Trump's hated liberal media is, if you can read and think, "Fair and Balanced."

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Trump is constantly deriding liberal media bias 

Wait, what? – Eugene Robinson’s Washington Post column

links to four other opinion pieces; 3 are from conservative observers

The other day I turned Around the Block over to the New York Times Frank Bruni whose column, How low will Trump go? suggested that “The president is unabashed, unapologetic and out of control.”

Today, I’ll turn Around the Block over to Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist of the Washington Post. But, unlike my Bruni post, which was very long, I’ll just provide the link to Robinson’s column, "Trump is spinning out of control. We must stop pretending otherwise." Your choice to read or not.

Of particular note, beyond Robinson’s excellent observations, is the Post’s decision to link his column to four other editorial observers – three of whom are bona fide conservative thinkers and writers. Given that, I think it is appropriate to shamelessly borrow Fox News’ bankrupt tagline, “Fair and Balanced,” to Trump's prime example of the liberal media, the "Bezos" Washington Post. This is the media at its “Fair and Balanced” best! 

Trump is spinning out of control. We must stop pretending otherwise – by Eugene Robinson.

(I’ll only quote Robinson’s closing paragraph: “Senators, pay attention. You may prefer to let voters judge Trump in next year’s election. But you must realize, at this point, that we may not have that long.”)

Trump is turning American ideology into a sham – by Michael Gerson. (Until 2006, Gerson was a top aide to President George W. Bush as assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning. Prior to that appointment, he served in the White House as deputy assistant to the president and director of presidential speechwriting and assistant to the president for speechwriting and policy adviser.)

Trump’s puerile letter to Erdogan should give every American the chills – by Henry Olson. (Henry Olson joined the think tank world where he spent eighteen years as an executive at a variety of institutions, serving as the President of the Commonwealth Foundation, a Vice President at the Manhattan Institute, and as Vice President and Director, National Research Initiative, at the American Enterprise Institute.)

Trump and lost Syria - And his mind – by Max Boot. (Max Boot was a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2007-2008, Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2011–2012, and Marco Rubio’s campaign in 2015-2016. He served as an adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

What to expect when you're expecting impeachment – by Doug Sosnik. (Doug Sosnik, a Democratic political strategist, was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000.)

Times' Frank Bruni: How Low Will Trump Go?

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How Low Will Trump Go?

I have had long and interesting debates about a Trump impeachment. Many people believe that impeachment is a non-starter. Yes, he will be impeached -- the votes are already there. But it is still questionable whether he will be removed from office by the Senate. And, without removal, my anti-impeachment friends say, Trump will do a "witch hunt" victory dance which will embolden him and his pack.

Today removal advocates were dealt a significant blow if you believe some GOP senators might come around and vote for removal; the two GOP senators from Florida opined on the Trump's announcement that the the 2020 G7 will be held at Trump Doral:

Sen. Rick Scott:“There’s no conflict of interest in holding anything in the great state of Florida.”

Sen. Marco Rubio : “I understand the arguments others are going to make about whether it’s lining his pocket at this event and so forth, but as a Floridian, you know, I think it’s good for Florida to have that event.”

After reading Scott's and Rubio's statements (and one more by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart whose district includes Doral), I wrote to my own Florida Representative, Democratic Congresswoman Lois Frankel:

"I'm aware that you're busy this week what with impeachment hearings, Syria, Kurds, Executive Branch scandal after scandal..., but perhaps you might carve out a little time to give your incredulous Congressional 'friends' (Scott, Rubio and Diaz-Balart) a lesson in the Constitution. Do you think they've actually read the document they've sworn to uphold? Can they say Emoluments? Can they spell Emoluments?"

The answer to our current Trump dilemma my non-impeachment friends suggest is to "let the voters decide." Yes, let them decide -- in the face of voter suppression, foreign influence, an anachronistic Electoral College system and who knows what else. And, while we wait for the voters to decide, we'll have to endure 18 more months of Trump wreaking havoc on the country and the world. 

So, with those 18 months in mind, I turn Around the Block today over to Frank Bruni of the New York Times.

How Low Will Trump Go?

By Frank Bruni

Oct. 19, 2019

The wonder of the Trump administration — the jaw-dropping, brain-exploding phantasmagoria of it — is that it doesn’t bury its rottenness under layers of counterfeit virtue or use a honeyed voice to mask the vinegar inside. The rottenness is out in the open. The sourness is right there on the surface for all to see.

It’s at the president’s rallies, where he plays a bigot for laughs, a bully for applause.

It’s in the ballrooms and beds at Mar-a-Loco, where he mingles official government business with free marketing for his gilded club.

It’s in the transcript of his phone call with the president of Ukraine, for whom the quid, the pro and the Biden-ravaging quo couldn’t have been clearer.

It’s at the microphone in the White House briefing room, where his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, showed up on Thursday, announced that President Trump would host the next G7 meeting at one of his own golf resorts, and conceded that, yes, aid to Ukraine had been tied to that country’s indulgence of the president’s political obsessions.

“Get over it,” Mulvaney told the assembled journalists.

“Elections have consequences,” he also said.

Allow me to translate: American voters gave Trump the presidency, so it’s his to use and abuse as he wants. If you’re looking for an apology, you might as well be looking for the yeti. What you should really be doing is looking the other way.

Mere hours later, Mulvaney changed his tune, whining that the media had “decided to misconstrue” his words as some kind of confession. Um, no.

Our hearing was just fine, our construing was just right and our sole arguable failure was that we didn’t instantly grasp and immediately communicate the overarching import of his remarks: He was telling us that in the minds of the president and his unscrupulous minions, he from now on possessed and planned to revel in carte blanche. And the White House has a new public relations strategy, much evolved since the days of Robert Mueller.

Those revelations of rottenness that I mentioned before? They’re no longer an inadvertent tic. They’re an advertent tactic. Done with denials of wrongdoing, administration officials are reframing it as right-doing — as a president’s prerogative, even his entitlement, pre-emptively authorized by voters themselves.

Get over it, media. Get over it, America. This is Trump’s country. You’re just squatting in it.

Trump’s presidency was scary from the very start, when he summoned “American carnage” and hallucinated inauguration throngs. But the past several days have been something else: a clarifying, terrifying descent.

How low will Trump go? Leagues lower than you ever imagined, and probably several hundred feet below your current nightmares. Officials with Trump’s re-election campaign apparently plan to use “get over it” as a slogan on merchandise, but I think that the White House’s real new motto comes from Tacitus, a celebrated historian in ancient Rome: “Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”

That audacity animated Mulvaney. It was manifest when Trump publicly beseeched China to get in on the action and do its own investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden. It helps explain the planned convening of the G7 at Trump National Doral Miami, a gesture of such perverse defiance, such profound contempt, that it takes the breath away.

With the gaslighting logic that is his greatest gift, Trump is asserting that no real crook would be this nakedly, flamboyantly criminal, and he’s giving anyone in America who isn’t aboard the Trump train the middle finger. It, not his brain, is the body part with which he governs.

This is all about impeachment, to which he has responded — predictably — with a puerile rage. The first, second and third laws of Trumpian psychology are that for every action, there’s an unequal and hysterical overreaction, and ever since impeachment took on an air of probability, he has been overreacting all over the place.

He’s at his most dangerous when he’s most vulnerable and impotent, because he’s compelled to project command and potency. He has to convince everyone that he’s unflustered and unafraid.

That, as much as any promise to voters, motivated the disastrous pullout from Syria and abandonment of Kurdish allies. Precisely because it was what might undermine the loyalty of his Republican saviors and leave him exposed, he did it. It was a pantomime of fearlessness, a pretense of invincibility.

Ditto the Doral decision, which Mulvaney, saying goodbye to any shreds of credibility and integrity that he was still clinging to, insisted would not turn much if any profit for Trump. Whatever the actual revenues from the G7 meeting itself, it would amount to the kind of advertising that money can’t buy. Doral would be better known afterward, just as Mar-a-Loco, Bedminster and other Trump properties have skyrocketed in visibility since he took office. He has made sure of it, by visiting them in a constant rotation that repurposes the presidency as a promotional tool and branding exercise.

The G7 at Doral is just the cherry on a rancid sundae. But the timing of it: That’s what’s so chilling. It comes as the sword dangles ever sharper and more threatening over his head, and it makes clear that he won’t be answering the accelerating revelations about him with good behavior that coaxes Americans to wonder if he could really have been that bad.

No, he’ll ratchet up the badness, intensify the insolence and lash out more provocatively and ruinously than ever before. He’ll be worse. Virtue is for suckers, who don’t have the nerve for vice. Look, Ma, no morals!

The miserable Mikes, Pence and Pompeo, will race around the world trying to forestall or clean up his messes, because “get over it” doesn’t really translate to geopolitics, where the “it” can be terrorism, slaughter and an American image soiled beyond repair.

Ivanka and Jared Kushner will lay low, as they’re doing now, unable to peddle the pretty fiction that they’re keeping a lid on the combustible patriarch, who keeps setting himself on fire.

He has finally arrived on the Fifth Avenue that he conjured long ago. Remember that — when he said that he could shoot someone there, in view of all the passers-by, and not lose any of his loyal supporters?

Metaphorically speaking, he’s now striding down that busy thoroughfare, gun in hand. Take cover, America.

Yes, take cover America -- unless 25 or so GOP senators show some courage, we are potentially facing the worst, most unendurable 18 months in our history.  

Trump to make more re-deployments, says, "Moving troops is fun, like playing with toy soldiers."

Satire from Ted Block

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After moving troops from Syria and into Saudi Arabia, Trump plans more re-deployments

Sources: Trump thrilled by idea of moving troops like “so many toy soldiers”  

While critics on both sides of the aisle continue to criticize President Trump’s withdrawal of American troops from Syria, putting our ISIS-fighting Syrian Kurd allies at risk of annihilation at the hands of Turkey’s armed forces, he simultaneously redeployed 1,200 American soldiers to Saudi Arabia to “help the Saudis defend themselves from Iranian attacks.” This, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia doesn’t seem to need the help as it has the third largest defense budget in the world (after the United States and China) and spends a whopping 8.8% of its GDP on defense (U.S.: 3.3%; China: 1.9%).

Why would Trump do this. Well perhaps this tweet from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, procured exclusively by Around the Block before it was taken down, reveals the answer: 

Translation: My wish is Trump’s command. He’ll do whatever I want because he owes us so much money!

After his Middle East redployments, and despite widespread condemnation of the moves, sources in the White House say he is emboldened by his actions. 

Speaking on the condition of anonymity prior to filing a whistle blower complaint, our White House source told Around the Block that “the president is thrilled that he has the ability to move troops around like so many toy soldiers. He even told the National Security Council staff that  he hasn’t had so much fun since the War Games 101 class at his prep school, the New York Military Academy – which, incidentally is another Trump lie since he paid a classmate to take the class for him because his bone spurs were acting up that year.”

Our source went on to tell us there are more moves on the way including:

Moving the U.S. Naval base from Yokosuka, Japan to Vladivostok, Russia in order to protect President Vladimir Putin from enemy attacks on Russia’s east coast. “Our Navy has been protecting Japan for many years…they owe us billions of dollars. It’s horrible what the Japanese are doing; disgraceful. And Vlad called and told me he needed the help,” Trump told his staff.

Redeploying 26,000 Army and Marine Corps personnel from South Korea to North Korea. Trump told his advisors, “I received a ‘beautiful’ letter from Kim Jong Un. Not only did he tell me he how much he loves me, he asked me if I could do him a favor – move all those U.S. forces that he believes are a constant threat to his regime up to North Korea to help him defend his beloved country from all those really bad neighbors like Japan and South Korea. I sent a terrific letter back telling him I loved him too and that not only would I move the troops, I will also schedule joint operations with our Army and Navy and his really terrific Korean People’s Army, Navy and Air Forces.” 

Moving 35,000 American troops from Germany to Belarus. Our source reported, in perhaps the most audacious move of all, “In that call from Putin about protecting Russia's Pacific coast, Putin also mentioned that he was really tired of having to deploy some many troops to the west to defend against NATO. So, Trump told Putin that NATO was 'a disgrace, none of them pay their bills and they owe us hundreds of billions of dollars, a real pain in the ass if you know what I mean.' As they talked some more, Trump told him, ‘Look, Vlad, we have 35,000 U.S. troops in Germany. How about this, I’ll move them to Belarus and western Ukraine to protect you from NATO which will be very weak without the U.S. troops. And by the way, those U.S. troops in Ukraine working with your army will really get that corrupt country on your side – a win-win if you understand. But I just need one favor – you’ve got to get that Trump Tower Moscow back on track. You know, a quid pro quo. To be honest, Vlad, I don't know what a quid pro quo is but everyone seems to be using it now, so I thought I'd give it a try.’”

Due to the controversy over the super-secret filing of the "transcript' of Trump's call to the Ukrainian president, our source reports that transcripts of all these calls and internal discussions, as well as the letters to and from Kim Jong Un, will be filed in the White House basement in a file cabinet labeled "Donald Trump's Reading List," which no one would ever look into for, well, obvious reasons.

Danger: The Yellow Brick Road leads to the Land of Trump, the Great and Powerful. Proceed (and vote) at your own risk!

Satire from Ted Block

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Donald Trump – con man in chief

Around the Block reveals where little Donald learned his flimflammery

As we head deeper and deeper into a full-fledged Constitutional crisis, a crisis in which democracy as we know it is on the precipice, a crisis of which Paul Krugman opined today, “…if democracy survives — which is by no means certain — it will largely be thanks to one unpredictable piece of good luck: Donald Trump’s mental deficiency," I started thinking, who is this man, Donald Trump? The man Krugman characterizes as not stupid because “a stupid man couldn’t have managed to defraud so many people over so many years.”

The answer is well-known and easy: Donald Trump is a con man, a “lazy, utterly incurious, insecure” one, according to Krugman, but a con man.

But, is this just his nature, or was there an event, a happening, an experience that formed Trump’s character?

And then it hit me. Donald Trump became the hustler he is today on Saturday, November 3, 1956 when he, along with millions of other kids, watched as CBS reintroduced the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, to the American public. Little Donald watched in amazement as the film went from the black and white of Kansas to the technicolor Land of Oz (most of us watched in amazement as well but for one thing: we couldn’t see the transition to color because unlike the Trumps we didn’t have a color TV), he knew instantly who he wanted to be – the greatest con man of all time: the Great and Powerful Oz!

Well as luck would have it, little Donald became president of the United States, a president who, in just the last few days has uttered the most incredible and amazing statements ever attributed to an American president (I could go back further than the last few days but even I have space limitations):

“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!).” 

“They (the Kurds) are  fighting for their land. And as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn’t help us in the Second World War. They didn’t help us with Normandy, as an example.”

“Well they (ISIS fighters) are going to be escaping to Europe, that's where they want to go." 

Regarding former Vice President Biden: “He was only a good vice president because he knew how to kiss Barack Obama’s ass.”

Regarding Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “She’s either really stupid or she’s really lost it — or maybe there’s a certain dishonesty in there.”

(Note: Last two statements were made at a campaign rally in Minneapolis which drew “roars of approval.”)

If only, as in the "real" The Wizard of Oz, there was little Toto to pull the curtain (or at least flush these statements down the, well, Toto) and reveal the true man. Someone, anyone who could finally tell us to “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” 

Someone, perhaps a Lindsey Graham, or a Mitch McConnell, or a Kevin McCarthy who could finally, finally tell us:

"If he only had a brain!"

"If he only had a heart!"

"If he only had some courage."

"But he doesn’t So, until he does, Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”  

As Trump reaches 42 potential offenses, "Lower the Bar" Barr seeing how low the DO(I)J can go

Satire from Ted Block

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Times’ Leonhardt: Trump up to 42 potential impeachable offenses

“Lower the Bar” Barr’s DO(I)J “Trump Protection Squad” working to end Congressional “Illegal Witch Hunt”

  

Last week, David Leonhardt of the NY Times detailed 40 potentially impeachable offenses Trump has said or done.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/opinion/trump-ukraine-whistle-blower.html?te=1&nl=david-leonhardt&emc=edit_ty_20191001?campaign_id=39&instance_id=12758&segment_id=17484&user_id=2ef6f205f60e02dd41a1490fd290e040&regi_id=84684220

Leonhardt reported today, in a message entitled, “41, 42...”, that “the president of the United States accused one of his congressional critics of treason yesterday morning and said that the critic should be arrested. And yet it might not even have been the most outrageous thing that the country learned about President Trump yesterday.

“That distinction could also belong to the news, broken by Times reporters, that during a phone call with the prime minister of Australia, Trump pressured him to produce information discrediting Robert Mueller’s recent investigation. White House aides took the unusual step of restricting access to the transcript of the phone call, in a sign they believed it was problematic. It was the same step they had taken after Trump’s July call with Ukraine’s president.”

After having part of Leonhardt's column read to him, we've learned that Attorney General William “Lower the Bar” Barr has charged his Department of Injustice's (DOIJ) “Trump Protection Squad” (TPS) to find ways to end the “illegal Congressional witch hunt.”

Sources inside the DOIJ have told Around the Block, on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss illegal department activities, that Barr has demanded his minions find some law, statute or even hearsay, that would put an end to, in his words, the “illegal, Congressional witch hunt being run by the traitor, Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

In a potential breakthrough for Team Trump coach Barr, our sources indicate that a very low level, but very deep state junior department attorney who, incidentally, most recently interned for White House advisor Stephen Miller, has found the answer: An obscure DOIJ Office of Illegal Counsel (OILC) rule reads, “There is a limit to the number of impeachable offenses that a president can be accused of; that number is 50. Once 51 offenses are reported, the impeachment inquiry must be abandoned and no further action can be taken to impeach and, of course, remove the president.” Given that, a member of Barr’s DOIJ team, posing as a left-wing whistleblower, has been charged with feeding Leonhardt more potential Trump transgressions in the anticipation that in the next few days and weeks, Leonhardt will reach the magic number, 51, and publish his findings…thus ending the impeachment inquiry.

Barr, in a meeting with his DOIJ TPS reportedly awarded this junior attorney the DOIJ “Medal of Unfreedom” medal saying, “Thanks to this young man we are only nine presidential wrongdoings away from making this horrifyingly illegal witch hunt go away and we can get back to work opining in favor of other injustices to the detriment of the people.”

Breaking Twisted News: Giuliani, Fox agree to Rudy producing/starring in TV shows and feature film

Satire from Ted Block

AROUND THE BLOCK

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**Breaking Twisted News** 

Giuliani signs BLOCKBUSTER deal with Fox 

Agreement includes 2 TV shows; 1 feature film

Around the Block has learned exclusively that the Fox Corporation, the Murdoch controlled owner of Fox TV and the Fox News Network, has signed Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, President Trump’s private attorney and America’s TV lawyer, to a blockbuster deal that will have “America’s Mayor” executive produce and star in two Fox-produced TV shows and one feature film.

The TV shows will be called Where in the World is Rudy Giuliani which will air on the Fox Network and America's Lawyer Yells and Screams to be carried by the Fox News Channel.

Where in The World is Rudy Giuliani – a weekly Fox Network series which will follow Rudy as he travels the world visiting dictatorships and other countries where the rule of law has been abandoned. Each episode will feature Giuliani meeting with leaders, laughing and sharing  autocrat jokes ("did you hear the one about Stalin walking into a bar with a rabbi and a priest..."). The show will always end with a fade to black as Rudy enters the White House after the trip. Initial venues will include Ukraine (Ukraine will be aired in five separate segments), Kazakhstan, Belarus, Hungary and, of course, Russia. We understand when Rudy visits Russia he will not meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin (at least not in the open). 

America’s Lawyer Yells and Screams – a daily primetime Fox News Channel talk/interview show in which a rotating panel of commentators from CNN and MSNBC, as well as Fox’s own Chris Wallace, will be grilled by Rudy who will yell and scream at them before they have a chance to answer his questions. The show’s format will feature a final 10-minute segment in which Rudy (by that part of the show Rudy will be so confused and demented that he will have to rest) will turn the show over to co-hosts who will continue to shout at and otherwise try to demean the panel. We've learned that Rudy has already lined up Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Jennine Pirro and Laura Ingraham as co-hosts.

The feature film, This Was Us, will be produced by Fox Searchlight.* 

This Was Us – a future, fantasy, dramady, will jump forward to 2024 to tell the story of Rudy and Donald Trump, three years into their sentences in federal prison, commiserating about their lives in politics and how their trials and convictions, as well as Trump’s impeachment and removal from office, were witch hunts, run by bad people who treated them both very badly. While full, final casting has not been announced, ATB has learned that Rudy will play himself while Alec Baldwin will play Trump, Steve Martin will play both Mike Pence and Joe Biden, Larry David will be Bernie Sanders, Kate McKinnon will play Crooked Hillary Clinton, Sacha Baron Cohen will be Adam Schiff,  Jeff Garlin will be Jerry Nadler and legendary Native American actress, Sacheen Littlefeather, will play Elizabeth Warren.

Terms of the agreement have not been announced as Giuliani believes that would suggest a quid pro quo and, as a lawyer, he understands the dangers of getting involved in “quid” and “pro” as well as “quo.” 

Our sources have told us however, that Giuliani's payment will be in a combination of Russian rubles (₽) and Ukrainian hryvnia (₴).

*Fox Searchlight and other former 21st Century Fox assets were recently sold to the Walt Disney Company. As part of that deal Fox retained the right to produce one film after the sale. Apparently, Murdoch being Murdoch, This Was Us is that film.