Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

DID YOU NAZI THE NEWS?
Did You NAZI The News?

Donald Trump demands complete and total loyalty. He believes any attacks on him are attacks on America because he’s America. He doesn’t want independent thought in the Republican Party, deeming those who criticize him as “Never Trumpers” and “human scum.” It’s as if not being a member of his cult takes away the critic’s credibility. The truth is, there are still people who respect the office and hate to see a racist, narcissistic, sexist, sophomoric, dumbass destroy it and all our cherished institutions.

In demanding loyalty, Donald Trump believes the press should only report favorably about him. Recently, he’s taken issue with Fox News. After the network reported a fact, Trump tweeted, “There’s something going on at Fox News.” He totally lost his shit when Fox published a poll showing a majority of American voters think he should be impeached. Trump lashed out in another tweet, saying, “Whoever their pollster is, they suck.” He complained that Fox is much different than it used to be in the “good old days.” I’m assuming the “good old days” when it was run by sexual harassers and assaulters. At least he still has Hannity, Tucker, Jeanine, and the morning gaggle of buttpoodles, Fox & Friends.

Trump really hates legitimate news outlets. He banned CNN’s Jim Acosta from the White House until a court ruled he can’t ban reporters. He’s labeled that network as “fake news,” along with several others. He’s screamed at and bullied reporters, especially if they’re black and female. He refers to The Washington Post as the “Amazon Washington Post,” and has sought to punish Amazon by having federal agencies not grant government contracts to the company. He calls his hometown paper, The “failing” New York Times. He’s accused journalists and publications of “treason,” and he’s talked about taking away the First Amendment which protects a free press.

Now, Trump has ordered the White House to cancel its subscriptions to the Times and the Post because of their factual reporting. He ordered other government agencies to follow suit and terminate their subscriptions as well.

Jonathan Karl, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association said, “Pretending to ignore the work of a free press won’t make the news go away or stop reporters from informing the public and holding those in power accountable.”

John Kennedy got fed up with the coverage by The New York Herald Tribune and ordered that it not be delivered to the White House. A Republican congressman said, “It might be well to remind President Kennedy that on Jan. 20, 1961, he was inaugurated as president, not coronated as king.” It was revealed years later that while the subscription was canceled, Kennedy had “bootleg” copies brought to the White House until he eventually restored the subscription.

Retired four-star general Barry McCaffrey compared Trump to Mussolini and said, “The White House Trump statement telling the entire Federal Government to terminate subscriptions to the NYT and Wash Post is a watershed moment in national history. No room for HUMOROUS media coverage. This is deadly serious. This is Mussolini.”

I’m fine with Trump not reading real news. In case you’re a Republican, there is no such thing as “fake news.” If it’s fake, then it’s not news. Donald Trump, upon insisting on only reading lies and conspiracy theories, is a fake president.

But it’s in his best interest to read the Times and the Post, as they’re the two best newspapers in the country. If he doesn’t read them, how will he know how the impeachment process is really going? How will he know when he’s been impeached?

Trump’s move is further proof that we need a strong, independent, free press exposing the truth now more than ever. It was a newspaper, The Washington Post, that took down President Richard Nixon.

The Washington Post’s moto is, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” But one can argue, it’s been dark at the White House for a while now. It takes a stupid president to choose to remain ignorant.

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The full consequences of President Trump’s decision on October 6 to withdraw American troops and give Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a green light to invade northeast Syria are not yet clear. Erdoğan claimed that he wanted to create a twenty-mile buffer zone in which perhaps one million Syrian refugees living in Turkey could be resettled, but he may have had the ambition of turning all of northeast Syria over to the Islamists whom Turkey had sponsored in western Syria during the country’s civil war and who were largely defeated there.

Thanks to deft Russian diplomacy, that ambition—which could have reignited the Syrian civil war just as it was winding down—appears to have been largely thwarted. But it is hard to imagine a more calamitous outcome for the United States, the Kurds, NATO, and possibly Turkey itself. Turkey is unlikely to accomplish its stated objective of eliminating Kurdish control of the border zone, while its invasion threatens to rupture relations with the West and lead to sanctions that would further shrink a contracting economy. If it comes to a prolonged fight against the Kurds, Turkey cannot rely on the undisciplined Syrian proxies that it has used so far, meaning large numbers of regular Turkish army troops will be engaged against a skilled and determined adversary. Costly battles with a conscript army are rarely popular at home.

Before the Turkish offensive, which began on October 9, Syria was essentially divided along the Euphrates River (see map below). To the west, the Syrian government had mostly overcome a disparate group of foes, including Islamists, Turkish proxies, warlords, and a small number of Western-oriented democrats. Only Idlib governorate in the northwest remained outside the control of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

To the east of the Euphrates, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) controlled almost one third of the country. With US air support and the assistance of around three thousand US special forces and CIA operatives, the SDF had prevailed in a five-year battle with ISIS, whose “caliphate” had at its peak in late 2014 controlled more of Syria than either the government or the Kurds. During that time, the SDF lost 11,000 fighters, while the US sustained five combat casualties.

By October 13, under the terms of a Russian-brokered deal between the Syrian government and the SDF, Assad’s forces had moved into the major population centers in northeast Syria to support the Kurds and as a first step to reestablishing Syrian government authority in the region. Turkish artillery fired on an American base, and the US scrambled to pull out troops and diplomats. In his public statements and tweets, Trump alternated between defending his green light on the grounds that the Kurds were “not angels” and didn’t fight on the US side in Normandy (neither had Turkey), and threatening to destroy Turkey’s economy if it didn’t stop its offensive. US secretary of defense Mark Esper publicly questioned whether Turkey was an ally. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally found something about Trump he didn’t like, as did almost every Republican lawmaker who spoke or tweeted on the subject. And if Iranian hard-liners drank, champagne corks would be popping in Tehran over Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds.
 
COVFEFE PUMPKINS
Covfefe Pumpkins

Here’s your cartoon for CNN’s weekly newsletter, Provoke/Persuade. Please sign up to get these in your inbox every Sunday for the rest of your life.

Donald Trump may have set the record for most meltdowns in a single week in his administration.

He referred to the impeachment process, that’s in the Constitution, as a “lynching.” He called Republicans who criticize him “human scum.” He referred to the emoluments clause, also in the Constitution, as “phony,” while comparing himself to George Washington. He told a crowd he was building a border wall in Colorado (in case you’re a Republican, Colorado is NOT on the border).

Trump’s problem, other than being corrupt and not very smart, is that he doesn’t have a defense of the charges he’s facing before Congress. All he’s done so far is attack the process and none of the allegations. The allegations are strong and from reliable, credible professionals with decades of government service. Trump, who has told over 13,000 lies, has no credibility.

One reason a president is impeached is to save the presidency.

Donald Trump was rotten before he came into office. If he’s not removed, he’ll rot the presidency.

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