Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Reality check: Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Steele Dossier is "totally discredited" and that it was the sole reason that the FBI opened an investigation into his campaign in 2016. Few, if any, components of the dossier have been refuted, and it was not the only source that the FBI relied on when it launched its counterintelligence investigation.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

King Joffrey is completely losing his shit this morning.

This is not sane. This is not normal -- no matter how much the country has tried to normalize this madness.

Trump this morning is attacking a dead war hero who isn't here to defend himself, he's demanding state censorship and federal investigation of late night comedians because a rerun of Saturday Night Live last night hurt his feelings, and what REALLY set him off was that his favorite ass-kissing "News" channel suspended his favorite ass-kisser.

This isn't just his personal Twitter account. Trump is repeating this on the official White House and Presidential feeds. These are OFFICIAL STATEMENTS by the President of the United States of America.

NOW -- now -- I want you to read those statements again, only this time I want to you remember that just two days ago Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America, was openly calling for the military, the police, and his most violent supporters to attack AMERICANS who oppose him.

This will come to violence.

This is going to come to violence in the streets. People are going to die. Americans are going to die. And Donald Trump will be the one who encouraged it, who inspired it, who started it.

Once that begins, there's no going back. The country will burn.

Even Republicans are starting to understand this.

Even FOX NEWS is starting to understand the precipice we stand on here.

Hillary Clinton was right, "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."

Or anything else.

This mad king needs to be removed from office before he destroys us all.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

I’ve never seen an incident that managed to combine so many of our modern anxieties -- especially about the role that the internet and popular social media outlets like Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and niche sites like 8Chan increasingly play in spreading both bogus information and ideologies of hate, but also about race and religion, the ubiquity of guns, and a political climate that in too many nations is working to foment intolerance instead of eliminating it.

One of those nations, unfortunately, is the United States.

It’s ironic that -- in a time when the American political debate centers on Trump’s made-up emergency about a border wall -- there ain’t no mountain high enough to keep the most vile, racist propaganda from spreading from Europe to the United States to Australia and echo back again in a matter of nanoseconds, and to keep that bile from inspiring the kind of deadly violence you’d never see from Central American immigrants.

After the banality of the wanton violence and the killer’s live broadcast, the second most shocking thing about the New Zealand massacre was how well versed the perpetrator was in right-wing tropes that aren’t just common on the American internet but find their way to “mainstream” venues like the Fox News Channel or the halls of Congress.

The Australian gunman said he wanted to spark more debate about our Second Amendment, invoked (perhaps sarcastically) the right-wing media celebrity Candace Owens, and spewed a range of warped theories about the threats to Western civilization from “invaders” that -- while horrible -- were only a degree or two more extreme than what we’ve heard from an Iowa congressman, Steve King, or from the good citizens of Old Forge, Pa. Or from certain quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Let’s be very clear: Donald Trump is not to blame for what happened in Christchurch. The killer was swimming in a cesspool of evil that both predates Trump and is much bigger than him. But let’s also not ignore this: At a moment when America and the world need a leader who will be steadfast in speaking out and trying to stop this spread of toxic white supremacy, the 45th president of the United States is doing the opposite. He is swimming in this sewage, and the killer knew it. He wrote in his manifesto that Trump is “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose ...”

In the 24 hours after the killing -- a moment when Americans once would have looked to the White House for grace and appeals for unity -- the president acted like a man determined to live up to this murderer’s endorsement. Trump’s complete lack of empathy and inability to even express it, even after the slaughter of 50 innocents, spewed from his Hallmark-random-word-generator that tweeted out “warmest sympathy and best wishes” to New Zealand. Neither that tweet, nor a subsequent statement from the White House, mentioned Muslims, expressed any solidarity with Islamic people, or condemned hatred.

Instead, Trump stuck to his scheduled event -- the veto of congressional efforts to stop his border wall, the fulfillment of his xenophobic campaign promise to spend billions on a crusade to keep out Hispanic people he’s routinely branded as criminals, murderers or rapists. Rather than acknowledge the horror of what happened in New Zealand, the president was dismissive about the white nationalism he foments, saying “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.” He plowed ahead with the border event, even calling undocumented immigrants “invaders” -- the exact same language used by a man who mowed down 50 worshipers.

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We need to get back to this simple premise: Trump’s presidency is morally unacceptable. Many of us believed this on Nov. 9, 2016. And we’ve just seen it ratified on the Ides of March, 2019. America’s political system seems to be too broken to deal with Trump’s unfitness through the most immediate political mechanism that we have, which is impeachment. But our spirits are not too broken to resist his immorality with every fiber in our beings. Now is not the time to become too jaded or cynical. Let’s renew the vows that so many of us made in those first dark hours. If you believe in a better humanity, Donald Trump is not our president.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A recent Fox News poll found one in four Americans believe “God wanted Donald Trump to become president.” Celebrities like the televangelist https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/23/raised-up-by-god-televangelist-paula-white-compares-trump-to-queen-esther/ (Paula White) and Franklin Graham have boosted the idea. The president’s own press secretary https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/01/30/sarah-sanders-tells-christian-broadcasting-network-god-wanted-trump-be-president/ (suggested as much) in a January interview. And on the opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference this month, the millionaire businessman Michael Lindell took to the stage and declared President Trump “chosen by God.”

Mr. Cahn was ahead of the curve.

He has dedicated an entire book to this very thesis, an insight he claims to have received from God. “The Paradigm: The Ancient Blueprint That Holds the Mystery of Our Times,” in fact, is only the most recent installment of a best-selling series dealing with the supposed mystical meaning behind all manner of current events. In it, Mr. Cahn likens Mr. Trump to the biblical king Jehu, who led the ancient nation of Israel away from idolatry.

With his growing stature, Mr. Cahn is also a rising figure in some quarters of conservative politics. In an email to congregants, Mr. Cahn shared his latest good news: This weekend he is making his first trip to the president’s vacation retreat, Mar-a-Lago. He is set to address a small gathering of activists and advisers.

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Leaning on arcane readings of the early books of the Bible, Mr. Cahn said that just as God visited judgments on the wayward Israelites according to a particular seven-year pattern — something called “the shemitah” — modern catastrophes might follow a similar pattern. In 2001 came terrorist attacks, in 2008 there was an economic crash. Mr. Cahn asked: could 2015 bring another disaster?

But months passed, and the doomsday date came and went. He was dismissed as a grifter.

One critic likened Mr. Cahn’s prophecy project to a “fragile house of cards,” set to tumble down. A Christian polemics site called Pulpit & Pen denounced Mr. Cahn in several posts. J.D. Hall, the site’s founder, called Mr. Cahn “the most prominent and successful omen huckster” working today. “Pastors should warn people away from Cahn,” Mr. Hall said recently.

Mr. Cahn actually grows embarrassed discussing the doomsday fiasco. He insists he has always included disclaimers on his work and never set exact dates. Rather, Mr. Cahn wanted to warn that a cataclysm could happen, not that it would. “I always say: You can’t put God in a box.”

Still, he appears to have learned from the brouhaha, growing even more cautious about making prognostications that could fall through.

His latest book, for example, was released only after Trump had taken the White House and is largely backward-looking, giving biblical explanations to current events only after the fact.