Above the Almighty

A guy evidently tweeting under a creative pseudonym can't really be serious.

Do people say #NoKings because they really believe Trump will try to claim the Presidency for a third/fourth/fifth term? Is everyone really that stupid?

— Bud Bundy (@ItsBudBundy) October 14, 2025

As USA Today reported

President Donald Trump had "Trump 2028" hats on display when meeting with Congress' top Democrats in the Oval Office ahead of the government shutdown.

Photos posted to Trump's Truth Social account show the hats set out on his desk when House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met with Republican leaders on Sept. 29 as the two sides tried to come to an agreement on spending to stave off a shutdown. The meeting was unsuccessful, and the shutdown began Oct.1.

"They just randomly appeared in the middle of the meeting on the desk. It was the strangest thing ever," Jeffries said on CNN on Sept. 30. He said he turned to Vice President JD Vance and asked him, "don't you got a problem with this?"

"And he said, 'no comment,' and that was the end of it," Jeffries recounted.

And as the fact-checking website Snopes reminds us

Trump, who was elected to a nonconsecutive second term in 2024, is constitutionally ineligible to run as president in 2028, when his second term concludes, due to the 22nd Amendment.

However, rumors about him considering running for a third term have swirled for some time, and the official retail website (archived) of the Trump Organization was selling (archived) red hats reading "Trump 2028." The product description read: "Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat."

Such rumors predated the commencement of Trump's second stint in the White House on Jan. 20, 2025. At different points, Trump has both suggested and ruled out the idea of a third term.

Although the 22nd Amendment does not preclude an individual from serving a third term as President, it does in fact preclude him from running for a third term. However, Steve Bannon has an answer for that, calmly telling Batya Ungar-Sargon

I think that there are many different alternatives that at the appropriate time after the midterms, uh, in '26, uh, we will roll out. But I think there are many different alternatives, uh, to make sure that President Trump is on the ballot and if he's on the ballot, he'll win.

Bannon said they are trying to figure out a way for Trump to get a third… pic.twitter.com/Yykf3gFdcd

— ❤🎹 Ames 🎹❤ (@Real_Ames) October 14, 2025

Having chosen previously not to rule out a third term, Donald in March claimed that he "probably" would not run again.  This false show of ambivalence allows Trump the luxury of ambiguity, thus empowering CNN and other mainstream media to ignore his apparent interest in circumventing the Constitution. It encourages him eventually to seek the office again because of (alleged) public demand and permits supporters such as tweeter Bundy to accuse critics of the President of being deranged or stupid.. 

It is clever strategy for someone who does not intend to walk away from the Oval Office on January 20, 2029. And he shouldn't go quietly because if Donald Trump is above the Almighty, there is no reason he should be, or could be subservient to the U.S. Constitution. And if we ever doubted the supremacy of the King of America, we cannot do so now, after the interview of one of the President's sons with Trump influencer Benny Johnson.

Eric Trump: "We're saving Christianity. We've saving God. We've saving the family unit. We're saving this nation. I mean, DEI is out of the window…” @atrupar
pic.twitter.com/0s1Q1Z0J2q

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) October 15, 2025

We're saving God. There is no way around it- if President Trump's supporters, the Administration generally, or the President specifically is the "we" who are saving God, they are superior to God. And if "God is good" or "God is great," then saving God is an unsurpassed act of divine mercy, a deed beyond anything imaginable. Undertaking such an enterprise must not be questioned.

Donald Trump did not leave the presidency gracefully in January of 2021. He now has a great deal of power, which is increasing weekly, as is likely to continue with creative use of the military. How he will decide to hang on beyond January 20, 2029 us unknown. However, given his mortal existence- which, despite what Eric and some others believe is his nature- he will try to do so somehow.

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More Than Trump

Chris Christie, former governor and presidential candidate and (still) Donald Trump sycophant, has been on a charm offensive with major news outlets, Nicole Wallace's credible interview notwithstanding.  He believes Trump did a lot of swell things as President and was a far better choice for the office than Hillary Clinton. And he condemns Joe Biden as President but acknowledges the latter was duly elected. So everything is forgiven.

Christie's perspective might be a little credible were Donald Trump the only problem facing the country. However, the latter is not the sole problem and may not be the primary one.

On Wednesday, 207 of 210 Republicans, 98.6%, voted against censuring and removing from committee assignments Representative Paul Gosar for having threatened the life of one of his colleagues, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In voting "present," David Joyce of Ohio refused, along with the two Republicans ( Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) who oppose the violent overthrow of the government, to defend a man so odious he's hated by his own family.

Then there is Steve Bannon, who unlike Trump has never been President and never will be, a man so odious that he has called for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Robert Wray. (I don't like either myself, but really.) Now

Republicans are rallying around former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon after his indictment on charges of contempt of Congress on Friday, warning that Democrats’ efforts to force Bannon to comply with what they say is an unfair subpoena paves the way for them to do the same if they take back the House in 2022.

Bannon, like former president Donald Trump, has refused to comply with an order from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection to turn over records and testify about his actions leading up to the attack, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol trying to stop the certification of President Biden’s electoral college win....

Many GOP leaders, however, are seizing on Bannon’s indictment to contend that Democrats are “weaponizing” the Justice Department, warning Democrats that they will go after Biden’s aides for unspecified reasons if they take back the House majority in next year’s midterm elections, as most political analysts expect.

“For years, Democrats baselessly accused President Trump of ‘weaponizing’ the DOJ. In reality, it is the Left that has been weaponizing the DOJ the ENTIRE TIME — from the false Russia Hoax to the Soviet-style prosecution of political opponents,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the third-ranking House Republican, tweeted Saturday.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) suggested that Republicans would seek payback if the GOP regained control of the House, signaling that in challenging the doctrine of executive privilege, Democrats were making it easier for Republicans to force Biden’s top advisers to testify before a future GOP Congress.

This claim is suspect because it comes from a Trump flunkie, but is stunning if true:

Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah riled up former President Donald Trump by telling CNN that he admitted his election defeat to Joe Biden was legitimate.

“He told me shortly after that he knew he lost, but then folks got around him,” she told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Saturday. “They got information in front of him, and I think his mind genuinely might have been changed about that, and that’s scary because he did lose.”

Donald Trump may have been less radical, less intent on allowing Joe Biden to assume the presidency, than were people around him. Chew on that awhile.

House Republicans and GOP bureaucrats are different in degree but not in kind from Chris Christie, who excuses the January 6 insurrectionists with "I don't think they would've gone there if they thought the election had been fair."  (Most of the media has interpreted this as Christie criticizing Trump's role in the insurrection. They were born yesterday.)  Donald Trump, Republicans in state legislatures curbing the right to vote, the former New Jersey governor, and GOP politicians from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, are sending a clear message:  representative democracy must have no home in the United States of America. 

 

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"Never Send A Marine To Do A Hit Man's Job"

Like any would-be fascist, Donald Trump can sense weakness.On Monday, Michael Wolff, author of "Siege- Trump Under Fire," told Lawrence O'Donnell (in the first part of a two-part interview) that President Trump

thought from the beginning he could take Robert Mueller.  He says I know this guy.  I know this kind of guy.  You know, he`s too separate as I said, he said he`s got no game.

And I think he sensed that.  He sense this had as a weakness in the special prosecutor.  He sensed that he could be – you know, by saying a witch hunt, witch hunt, witch hunt, he could be the person that Robert Mueller was essentially would say, you know, this is a crazy man and how to predict what a crazy man will do.  And that`s a scary thing.

Asked by O'Donnell about Steve Bannon, Wolff replies

And he says never send a marine to do a hit man`s job.  I think he sees this as Steve understood, you know, Robert Mueller is there as to – as an institutional guy to protect an institution.  And Donald Trump is perfectly willing to destroy an institution.

Robert Mueller played right into the President's game. The next evening, Ari Melber reported that according to "Siege," the Special Counsel's office had investigated whether the President could directly (as well as indirectly) fire the Special Counsel and whether he could dismiss the Special Counsel if the purpose were to impede an investigation. The staff concluded that the President could do either or both.

Wolff had told O'Donnell

What happens to the work product they ask if they are fired?  Well, the chances that it could be – the possibility is it could be completely destroyed.

They go through one of these one after another of these contingencies, nothing with a positive result.  And one of the things that I think happened here or one of the things that I feel might well have happened here is Robert Mueller looked at this and said, you know, this guy, Donald Trump could bring the house down,  could bring the temple down.

Describing the Special Counsel as an institutionalist concerned with the house burning down is fairly generous. The intrepid, courageous Marine was intimidated by a President who realized that was his only way to head off a report that would lead to removal from office, if not prosecution. As Elie Mystal explained to Melber

It's like the old Mike Tyson thing, where he would win the fight before he got into the ring because people were scared of him. Mueller- and I think this gets to this institutionalist aspect of Mueller's investigation- he was more concerned with the institution, with his own part of the store, than he was with the rest of the house burning down.

 Mystal noted that Mueller had forgotten the advice traditionally given to football players by their coaches: "stop worrying about what they're going to do to you and start worrying about what you're going to do to them." Instead, Robert Mueller was cowed by a President who knew only intimidation of the Special Counsel stood between him and report which would lead to his removal from office and/or prosecution. "Mueller," Melber recognized, "clearly played the game not to lose." In so doing, he made sure Donald Trump would win, and the suspicion grows that that was no accident.

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Checking Team Russia

On Tuesday morning before the Manafort verdict and the Cohen guilty plea, Carl Reiner tweeted

Hearing all the breaking news this morning caused me to envision Trump as Humpsty Dumpty tottering on his wall as he is about to fall

— carl reiner (@carlreiner) August 21, 2018

After Manafort and Cohen went down (at least for now), Charlie Pierce wrote

This is a mortal blow to the administration*, which may stagger around for a year or so before it falls over and crushes people, but there is no way I can see that this gets any better for the president* or the people around him. The president* and his fixer paid off Stormy Daniels, and also paid off a tabloid media company, in order to bury stories about the president*'s wandering Donald, and did so in direct violation of even those campaign finance laws that Anthony Kennedy left in place.

Pierce has proclaimed the First Law of Economics as "Fck The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money."  And although people have jobs now, they may be working two at a time and inflation is rising so real wages are not. A corollary to Pierce's Rule of Economics could be "no one cares about the deficit (except some congressional Democrats)."

However, there is another law of American politics which roughly states "no one cares about campaign finance violations." Consequently, the reliably cynical (and realistic) Steve M argues

I think ordinary Americans are simply too cynical about campaign finance -- and rightly so -- to get worked up over this. What's the admission here? That Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to remain silent during the 2016 campaign. But another news story yesterday told us that Sheldon and Miriam Adelson gave $25 million last month to the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC. Would you blame people who don't follow politics closely if they don't understand why a six-figure de facto campaign contribution is a felony but an eight-figure gift is just fine? I think most Americans believe that the problem is that American politics is awash in money, not that a gift directly to a candidate ought to be under strict dollar limits while super PAC money can flow much more freely.

As SM understands,  people will take notice if Cohen starts to spill his guts, which is likely to occur at some point.  Nonetheless, he's overly pessimistic when contending

If Democrats take the House, they might believe this is enough for an impeachment, though I think they know better. I believe any impeachment will be an exercise in futility unless public opinion changes dramatically and persuades Senate Republicans that they should vote to convict.

Democrats are unlikely to gain control of the House of Representatives unless they win the national popular vote for the chamber by something north of eight percentage points.  As Steve Bannon predicts, the midterms will likely be "a referendum on the Trump presidency." With the economy perceived by Republicans, the mainstream media, and even conceded (unnecessarily) by some Democrats as strong, a Democratic takeover will not occur unless public opinion about the Russia probe does change significantly.





If that occurs and Democratic losses in the Senate are held to a minimum, the stakes in the Special Counsel probe are heightened. If Mueller issues a damning report or the investigation is severely curtailed or ended by President Trump, the reaction is likely to make the latter wish he had never heard of the presidency.

Of course, Donald Trump may be called to account even if Michael Cohen doesn't sing or the Democrats gain control over the House of Representatives. Still the majority in both chambers, the GOP could decide to put country over party. Just kidding.

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Too LIttle, Too Much, Too Late

A great political strategist- Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6-) once put it succinctly, quipping "when you're explaining, you're losing."

Reagan had few original thoughts but was sufficiently crafty to know what plays well in Peoria. And if true that "when you're explaining, you're losing," there is a corollary: when you're clarifying, you're losing.

Steve Bannon less-than-cleverly combined the two when on Sunday he stated  "My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, these comments were not aimed at Don Jr."

David Frum responds "Bannon helpfully explains that Don Jr, CEO of the supposedly multibillion-dollar Trump Organization, was too inexperienced and unknowledgable to realize he shouldn’t receive stolen information from Russian spies,"

In the statement first reported by Axios, Bannon had omitted mention of Jared Kushner or Ivanka Trump, but called Donald Trump Jr. "both a patriot and a good man" who "has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around." Again, Frum: "Bannon clarifies: it was not treasonous of Donald Trump Jr. to organize a meeting with Russian spies, only of Paul Manfort to attend it."

Nonethless, as Politico notes

inside the White House, Bannon's 297-word statement of contrition about comments he made in Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" was seen as too little, too late for an operative unaware of the self-inflicted damage his hubris could cause.

It did nothing to quell Trump’s rage at his former chief strategist or the anger of Bannon’s former West Wing colleagues, according to multiple administration officials, who said the vibe in the president’s circle was that people were unmoved by the statement. Asked whether there is anything Bannon can do at this point to get back in the president's good graces, one White House official said curtly, "Unlikely."

Bannon and Trump are wise enough to recognize that each can use the other, and some sort of rapproachment is likely. Still, the response from the White House was far more predictable than that Bannon would do something so foolish as to wait a few days and then issue what The Washington Post referred to as a "mea culpa."

Bannon's (belated) response was both too little and too much.  Trump does not crave approval but adulation.  After passage of the Corporate Tax Scam of 2017, the always-understated Senate Majority Leader McConnell told the President "you hold the record."  House Speaker and perennial ass-wipe Paul Ryan cited "exquisite presidential leadership" and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy gushed "we would not be standing here it it were not for you."

Similarly, House Ways and Means Committee chairperson Kevin Brady told the President "but for your leadership we would not be here today" and Senate counterpart Orrin Hatch, chairperson of the Finance Committee, raved "you're one heck of a leader" who "has been making history since the first day of this administration." (In the old days, we would refer to people such as Hatch as "senile.")





Compared to all that, "patriot and good man" (directed at the President's son) is very weak tea and could not impress Donald Trump.

In an ironic twist, however, while Bannon's compliments were insufficient, they also were excessive.

Often generously referred to as a "bully"- fascist would be far impolitic and rude- Donald J. Trump feeds on the weak and the unsuccessful. When candidate Trump trivialized the Vietnam war sacrifice of John McCain, he did not suggest the reports of torture were exaggerated, question their accuracy, or claim the torture was unusually severe. Instead, he maintained "I like people who aren't captured"; that is, individuals who aren't losers.

Once the blowback ensued after the "Sound and Fury" comments were published, Bannon had lost.Yet, iIf he had issued his near-apology immediately, it would have been merely insufficient, having taken place before it was clear the remarks were damaging him. Instead, he waited until the President criticized him, thus making it obvious he issued the mea culpa because his back was against the wall and he had no choice. He was a loser, and Trump pounced.

It was an unforced error on the part of Steve Bannon and a mistake he's unlikely ever to repeat.




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Grand Opportunity

Interviewed Friday morning on "The TodayShow," "Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff was asked about his credibility and responded "my credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who has ever walked on earth at this point."





Perhaps? Mr. Wolff is being too generous. Donald J. Trump, at many and varied times both attacked and praised as a nationalist and populist, is a world-class liar- and a fake, phony, and fraud.

Or maybe he's not, and in the next 24 hours we'll know with confidence whether his image, crucial to his electoral success, as a populist and nationalist is legitimate. Henry Grabar explains that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, NY

announced on Thursday it would start charging mandatory admission fees to out-of-state visitors, a policy change that will provide revenue for the Met and bring the museum’s business model in line with its global peers. It will also deprive New York of one of its most extraordinary, egalitarian traditions, a rare offering that had lingered from the city’s fading commitment to common public life.

The Met, whose 7 million annual visitors make it the second-most popular art museum on Earth after the Louvre, has long wanted to make more money from admissions. The museum says out-of-staters account for more than half of its annual attendance. (New York state residents and students from around the region will continue to pay what they wish to enter the nation’s largest art museum; admission for children under 12 remains free.) It wasn’t just about making ends meet; it was a matter of principle. “What is it about art that it shouldn’t be paid for?” the former Met director Philippe de Montebello asked in 2002....

In a letter published on Thursday, Met President and CEO Daniel Weiss put a more pragmatic spin on it: The Met needs money. The museum has struggled financially in recent years, running up a $40 million deficit that forced layoffs of 90 employees last year and the downscaling of a planned $600 million new wing. Critics say that under Thomas Campbell, who resigned as director in February of last year, the museum had spent recklessly, seduced by visions of new wings, new art, and new donors.

Weiss argues that his museum does not derive most of its revenue from government and is “the only major museum in the world that relies exclusively on a pure pay-as-you-wish system," It's unlikely that charging visitors- who currently are asked to make a donation-will greatly cut into its attendance because

No one would contend that a tour of the Met is not worth $25 or that most international visitors, who account for 37 percent of the museum’s attendance, could not afford it. Museum directors and their allies have often said their institutions possess what economists call a low “elasticity of demand,” meaning that price hikes generally don’t drive visitors away.

However, Grabar argues

This may be true and good for globetrotters, and perhaps the Met will still bring in 7 million visitors next year. But the person the museum ought to be trying to get inside is not someone already determined to be there. It’s precisely those who might be turned off by a $25 ticket who are the Met’s perfect audience: the young woman visiting her sister who is not sure if she can afford it, the New Jersey commuter who doesn’t know if he even likes this stuff. The Met has always offered itself to those people, in part because its astounding array of treasures in such close proximity—not just art, but armor, and the choir screen of a Spanish church, and the façade of an 1825 bank building, and an entire Egyptian temple—can melt any skeptic’s resistance. But also because, being free, all you had to lose was your time.

Fewer domestic travelers- even those from Trump's allegedly beloved heartland- will be able to afford to visit one of the nation's cultural treasures. Grabar continues:

Enduring the stern looks of the ticket-sellers when you handed over your $2 was the price you paid to share this sneaky, radical bargain with a friend from out of town. It’s too bad that the Met will no longer mean the same thing to visitors as it does to New Yorkers, because no city is quicker to make you one of its own than this one. However diminished from days when the subway was a nickel and CUNY was free and the Met didn’t“suggest” anything but the city’s tremendous public assets, New York’s occasional largesse was never something that had to be earned. And while the museum remains all but free for New Yorkers, whatever their vintage, the formality of an ID check nevertheless functions as a little marker to remind that some visitors belong and some do not.

The Met, Grabar understands, "will no longer mean the same thing to visitors as it does to New Yorkers" while "the formality of an ID check" will serve "as a little marker to remind that some visitors belong and some do not."  A cultural institution freely available to all individuals- who would attend alongside New Yorkers- will become less available to Americans from Durham or Dubuque or Delavan, Wisconsin.

Normally, this would not concern a President of the United States. But inveterate tweeter Donald J. Trump is not a normal president. He made his millions or billions in New York City, NY, where he maintains his principal residence. His favorite person and her husband are Manhattan people,where they lived in opulence and Jared made his own big bucks in real estate.

And now a repository of high culture located in Democratic New York City in Democratic New York State has chosen to favor New York citizens over those of Southfield, Michigan or Scranton, Pennsylvania. They will be asked for identification and charged admission on the same basis as visitors from any country.

This would be a perfect opportunity for a president who once claimed to represent "Pittsburgh, not Paris" to tweet out his concern.





Or it would be if President Trump were a populist or even a genuine nationalist.  But that was all for popular consumption.  In "Fire and Fury," Wolff notes that when the President signed the initial Executive Order promulgating the travel ban

The result was an emotional outpouring of horror and indignation from liberal media, terror in immigrant communities, tumultuous protests at major airports, confusion throughout the government, and, in the White House, an inundation of opprobrium from friends and family. What have you done? You have to undo this! You’re finished before you even start! But Bannon was satisfied. He could not have hoped to draw a more vivid line between Trump’s America and that of liberals. Almost the entire White House staff demanded to know: Why did we do this on a Friday, when it would hit the airports hardest and bring out the most protesters?

“Errr … that’s why,” said Bannon. “So the snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot.” That was the way to crush the liberals: Make them crazy and drag them to the left.

Serving the most sensitive President in American history, presidential advisor Steve Bannon was pleased "the snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot."  "That was the way," Wolff wrote, "to crush the liberals."

Not only was crushing liberals by enraging them the primary objective of Trump's chief campaign strategist, it was the guiding principle of the Trump campaign. It was not populism or even nationalism, though the latter played a role: it was to exhibit a visceral hatred of the people Republicans hate, thereby stirring up more animosity to exploit. Given a chance to show a genuine populist or even nationalist spirit, the President will pass.




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Missing Persons Bulletin Needed

Someone must immediately contact the FBI or the local police.  Van Jones must have been kidnapped and replaced with a body double because a man identified Jones stated (video of this portion not available; instead, two featuring Joy Behar) Friday on Real Time with Bill Maher

I am a little concerned that people are so happy that Flake is making this great speech, he's so courageous. When you're courageous, you say you are going to fight. He said I am going to get the heck out of here. The reason he ran scampering out is because of Bannon and he has a billion dollar cannon pointing at the head of every Republican who opposes Donald Trump and these guys are giving great speeches and turning the Party over to Bannon without a shot and that's not courage.










Donald Trump is the logical outcome of a Republican Party which has been trading for a long time in such things as denial of science, anti-minority animus, and accumulation of personal wealth as the highest ideal and prerequisite for making public policy. But Steve Bannon, with the power and money of the Mercers behind him and the luxury and flexibility of a private citizen, represents something new and different even in GOP politics. "Right now, it's a season of war against a GOP establishment," most recently asserted the guy who has vowed to take out the Senate Majority Leader and any Republican who does not pled allegiance to Trump, the Father.

So Jeff Flake, whose Senate career was dead in the water (or would have been, if Arizona had any water) before Bannon's latest foray, does not impress Van Jones, or at least the individual claiming Friday night to be hi,. It could not have been the real deal because eight years ago

The White House, in an unusual pre-dawn announcement Sunday, said its “green jobs czar” Van Jones would resign after fierce criticism from Republicans about some of his statements and associations prior to joining the administration.

While the job itself is not that high-profile — special adviser on green jobs — Jones’ departure from the position is the first real scalp claimed by the Republican right, which stoked much of the criticism of Jones....

The Van Jones of the Obama Administration sounded like the Jeff Flake of today when

In a resignation statement early Sunday morning, Jones said: "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide." 

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Van Jones' resignation was "a loss to the country."

It literally was a loss to the country because that Van Jones no longer exists or has "scampered out" to some other location. He was forced out by political opponents and presumably encouraged to quit by Barack Obama, whom Jones never fails to praise directly or indirectly. That Van Jones clearly helped turn the Obama Administration over to the GOP and "that's not courage," or so this one would say.

Today, there is someone impersonating the green jobs adviser of the other presidency, someone with a far different perspective on what to do when a person's political days are numbered. With this one deeply unrealistic, the real Van Jones must be found and returned to the comfort and safety of his family.

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"God Opposes The Proud But Gives Grace To The Humble Donald Trump"

If I were, say, 30-35 years younger, I might say "what hallucinogen are they providing at the Values Voter Summit- and how can I get some?"

At the gathering in Washington, D.C. (not "D.C."), Steve Bannon stated

Bob Corker has trashed the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces while we have young men and women in harm’s way, right? He said he’s leading them on a path to World War III, that he is not stable, that people have to keep him moderated… Why some U.S. senator in a position of that authority for the first time in the history of our Republic has mocked and ridiculed a Commander-in-Chief when we have kids in the field.

On a positive note, Bannon understands Article II, Section 2 of  the US Constitution, in which the President is identified as commander-in-chief specifically, and solely, of the armed forces.  On a negative note, he doesn't understand the First Amendment and that the nation is at virtual perpetual war, which by Bannon's standards, would bar anyone from ever criticizing the President.

As of three years ago (when this was written), the USA was involved in "extensive military incursions" not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in at least four countries: Pakisant, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria. Bannon didn't explain whether Trump's attacks on President Obama, commander-in-chief to American soldiers in those six countries and 128 others, were unpatriotic.

Bannon's remark also patronized those "kids in the field," as if those "kids" were 16 or 17 years old. Two of those "kids," as luck would have it, are closely related to former naval aviator, now Senator, John S. McCain, whose daughter Meghan tweeted  "Trump slammed my dads service when both of my brothers were (and still are) currently serving. Give me a break with this."

But at least Bannon, crusading to replace the GOP establishment with the GOP alternative right, probably is not deluding himself.  Beaming in from light years away, however, is former GOP Representative Michele Bachmann, of whom The Hill reports 

We were in a meeting with the vice president and the president, about 25 of us. I know the vice president. I served with him in Congress, and he is a vocal, committed believer of Jesus Christ himself. And he said, ‘I want all of you to know that the president is a committed believer. He is a man of faith,'" Bachmann said quoting Pence.

Bachmann went on to say that Trump is observant of God's authority over his life and presidency, which "should give us a lot of hope," said, arguing that faith "helps regulate our behavior." 

Surely, the man who proclaimed "I alone can fix it," is singularly observant of God's authority over his life and presidency.  Surely a man who calls himself "a total genius" and "the man that will easily go down as the greatest president in the history of the United States: Me, Donald John Trump” lives by the admonition "in humility count others more significant than yourselves."







Nonetheless, puppet Pence says "I know that the president is a committed believer," and we can believe Mike Pence because he would never, ever say or do something divisive because Donald Trump told him to do so.

Bachmann also, The Hill notes, "called Trump's election victory 'proof positive of what the Lord did.'"  Of course, Barack Obama also was elected- twice- which must itself have been "proof positive of what the Lord did," even though Bachmann once maintained his "number one goal to ensure that Iran has a nuclear weapon.”

I'm tempted to suggest that Michelle Bachmann, Steve Bannon, and President Trump himself, all speakers at the Values Voters Summit, don't understand Christian values. However, that would be irrelevant because the sponsors of the event don't identify it as the "Chrisian Voters Summit."  Courage, it appears, is not a value the "religious" right values.









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Bannon Is Almost Right. But It's Not A Sin.

Chris Cillizza in his "The 48 most revealing lines of Steve Bannon's 60 Minutes interview" got it right about Donald Trump (not) specifically being a counter puncher, but somewhat wrong responding to one of Bannon's most controversial remarks.

He quotes Bannon as "Because unable to really to come to grips with the problems in the church, they need illegal aliens, they need illegal aliens to fill the churches" and responds

Um, what? By Bannon's logic, the reason the Catholic Church opposes the repeal of DACA is because they know the faith is struggling and the only way to make their numbers is to allow undocumented immigrants to pack into their church services.

Bet you didn't know that.





He's right- I didn't.   That's because as phrased by Cillizza, "the only way to make their numbers is to allow undocumented immigrants to pack into their church services," the statement is accurate. A year ago, the Public Religion Research Institute (report here; analysis here) found

While non-white Protestants and non-Christian religious groups have remained fairly stable, white Protestants and Catholics have all experienced declines, with Catholics suffering the largest decline among major religious groups: a 10-percentage point loss overall. Nearly one-third (31%) of Americans report being raised in a Catholic household, but only about one in five (21%) Americans identify as Catholic currently.

(In the interests of full disclosure: the decline among mainline Protestant denominations is even greater than in the Roman Catholic Church but increases among evangelical denominations keep the overall Protestant drop below the Catholic drop.)

Religious denominations generally, and their member congregations specifically, recognize that the decline in church attendance and affiliation is especially severe among young people. PRRI noted

And while 21% of the total population currently identifies as Catholic, only 15% of young adults ages 18–29 say they are Catholic, which is not a particularly encouraging trend line for the Catholic Church.

Nonetheless, Bannon was off when he prefaced the statement quoted by Cillizza with "The Catholic Church has been terrible about this. The bishops have been terrible about this. By the way, you know why- you know why." He strongly implied the need for numbers was the sole reason for the church's stance.  By contrast, the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan responded to the initial report of Bannon's charge by arguing

And the Bible is so clear, so clear, that to treat the immigrant with dignity and respect, to make sure that society is just in its treatment of the immigrant is Biblical mandate,.  It's clear from the lips of Jesus when he said, 'Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me. When I was a stranger,' meaning an immigrant or a refugee, 'you welcomed me.'

Sister Simone Campbell, the bus riding director of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, already had slammed the Trump Administration's decision to shut down DACA in six months. Hearing of Bannon's complaint, she issued a series of tweets, maintaining "Bannon has forgotten that he is the son of immigrants and forgottten the teachings of his Church," one "whose members support,value & protect immigrant families rather than ter them apart" (although not so much her and ideological allies, it turns out).

There is a happy confluence of openness to immigrants on the grounds of compassion (and, they claim, religious faith) and the need to increase membership and involvement in Roman Catholicism. Further,it is likely that most immigrants from Mexico and points south are at least nominal Catholics.

Cillizza's reaction to Bannon's charge suggests unnecessary defensiveness over the latter motive. There is nothing nefarious in increasing numbers in the pews, without which it is difficult- as Christians might put it- to strengthen an individual's "walk with Christ." Exposing the "unchurched" to worship is a reasonable means of witnessing to non-believers, to which many devout Catholics and Protestants (especially the latter) are devoted.

Give Bannon a little credit, though. Although he is off-kilter, his pronouncement about the Roman Catholic Church's view of immigrants is bold, as well as  pretty good fodder for a blog post.





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Punching Always

There are few media figures more "inside the Beltway" than Chris Cillizza.  But at least in one way, he's out of character in his CNN article "The 48 most revealing lines of Steve Bannon's 60 Minutes interview."

Precious few individuals have questioned Donald Trump's claim of being a "counter puncher," frequently asserted by master strategist Trump to imply that he attacks only in self-defense. However, responding to Bannon's assertion to CBS' Charlie Rose that  "Donald Trump's a fighter. Great counter puncher. Great counter puncher. He's a fighter," Cillizza writes

The "counterpuncher" thing is straight from the mouth of Trump. What's interesting about it is that it's not totally true. Trump does do best when he is in a back and forth with someone -- President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, etc. But, it's not at all clear to me that Trump is always counterpunching. It feels like he is just punching a fair amount of the time.





Amen.  There are innumberable instances to demonstrate that Donald Trump is not a counter puncher but simply a puncher.

Consider the timeline of his feud with Megyn Kelly, then of GOP TV.  In an August 2015 debate, Kelly asked the candidate a question featuring "You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” Trump struck back on Twitter and soon thereafter stated "You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” (Not all of them had first criticized Trump.)

Choosing to de-escalate, two months later Kelly told Charlie Rose "So we just wanted to forge forward and try to put it behind us, not pour any more fuel on that fire.”

And then the "counter puncher," faced with a good-faith effort to end the civil war between Republican and Republican, tweeted "Isn't it terrible that @megynkelly used a poll not used before (I.B.D.) when I was down, but refuses to use it now when I am up?"  Stirring up a pot which had settled down to cool is not counter-punching.

There was the time in July 2015 at a GOP presidential forum at an evangelical gathering when Trump commented that John McCain is "not a war hero.  He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Politico captured what happened next, including

.@SenJohnMcCain is an American hero & all POW’s deserve our nation’s highest debt of gratitude. @realDonaldTrump’s comments are disgraceful,” tweeted former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

“As a fellow veteran I respect @SenJohnMcCain because he volunteered to serve his country. I cannot say the same about Mr. @realDonaldTrump,” Perry added. He then called in a statement for Trump to drop out of the race.

Rick Perry is now Secretary of Energy. Some conter-puncher, that Donald Trump. All he needs is an excuse to go at an opponent, even one who had been a supporter, although Generals seem to  be n exception. That's because there is a difference between being a coward.... and a counter puncher.





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