Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

[January 2017] Trump is following the authoritarian playbook
Trump is following the authoritarian playbook - CNN

(CNN)In less than a week, America will embark on a new political experience: rule by an authoritarian President. Donald Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million. So, for every American who looks forward to the Trump era, there is likely another who fears he will lead us into ruin.

What can we expect from Donald Trump, based on his words and actions over the 19 months since he declared his candidacy?

Many Americans were initially confused by Trump and his unorthodox behavior, or dismissed him as a joke. I have spent decades studying authoritarian and fascist regimes and saw in Trump a deeply familiar figure: the strongman who cultivates a bond with followers based on loyalty to him as a person rather than to a party or set of principles.

Such individuals inevitably seek to adapt the political office they inhabit to serve their needs. They are clear from the start about this intention, refusing to submit to shared customs and norms -- such as releasing tax returns -- that would mean they were submitting to the will of the political class. Anyone who believes that Trump will morph into anything resembling a traditional politician will be sorely disappointed. Authoritarians never pivot.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

PANMUNJOM, Korea — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s visit to the Korean Peninsula’s extremely militarized demilitarized zone on Friday was meant to show American solidarity with South Korea against a muscular North, which Mr. Mattis accused of building nuclear weapons to “threaten others with catastrophe.”

But the trip also highlighted the central contradiction in the Trump administration’s rhetoric on North Korea: that for all the talk of military options, there really aren’t any — at least, none that wouldn’t put the sprawling city of Seoul, with its population of 10 million, in the cross hairs of thousands of Pyongyang’s artillery installations.

Standing side by side with Mr. Mattis atop an observation post to gaze at the North, South Korea’s defense minister, Song Young-moo, seemed at times to be giving his American counterpart a guided tour of how a strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities would quickly trigger retaliation.

“There are 21 battalions” stationed over the border, Mr. Song told Mr. Mattis, gesturing toward the hills of North Korea in the distance. “Defending against this many L.R.A.s is unfeasible, in my opinion,” he said, alluding to the bristling array of long-range artillery pointed at his country.

Mr. Song said that the United States and South Korea would have to destroy the North Korean artillery “the moment the war starts.”

But even if the United States and South Korea were able to do so, American defense officials acknowledge that North Korea would still have a significant retaliatory capability, including chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as well as conventional forces. It would be virtually impossible, the officials said, to destroy all of North Korea’s offensive capabilities before it could strike Seoul.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Whoever did this is a damn genius.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Trump and Bannon have filled the void with their own creed, which is anti-biblical. The American story they tell is not diverse people journeying toward a united future. It’s a zero-sum struggle of class and ethnic conflict. The traits Trump embodies are narcissism, not humility; combativeness, not love; the sanctification of the rich and blindness toward the poor.

As other relationships wither, many Americans are making partisanship the basis of their identity — their main political, ethnic and moral attachment. And the polls show that if you want to win a Republican primary these days, you have to embrace the Trump narrative, and not the old biblical one.

The Republican senators went to the White House and saw a president so repetitive and rambling, some thought he might be suffering from early Alzheimer’s. But they know which way the wind is blowing. They gave him a standing ovation.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Natalia V. Veselnitskaya arrived at a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 hoping to interest top Trump campaign officials in the contents of a memo she believed contained information damaging to the Democratic Party and, by extension, Hillary Clinton. The material was the fruit of her research as a private lawyer, she has repeatedly said, and any suggestion that she was acting at the Kremlin’s behest that day is anti-Russia “hysteria.”

But interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim.

The coordination between the Trump Tower visitor and the Russian prosecutor general undercuts Ms. Veselnitskaya’s account that she was a purely independent actor when she sat down with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul J. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chairman. It also suggests that emails from an intermediary to the younger Mr. Trump promising that Ms. Veselnitskaya would arrive with information from Russian prosecutors were rooted at least partly in fact — not mere “puffery,” as the president’s son later said.

In the past week, Ms. Veselnitskaya’s allegations — that major Democratic donors were guilty of financial fraud and tax evasion — have been embraced at the highest levels of the Russian government. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin repeated her charges at length last week at an annual conference of Western academics. A state-run television network recently made them the subject of two special reports, featuring interviews with Ms. Veselnitskaya and Mr. Chaika.

The matching messages point to a synchronized information campaign. Like some other Russian experts, Stephen Blank, a senior fellow with the nonprofit American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, said they indicate that Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions “were coordinated from the very top.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

""[T]he headline nobody has guts to run today: "Trump vows not to spend one additional dollar on opioid epidemic""

President Trump is and will always be a carnival barker, a snake-oil salesman, a flim-flam artist who dresses up a lot of nothing in showy garb. He’s gotten people to buy his crummy steaks, stay in gaudy hotels and pay thousands of dollars for Trump U. With that in mind, you can fully appreciate his announcement on opioids on Thursday.

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That’s it? A speech and some regulatory mumbo-jumbo? Welcome to the world of oversold, underperforming Trump bric-a-bracs. Now wonder then that “Trump’s announcement drew sharp criticism from Democratic lawmakers and some public health advocates, who questioned his commitment to the crisis, given that Trump made no immediate request to Congress for emergency funding.”

And that bait and switch — an emergency announcement accompanied by no new resources — is not the worst of it. He spent the first nine months of his presidency trying to eviscerate the most important source of funding for opioid addiction treatment — Medicaid. And the GOP budget envisions, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, “a cut of $1.8 trillion in health entitlement programs, including $473 billion in Medicare and $1.3 trillion primarily in Medicaid and subsidies to make coverage affordable through the ACA marketplaces.”

In September the Kaiser Family Foundation explained that “Medicaid covers 3 in 10 nonelderly adults with opioid addiction.” Medicaid coversscreening and early intervention, overdose prevention and medication-assisted treatment.

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Trump’s way of addressing opioids — lots of show and self-congratulatory cheerleading but little substance — should surprise no one who has followed his career. Unfortunately, there are real victims here who will not benefit from Trump’s showmanship. To the contrary, they may find on net fewer resources and less access to treatment. You see, when you actually need someone to address real problems and operate the levers of government, a president with no experience, no interest in details and no willingness to prioritize tax-and-spend policies to protect the safety net is a serious impediment to action — which in this case means the death toll from opioid abuse will not decrease anytime soon.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]