Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

During the 2016 campaign, I received a phone call from an influential political journalist and author, who was soliciting my thoughts on Donald Trump. Trump’s rise in the Republican Party was still something of a shock, and he wanted to know the things I felt he should keep in mind as he went about the task of covering Trump.

At the top of my list: Talk to psychologists and psychiatrists about the state of Trump’s mental health, since I considered that to be the most important thing when it came to understanding him. It was Trump’s Rosetta stone.

“I don’t oppose Mr. Trump because I think he’s going to lose to Hillary Clinton,” I told Ben from Purcellville, Virginia. “I think he will, but as I said, he may well win. My opposition to him is based on something completely different, which is, first, I think he is temperamentally unfit to be president. I think he’s erratic, I think he’s unprincipled, I think he’s unstable, and I think that he has a personality disorder; I think he’s obsessive. And at the end of the day, having served in the White House for seven years in three administrations and worked for three presidents, one closely, and read a lot of history, I think the main requirement for president of the United States … is temperament, and disposition … whether you have wisdom and judgment and prudence.”

That statement has been validated.

Donald Trump’s disordered personality—his unhealthy patterns of thinking, functioning, and behaving—has become the defining characteristic of his presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism; his addiction to lying about things large and small, including https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2019/06/14/feature/how-donald-trump-silenced-the-people-who-could-expose-his-business-failures/ (his finances and bullying and silencing those who could expose them); his detachment from reality, including denying things he said even when there is video evidence to the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories; his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating.

It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his craving for adulation; his misogyny, predatory sexual behavior, and sexualization of his daughters; his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack of empathy and sympathy, including attacking a family whose son died while fighting for this country, mocking a reporter with a disability, and ridiculing a former POW. (When asked about Trump’s feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump’s mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, reportedly said, “He pisses ice water.”)

But if a clinical diagnosis is beyond my own expertise, Trump’s psychological impairments are obvious to all who are not willfully blind. On a daily basis we see the president’s chaotic, unstable mind on display. Are we supposed to ignore that?

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Over the past year, Falwell, a prominent evangelical leader and supporter of President Donald Trump, has come under increasing scrutiny. News outlets have reported on business deals by Liberty University benefiting Falwell’s friends. Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen claimed that he had helped Falwell clean up racy “personal” photographs.

Based on scores of new interviews and documents obtained for this article, concerns about Falwell’s behavior go well beyond that—and it’s causing longtime, loyal Liberty University officials to rapidly lose faith in him.

More than two dozen current and former high-ranking Liberty University officials and close associates of Falwell spoke to me or provided documents for this article, opening up—for the first time at an institution so intimately associated with the Falwell family—about what they’ve experienced and why they don’t think he’s the right man to lead Liberty University or serve as a figurehead in the Christian conservative movement.

In interviews over the past eight months, they depicted how Falwell and his wife, Becki, consolidated power at Liberty University and how Falwell presides over a culture of self-dealing, directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains. Among the previously unreported revelations are Falwell’s decision to hire his son Trey’s company to manage a shopping center owned by the university, Falwell’s advocacy for loans given by the university to his friends, and Falwell’s awarding university contracts to businesses owned by his friends.

“We’re not a school; we’re a real estate hedge fund,” said a senior university official with inside knowledge of Liberty’s finances. “We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Pompeo's CIA exfiltrated our most highly placed agent in Moscow, apparently concerned that Trump would reveal the person's identity to Putin or other officials.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Pompeo's CIA exfiltrated our most highly placed agent in Moscow, apparently concerned that Trump would reveal the person's identity to Putin or other officials.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

GOOFY SCIENCE
Goofy Science

Fake news is not news and fake science is not science. And now, a future administration will have to repair the credibility of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration along with other scientific agencies within the government.

Science used to be non-partisan. But over the last few years, Republicans have made climate change a political issue. Somewhere along the way, facts became liberal. But even previous Republican administrations, while often quarreling with government scientists, did not blatantly try to change scientific fact, like the location of a hurricane.

Donald Trump doesn’t care about facts and he doesn’t put any priority into science. He’s a man who believes climate change is a hoax created by China. He once lied about the rain and claimed it stopped raining when he started a speech when it didn’t. He claimed the noise from windmills cause cancer.

The NOAA hasn’t had a confirmed leader since the Obama administration. On Friday, the NOAA, which oversees the National Weather Service, took the very unusual steps of issuing a statement criticizing one of their own meteorologist for contradicting Donald Trump and issuing an accurate weather report.

The NOAA isn’t backing up Trump to advance hard science, but only to coddle his ego and narcissism. Last week, Donald Trump doctored a weather map with a Sharpie after being criticized for warning Alabama about being impacted by Hurricane Dorian when that state wasn’t in its path. Trump has spent over a week defending a wrong tweet. Most people would say “oops” and move on with their lives. Trump, being a narcissist, can’t admit a little mistake. But now, this little mistake is destroying the credibility of the government’s science agencies.

First, the agency warned its scientists not issue any statements correcting or contradicting Donald Trump. After their bureau in Alabama did just that and Trump lost his shit, the NOAA backed up Trump with an official statement despite provable facts.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has ordered its agencies and government employees to contradict facts.

Shortly after lying about having the largest crowd size of any inauguration in U.S. history, Trump ordered the National Park Service to hunt for photographs that would support his claim. They didn’t find any.

Donald Trump created a commission to prove his claim about voter fraud. After the commission failed and disbanded, a member claimed its creation was rooted in Trump’s rage at losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

When Trump claimed Middle Easterners were part of the migrant caravans headed to the border, he tried to get government agencies to support his lie. They failed.

Trump ordered agencies to create an impression that there would be a middle-class tax cut before the midterm elections (even though Congress wasn’t in session), which he had lied about. The tax cuts never happened.

The White House press office issued a doctored video to make CNN reporter Jim Acosta appear physically abusive to a White House aide.

After Trump created a bogus story about migrant women being blindfolded and gagged by drug traffickers, a top border official went on an internal hunt for information to make the story true. He failed.

The Department of Homeland Security released a slick presentation to support Trump’s lie that 4,000 known terrorists were prevented from crossing the border with Mexico.

Donald Trump is inflicting damage to this nation that will take years to repair. Our allies can’t trust us. A new report came out this morning that the CIA snuck a spy out of Moscow out of fear Trump would disclose him to Vladimir Putin. The Justice Department has become a lackey for Trump’s crimes. The entire Republican Party in Congress has become a cult. The State Department has to explain why we can trust promises from Kim Jong Un and the Taliban. The Defense Department has to publicly support losing funding to Trump’s racist, useless border wall. The military has to justify spending money at Trump’s resorts. The White House sends out lackies to tell us the free press is an enemy to the United States. Now, the government’s science agencies have to sell us debunked science.

The only good thing is that we still have eyes, ears, and logic on our side. Unfortunately for Trump cultists, they’ve been told not to believe what they see and hear and they’re complying.

Maybe you and I can argue over the differences between Pluto and Goofy, but we should all know the difference between being rained on and pissed on.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WASHINGTON — The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew criticism from the scientific community that NOAA, a division of the Commerce Department, had been bent to political purposes.

Officials at the White House and the Commerce Department declined to comment.

The actions by the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur L. Ross Jr., are the latest developments in a political imbroglio that began more than a week ago, when Dorian was bearing down on the Bahamas and Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that Alabama would be hit “harder than anticipated.” A few minutes later, the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Ala., posted on Twitter that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama.”

Mr. Trump persisted in saying that Alabama was at risk and a few days later, on Sept. 4, he displayed a NOAA map that appeared to have been altered with a black Sharpie to include Alabama in the area potentially affected by Dorian.

Mr. Ross, the Commerce Secretary, intervened two days later, early last Friday, according to the three people familiar with his actions. Mr. Ross phoned Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency’s perceived contradiction of the president.

Dr. Jacobs objected to the demand and was told that the political staff at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed, according to the three individuals, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode. Unlike career government employees, political staff are appointed by the administration. They usually include a handful of top officials, such as Dr. Jacobs, and their aides.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WASHINGTON — Decades ago, the C.I.A. recruited and carefully cultivated a midlevel Russian official who began rapidly advancing through the governmental ranks. Eventually, American spies struck gold: The longtime source landed an influential position that came with access to the highest level of the Kremlin.

As American officials began to realize that Russia was trying to sabotage the 2016 presidential election, the informant became one of the C.I.A.’s most important — and highly protected — assets. But when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia’s election interference with unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.’s Kremlin sources.

C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia. The situation grew more tense when the informant at first refused, citing family concerns — prompting consternation at C.I.A. headquarters and sowing doubts among some American counterintelligence officials about the informant’s trustworthiness. But the C.I.A. pressed again months later after more media inquiries. This time, the informant agreed.

The move brought to an end the career of one of the C.I.A.’s most important sources. It also effectively blinded American intelligence officials to the view from inside Russia as they sought clues about Kremlin interference in the 2018 midterm elections and next year’s presidential contest.