns and official Washington, and the American power elites are sick and tired of his mindless bombast, dangerous lies and erratic behavior.”
Trump approval rating
June 1-2, 2020
Ipsos Poll
Approve Disapprove
39% 56%
The Table of Contents
• James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution
• A triple whammy of crises tests Trump’s support ahead of November’s election
• Twitter accuses President Trump of making ‘false claims’
• Donald Trump Is an Autocrat. It’s Up to All of Us to Stop Him.
• It’s in the blood!
• A Perfect Storm
• Trump’s Bible photo op splits white evangelical loyalists into two camps
• Trump autographs bibles while meeting Alabama tornado victims
• German Official Leaks Report Denouncing Corona as ‘A Global False Alarm’
• Donald Trump’s Fake Renoir: The Untold Story
• Trump & US ‘Insurrection’
James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution
In an extraordinary condemnation, the former defense secretary backs protesters and says the president is trying to turn Americans against one another.
May 3, 2020
by Jeffrey Goldberg
The Atlantic
James Mattis, the esteemed Marine general who resigned as secretary of defense in December 2018 to protest Donald Trump’s Syria policy, has, ever since, kept studiously silent about Trump’s performance as president. But he has now broken his silence, writing an extraordinary broadside in which he denounces the president for dividing the nation, and accuses him of ordering the U.S. military to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens.
“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis writes. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.” He goes on, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”
In his j’accuse, Mattis excoriates the president for setting Americans against one another.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
He goes on to contrast the American ethos of unity with Nazi ideology. “Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that ‘The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
Mattis’s dissatisfaction with Trump was no secret inside the Pentagon. But after his resignation, he argued publicly—and to great criticism—that it would be inappropriate and counterproductive for a former general, and a former Cabinet official, to criticize a sitting president. Doing so, he said, would threaten the apolitical nature of the military. When I interviewed him last year on this subject, he said, “When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country. They still have the responsibility of protecting this great big experiment of ours.” He did add, however: “There is a period in which I owe my silence. It’s not eternal. It’s not going to be forever.”
That period is now definitively over. Mattis reached the conclusion this past weekend that the American experiment is directly threatened by the actions of the president he once served. In his statement, Mattis makes it clear that the president’s response to the police killing of George Floyd, and the ensuing protests, triggered this public condemnation.
Here is the text of the complete statement.
In Union There Is Strength
I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.
A triple whammy of crises tests Trump’s support ahead of November’s election
June 4, 2020
by James Oliphant and Chris Kahn
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Battered by crisis after crisis, President Donald Trump appears to be in political peril as never before.
Since taking office in 2017, Trump has weathered storm after storm, always emerging with a fighting chance at being re-elected. After he survived an impeachment trial that saw him acquitted by the Republican-led Senate on Feb. 5, things looked up.
Now Trump’s Teflon shield is being put to an acid test as he faces a triple whammy – the biggest public health crisis in a century, the worst economic downturn in generations and the largest civil unrest since the 1960s.
This week, Trump’s calls for a crackdown here on nationwide protests over police brutality have drawn rebukes from civil rights advocates, religious leaders, opposition Democrats and some fellow Republicans.
Even former Republican president George W Bush felt the need to issue a statement that the protesters be heard here
Perhaps of more concern to Trump and his re-election campaign, however, is that almost every opinion poll points to clear signs of erosion of his electoral support since the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has taken almost 109,000 American lives since February and led to 40 million jobless claims.
At the same time, his Democratic opponent in the Nov. 3 election, Joe Biden, has re-emerged in public from a coronavirus lockdown, with a message of unity and civic healing here that stands in marked contrast to Trump’s talk of “thugs” and “lowlifes” and “law and order.”
So far, Trump’s aggressive tone does not seem to be matching the moment. An opinion poll by Reuters/Ipsos this week showed that a bipartisan majority of Americans, including twice as many independents, sympathize with protesters and disapprove of Trump’s bellicose response.
REFRAME DEBATE
Republicans say he has time to turn things around, particularly if the economy begins to rebound. And, they note, if the protests persist and become unruly, voters may become more responsive to Trump’s hardline approach.
“As awful as this is, it does allow Trump the opportunity to reframe the debate the way he wants it to be – law and order versus chaos,” said Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee official and frequent Trump critic. “That is part of the conversation that he wants.”
A source close to the Trump campaign said the protests have taken attention away from the government’s often-criticized handling of the pandemic. And Trump could ultimately benefit if states continue to re-open their economies and job numbers improve in the fall, said the source, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly.
Right now, though, the numbers are against him.
More than 55% of Americans said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the protests, including 40% who “strongly” disapproved, while just one-third said they approved – lower than his overall job approval of 39%, the poll showed.
A separate Reuters poll this week showed Biden’s lead over Trump among registered voters expanded to 10 percentage points – the biggest margin since the former vice president became his party’s presumptive nominee in early April.
This week, for the first time since Biden became the likely nominee, betting markets favored him to beat Trump in November. Both Smarkets, based in the U.K. and PredictIT, based in New Zealand, had previously said the odds were with Trump.
With five months to go until the election, there’s plenty of time for those odds to change.
Tim Murtaugh, spokesman for the Trump campaign, said the campaign’s internal data shows the president is “running strong” with Biden in battleground states. “Everyone knows public polling is notoriously wrong about President Trump,” he said.
LOSING GROUND
An analysis of Reuters/Ipsos polling since March shows that Trump’s approval, which has remained remarkably consistent over more than three years, has slipped among some demographic groups of voters who will be crucial in deciding the election.
An increasing number of Americans who make more than $100,000 a year, those between the ages of 35 and 54 years old and white women with college degrees said they were considering Biden.
Trump’s approval among those earning six-figure salaries dropped 15 percentage points between March and May while Biden’s lead with that group expanded by 9 points.
College-educated white women, meanwhile, support Biden over Trump by a 23-point margin, up from 19 points in March. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, won this group by seven points. They helped power Democrats to large gains in 2018’s congressional elections.
Biden’s 10-point lead in the head-to-head poll matched two other national polls by Monmouth University and The Washington Post and ABC News. At this point in 2016, Clinton led Trump generally by less than five points.
Trump’s upset victory then still gives his supporters hope he can do it again.
“I still think he gets re-elected,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party. “And I know what all the polls say.”
Robinson pointed to the U.S. stock market being up almost 40% since the coronavirus lockdowns in March as an indicator that “things are not as bad as we thought.”
David Wasserman, an elections analyst with The Cook Report, noted that Trump’s campaign has not been able to fully unleash its attacks on Biden and his record while dealing with the pandemic and protests. That could change this summer.
In addition, because of the makeup of the Electoral College, which dictates the outcome of the election and currently gives Republicans a structural advantage, Wasserman said Biden could be up by as much as 5% in national polls in November and still lose to Trump.
“This lead is not safe,” Wasserman said.
Reporting by James Oliphant and Chris Kahn; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Grant McCool
Twitter accuses President Trump of making ‘false claims’
June 3, 2020
by Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent
BBC News
Twitter has accused the US president of making false claims, in one of the app’s own articles covering the news.
The move – which effectively accuses the leader of lying – refers to a tweet by Donald Trump about his first defence secretary.
Mr Trump had tweeted that he had given James Mattis the nickname “Mad Dog” and later fired him.
But Twitter’s article says that the former general resigned, and his nickname preceded Trump’s presidency.
It follows last week’s explosive confrontation, which saw Twitter fact-check two of President Trump’s tweets and label another as glorifying violence.
The latest confrontation was prompted by a strongly-worded statement issued by General Mattis last night, in which he criticised the president’s handling of the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd.
Gen Mattis described Donald Trump as “the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.”
The president fired back quickly in a tweet saying that the one thing he and predecessor Barack Obama had in common was “we both had the honour of firing Jim Mattis, the world’s most overrated general. I asked for his letter of resignation and felt good about it”.
“His nickname was ‘Chaos’, which I didn’t like, and changed it to ‘Mad Dog’,” he added.
Twitter later published what it calls a Moment, a summary of a news story that you can see when you press the platform’s search button. It has also been promoted within the What’s Happening box that appears on Twitter’s website.
The article says that “Mattis resigned from the position… after the administration decided to withdraw US troops from Syria”, and attributes the fact to a report by the Associated Press news agency.
It then refers to journalists at CNN, the National Review, the Washington Post and The Dispatch as having written that the nickname ‘Mad Dog’ had been used before Trump’s presidency, with published references dating back to 2004.
Moments are curated by an internal team at Twitter. They provide a summary of a recent development before presenting some related tweets.
This is not the first time the tool has been used to call out Donald Trump.
In March 2019, it said the president had misidentified a co-founder of Greenpeace, and in April 2020 it said he had falsely claimed he could force states to reopen during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But what is interesting here is that Twitter has chosen to raise the temperature of its clash with the president over what could be seen as a relatively minor issue.
It was on 20 December 2018 that Gen Mattis announced his resignation, effective from 28 February 2019.
A furious Mr Trump then announced his defence secretary was going from 1 January and stated he’d essentially fired him. So you could at least argue that, as in many cases, there is a blurry line between a resignation and a firing.
Perhaps Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey is looking on, with a degree of schadenfreude, at what has happened in recent days at Facebook.
There, Mark Zuckerberg’s determination not to follow Twitter’s lead and take some kind of action over the president’s posts has sparked open revolt.
Facebook staff, who previously would only grumble anonymously about the company’s practices, have put their names to statements deploring Mr Zuckerberg’s failure to act.
This morning, nearly three dozen former employees, including some who had helped write the original guidelines on what can and cannot be posted, published an open letter accusing Mr Zuckerberg of a “betrayal” of Facebook’s ideals.
Last week, it felt as though Twitter might be putting its future in danger by taking on the president.
This week, it feels as though Mr Zuckerberg’s failure to act might leave him facing an even bigger crisis than the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Snapchat says it has stopped promoting President Donald Trump’s account.
As a result, it will no longer feature in the app’s Discover section. The firm said it would “not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice”.
The decision follows Mr Trump saying that “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” would have been used on protesters if they had breached the White House fence.
It follows Twitter’s decision to hide some of the president’s posts.
Snapchat’s parent company Snap said: “Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America.”
The move is likely to feed into tensions between the White House and social media, which escalated when Twitter added fact-checking tags to some of the President’s tweets last week.
The president subsequently signed an executive order seeking to curb legal protections offered to the industry.
Twitter later hid one of the president’s tweets for breaking its rules on “glorifying violence”.
Snapchat’s action will also put further pressure on Facebook.
Its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has resisted internal and external calls to intervene in regard to posts on its platform. Mr Zuckerberg has said the firm’s free speech principles mean the president’s posts should be left up unaltered.
President Trump has more than one million followers on Snapchat, according to the Bloomberg news agency. It said the app is seen as being a “key battleground” by Mr Trump’s re-election campaign because it offers a way to reach first-time voters.
The president’s account will not be suspended or deleted.
However, the fact it will not feature in Discover means that his posts will only be seen by people who subscribe to or search for his account directly.
Snapchat based its decision on remarks Mr Trump had posted to Twitter rather than its own platform.
On Monday, Snap’s chief executive Evan Speigel had sent a memo to staff in which he detailed his views on the civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd.
“Every minute we are silent in the face of evil and wrongdoing we are acting in support of evildoers,” Mr Speigel wrote.
“As for Snapchat, we simply cannot promote accounts in America that are linked to people who incite racial violence, whether they do so on or off our platform.”
“Our Discover content platform is a curated platform, where we decide what we promote,” he added.
Donald Trump Is an Autocrat. It’s Up to All of Us to Stop Him.
June 4, 2020
by James Risen
The Intercept
I have a question for American leftists: Do you finally see the difference between the Democrats and Donald Trump?
I have a question for American right-wingers: Do you finally see that it is Trump who will take your guns?
I have a question for American evangelicals: Do you finally see that Trump is the one who will close your churches?
I have a question for Republican members of Congress: Do you finally see that you will be in the camps too?
Dictatorships are built on denial. Dictators take over gradually; each incremental step that erodes civil liberties and the rule of law can be justified and explained away. Sometimes a would-be dictator is laughed off as a political buffoon who shouldn’t be taken seriously. While it is happening, no one can quite believe that they are on the road to serfdom.
Autocrats often enjoy broad public support for their crackdowns. Initially, they target the “others,” while the majority cheers. The public doesn’t recognize the threat until it is too late. The supporters who cheered the loudest are often caught up in ideological purges and become some of the regime’s earliest victims.
After nearly four years in office, it is impossible to miss what Trump truly is. He is a psychopath who lusts for dictatorial powers. He has jettisoned everyone from the government who might get in his way. He is now surrounded by enablers in jackboots like Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Gen. Mark Milley, a lickspittle who claims to be an American military officer, strolled through the streets of Washington, D.C. on Monday night with Trump and Barr while U.S. military personnel were illegally being used to attack protesters and shove them out of the way so that Trump could pose for a photo holding a Bible in front of graffiti-covered St. John’s Episcopal Church. The men had the look of coup plotters bent on seizing the government in the dark of night.
That same evening, military helicopters hovered low over Washington, just over the heads of demonstrators who were protesting the May 25 murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. The noise and downward air blasts from the helicopters were used to disperse crowds. (Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said that the Pentagon asked Maryland and Virginia for troops without the knowledge of the D.C. government.) It was one of the most shameful episodes involving the use of the U.S. military in the nation’s capital since 1932, when the Army infamously used tanks and tear gas to attack protesters known as the “Bonus Army,” World War I veterans camped out to demand long-promised bonuses.
Trump gave away his game Monday night. A scheming man of no moral convictions, he figured that holding a Bible would be enough to rally his white evangelical base.
He said nothing as he stood, Bible in hand, for the photographers in front of the church, but it was easy to guess what he was thinking. He was probably thinking that evangelicals are chumps, morons who always fall for his cheap tricks. It’s not hard to discern that Trump looks down on evangelicals, resents them for how easy it is to manipulate them, and will turn on them as soon as he no longer needs them.
Washington Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde readily saw through Trump after his photo-op in front at St. John’s. “The president just used the Bible, our sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus,” she said.
The next day, Trump stood for photos at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, doubling down on his shabby game of exploiting religious iconography. This time, he was going for conservative Catholics, rather than evangelicals, but the act was the same. The Catholic archbishop of Washington quickly attacked Trump’s visit to the shrine, just as Budde had attacked his photo-op in front of St. John’s the day before.
Meanwhile, in the White House Rose Garden on Monday, the president vowed to protect “Second Amendment rights.” Once again, Trump proved that he thinks his supporters are idiots who can be exploited with simple, coded phrases. The gun rights activists who rave enthusiastically about giving Trump expansive powers may soon have troops knocking at their doors as helicopters hover overhead. When that happens, they may feel, too late, an unexpected kinship with the protesters they now disparage.
Trump bared his authoritarian intentions in a conference call with state governors Monday, in which he berated them for being weak in the face of protests, demanding that they “dominate” the demonstrators, while threatening to send troops to their states if they didn’t accede to his demands. Trump also talked that day by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin; maybe he was getting pointers on how to crush dissent.
Trump is speeding down the path toward dictatorship because what remains of the Republican Party is eager for him to grab power. It is now a white identity party, filled with aging white people who fear the demographic trends of increasing diversity. They don’t like America as it now exists, and they want Trump to destroy the rules and laws that protect minorities, the poor, and the disadvantaged.
On Monday, Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and Trump acolyte, offered a typical Republican response to the protests when he called for all the lethal tools of the global war on terror to be brought home and turned on American protesters. “Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” Gaetz tweeted Monday. Twitter restricted access to the Gaetz tweet, labeling it a glorification of violence.
By advocating for an end to the rule of law, Republicans like Gaetz will find themselves surviving at the whim of Trump. That’s when the jokes about drones and Gitmo won’t seem so funny to them.
Finally, for American leftists who don’t see any difference between the Democrats and Trump — and who might even prefer Trump because he is destroying the centrist status quo, thus creating an opening for the left — it is time to face the cold facts of history.
Consider the case of Ernst Thälmann.
Thälmann was the leader of the German Communist Party in the late 1920s and early 1930s and saw the center-left German Social Democratic Party, rather than Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, as his main political enemy. Thälmann did everything he could to undermine the Social Democrats, who he called “social fascists,” in order to destroy the liberal status quo in the Weimar Republic and set the conditions for a communist revolution. The deep political divide between the center-left and the left in Germany in the early 1930s helped enable Hitler’s rise.
After Hitler came to power, Thälmann was arrested and imprisoned. He was later transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was shot by the SS on Hitler’s orders.
It’s in the blood!
June 4, 2020
by Christian Jürs
The current American President is directly descended from the German Trumpf family. His ancestor in the direct line, was Johannes Trump(f), a native of the village of Kallstadt.
The same Trumpf family also produced one Arnold Wilhelm August Trumpf.
Arnold Trumpf was Vorstand Reichsverband Deutscher Landwirtschaftlicher Genossenschaften-Raiffensene.V and Hauptabteilungsleiter III of the Reichsnahrstand, Allegemeine SS since 1934.
This Trumpf was also a director of the Reichsbank.
SS background of Arnold Trumpf:
SS-Oberführer / Leutnant d.R. a.D.
Born: 27. Oct. 1892 in Gifhorn
Died: 7. January 1985 in Garmish-Partenkirchen
NSDAP-Nr.: 389 920 from 1, December 1930
SS-Nr.: 187 119
Promotions:
SS-Oberfuhrer: 30. Jan. 1939
Career:
Bei dem RuS-Hauptamt: (9. Nov. 1944)
Decorations & Awards:
1914 Eisernes Kreuz II. Klasse
Kriegsverdienstkreuz II. Klasse ohne Schwerter
Verwundetenabzeichen, 1918 in Schwarz
Ehrenkreuz fur Frontkampfer
Ehrendegen des RF SS
Totenkopfring der SS
The RuSHA was founded in 1931 by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler
Among their duties were:
• Kidnapping of children suitable for Germanization
• Population transfers
• The persecution and liquidation of Jews
The RuSHA also employed Josef Mengele from November 1940 to early 1941, in Department II of its Family Office, where he was responsible for “care of genetic health” and “genetic health tests”
References
• http://de.metapedia.org/wiki/Trumpf,_Arnold
• Das Deutsche Führerlexikon, Otto Stollberg G.m.b.H., Berlin 1934
• Dienstaltersliste der Schutzstaffel der NSDAP 9, November 1944
A Perfect Storm
June 4, 2020
by Andrew P. Napolitano
AntiWar
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
~ Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Colonial America was filled with summer soldiers and sunshine patriots who wanted triumph over tyranny but were afraid to fight for it. Of course, enough did fight. They won the Revolutionary War and they enacted a Constitution intended to prevent both anarchy and tyranny.
Today, we have both.
America is under attack by three deadly viruses. COVID-19 has killed more than 107,000 Americans since March. Yet, it pales in comparison to the virus it provoked – hubris. And that, in turn, provoked the virus that has bedeviled America since the 17th century – racism.
Right now, the largest U.S. cities in at least 28 states are under curfew and many are patrolled by National Guard troops as the cities have been beset by violence.
We all watched the gut-wrenching video of a white Minneapolis police officer torturing and murdering a handcuffed black man on a public street. The now former cop has been charged with what Minnesota calls third-degree murder. This is a misnomer in criminal law, as it is really manslaughter – the reckless use of deadly force. Yet, manslaughter is a most inappropriate charge here.
Were the killer not wearing a police uniform, he’d have been charged with first-degree murder. First-degree murder requires proof of intent to kill plus planning or premeditation. Yet, that premeditation can arise during the commission of the crime itself. For example, when the time consumed by the commission of the murder is far longer than was necessary to consummate it.
The premeditation occurred in the killer’s mind as he continued the slow choking – planning its continuance and its consummation, even rejecting the plea of a fellow officer to let go of the victim. Hence, by choking George Floyd for eight and a half minutes, former officer Derek Chauvin planned to kill and carried out his plan.
The killing was an act of racism or hubris or both. Racism is hatred of another because of skin color. It is legally prohibited to all governments. You can choose a friend based on skin color, but you cannot lawfully perform a single government act based on it.
Hubris was the Greek goddess of unpunished arrogant behavior. Hubris rejects the applicability of laws to oneself because of a false belief in one’s invincibility. At its essence, hubris is the lust to dominate. We saw this, too, in Floyd’s murderer.
We have also seen hubris in the slow death of personal liberty this spring – as all 50 governors and the mayors of many of the same cities now beset by rioters have crafted standards of behavior never legislated into law, and used police to enforce those standards as if they were law.
Believing they will suffer be no consequences for their destruction of constitutionally guaranteed liberties and economic prosperity, these governors have become infected with hubris.
Government racism and hubris has led to violence in our streets. Yet, protests, that were once the manifestation of natural grief and lawfully protected assembly for the redress of known government failures and excesses, have been captured by those with sinister motives. Some of these fomenters of violence – white and black – seek to restructure our culture through violence. That violence will destroy what little freedom remains.
What is it about those in government who believe they are above the law and are invincible – whether cops using deadly force unlawfully or governors commanding cops unlawfully to enforce their whims? Add to this the lives, liberties and property lost by the hubris of governors shutting down businesses and putting 40 million folks out of work – and you have the perfect storm that is trying our souls today.
Do we have the moral leadership to address this deadly mess?
Is the president’s harsh rhetoric – “looting brings shooting”; “we will unleash vicious dogs”; “get control of the battle space” – making things better or worse?
Was it just for him to break his own curfew and use tear gas to move peaceful protesters, who were lawfully present, out of a park near the White House so he could walk through it to a nearby church? Should the president be a tough guy or a peacemaker? Do violent words and deeds beget violence?
Can the same governors who unconstitutionally shut down society now employ lawful force against rioters who want to destroy and remake society? Their police can’t protect private property and can barely protect private citizens – which is why we have a Second Amendment. Now you know why we need large magazines and much ammo.
Why can New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy – the prince of hubris – permit 2,500 people in Newark to demonstrate over Floyd’s death but deny 25 people in the small town of Newton the right to demonstrate against his lockdowns? Because – in his own words – he agrees with the Newark demonstrators and has no use for the Bill of Rights. We have no use for him.
All political dissent, even civil disobedience, is legitimate when it is peaceful. But violence is not legitimate unless in self-defense or toppling a tyrant. The police have a duty to neutralize violence. That means for them proceeding into the face of known danger – not watching their buddy murder someone or deserting their own police stations, as Chauvin’s colleagues did.
The late historian Chalmers Johnson observed that if we fail to eliminate racism and hubris in the government, we will pay dearly. He argued metaphorically that Nemesis – the Greek goddess of retribution – awaits her time with us. Perhaps she is here already.
Trump’s Bible photo op splits white evangelical loyalists into two camps
Ardent supporters saw the photo op as a blow against evil while others saw the gesture as cynical and a ploy
June 4, 2020
by Matthew Teague in Fairhope, Alabama
The Guardian
On Monday when Donald Trump raised overhead a Bible – the Sword of the Spirit, to believers – he unwittingly cleaved his loyal Christian supporters into two camps.
His most ardent evangelical supporters saw it as a blow against evil and described his walk from the White House to St John’s Episcopal church, over ground violently cleared of protesters, as a “Jericho walk”.
The Rev Johnnie Moore, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, described Trump in shepherd-like terms on Twitter:
“I will never forget seeing @POTUS @realDonaldTrump slowly & in-total-command walk from the @WhiteHouse across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church defying those who aim to derail our national healing by spreading fear, hate & anarchy. After just saying, ‘I will keep you safe.’”
But evangelicals are not monolithic: some saw the gesture as cynical, a ploy by a president whose decisions, both private and public, do not align with biblical principles.
“I guess it’s a sort of Rorschach test, then,” said Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, who is one of Trump’s most important defenders among the faithful. “You see what you expect to see.”
But that’s not true, Trump’s emerging evangelical critics say: an objective measure is contained in the very book Trump wielded.
“Blessed are the peacemakers! Blessed are the merciful! It’s right there in the Sermon on the Mount,” said John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College. “Just read Jesus.”
Trump’s photo opportunity required police to attack and push away protesters against police brutality. He walked surrounded by key civilian and military advisers, some of whom later said they were caught unaware by the stunt and the violence that preceded it. Some evangelical leaders said they felt similarly aghast, watching the event unfold.
“Pelting people with rubber bullets and spraying them with teargas for peacefully protesting is morally wrong,” said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. “What we need right now is moral leadership – from all of us, in the churches, in the police departments, in the courts, and in the White House. The Bible tells us so. So do our own consciences.”
The day’s events left Moore “alarmed”, he said.
The staunchest of evangelicals, 90-year-old televangelist Pat Robertson, split from Trump on Tuesday.
He told his television viewers of the president: “He said, ‘I’m ready to send in military troops if the nation’s governors don’t act to quell the violence that has rocked American cities.’ A matter of fact, he spoke of them as being jerks. You just don’t do that, Mr President. It isn’t cool!”
It could be far worse than uncool, politically.
Trump can’t afford to lose evangelicals, even by the handful. A record 81% of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016, and he only narrowly won the presidency, sometimes by just a few thousand votes in crucial areas. His gesture with the Bible outside St John’s was meant to shore up that support, reminding his base of a tacit agreement.
“It’s a contract between him and evangelical voters,” Fea, the professor, who is a Christian, said. In exchange for their ballots, he said, Trump has packed the courts, including the supreme court, with conservative judges who agree with them on social issues.
So while evangelicals lifted Trump to power by voting together, they may prove his undoing if a contingent breaks away. In which case his campaign might shudder to hear of evangelical believers like Anthony Kidd in Daphne, Alabama.
During the week Kidd works at a salvage yard, and on weekends he does audio work during church services. He’s conservative.
“The past few years he has done things that are good for Christians, I’ll grant that,” he said. But when he saw Trump lift the Bible outside St John’s, he said, “It made me want to throw up a little bit.”
Fea said it was unclear what happens next: whether evangelicals will stay by Trump, or make a significant split. But whatever happens, he said, is unlikely to be peaceful.
“Here’s a good rule of thumb,” he said. “Looking back through history, whenever you see someone in authority using the Bible to justify law and order, it ends badly.”
Trump autographs bibles while meeting Alabama tornado victims
‘The man whose vicious and inhumane border policy violates the fundamental teachings of Jesus is signing bibles,’ says former Hillary Clinton advisor
by Maya Oppenheim
The Independent
Donald Trump has sparked controversy for signing bibles of Alabama residents who were hit by a deadly storm that claimed 23 lives.
The president made the unusual gesture while visiting a Baptist church in Opelika which is serving as a disaster relief centre.
Local volunteer Ada Ingram told reporters Mr Trump signed several hats and bibles – including one for a 12-year-old boy – prompting a crowd of onlookers to erupt into applause.
Ms Ingram, who said she voted for Mr Trump and would again in 2020, said: “I enjoyed him coming. I think it’s a godsend. I’m sorry. The situation is bad.
“And there are going to be people who will say ‘why did he come to my town?’ I don’t know why. I don’t why the hurricane happened [either]. But there is a reason.”
Emily Pike, another volunteer, said the president and and first lady Melania Trump signed her 10-year-old daughter’s Bible, which was already decorated with pink camouflage.
Mr Trump’s bible signing in the storm-ravaged rural town of Beauregard – which has been hit by the most deadly tornado in the US in six years – has sparked criticism.
“In Trump’s defence, he wrote as much of the bible as ‘Art of The Deal,’” one user tweeted, referring to the first of more than a dozen books for which Mr Trump has hired a ghostwriter.
Other critics compared the philosophies and the principles of the bible to Trump administration policies which they consider to be immoral.
“Donald J Trump is signing bibles,” Peter Daou, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, tweeted. “The man whose vicious and inhumane border policy violates the fundamental teachings of Jesus is signing bibles.”
Despite courting the Christian vote – 81 per cent of white evangelicals voted for Mr Trump – the president is not a regular church-goer and his references to Christianity tend to centre on political issues and talking points.
Some argue any signature – a deed typically reserved for the author of the book in question – on or in a bible is morally reprehensible.
On the 2016 campaign trail, Mr Trump autographed a bible that was reported to go for £2,700 ($3,500) on eBay.
German Official Leaks Report Denouncing Corona as ‘A Global False Alarm’
May 29, 2020
by Daniele Pozzati
Straegic Culuture
Germany’s federal government and mainstream media are engaged in damage control after a report that challenges the established Corona narrative leaked from the interior ministry.
Some of the report key passages are:
The dangerousness of Covid-19 was overestimated: probably at no point did the danger posed by the new virus go beyond the normal level.
The people who die from Corona are essentially those who would statistically die this year, because they have reached the end of their lives and their weakened bodies can no longer cope with any random everyday stress (including the approximately 150 viruses currently in circulation).
Worldwide, within a quarter of a year, there has been no more than 250,000 deaths from Covid-19, compared to 1.5 million deaths [25,100 in Germany] during the influenza wave 2017/18.
The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm.
A reproach could go along these lines: During the Corona crisis the State has proved itself as one of the biggest producers of Fake News.
So far, so bad. But it gets worse.
The report focuses on the “manifold and heavy consequences of the Corona measures” and warns that these are “grave”.
More people are dying because of state-imposed Corona-measures than they are being killed by the virus.
The reason is a scandal in the making:
A Corona-focused German healthcare system is postponing life-saving surgery and delaying or reducing treatment for non-Corona patients.
Berlin in Denial Mode. The scientists fight back.
Initially, the government tried to dismiss the report as “the work of one employee”, and its contents as “his own opinion” – while the journalists closed ranks, no questions asked, with the politicians.
But the 93-pages report titled “Analysis of the Crisis Management” has been drafted by a scientific panel appointed by the interior ministry and composed by external medical experts from several German universities.
The report was the initiative of a department of the interior ministry called Unit KM4 and in charge with the “Protection of critical infrastructures”.
This is also where the German official turned whistleblower, Stephen Kohn, work(ed), and from where he leaked it to the media.
The authors of the report issued a joint press release already on Mai 11th, berating the government for ignoring expert advise, and asking for the interior minister to officially comment upon the experts joint statement:
“Therapeutic and preventive measures should never bring more harm than the illness itself. Their aim should be to protect the risk groups, without endegearing the availibilty of medical care and the health of the whole population, as it is unfortunately occurring”
“We in the scientific and medical praxis are experiencing the secondary damages of the Corona-measures on our patients on a dialy basis.”
“We therefore ask the Federal Ministry of the Interior, to comment upon our press release, and we hope for a pertinent discussion regarding the [Corona] measures, one that leads to the best possible solution for the whole population”
At the time of writing, the German government had yet to react.
But the facts are – sadly – vindicating the medical experts’ worries.
On Mai 23 the German newspaper Das Bild titled: “Dramatic consequences of the Corona-Measures: 52,000 Cancer Ops delayed.”
Inside, a leading medical doctor warns that “we will feel the side-effects of the Corona crisis for years”.
Shooting the Whistleblower. Ignoring the Message.
As Der Spiegel reported on Mai 15th: “Stephen Kohn [the whistleblower] has since been suspended from duty. He was advised to obtain a lawyer and his work laptop was confiscated.”
Kohn had originally leaked the report on May 9th to the liberal-conservative magazine Tichys Einblick one of Germany’s most popular alternative media outlets.
News of the report went mainstream in Germany during the second week of Mai – but already in the third week media and politicians alike stopped discussing the issue by refusing to comment upon it.
Emblematic was the approach taken by Günter Krings, the representative for Interior Minister Horst Seehofer – the whistleblower’s boss:
Asked it he would treat the document seriously, Krings replied:
“If you start analyzing papers like that, then pretty soon you’ll be inviting the guys with the tin foil hats to parliamentary hearings.”
Men in tin foil hats – Aluhut in German – is a term used to describe people who believe in conspiracy theories.
Indeed one article by Der Spiegel adressing the Corona protest movement and the consequences of the leaked report contained the word “conspiracy” no fewer than 17 times!
And no discussions of the issues raised by the report itself.
Outside Germany the news has virtually gone unreported.
The Protest Movement – or “Corona-Rebellen”.
Germans begun demonstrating against Lockdowns as early as April.
And thousands of citizens keep showing up at demos every week-end, even as the government is easing the restrictions.
The demos are not merely against restrictions, which have actually been comparatively mild compared to many other Western countries.
The demos question the entire Corona Narrative, and even more its principals, especially the role Bill Gates is playing, as the WHO second biggest donor (the first one since Trump suspended U.S. contribution).
Indeed the biggest such demos took place in Stuttgart on May 9th, where tens of thousands people assempled to say no – to the NWO.
Germans are saying no to any orwellian solution the government might one day impose out of a questionable “emergency status”, from mass surveillance Apps to mandatory vaccinations.
The leaked report has proved their fears to be well founded.
At least as far as the fake nature of the “Corona pandemic” is concerned.
The rest might soon follow.
Donald Trump’s Fake Renoir: The Untold Story
Trump biographer Tim O’Brien talks about his years covering the developer turned reality star turned president—including a bizarre incident involving a fake impressionist painting.
by Nick Bilton
Vanity Fair
Years ago, while reporting a book about a real-estate developer and reality-TV star named Donald Trump, Tim O’Brien accompanied his subject on a private jet ride to Los Angeles. The plane, as you can imagine, was overly ornate; hanging on one wall, for instance, was a painting of two young girls—one in an orange hat, the other wearing a floral bonnet—in the impressionistic style of Renoir.
Curious, O’Brien asked Trump about the painting: was it an original Renoir? Trump replied in the affirmative. It was, he said. “No, it’s not Donald,” O’Brien responded. But, once again, Trump protested that it was.
“Donald, it’s not,” O’Brien said adamantly. “I grew up in Chicago, that Renoir is called Two Sisters on the Terrace, and it’s hanging on a wall at the Art Institute of Chicago.” He concluded emphatically: “That’s not an original.”
Trump, of course, did not agree, but O’Brien dropped the conversation topic and moved on with his interview. He thought that he had heard the last of the Renoir conversation. But the next day, when they boarded the plane to head back to New York City, Trump again pointed to the painting, and as if the conversation had never happened, he pointed to the fake and proclaimed, “You know, that’s an original Renoir.” O’Brien chose not to engage, and dropped the conversation.
Years went by. O’Brien wrote an explosive book, titled TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, which noted that Trump was not actually a multi-billionaire, but rather worth about $150 to $250 million. Trump didn’t like being labeled a measly millionaire, so he sued O’Brien for “malice,” and lost. More time went on, Trump sold the jet, and traded-up to a larger plane; O’Brien assumed that the fake Renoir had been tossed into a bonfire, or at least a proverbial one. And that was the end of the story.
Then, in 2016, the unimaginable happened: Trump was elected president of the United States. A few days afterward, Trump sat down with 60 Minutes for one of his first interviews as president-elect. O’Brien was watching the interview, which took place in Trump Tower. It was highly choreographed, with cameras set up precisely where Trump wanted them. O’Brien watched Trump seated in an ugly mini-throne—“the kind of furniture Trump loves,” O’Brien notes—and sure enough, in the background, hanging on a wall, was that fake Renoir. “I’m sure he’s still telling people who come into the apartment, ‘It’s an original, it’s an original,’” O’Brien told me on this week’s Inside the Hive podcast.
While this story is comical and sad and utterly bizarre on so many levels, it’s also emblematic of Trump’s very essence. “He believes his own lies in a way that lasts for decades,” O’Brien told me. “He’ll tell the same stories time and time again, regardless of whether or not facts are right in front of his face.” And, as O’Brien points out, that’s what makes Trump so dangerous in his current war with the media around so-called fake news. “Its foundation is that he’s the final arbiter of what is true and what isn’t,” O’Brien said, “and it’s one of the reasons that he’s so dangerous.”
Trump & US ‘Insurrection’
Using federal troops to quell citizen unrest is nothing new in America, but Trump is on shaky ground.
June 3, 2020
by John Kiriakou
Consortium News
President Donald Trump this week threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to quell demonstrations across the country instigated by the police murder of George Floyd. The act has been invoked at least 14 times throughout history, allowing presidents to use federal troops domestically.
But just standing in front of a lectern in the Rose Garden and saying he’ll invoke the act won’t accomplish what Trump thinks it will. He may not even have the authority to invoke it in the first place.
The Insurrection Act, 10 U.S.C. 251-255, empowers the president to federalize the National Guard and to call out the armed forces domestically, but only in specific circumstances: When requested by a state’s legislature or governor; to address a “rebellion against the authority of the United States” or to hinder the execution of laws such that citizens are deprived of their constitutional rights.
So far, no governor or state legislature, Republican or Democratic, has asked Trump to intervene, even though he’s offered. There has been no insurrection against the federal government, even in Washington, D.C., where it was the National Guard, police and Secret Service that fired on peaceful, unarmed protestors and not vice versa. And there are no laws on the books in any state that deprive citizens of their constitutional rights.
Trump giving a speech and then walking across the street from the White House to a church for a photo op, where he waved a Bible like a guy waves a dollar bill at a stripper, does not then suddenly give him the authority to wage war against the American people.
Trump certainly tried to lay the groundwork for that war earlier in the day, when he spoke on a conference call with governors, where he called them “weak” and said they “look like jerks” for allowing demonstrations in their states.
Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker had the guts to stand up and tell Trump that he was the one causing upheaval because of his incendiary language. In retrospect, Trump was probably hoping that one of the governors would “invite” U.S. troops into his or her state, giving Trump his cause célèbre and making him the “wartime” president he so desperately wants to be. Instead, though, he’s the president who hid in a bunker at the first sign of trouble.
Trump’s hands are tied in most of the places where he might want to send troops. New York, California, Pennsylvania and Colorado are all run by Democratic governors. Massachusetts has a liberal Republican governor.
But Trump can make all the trouble he wants in Washington, D.C., where “taxation without representation” is the mantra. Final authority in the District of Columbia rests with the federal government. Trump can call out troops in Washington and there’s nobody to stop him, unless Congress suddenly and uncharacteristically decides to take action, or unless Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s opposition causes Trump to think twice.
He might also try to construe looters or violent protestors crossing state lines as breaking federal law, allowing him to intervene in those states with federal troops even without the governors’ consent. Such a move would very likely be challenged in court.
But Trump Has Precedent
The question, then, is “will American troops fire on American citizens?” I think the answer is a resounding “yes.” They certainly have in the past. Just look at a handful of previous invocations of the Insurrection Act.
In 1894, President Grover Cleveland used federal troops to put down the Pullman Strike in Chicago. In 1914, Woodrow Wilson did the same in Colorado in what became known as the Colorado Coalfield War. Franklin Roosevelt did it in 1943 to put down a race riot in Detroit. And Lyndon Johnson invoked the act four times to put down riots in Detroit, Washington, Baltimore, and Chicago. In every one of those cases, U.S. troops fired on Americans. History may be repeating itself.
And if Trump doesn’t have his defense secretary’s support in sending in active-duty troops, Esper, in that same conference call with governors, did encourage them to hit protesters hard. “I think the sooner that you mass and dominate the battlespace, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal,” he said.
Esper is calling American cities “battlespaces.” And what in the world is “the right normal?” Is that the “normal” where the police can murder black men with impunity? Is it the “normal” of the “good old days” that we had after Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland and Sacramento?
One other note. You may be wondering about the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the federal law which specifically prohibits the use of military forces in domestic law enforcement. It allowed exceptions in “cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress,” such as the Insurrection Act, which preceded it.
And then it was essentially repealed in 2016. By President Barack Obama.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee