USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[Peter Lemkin]

Here's what we do now a personal note
by Greg Palast

Being right never felt so horrid.

"This is the story of the theft of the 2016 election.
It's a crime still in progress."

So opens my film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
And on Election night I waited for the returns to make a fool of me.

Instead, the returns made the fool a President.

And so, my vacation's cancelled. My life's cancelled; that is, a life of anything but sleuthing and exposing the details of the heist of our democracy.

What's at stake?
No way around it, this is one frightening moment.

Decades of progress created with sweat and determination face destruction. Within the next six months, we may see the Voting Rights Act repealedand civil rights set back 50 years; the entirety of our environmental protection laws burnt in a coal pit; police cruelty made our urban policy; the Education Department closed to give billionaires a tax holiday; and a howling anti-Semite as White House Senior Counselor.

But the horror we face is countered by this one hard and hopeful fact: Donald Trump did NOT win this election.

Trump not only lost the popular vote by millions he did not legitimately win the swing states of the Electoral College.

Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Ohio: every one was stolen through sophisticated, and sickeningly racist vote suppression tactics.

If you saw my report for Democracy Now! on election morning, it revealed that Ohio GOP officials turned off anti-hacking software on voting machines, forced Black voters to wait hours in line (while whites had no wait).

And, crucially, I confirmed that purged tens of thousands of minority voters on fake accusations they'd voted twice. I first exposed this bogus double-voter blacklist called Crosscheck, in Rolling Stone. It's the sick excrescence crafted by Kris Kobach, the Trump transition team's maven who also created the Muslim-tracker software he's bringing to the Trump administration.

What can we do now?
I have been INUNDATED with requests for my factual reports and findings by media and, most important, the front-line activist groups preparing for the fierce fight to protect our votes. Some examples:

• Rev. William Barber of the NAACP filed a suit based in North Carolina, hoping to overturn the Trump "victory" and protect the tiny margin of the Democrat's win of the Governor's mansion. The NAACP cites my discovery of "Crosscheck" in which North Carolina removed upwards of 190,000 voters on false charges they voted twice.
  

They now need my facts.

• Congressmen Keith Ellison and Alcee Hastings of the Congressional Black Caucus, personally presented Attorney General Loretta Lynch with my investigative reports and demanded investigation "and indictments." That investigation must kick off immediately.
  

They now need my facts.

• The Asian-American civil rights group 18 Million Rising has gathered 50,000 signatures to push the Justice Department to investigate my evidence of a massive attack on the Asian-American vote.
  

They now need my facts.

• In Michigan, the ACLU is ready to take action on the purge scheme I uncovered, "Crosscheck," that wrongly gave the state to Trump. In Ohio, voting rights attorney Robert Fitrakis is going into court with evidence, much that I uncovered, of racist voting games from 5-hour-long lines in Black precincts to shutting off ballot security measures on the voting machines.
  

The team need my facts.

I expect to be in Washington at the Justice Dept and meeting with civil rights groups in December before the Electoral College meets.

Informationplus film, video, investigative reports
And beyond the voluminous files and confidential documents my team has uncovered, we are deluged with requests for our film, videos, writings and more.

And now we have US networks, even major comedy shows, asking for our material and, of course, new investigative findings.

Information and facts make a difference
With our investigative reports, with our hard and unassailable evidence, we can challenge the legitimacy of the Trump "election." Most important, we must begin the difficult but necessary work of protecting and restoring voting rights. The 2018 Election and the threat of more stolen elections is upon us.

What we need to keep going...
Your extraordinary support and faith in our work funded my film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, which is now more relevant than ever and being seen by ever more audiences.

Now we need your financial support again to keep this fight going. We just did not budget for the GOP's in-your-face steal of the Congress and White House. All our resources went into raising the alarm before the election.

So, now, I have to re-hire the staff, hit the road again. Ohio, North Carolina, Washington DC and who knows where, retain attorneysand retain our team of technicians from cameramen to outreach organizers.

Can this new work be done?
Is there any choice?

Honestly and personally, I was hoping for some rest and time off.

But a lifetime of your work and mine is now in the balance.

• PLEASE, say, "Count me in to count the votes" by supporting the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation for a donation of any size no matter how small or large
  
  
• Be listed as a producer ($1,000) or co-producer ($500) in the credits of the broadcast version of the updated, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: THE THEFT OF 2016
  
  
• Stay informed and get a signed DVD of my film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a signed copy of the book with the same title or better still - get the Book & DVD combo.
  

And does an angel have the $8K needed for our Washington work and filming? If so, flap your wings.

I can't thank you enough for all the years of support. Alas... our work is not done.

Greg Palast
and the Palast Investigations Team

[Cliff Varnell]

Trump not only lost the popular vote by millions he did not legitimately win the swing states of the Electoral College.

Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Ohio: every one was stolen through sophisticated, and sickeningly racist vote suppression tactics.

Thank you for posting this, Peter.

[David Guyatt]

Strange that there hasn't been any terror attacks or mass shootings in recent months. Maybe all the crazed loners are preoccupied at the moment.

Or a stand down order was sent... ::hush::

...or they are not needed to scare the People...Trump is doing a good enough job of it.

Here in the US we had a workplace revenge shooting by folks who just happened to be Muslim, and we had a guy who couldn't handle being both gay and Muslim freak out in a nightclub.

That's it.

There are mass shootings all the time in the States, but on that rare occasion the gun nut (and they're always gun nuts) happens to be Muslim the right-wing loses their shit in fear.

Jihadi terrorism may be a problem in Europe, but over here it's practically nothing.

That's right, Cliff.

9/11, San Bernadino, the previous attempt on the Twin Trade towers, the Orlando Gay nightclub massacre (the perp was a security guard for G4S), the Boston Bombing, the 2015 Chattanooga killings, the 2013 Buena Vista beheadings, the 2011 Waltham throat slittings - plus dozens and dozens of other attacks over the years.

Practically nothing.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

I'm Juan González, in for Amy Goodman. Amy is on assignment. We turn now to look at the rest of the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. Last week, Trump made three key announcements to his Cabinet. He offered Lieutenant General Michael Flynn the position of national security adviser. Flynn is well known for his anti-Muslim worldview, having called Islam a "cancer" and saying, quote, "fear of Muslims is rational," unquote. The position of national security adviser does not require Senate confirmation. Flynn served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama, during which time some of his subordinates invented the term "Flynn facts" to refer to the false claims Flynn frequently made, including claiming Sharia law was spreading in the United States.
On Friday, Kansas Congressmember Mike Pompeo was named as CIA director. Pompeo has opposed closing Guantánamo Bay prison. In 2013, he visited the notorious U.S. prison and said of the prisoners who were on hunger strike, quote, "It looked to me like a lot of them had put on weight." He's also a vocal opponent of the Iran nuclear deal.
And in one of his first appointments, Trump selected Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. Sessions is a former prosecutor who was elected to the Senate in 1996. As a senator, he's consistently supported anti-immigration legislation. In 2010, he was a leading proponent of the efforts to repeal the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to everyone born in the United States. Sessions has also been a vocal opponent of the Voting Rights Act. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sessions for a federal judgeship, but he was denied confirmation because of his history of racist comments, including reportedly saying he thought the Ku Klux Klan, quote, "was OK until I found out they smoked pot," unquote.
Well, for more, we're still joined by Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept.
Jeremy, welcome back. Talk to us about these appointments from Friday, the three key securitydefense and security appointments.
JEREMY SCAHILL: I mean, first of all, one thing that's, I think, really interesting is that Trump is putting together his own version of a "team of rivals." They're rivals of President Obama when it comes to some of these military people. You have General Flynn. You have General Mattis, whoa former Marine Corps general who very well may be the secretary of defense. And then you have Admiral Mike Rogers, current head of the NSA, that may end up being the director of national intelligence. All of these people ended up in direct conflict with President Obama over key issues that Trump and Pence have sort of touted. And we'll get to that in a moment.
With the issue ofstarting with General Mike Flynn, I've followed Flynn's career for a very long time. Flynn is actually a very fascinating character. You know, his social media presence, I think, gives the impression that he's just kind of a hateful buffoon. Flynn actually is a very important figure in the evolution of dirty wars post-9/11. Flynn was the intelligence chief for General Stanley McChrystal when McChrystal was the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, which effectively operated as a kind of Praetorian Guard for the most sensitive operations being ordered by the White House under Bush and Cheney. You know, they killed their way through Iraq. They had set up a notorious prison called Camp Nama in Baghdad. Later, when Flynn and McChrystal really were rolling their sleeves up, they moved it the Balad Air Base. And Flynn and McChrystal were really credited with taking the strategy that in order to fight a force like al-Qaeda, you have to think like them. And so they started doing a lot more house raids, this intelligence leads to that intelligence, pre-emptive strikes. Flynn, himself, would personally sit in on the interrogations that were being conducted of prisoners, and there were wide allegations of abuse and torture at Camp Nama in Baghdad and then later at Balad, where Flynn was. He then went on towith McChrystal, to Afghanistan, under President Obama, where they did their surge there and then implemented the same kind of sort of systematic, mathematical kill operation that they had built up in Iraq.
And then, you know, Flynn, at the Defense Intelligence Agency, ended up sort of being a nightmare of a footnote for Flynn's career, in his own eyes. And you did have this business about him, you know, looking with a radical anti-Islam ideology at intelligence, which defeats the whole purpose of having people head an intelligence agency. And just so listeners understand, the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, is the military's equivalent of the CIA. And Under Donald Rumsfeld, when he was defense secretary, Rumsfeld really started encroaching on the areas that were typically the sovereign realm of the CIA. And that started this battle that we still see to this day where the CIA and the Pentagon are diving into each other'sdipping into each other's territory.
What I think we're going to see with someone like Mike Pompeo, if he ends up being the CIA director, first of all, just on a side note that relates to the work we do at The Intercept, Pompeo basically has said that he thinks Edward Snowden should be killed and that he is a treasonous traitor and that he supports domestic surveillance operations, including against American citizens. He has a very strong anti-civil liberties background. And that's why he's getting praise from people like General Michael Hayden and others. Democrats also are speaking positively about him. He's another adult in the room, Juan, like we were talking about Mike Pence.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right.
JEREMY SCAHILL: "Mike Pompeo, OK, he's an acceptable guy. He's one of us. We know that we can do business with him." But the business these guys are going to do is bringing back a full-blown torture operations. It's not that under Obama the CIA wasn't engaged in horrifyinglyhorrifying activities of questionable legality. It's that with Bush and Cheney it was like they wore it on their sleeves, and it was sort of theyou know, Cheney's obsession with we have to use forces on the dark side, that's all coming back into power right now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask youKansas Congressmember Mike Pompeo has opposed closing Guantánamo Bay. In 2013, he visited the notorious U.S. prison and said of the prisoners who were on hunger strike, quote, "It looked to me like a lot of them had put on weight." He's also a vocal opponent of the Iran nuclear deal. This whole issue of Guantánamo, which Obama has been trying to close, and at least whittling down to a small number, but still not closing it.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, and, I mean, it's one of the great failures of the Obama presidency. The Republicans outplayed Obama on the issue of Guantánamo. And I think their game plan was as long as there's like at least one prisoner there by the time the Maoist, socialist, you know, black Kenyan gets out, then we can go back to game on. There are several of Trump's either appointees or people that he's considering that have said the only problem with Guantánamo is that there aren't enough bodies there. And, you know, what's interesting about Flynn, Pompeo and Guantánamo, Flynn actually has been an interesting critic of the president's drone strike program. Now, it's not that Flynn isn't in love with killing people around the world. He definitely believes in pre-emptive strikes and targeted killings, you know, assassinations. But Flynn has said, by killing these people, we're losing an opportunity to get valuable intelligence; what we need to do is ship them to black sites again, what we need to do is bring them to Guantánamobig supporters of the military tribunal system.
So, I think what we're going to see is that Obama has blessed these menand it's all men right nowwith the gift of legitimizing drone strikes and making a legal argument as to why it's OK to assassinate American citizens, combined with his failure to close Guantánamo, means that these guys are going to combine the worst aspects of what Obama has done, and using his credibility to legitimize it with liberals, and the worst aspects of the Bush-Cheney doctrine. It really is kind of unprecedented that this kind of a cabal has this much power, controlling both houses of Congress, the White House and an ability to run the deck in making a Supreme Court that is extraordinarily, almost unprecedented in its right-wing nature.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, on Saturday, former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney reportedly met with Donald Trump, as well, to discuss foreign policy amidst speculation that Trump is considering him as a possible pick for secretary of state. Trump is reportedly also considering former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton as his secretary of state.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That's quite a trio there. Can you talk about these three and the possibility of one of them being secretary of state?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know things are bad when you're rooting for Mitt Romney to be named as secretary of state. I mean, I don't even know which of these people would be a worse disaster. I mean, you have Rudy Giuliani. First of all, Giuliani has a lot of questions to answer, and going in front of a Senate and having to talk about money his firm took from Qatar, talking about the fact that he gave paid speeches in front of a State Department-designated terror organization, the MEK, which, also Howard Dean and others are connected toit's a bipartisan love fest with this particular cult. You know, Giuliani's record in New York, he's sort of thought of as America's mayor because of 9/11. You know, you and I remember what it was like in New York. I mean, this was a guy who developed a very close relationship with the FBI and the CIA targeting Muslim communities. His police force was empowered to shoot at will against black people on the streets of New York. I don't know how else to say it. I mean, you look at what happened to Amadou Diallo, who was shot at 41 times by special units of the police force. You had the torture of Abner Louima inyou know, I remember you were there and interviewed Abner Louima. I mean, people have to understand that the tone Giuliani set in New York City is not about, "Oh, America's mayor." This was a guy who believed that police forces should be agents of war, of urban war. And for all of the bragging he'll do about how he cleaned up New York, you look at the tactics that Giuliani used and think of those in the emerging landscape we see with the paramilitarization of law enforcement, Giuliani as either as a secretary of state or as a homeland security director is a terrifying prospect.
John Bolton, who, you know, sort of cut his teeth as an assistant attorney general under Reagan, was most known for trying to stifle the Iran-Contra investigation into Oliver North, arms for hostages, the funding of the Contra death squads in Nicaragua. And so, you look at that, and you say, "How bad could Mitt Romney be?"
So, we'll see what happens, Mike Pence is indicating that Mitt Romney is the leading candidate. But, you know, Trump is running this basically like The Apprentice. And, you know, remember Obama, he met Hillary Clinton in secret in the firehouse annex at the airport in Washington, D.C. They kept the whole thing down low. And Trump is puttinghe's telegraphing all of this stuff and picking the mostI think he's floating a balloon, too, naming some people he knows will never pass Senate confirmation. But it's sort of like messaging that he does with the Ku Klux Klan and the white supremacists, white nationalist groups. It's sort of like, "These are the kind of people I like. Oh, we'll have Romney here, but Bolton really is our kind of guy." And I think that there's some of that happening, too, with the way Trump is running this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But theif he did name Romney as his secretary of state, there'd be real issues as to whether they could be on the sameon the same game plan, isn't it?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean, I think that when it comes to the military figures, Trump is sort of in awe of the generals, and I think that he's going to be a very malleable figure when it comes to people like General Flynn, General Mattis, Admiral Rogers. You know, he's sort of, "All praise the wise military men." When it comes to secretary of state, if it is Romneyhe basically is doing it almost as a throwaway ambassadorship of sorts. And I think it's meant to be a kind of chit thrown to, you know, the Republican establishment. But if you have a disempowered secretary of state and, basically, you're just running everything by fiat, which it seems like Trump will do, then it really is just a token appointment, if it's Romney. It'll be interesting. If he puts a Giuliani or a Bolton there, then you're going to have someone who, A, is a loose cannon, but, B, really knows how to effectively be a bad person globally and in their cities.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, we haven't talked about Mattis
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: and the potential of Mattis for secretary of defense.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, remember, Mattis, there was this move to draft Mattis"Mad Dog" Mattis, as he's calledwhose most recent post, he was the commander of U.S. Central Command and was fired by President Obama for speaking openly or critically about the Iran deal and questioning some of the Obama administration's motives.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But he also played a key role in the initial invasion of Iraq.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And then in the battle of Fallujah, right?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right, so, MattisMattis was the commander who encircled Fallujah in thein advance of the first siege of Fallujah in March of 2004. That was thenit was sparked by the killing of these BlackwaterBlackwater somehow manages to seep into everythingbut the killing of four Blackwater guys in Fallujah. And, you know, Mattis, though, has said, speaking about his time commanding forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, that sometimes it's fun to shoot people, and talking specifically about people that were resisting U.S. occupations. But he has a very sort of golden reputation within the hawkish militarist world. And there was a move to draft him to actually run for president. I think, as defense secretary, he would beI think he's less of a neocon than some of these other people, but he definitely believes in the iron fist of U.S. militarism. He definitely would be one of the more sophisticated military figures that Trump is speaking to.
Also, Mattis, it should be noted, he intervened and was able to get clemency or free a variety of people that were involved with the Haditha massacre in Iraq, where 20-something Iraqis were massacred, and other war crimes. He actually intervened and got some of the soldiers out or got them actually cleared in the aftermath, including in the aftermath of their convictions. So, you know, Mattis, everyone says, "Oh, he's a general's general." That was the thing that Trump said about him. What do they mean by that? Well, part of what people in the military would mean is, there is no real crime when you kill civilians in war. There's just sort of mistakes in the moment, fog of war. And, you know, that's kind of disturbing, given that the defense secretary is going to be responsible for overseeing all of the armed forces in a world that Trump is committing to unleashing U.S. power with no regard for international law or even some U.S. laws.

[David Guyatt]

Oh great. Rendition and torture again. The US just gets darker and darker as its global power wanes more and more.

[Michael Barwell]

Oh great. Rendition and torture again. The US just gets darker and darker as its global power wanes more and more.

I wouldn't sweat it Dave, yer far more likely to get swallowed by a sinkhole - THAT was on the telly, ergo, real & exists in reallife. Deffo got me looking ower me shoulder, like, hen.

[Peter Lemkin]

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today with a look at the growing movement in the United States that calls itself the alt-right. On Monday, a video was leaked from an alt-right conference that took place over the weekend in Washington, D.C., where hundreds gathered to celebrate Donald Trump's victory. In the video, alt-right leader Richard Spencer recites Nazi propaganda in original German, as some attendees raise their arms in the traditional Nazi salute.

RICHARD SPENCER: Heil Trump! Heil our people! Heil victory! To be white is to be a striver, a crusader, an explorer and a conqueror. We build. We produce. We go upward. And we recognize the central lie of American race relations. We don't exploit other groups. Wewe don't gain anything from their presence. They need us, and not the other way around. America was, until this past generation, a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That's alt-right leader Richard Spencer speaking over the weekend. When asked by The New York Times about Donald Trump, Spencer said, quote, "I do think we have a psychic connection, or you can say a deeper connection, with Donald Trump in a way that we simply do not have with most Republicans," unquote.
Leaders of the alt-right movement have been emboldened since Trump's election, particularly since he named Steve Bannon to become his chief strategist after first being his campaign manager. Bannon is the former head of the right-wing news outlet, Breitbart Media.
Well, for more, we're joined by Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University. When asked about Bannon's appointment, she told Politico, quote, "I find that the most depressing of almost anything I've heard thus far." Lipstadt is also the subject of a feature film, now in theaters, called Denial, which is based on a court case in which she was sued by a leading Holocaust denier.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Lipstadt. Professor Lipstadt, can you hear me? I think we're having a little problem with the connection with Professor Lipstadt. We'll take a break and come back.
[break]
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: "Can't Go Home" by Weyes Blood. Welcome back to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Juan González. Deborah Lipstadt is the Dorot professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University. The film Denial, based on the court case in which she was sued by a leading Holocaust denier, is currently in theaters. She joins us now to discuss the growing alt-right movement.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Lipstadt.
DEBORAH LIPSTADT: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, tell us about your concerns, especially, first, about the appointment of Donald Trump of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist.
DEBORAH LIPSTADT: Let me say at the outset that I don't know Steve Bannon personally. I know very little of him personally. So I have no idea if he is personally an anti-Semite or racist or any of his personal feelings. But what I do know is that he has facilitated the rise of alt-right, or maybe not the rise, but the entry of alt-right into more of the mainstream through Breitbart News. And on top of thatI mean, he has a longer record than just that, but I'll point to one example, which was the final ad that the Trump campaign put out, and he was campaign either manager or strategist, but he was one of thehe was the top person at the campaign. And the final ad, with Donald Trump's voice in the background talking about global interests, taking control of our economy, "they work for people who don't care about you," "they have their own interests," you saw threefour people on the screen. You saw Hillary Clinton, and then you saw George Soros. You saw Janet Yellen, and you saw Lloyd Blankfein. Soros, the financier
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Lipstadt, if I can for a second, let's go to that ad. We have a clip of it here so that our viewers and listeners
DEBORAH LIPSTADT: OK.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: can see what you're and hear what you're talking about. This is that ad.
DEBORAH LIPSTADT: OK, great.

DONALD TRUMP: The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don't have your good in mind. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration, and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry. The political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs as they flee to Mexico, China and other countries all around the world. It's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was the ad, and it was an extended ad, not your normal 15-second or 30-second commercial. Your response to that ad, Professor Lipstadt? Well, we're having problems with her again. But in response to the ad, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted, quote, "Whether intentional or not, the images and rhetoric in this ad touch on subjects that anti-Semites have used for ages. This needs to stop. In the final days before the election, tensions are extremely high. It's a time when all candidates need to be especially responsible and bid for votes by offering sincere ideas and policy proposals, not by conjuring painful stereotypes and baseless conspiracy theories." That was the Anti-Defamation League. Professor Lipstadtwe're again having problems with the connection to Emory University, and we'd like to go to this other clip of Howard Dean, who is running for chair of the Democratic National Committee, a position he's held previously. He spoke with Canada's CTV about Donald Trump and his picks for his senior officials.

HOWARD DEAN: He's a complicated guy. He appoints a reasonable person, who's much more conservative than I am, but somebody you can talk to, to his chief of staff. And then his senior adviser is a Nazi. I mean, whatyou know, what do you do with this?

EVAN SOLOMON: OK, hang on. Slow down. Well, this is interesting. You're talking about Reince Priebus

HOWARD DEAN: Right.

EVAN SOLOMON: who is the chairman of the Republican national party.

HOWARD DEAN: Right.

EVAN SOLOMON: Right? He's now his chief of staff.

HOWARD DEAN: Right.

EVAN SOLOMON: Steve Bannon, who ran something called Breitbart News

HOWARD DEAN: Right, which is a far-right, anti-Semitic publication.

EVAN SOLOMON: You called him a Nazi?

HOWARD DEAN: Well, he's anti-Semitic, he's anti-black, and he's anti-women.

EVAN SOLOMON: He's openly said, "I'm part of the, quote-unquote, 'alt-right.'"

HOWARD DEAN: That's right.

EVAN SOLOMON: He is Donald Trump's chief strategist. What does that tell you?

HOWARD DEAN: It makes me very nervous.

[Peter Lemkin]

In the last 24 hours Trumpf has said he is not obliged [and will not] put his businesses into blind trust while he is President. Constitutional experts have stated this is illegal. However, it is certainly also highly unethical [and all prior Presidents have done so], and to use his new office to sell his products could well very soon become grounds for the beginning of impeachment proceedings. The problem being the Republican control of Congress. This is a completely distasteful human being who will, IMO, change nothing for those who voted for him - he's in this only for himself. I still can't believe that so many were willing to ignore all the clear warning signs only because of their own financial distress or hope to 'give it to the system'. That neo-Nazis are now in his cabinet and among his advisors should surprise no one as he refused to denounce the support of David Duke of the KKK. Trumpf's father was a big supporter of the KKK and had legal action against him for denying sale of his housing to African-Americans. It is little satisfaction that more in the USA dislike Trumpf than like him. I'm sick at heart at the reality we face, even if we'd have had many problems to face with Clinton. When one compares the likes of Trumpf to JFK [who was assassinated by and for his moral and political stands against the 'men behind the curtains'] one can see how far the USA has fallen in the post-war period. We will certainly self-destruct much more quickly than did Rome - but for the same reasons.

[Lauren Johnson]

He seems to model himself after Berlusconi, minus the bunga bunga parties -- so far.