WHOA! NY Daily News BURNS Trump with Most Damning Front Page Yet as Russian Agent Arrested in US!
The editors of New York City’s iconic tabloid Daily News went there. They used the “T” word on their front page, turning Trump’s campaign-era brag against him.
Expect an extra colic-y day from Trump’s sycophants and the vapid #MAGA cultists on social media, because in some responsibel journalistic circles the gloves are off.
Before the entire world Monday, the self-styled tough-guy, America-First President revealed himself to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s poodle.
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“Coats said they think it’s Russia [interfering with U.S. elections],” Trump said, referring to his director of national intelligence. “Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia.
That sound you hear is the head of the U.S. executive branch stabbing his intelligence agencies in the back in order to side, against all evidence, alongside the leader of a country that meddled in an American election and wants to do it again.
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Trump, in fact, blessed Putin as “extremely strong and powerful” in his denial — words he would never assign to the reams of proof compiled by the top four American intelligence agencies — and talked up the Russian president’s “incredible offer” to have his own agents review what U.S. officials have found.
He derides reports with which he disagrees as “fake news,” then buys the Russian narrative hook, line, sinker, pole and boat.
Ignorant about decades of Moscow meddling, from the Korean and Vietnam Wars, to Cuba and Eastern Europe, Trump says relations have “NEVER been worse.” Worse than the ignorance is the finger-pointing: He blames “many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt.”
Reporter forcibly removed for waving sign at Trump, Putin press conference in Helsinki »
Nothing about Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Or its complicity in the shooting down of a civilian airliner. Or its meddling in the 2016 elections.“We’re all to blame,” said the American President Monday, the foreign-policy equivalent of his “both sides” drivel after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
It would be high comedy if it were not a national tragedy. And a national emergency.
The Daily News was not alone in their assessment of Trump’s treason:
New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow was among the first to apply the “T” word to the president in a prescient Monday piece titled “Trump, Treasonous Traitor,” which appeared just hours before the presser. “It was nothing short of treasonous,” former CIA Director John Brennan tweeted of Trump’s press conference performance. “I’m so sorry the Commander-in-chief is a traitor,” tweeted Michael Moore, agreeing with Brennan for the first time ever. Tea Party stalwart Joe Walsh said the same. “Trump the Traitor,” read the headline on Boston Globe columnist Michael A. Cohen’s Monday afternoon piece. He concluded, “Trump is a clear and present danger to US national security.”
Even old hands at statecraft, well-known for their cautious use of words and language, are bandying the word about:
The word treason is so strong that we must use it carefully. But that press conference has brought the President of the United States right up to that dark, dark shore.
— Eliot A Cohen (@EliotACohen) July 16, 2018
Laurence Tribe, who in a sane world would be sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, was far more blunt:
Trump’s overt trashing of America’s intelligence agencies and US law enforcement, taking Putin’s side on the world stage in Helsinki over an act of cyberwar that Trump all but invited Putin to continue, wrapped in renewed claims of an electoral win, puts him at war with the US.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) July 16, 2018
As if Trump’s seditious antics in Helsinki are not enough, it is now clear that NRA stands for “nefarious Russian assets.”
A Russian woman with ties to a senior Russian government official was charged in Washington on Monday with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation, including by building ties to the leadership of the National Rifle Association and other conservative political organizations.
Maria Butina, 29, who recently received a graduate degree from American University, was arrested Sunday in the District and made her first appearance in U.S. District Court before Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson, where she was ordered held without bond.
Butina is accused of trying to cultivate relationships with American politicians to establish “back channel” lines of communication and seeking to infiltrate U.S. political groups, including an unnamed “gun rights organization,” to advance Russia’s agenda. Descriptions in court papers match published reports about Butina’s interactions with the NRA.
(More details via press release from the DoJ).
I am not holding my breath waiting for the Republican machine to turn on Putin… er, Trump, who, after all, has delivered the party the business-coddling, woman-hating, freedom-limiting federal court system they have craved since even before the notorious “Powell Memo.” That’s the way we roll.
Which means that Making America America Again will require the rest of us to roll over Trump’s cult of personality and the party that has sold us out to Russia because they had to get what they want at any cost.
Send them all to Leavenworth — Trump, Pence, McConnell, Ryan, Rand Paul, Mike Meadows, Jim Jordan — the whole treasonous bunch. An investment in noose rope futures may be wise, but consult a professional financial advisor.
