Conrad Theodore Seitz

An opinion piece on CNN points out that Don the Con is unwilling to stand up to Russia to protect Europe.  This means that the US doesn’t support “Article Five”, the mutual-defense pact which is at the center of NATO.  Don failed to actually say, “If you are attacked, we will defend you”– instead he complained about the other NATO countries not paying enough for their defense, insulted them, and claimed that Germany is unfairly making better cars than the US is able to produce, causing a balance-of-payments deficit.

After Don left Europe, Angela Merkel gave a speech in which she acknowledged that Germany will have to take care of herself.  Don the Con snubbed her and the other G-7 leaders publicly in his just-ended European trip.  The Europeans are all aware now that Don, despite having the biggest military establishment in the world, will not go to war to defend them against aggression by Russia.

Don’s position is precisely what Vlad “the Impaler” Putin and his cronies wanted to hear.  They aren’t planning to invade Europe any time soon, but they are happy to see European leaders anxious and distrustful of the US.  Don has clearly been bought and paid for by his Russian puppet-masters.  Vlad wants to see instability and anxiety among European leaders because he is envious of their success; he blames the US for fostering a comfortable environment.

Vlad is afraid of the press freedom and transparency that has kept European politicians relatively honest.  He is also concerned that the secrets behind his ascent to power in Russia may be revealed and may cause loss of confidence in his “leadership.”  No such revelations are possible within Russia because Russian journalists have been assassinated or warned off; more than 130 Russian reporters have been killed because they dug into Vladimir’s secrets too deeply.

Don the Con admires Vlad’s leadership style and wishes he could kill off a few of those annoying reporters.

Don the Con is using someone else’s coat of arms on his golf courses and other properties, reports the New York Times.  The real owner of that particular coat of arms has declined to sue Don in the United States because, well, you know, you just don’t want to start a law suit with that guy.  In Scotland, where coats of arms are taken seriously, Don was refused permission to use his purloined coat and had to come up with an alternative.  Similarly, the British Trademark Office refused to let him use the coat, which belongs to a gentleman named Davies and his descendants, one of whom is Joseph D. Tydings, a Democrat and a former senator.

The best part is that where the motto goes, at the bottom, it used to say “integritas”, but now it says “Trump.”  Let me be the first to point out that “integrity” is not something Don the Con wants to be associated with.

This tidbit of information is just so much more interesting and entertaining than the revelations that Jared Kushner is a billionaire slumlord who orchestrated Don the Con’s collusion with Russia to steal the presidential election.  There’s not even any surprise that Don would use his son-in-law as a go-between with the murderous autocrat Vlad “the Impaler” Putin.

A close look at Mike Flynn and how Don the Con treated him reveals the corrupt nature of their relationship and how it was exploited by Russia.  This is from an article in yesterday’s New York Times:

Mr. Flynn’s ties to Russian officials stretch back to his time at the Defense Intelligence Agency, which he led from 2012 to 2014. There, he began pressing for the United States to cultivate Russia as an ally in the fight against Islamist militants, and even spent a day in Moscow at the headquarters of the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence service, in 2013.

He continued to insist that Russia could be an ally even after Moscow’s seizure of Crimea the following year, and Obama administration officials have said that contributed to their decision to push him out of the D.I.A.

But in private life, Mr. Flynn cultivated even closer ties to Russia. In 2015, he earned more than $65,000 from companies linked to Russia, including a cargo airline implicated in a bribery scheme involving Russian officials at the United Nations, and an American branch of a cybersecurity firm believed to have ties to Russia’s intelligence services.

The biggest payment, though, came from RT, the Kremlin-financed news network. It paid Mr. Flynn $45,000 to give a speech in Moscow, where he also attended the network’s lavish anniversary dinner. There, he was photographed sitting next to Mr. Putin.

A senior lawmaker said on Monday that Mr. Flynn misled Pentagon investigators about how he was paid for the Moscow trip. He also failed to disclose the source of that income on a security form he was required to complete before joining the White House, according to congressional investigators.

American officials have also said there were multiple telephone calls between Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, on Dec. 29, beginning shortly after Mr. Kislyak was summoned to the State Department and informed that, in retaliation for Russian election meddling, the United States was expelling 35 people suspected of being Russian intelligence operatives and imposing other sanctions.

American intelligence agencies routinely tap the phones of Russian diplomats, and transcripts of the calls showed that Mr. Flynn urged the Russians not to respond, saying relations would improve once Mr. Trump was in office, officials have said.

Mike Flynn was unreasonably pro-Russia; before the invasion of Crimea, he was allowed to cultivate a relationship with the Russians, who were not at the time viewed as quite so threatening or inimicable to American interests.  After Crimea, when Obama began to realize the extremes to which the Russians were willing to go in order to control or undermine the government of the Ukraine, Flynn persisted in his unreasonable pro-Russian stance.  Obama fired him, in part for this, and in part for his tendency to conspiracy theories and his racist attitude towards Muslims.

After being fired, Flynn cultivated even closer ties to Russia, and essentially went on their payroll without informing his former employers, the US government.  He thus kept his lucrative security clearance and at the same time became vulnerable to Russian blackmail.  Despite all this, and despite being specifically warned against Flynn by not only Obama but Chris Christie, Don the Con hired him and apparently instructed him to inform his Russian contact, Ambassador Kislyak, that Don would end the sanctions after he took office.  It is entirely possible that Flynn made these promises to Kislyak without specific authorization from Don, and only sought his approval afterwards.

Flynn’s relationship with Turkey, and his compensation from the Turkish government, was even more corrupt than his ties to Russia.  Flynn vetoed a plan which would have armed Kurdish forces and used them in the fight against the Islamic State in Mosul– all because the Turks were enemies of the Kurds, whom they had oppressed for over a hundred years.  Flynn’s actions as national security advisor were corruptly influenced by his support from Turkey as well as from Russia.

Don the Con’s treatment of Mike Flynn and his attempts to protect Flynn from FBI investigation show that Don had been compromised by his relationship to the Russians.  Don supported Mike, who was directly in the pay of the Russians, and his foreign policy towards Russia was influenced by his corrupt relationship with them.  Direct collusion with the Russians during the election campaign is not really an issue– Don already was compromised and continued to be influenced in a corrupt relationship.

Don the Con’s relationship with Paul Manafort is another manifestation of his corrupted attitude towards Russia.  The fact that he allowed Manafort, who had been deeply involved with pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Victor Yanukovitch, to work on his campaign, shows that he had no aversion to using improper methods in his election campaign and that he looked kindly on those who supported Russian aims.

The problem is not that Russia spied on the US, particularly the election campaigns of both parties.  That is to be expected.  What is a problem is that the Russians used the information they obtained about the Democratic campaign to damage the election prospects of the Democratic candidate– Hillary Clinton– whom they considered an implacable enemy.  This is known as “weaponized” intelligence, and is considered an act of electronic warfare.

In addition to this weaponized intelligence, they developed a network of people, mostly in Eastern Europe, who were compensated to produce fake news stories that attempted to damage Hillary Clinton by making her appear chronically or terminally ill, erratic, or simply too weak to withstand the demands of the presidency– besides being a liar, uncaring, hypocritical and so on.

There was no need for any direct communication between the Russians and Don or his election campaigners in order to make this campaign of lies and embarrassingly revealed private communications function as desired: to prevent the election of Hillary Clinton.

Don the Con is irredeemably corrupt.  What is important is not whether specific laws were broken but whether the Democrats can gain a majority in the US House to vote for impeachment.  “High crimes and misdemeanors” worthy of impeachment are what a majority of the House say that they are.

This item in the Guardian caught my eye:

…after an article recently emerged that showed one of Trump’s sons, Eric, told Golf writer James Dodson in 2014 that Trump’s golf courses relied on Russian money because of tight financing.

“We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia,” Eric reportedly told Dodson.

I just don’t know… does that make…?  You mean he…?  Does that mean…?  Yes.  Yes it does.  This little “slip” made by a son of the Don-Con tells all we need to know about his collusion with Russia.  It’s all over but for the shouting.

I’m thinking that Don the Con’s wife has told him never to touch her– which is why she flicked his hand away when he tried to hold hands with her in public.  Don apparently saw Bibi Netanyahu and his wife cuddling up as they walked down the red carpet and decided he wanted to have a public show of affection with his wife, too.  Her reaction: see the video.  See this video in the Guardian or practically anywhere on the web, as it seems to have “gone viral” in the last couple of days.

Don the Con has a few weak points, among them an understanding of global politics.  Thus it is not surprising that he would try to get closer to Sunni Arab countries and give Iran the cold shoulder– while at the same time claiming to want to have better relations with Russia, which heavily supports Iran and the current government of Syria:

Tamara Cofman Wittes, a former State Department official who worked on the Middle East under Mr. Obama, said Mr. Trump’s goal of aligning with the Sunni states fundamentally conflicted with his desire for closer relations with Russia, which has sided with Iran in bolstering the government in Syria’s civil war. Allowing President Bashar al-Assad to remain in power in Syria under Iran’s thumb is precisely the outcome the Sunni states and Israel oppose, noted Ms. Wittes, who is now at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

But no matter: our collaboration with Saudi Arabia will produce “jobs, jobs, jobs” for the defense industry.  First on the list is a $110 billion package of weapons for the Saudis, including advanced weapons the Obama administration with-held because they could be used to target civilians in Yemen.  Nor does it matter to Don that Saudi Arabia is a highly repressive monarchy, while Iran is a slightly less repressive democratic republic.  These fine points of global governance are beyond Don the Con, who favors autocrats like Vladimir Putin (who has hollowed out his country’s putative democracy and kills his opponents with impunity) and Rodrigo Duterte (who has made his country a killing field for anyone suspected of involvement in “drugs” and who has recently banned public cigarette smoking.)

In fact, Don seems to have trouble with basic consistency (he’s a hypocrite, along with everything else):

Mrs. Trump stood near her husband with her hair uncovered, as is common for visiting American first ladies. The country’s tradition is for Saudi women to cover their heads in public. (In 2015, Mr. Trump criticized Michelle Obama on Twitter for not wearing a head scarf during an official visit here. Hillary Clinton and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany also did not cover their hair during trips to the country.)