Thursday, July 26, 2018

Trump Is Selling Out America, and His Supporters Love It

Trump Is Selling Out America, and His Supporters Love It:

"The president of the United States wants to entertain, in the White House, the man U.S. intelligence services say intervened in the election that ultimately landed Trump in the Oval Office. If Putin accepts, he will arrive as an investigation of the election matter by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is ongoing. A Putin visit would no doubt please the evangelical foot soldiers of the Trump base. And it would elate the white supremacists who form the leading edge of support for Trump’s racialized policies on immigration and law enforcement. Of course, the mere fact of the invitation surely pleases Vladimir Putin, patron of the Quisling from Queens. Whatever Putin has on Trump is endangering the republic. It’s a weakness that allows his manipulation by Putin, who has long wished to destroy both the EU and NATO.  Congressional leaders surely know this, but other than paying lip service to the obvious fact that Vladimir Putin is not our friend, they’ve yet to rein in the president. After all, the midterms are only months away, and Trump is popular with the Republican base—the people who show up at the polls for midterm elections. Any responsible member of Congress, regardless of party, should be willing to censure this president for his egregious behavior in Helsinki. No read-out or comprehensive statement about what the president and Putin discussed at the closed-door summit has been issued by the White House. Yet, according to the Russians, agreements were made.  Meanwhile, something worth contemplating is the $1 billion lent to Donald Trump by a bank with some shady practices. Justin Kennedy, the bank official who made the loan, is the son of the Supreme Court justice who just stepped down in time to give Trump a nomination to make just ahead of the mid-terms. Justin Kennedy made that astonishingly large loan when he was an executive at Deutsche Bank, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. for laundering the money of Russian oligarchs. Maybe there’s something in that billion-dollar loan that Putin has on Trump."