Trump Embarrasses the United States on the World Stage...Again

While in Hanoi with the world’s press gathered after the US-North Korea talks abruptly ended, Trump was asked about whether he spoke with Kim Jong Un about American Otto Warmbier who had been held for months by North Korea and was brutally tortured until he was comatose, then hurriedly released to the U.S. so he could die hours later at home.

Trump answered the reporter’s question by saying Kim “tells me he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.”  

Trump could have made a statesman-like appeal to Kim and ask him to launch an investigation to find out who ordered and carried out Warmbier's torture - because who would have the nerve to do something that besmirched and sullied Kim's reputation and make him look like a blood-thirsty monster to the world rather than a great leader? Trump would have finally looked presidential with that one request. But Trump just doesn't have it in him.

Once he was safely back home where he thinks he can massage whatever message comes out and do his own damage control he reinvents the moment and claims it was a misunderstanding, tweeting “I never like being misinterpreted, but especially when it comes to Otto Warmbier and his great family. Remember, I got Otto out along with three others. The previous Administration did nothing, and he was taken on their watch. Of course I hold North Korea responsible…”

Trump didn't “get Otto out.” That's just Trump hyperbole. Only days before Warmbier died, panicky North Koreans contacted the U.S. and demanded they take the dying man off their hands. Trump didn't lift a finger. Trump also played the “blame Obama” card in his tweet - as though passing the buck to cover his own shortcomings in defending Kim's implication in murder is a rational and adult way to explain why Trump is not to blame, for anything. Trump ends the tweet almost in a whisper “Of course I hold North Korea responsible…” 

Of course you do. 

 

Yet when Trump had the opportunity to say that on the world stage he crumbled. He showed everyone his true colors; he defended the regime that killed Warmbier, and he actually used the world stage to praise that regime. What does that say about the United States with Donald Trump as our president?

Worldwide approval of U.S. leadership has already floundered and remains low after a dramatic drop during Trump's first year in office, while China's rating ticked up to its highest in almost a decade. That’s according to a new Gallup poll released Thursday, February 28th that measures how adults in 133 countries feel about the global leadership of countries like the U.S., China, Germany, and Russia. The low approval rating for the U.S. "suggests that the doubts sowed in Trump's first year about U.S. commitments abroad have taken root," it reads. "Russia is now on a more even level with the U.S." Trump is the reason we are at this new low point.

Trump has repeatedly embarrassed the U.S. on the world stage.

He shut down the U.S. government over Mexico not paying for his border wall. When that didn't work, he declared a National Emergency when there was no emergency at all, even according to his own military commanders. It was such a serious situation that, after declaring it, Trump spent the next three days playing golf at Mar-a-Lago.
        In Helsinki he validated Vladimir Putin’s interference in the 2016 election…interference that got Trump into office. Trump used the same opportunity to defend Putin, taking his word over the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus. All the while Putin stood next to him and proudly boasted "Yes I did, yes I did" want Trump to win.

Trump validated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ordering the execution of U.S. legal resident Jamal Khashoggi. What is one death when measured against the billions U.S. defense contractors, and real estate moguls like Trump, make off the Saudi government?

He defended as "fine people" racists, White Supremacists, and the KKK at the Charlottesville Virginia march even after a White Nationalist had killed a protester and injured 19 others. 

He referred to African nations as “shithole” countries, just as he did with Haiti and El Salvador. Even after being told the correct pronunciation, he still repeatedly mispronounces Namibia as ‘Nambia’, Tanzania as 'Tan-Zay-nee-uh, Bhutan as “Button,” and Nepal as “Nipple.” He doesn’t understand that Colombia and Columbia are not the same things.

Trump was actually laughed at by the entire world…literally, on September 25, 2018, when he bragged about phony accomplishments before the U.N. General Assembly.

His administration still uses the terrorist tactic of ripping children away from parents who’ve crossed the border into the U.S. attempting to flee terror in their own country. Several of those kids have now died as a result of maltreatment while being held in U.S. government facilities. The Trump administration doesn’t care.

That is because Trump doesn’t care...about America or anything else. Trump only cares about Trump. The entire Trump presidency is one long get-rich-quick scheme.

We will pay for Trump’s enriching himself at our expense far into the future unless we use our Constitutional right to demand enactment of the 25^th Amendment to remove him from office and indict him as soon as he steps outside the White House. He should face the consequences for his lifetime of unethical behavior, criminal activities, and treasonous actions taken as president. 

For his massive corruption, dishonesty, deceit, fraud, sexual assaults, money laundering, numerous Emoluments violations just to name a few, Trump should become the first U.S. president to die in prison.

It will be cheaper for us.

Trump's Coming Non-existent National Emergency to Fund his Wall

At Trump’s February 5^th State of the Union address, he said “In the past, most of the people in this room voted for a wall, but the proper wall never got built. I will get it built…simply put, walls work and walls save lives,” But saying walls work and walls save lives is like saying ‘life vests work and life vests save lives’, so is everyone supposed to now wear a life preserver whenever they go outside, and especially if they cross a bridge or walk next to a lake? Did the Great Wall in China keep out the plundering hordes from the north - which was its intended purpose? Did the Maginot Line in France keep out Germany in 1940? If you want to get Biblical, did the walls at Jericho protect them from Joshua’s army?

Trump claimed ownership for the shutdown in his Jan. 31st Oval Office press conference, “If I didn’t do the shutdown, people wouldn’t know — they wouldn’t understand the subject. Now they understand the subject. They realize what a humanitarian crisis it is.” The shutdown was an educational opportunity for Trump to help Americans understand what a humanitarian he was by drawing attention to his manufactured emergency subject ---> Mexico hasn’t held up their end of Trump’s campaign promise so Trump decided it is only right that Americans should come up with the Border Wall money instead! Maybe somewhere, somehow, some way, someday, Mexico might reimburse us, who knows? This stupid semantics game needs to end. The issue is not about ‘border security’ even though that’s how Trump and the GOP try to frame it. The issue is about who pays for Trump's big beautiful wall.

Not one U.S. penny should be spent on a wall Trump boasted, bragged, and guaranteed his crowds that Mexico would pay for…gladly.

Still, Trump has used the past few days sugar-coating the fresh fecal material that he was feeding his base after losing the government shutdown confrontation. The ‘president’ then insinuated he’d won…

…by issuing a threat.

“If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, (‘fair deal’ means you give me what I want) the government will either shut down on Feb. 15, again, or I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and Constitution of the United States to address this emergency,” Trump said Friday.

Dammit, one of you reporters should have immediately asked him to cite where in the Constitution he is granted those powers. It’s guaranteed he wouldn’t have been able to do it. (It’s in Article II.)

But there is no emergency.

None.

He is shouting “fire” in a crowded theater where there is no fire.

Trump even states he is "prepared to shut down the government again if my demands aren’t met.” Does this sound like a negotiator or a Mafia boss? So once again the nation's safety has to be put at great risk, government functions grind to a halt, and federal employees are forced to go without paychecks because no one is giving in to the demands of the petulant five-year-old-acting president. Trump frequently sounds like a child arguing with his mother.

The fact that Trump doesn’t recognize the emergency right now, or at any time during the 35-day shutdown, attests to the lack of a crisis.

This past record-breaking shutdown was entirely based on a campaign promise Trump couldn’t keep. It was done by Trump to placate his bruised ego.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report showing Trump’s shutdown cost taxpayers an additional $11 billion tacked on to the federal deficit. Think about what we COULD have used that money for.

With all this Trump-induced chaos, one has to wonder what we’re going to miss if Trump declares his National Emergency. We’ve been so distracted by the daily Trump-inflicted wounds on America that we’ve lost sight on what’s going on in the Middle East, Central and South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. This distraction has only helped our adversaries. They can see what is happening across the nation and they are taking full advantage of it. We’re going to pay a lot for that negligence down the road.

And it’s all because of Trump.

Trump Sucks at Being President

TRUMP CAVES IN

The longest government shutdown in history has ended.

It lasted this long because...

Trump sucks at negotiating.

Trump announced his 'short-term' end to the shutdown - but gets no wall-funding. He gets NOTHING! So 800,000 federal workers had to be financially harmed and our nation's safety jeopardized...for Trump's NOTHING!
Remember how well he negotiated with Russia? Neither do I. But Russia has notes on every meeting Putin has had with Trump. Putin can say whatever he wants about what is in them and what Trump agreed to.
Remember what a detailed and thorough deal Trump signed with Kim Jong Un? Me either. Trump claimed he had ended the North Korean nuclear threat, then last week the Defense Dept. released new information that the Kim regime has opened at least 20 new nuclear missile launch sites since June 2018. Satellite photos confirm their existence.

Trump sucks at press briefings.

That’s why he now does them within a few yards of running helicopter engines, shouts answers to questions he hasn’t been asked, repeats himself, and walks away every time he’s asked for his source material or details about something.

Trump sucks at military matters, too.

The loss of General Jim Mattis and Gen. H. R. McMaster. The disgust of reputable retired military people like General McChrystal and Admiral McRaven.

Six days into his presidency, with little thought about the mission and what was to be accomplished, Trump ordered the SEAL team attack on Yemen in Jan. 2017 that killed CPO Owens, wounded at least three others, a $75 million dollar aircraft was destroyed and the mission yielded absolutely nothing according to the Defense Dept.

Four Green Berets are killed in Niger Oct. 4, 2017. Chadian troops fighting ISIS sympathizers pulled out of Niger after Trump arbitrarily included Chad in his Muslim travel ban. ISIS floods back into Niger, where lightly armed US troops are sent along with Niger soldiers into an ambush. No directive is issued on what the mission is to accomplish, there is no backup, no air support, and no extraction plan. And Trump couldn't bother telling the public for 12 days then he lied about contacting the families of those KIA when he hadn’t done any such thing.

Trump ordering the pull-out of US troops in Syria without consulting the Pentagon, the Dept. of Defense, or any of the generals. 
And remember, on Veterans Day, Trump sat in the White House and did absolutely nothing, no visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, no laying a wreath, no visit to Arlington, no visit to Veterans hospitals or even a VFW hall. But to be fair, I guess those bone spurs can act up and prevented him from doing stuff at the most inopportune times.

Trump sucks at choosing “the best people”.

Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, Ryan Zinke, Jeff Sessions, David Shulkin, Rob Porter, John Kelly, Roy Moore, Scaramucci, and all the “fine people” on the side of the Nazis and the KKK in Charlottesville, Va. Can Trump pick them or what?

Trump sucks at running the government

To date, over 3,000 positions within the government have still not been filled because Trump has not submitted or approved any names.

He ‘works’ barely 3 hours a day…if that. His own time schedule shows he arrives in the Oval Office at the earliest around 11:00, and is out of there by 4…with an hour for lunch and another hour or two of ‘executive' (meaning TV) time included.
He's never read the Constitution all the way through, so it's no wonder he doesn't understand the office of the presidency.

When he couldn’t get Mexico to honor his campaign pledge to pay for the wall, he decided American taxpayers should cough up the money. When the answer was no, he threw a fit and shut down the government. Let's face it...

Trump sucks at being president.

Trump turns the U.S. into a Ghoul Nation

Thanks to Trump, the United States has become a ghoul nation. Actions taken by this administration seem to be guided by a sinister side of Trump, especially one that feeds on ‘dead bodies.’ The word ghoul is also applicable in the derogatory sense when referring to a person who delights in the macabre, or is indifferent to someone else’s death. Has Trump expressed any sorrow or concern for anyone who has died or been killed on his watch? Not at all.

          Everyone, from CPO William Ryan Owens the Navy SEAL killed in Yemen less than a week into the Trump presidency, the four Green Berets, ambushed and gunned down in Niger on October 4, 2017, to the three U.S. Special Forces soldiers killed by an IED, November 27, 2018, near Ghazni in Afghanistan produced no reaction from Trump. Not one tweet from him about their sacrifice, and in most cases, Trump couldn’t even bother to be at Joint Base Andrews when the bodies were flown home. Ghouls are unconcerned with death.

        Just a few days after 7-year-old Guatemalan Jakelin Caal Maquin died in Border Patrol custody, 8-year old Felipe Gomez Alonso, also a Guatemalan died just before midnight Monday at a government facility in Albuquerque NM. CBP says it doesn’t know the cause of the boy’s death. Records show he was sent to a hospital, diagnosed with a cold, sent back to Border Patrol care and began having seizures soon after arriving there. He died later that evening while being transferred back to the hospital.

Trump supporters are secretly thrilled that these little sub-humans are now dead after illegally entering US territory…and it’s all their parent’s fault. If the immigrants hadn’t entered the U.S. through the desert they wouldn’t have lost their child. “Go die on someone else’s dime” is the Trump supporter’s attitude regarding the children’s deaths while in U.S. custody. There is no sympathy except for how it makes Trump look. That’s where their ghoulish sympathies lie.

A U.S. military report was released in December 2018 stating foreign civilian casualties during U.S. Drone strikes have dramatically increased under the Trump administration. Last year, Trump ordered all caps removed (in a simplified manner, caps were to be the maximum allowable number killed during U.S. actions hopefully restricted to maybe a dozen). Drawing on Defense Department memos and collateral damage assessments, so far in 2018, almost 3,500 civilians have been officially reported as killed - but governments in the countries where the strikes occurred claim the number is substantially higher and that the Trump administration is deliberately under-reporting the civilian slaughter. Meanwhile, the Trump administration pedals it as the price paid for America's freedoms. Ghouls do not care about collateral damage deaths.

In mid September 2018, Yahoo News is the first to report on a release that shows the Trump administration had transferred $13 million from Childhood Cancer Research and over $16 million from Head Start in order to give it to ICE for the supplying and construction of more detention centers and holding facilities for immigrants and their children. Why help kids when you can incarcerate…and possibly accelerate the death of…illegal immigrant children? Only a Ghoul nation would do this.

Even though FEMA has admitted fault for the thousands of pallets of now-undrinkable bottled water left on a runway in Puerto Rico as CBS reported in mid September, FEMA confirmed that it moved the bottled water in a cost-saving measure as a part of its effort to provide “the maximum support to disaster survivors, while also being mindful of our responsibility as stewards of taxpayer dollars.” Leaving it on the runway for months saved FEMA money and Trump gave their effort an A+. The supplied-and-lost-water could have saved some of the lives of the almost 3000 Puerto Ricans who died as a direct result of the effects of Hurricane Maria in the fall of 2017, and the inadequate response of the Trump administration. Trump denied the death toll from Hurricanes Maria and Irma in a series of tweets stating "3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths." Trump then blamed Democrats for the figures, "to make me look as bad as possible." It is always…ALWAYS…someone else’s fault, never the Ghoul that was directly responsible for making the tragedy worse.

The world judges the United States by what Trump does. We will pay for this for generations…long after we’ve paid for Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%.

Trump Decay

There is a decay eating at America. A decay personified by the unchecked dishonesty emanating from the office-holder at the highest level of the government. There, resides an individual who lacks any moral character, who fans the flames of division, who encourages chaos among those in his administration and who surround him, who was actually laughed at by the entire world in his speech before the UN last September. That decay is spreading across the land. What a metaphor for what has happened to our country.

Ann Coulter, one of his biggest supporters, writes “For those of us who were ecstatic the night Donald Trump was elected president…it used to be easy to defend him against the charge that he is just a con man who would say anything to get elected. It’s getting harder.”

Sebastian Smith of AFP* wrote from the G-20 meeting in Buenos Ares on Dec. 1, 2018, regarding the announcement that Bush 41 had died:

One US president talked softly, the other harangues. One built international coalitions, the other tears them up. One was a war hero, the other avoided battle.

One was called George Herbert Walker Bush and the other is the current occupant of the White House…Donald J. Trump.

Trump was one of the first of current and past world leaders to praise the life of Bush. But even Trump's courteous statement couldn’t gloss over the undeniable contrast between the two. Using words like "humble," "quiet," "unflappable leadership," and "inspired" in their condolence announcement couldn’t detract from how alien they sounded coming from the Trump administration, especially Mr. Trump himself.

         Honor, honesty, and faithfulness are not words that would describe Mr. Trump. While he was running for president, Donald Trump was heard on tape discussing the payment scheme with Michael Cohen to pay off Karen McDougal for an affair Trump had with her just a year after he married his third wife. Another scheme was confirmed involving a quickie with adult film star Stormy Daniels one month after the birth of his 5^th child Barron when the reimbursement payment to Michael Cohen showed up in the tax filing Trump released last April. What are the odds that those were the only two times that Trump had an extramarital affair covered up? Yet the evangelicals claim to love and support this man because he is the beacon of Christianity to the world. No one is better at the Bible than Trump.

          The Bible calls for people who’ve committed adultery to be put to death. Shouldn’t Trump head the list of the “first to be executed” for dozens of instances of adultery that he admitted to on the Howard Stern radio show, on the Access Hollywood tape, and other times when he publicly bragged about it? Evangelicals tend to cherry-pick what parts of the Bible apply when it comes to Trump.

The Trump Administration sounds like a broken disc that keeps repeating "I-didn't-know-better…I didn’t know better…IDKB…"

Donald Trump sides with dictatorships over and over against the interests of the American people - for personal gain, not to MAGA. (IDKB)

He can’t be bothered to attend a remembrance ceremony honoring US World War One dead, then gets angry with others who didn’t warn him how bad that would look. 

Ivanka’s use of a private email server. (IDKB)

Kellyanne Conway, Dan Scavino, Hope Hicks, and others in his administration, repeatedly violating the Hatch Act. (IDKB)

The self-serving exploits of Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, David Shulkin, Rex Tillerson, Mike Flynn, Ryan Zinke…the list grows every day.

Did Trump collude with the Russians to get elected? Rudi Giuliani rushes to Trump's defense on TV and says that even if he did, collusion is “not a crime.” Is it still alright if the Trump Administration didn’t know better?

Trump puts his stamp of approval on the murder of a legal U.S. resident that was committed by a foreign government…a foreign government that - by Trump’s own admission pays him personally millions of dollars - would not be sanctioned because it would be financially “bad” for the U.S. to hold them accountable. It would especially impact the businesses supplying military hardware to the Saudis, who were fighting a proxy war for the Trump administration in Yemen. As a reward, imported oil suddenly costs less, and Trump tweets congratulations to himself over the Thanksgiving weekend for the lower gas prices. Can your moral compass be compromised over artificially and temporarily lower prices at the pump so the Saudi government can get away with murder?
Speaking of getting away with murder, remember these four soldiers...

        Mr. Trump treats our military like an afterthought. There is no respect for the military. There never has been. To Trump, the military is just a convenient macho-looking backdrop for when he needs to puff up his ego and remind them he's their Commander-in-Chief. His record of avoiding the draft in the late 1960s along with his contrived bone spur excuse still produces a stream of hilarious comedy material because Trump can’t remember which foot had the bone spur that kept him out of the military. Should we be trusting a forgetful, dishonest coward with the nuclear codes?

His unforgivable attitude toward military veterans was on full display when he weighed in on John McCain’s capture and torture during the Vietnam War claiming it was nothing heroic – tweeting his new name for him was “very foul-mouthed Sen. John McCain”, called him incompetent - all the way up to a final disrespect by raising the White House flag after just a few hours at half-staff the day McCain died. Nor did Trump attend the funeral. Those who serve our country mean nothing to him. Veterans mean nothing to him.

That’s why he didn’t do anything on Veteran’s Day 2018.

That’s why he skipped the visit to the Aisne-Marne US cemetery in France on the 100^th anniversary of the end of World War One.

That’s why he threw our intelligence services under the bus twice in the past 6 months. Siding with Saudi Arabia in regards to who killed Jamal Khashoggi, and siding with Putin last July in Helsinki thereby validating his deliberate attack on our election…an election that got Trump into the White House.

And now it turns out Trump has had a very recent business interest in Russia, and in order to get the money to build a business in Moscow, he needed to be president of the U.S. so he could remove those unfair sanctions, allowing Russia’s VTB bank to finance Trump Tower Moscow. And the top penthouse would be given as a gift to Vladimir Putin…for getting him into the White House.

How is this NOT a criminal conspiracy?

I can hear the sputtering of the GOP and Trump’s supporters already…”Those are just coincidences…why, he never…that’s absurd…he’s…he’s doing it to protect us…that’s just more fake news…so what if he makes a buck or two off of it…who cares what the Emoluments Clause says…who cares if he continually lies to us about it?”

Hasn’t Trump been leaving clues all along about his intent to use his position to enrich himself at our expense? Keep in mind the tax cut bill he signed last December specifically gives huge tax breaks to real estate developers and golf course owners. Is that what you put him in office for? You are right about one thing though…you Trump supporters are not forgotten anymore. Trump is holding his middle finger up at you right where you can see it. And unless we see to it he dies in prison, Trump will get to keep and enjoy those billions – of your tax dollars - long after he leaves office. Thanks, Republicans.

This is the president we currently have. He is raping the United States in front of the world to expand his bank account. He’s using the power of the presidency in order to justify his own personal financial gains. We will have to start paying for that soon with our taxes. There is no other choice unless we choose suicide via civil war.

        Trump is leading us into a disaster. It’s like approaching Niagara Falls in a large rowboat. You climbed into the rowboat when you voted Trump into office and let him steer the ship of state. You’re already in the middle of the river; you either row for the side as hard and as fast as you can, or you go over the falls.

If you get to shore, what are you going to do about the ship’s captain whose bank account meant more to him than any peril you and the country would face?

Trump is rotting the United States from the inside out because Trump is in it for Trump…and Trump only. His solitary concerned is with his bank account. He doesn't give a damn about yours. If anything he does makes you a little extra money, it is incidental, not deliberate. Make America Great Again is simply a slogan on a hat Trump uses as part of his get-rich-quick scheme that will bankrupt the country. 

        The Trump administration is like a dead fish. The stink starts at the head.

 [*AFP is the world's oldest news agency, and is the third largest news agency in the modern world] 

TRUMP + SAUDI ARABIA + $$$ = MURDER IS A-OKAY

        It’s a great day for murderers! Murder has become tolerable, even chic. According to Donald Trump, murder is acceptable. Not just acceptable, but okay to the point of making money off of it.

Who cares what the Bible’s outdated 6^th Commandment means? Evangelicals who support Trump have to be so pleased that Trump has invalidated “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” Whether that means “killing” or more precisely “murder” if you’re a Christian, who needs that kind of restriction or restraint? It’s all for the best that evangelicals encourage Trump to approve of and endorse murder, most especially by a foreign government from which Trump is personally making millions of dollars. White Christians claim God put Trump in the White House. Who are we to question what God does? Sure it throws into question their whole anti-abortion stance, but Trump needs to just be Trump, and if murder is alright, then that’s alright with Christians. They approved of Trump saying “I could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.” And he meant it.

As was predicted in mid-October, when solid evidence established that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman not only knew of Jamal Khashoggi’s torture and murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2nd but actually orchestrated it, Trump would simply ignore it and defend the Saudis. Tuesday, November 20^th, Trump said the U.S. will not levy additional punitive measures at this time against Saudi Arabia over the killing of Khashoggi. And not just that, in a statement released today claiming that while the U.S. does not condone the killing of the U.S-based Saudi columnist, Trump reiterated that "foolishly" canceling $110 billion in arms sales would only mean that Saudi Arabia would go to other countries to acquire them. See, money is always more important than murder. If Trump stands to lose even a dollar, then murder by necessity must be condoned.

Is any of this really surprising?

Trump, of course, defended Vladimir Putin and validated his interference in the 2016 U.S. election guaranteeing Trump’s victory - even after our intelligence agencies had proof that Putin had ordered the killing of Denis Voronenkov, Boris Nemtsov, Boris Berezovsky, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, Sergei Magnitsky, and Anna Politkovskaya, to name just a few. What are a few murders between bosom buddies?

He’s the same man who defended Nazis and Nazi sympathizers in Charlottesville, Va. in August 2017…even after one of them used his car to kill Heather Heyer and badly injured 19 others.

He also defended Xi Jinping who grabbed absolute power in China by abolishing term limits which now means he can serve as the country’s president for life. So whatever Xi says or does has the authority of supreme law in China. It means anyone challenging Xi can now be charged with committing a political crime. Political crimes in China are considered capital offenses. As recently as April 2018, Trump demanded that White House counsel Don McGahn order the Justice Department to criminally prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey. Is it any wonder why Trump approves of what Xi has done?

Trump’s repeated pissing on the military included him scoffing at retired Admiral William McRaven who led the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and tracked down Saddam Hussein in the second Gulf War. Why? For not killing them soon enough. Trump clearly has no issue with killing in any form, but he has to be able to make a buck off of it.

Maybe now Trump supporters can come to understand where their willingness to vote him into office - with an extra nudge from Putin - has led us. We have a president who not only mocks the word of the Biblical God’s commandment but thumbs his nose at common sense and decency as well. Approving of the killing of someone gets Trump another “mulligan” from his evangelical base and the Republican Party.

Because ignoring murder = $$$...and GOP votes.

Here is the key question his supporters now have to answer. If Trump says murder is okay, what is NOT okay?

The Issue is Trump

Of courseTrump CLAIMS the White House is a 'smooth-running machine', but it runs more like this.

The major issue we are currently facing is not about the immigrant caravan heading north out of Mexico City, the great Blue Wave that swept dozens of Democrats and far fewer Republicans into power than ever in the nation's history during the midterm elections, or who on Trump’s cabinet or staff is the next to leave - unwillingly, or breaking all precedent and allowing the first lady to fire, for no clear reason, a member of the Homeland Security Staff. Those are all diversions. The real issue is much bigger.

The issue is Trump himself.

            Trump Indicates Where the Stupid Starts

He doesn’t care about governing, he doesn’t understand the office he holds, his decisions are not made to help Americans; they are made to help Trump, and Trump alone.

He isn’t in it to make America Great. He’s in it to make his bank account great. He admits that at his rallies. “Saudi Arabia? I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” he said at a rally in Alabama. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.” Trump loves money and he is using his position simply for financial gain and running the country in much the same way he ran Trump University. Scamming, lying, swindling, bait-and-switch, and then denying everything when he gets caught.

In late October, a federal judge in Maryland gave the green light to a violation of the Emoluments Clause lawsuit that charges him with encouraging and accepting government business at his properties. Trump financially benefits directly from his position as president which is exactly what the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause was written to prevent. Trump doesn’t understand the Constitution. It’s a sure bet he’s never read it through.

He’s a man who lied repeatedly promising to provide his tax records before Election Day in 2016. If nobody actually cared about seeing them, as he now claims, why make the promise over 18 times on live TV?

He overlooks a legal U.S. resident being murdered by the Saudi government because to publicly acknowledge it might interrupt the flow of money from Saudi Arabia to Trump’s bank account. (Is there any wonder why he won’t provide his tax records?)

He disparages anyone who is non-white, non-English speaking unless he’s making money off of them. (He won’t even listen to the English translation in his earpiece when foreign leaders speak in their native language at the White House, which strongly suggests he doesn’t care what they say since it won’t make him richer.) Trump is an out and out racist and even the racists say he’s a racist. When someone says “I like Trump because he speaks his mind” they are actually saying “I like Trump because he’s a damned racist, and so am I.”

Trump validated Vladimir Putin’s interference in the election that got Trump elected - by siding with him against the ENTIRE U.S. intelligence apparatus. How does that make America great again?

For all of his bluster about his concern for “the military,” he sure doesn’t show it. Just before leaving for the Armistice Day memorial in France, he took time to disparage President Obama for “what he did to the military. I will never forgive him for what he did.” This was his no-evidence-offered response to a reporter asking him about Michelle Obama’s sentence in her book that she won’t forgive Trump for his Birther lies that threatened her family. He's like a 5-year old going "I know you are, but what am I?" like he's Pee Wee Herman.
        How did Trump show MORE reverence for the military once he was in France? He was a no-show for the wreath-laying at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and the walk with other world leaders in Paris to the Arc de Triomphe claiming it was because the Secret Service wouldn’t allow it. A member of the Secret Service revealed it was because Trump didn’t want the rain to mess up his hair. How’s that for respect for the military? Add to that his skipping doing anything on Veteran’s Day, not even laying a wreath at Arlington, his treatment of the Gold Star Khan family, his refusal to show up at Joint Base Andrews when US military dead are flown back to the US, his treatment of the widow of Sgt. LaDavid Johnson, or his ridiculing Senator John McCain’s captivity and even his death? 
        The ONLY reason Trump displays any concern for the military is that it enriches his defense contractor millionaire friends. He has admitted that that is why he won’t raise an issue of Jamal Khashoggi’s death with the Saudis. The US makes too much money off of them. He has even accepted every one of the constantly changing Saudi explanations – now they state that it was a “rogue operation” which carried out Khashoggi’s murder and that the Saudis will execute the members - as was predicted they would do just after word of the murder got out. It’s to cover their asses to prevent any interruption of cash-oil/weapons flow. Trump benefits personally from this.

Hell, Trump can’t even figure out to operate an umbrella. What makes anyone think he understands how to operate the government?

How is any of this admirable? How is any of it presidential?

Why support such a person?

Donald Trump is as qualified to be president as a 2-year-old is qualified to fly a 747.