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

[Peter Lemkin]

Republican Senator Ben Sasse comes out swinging at Donald Trump, lays groundwork for impeachment

Bill Palmer
Updated: 11:56 pm EDT Wed Oct 11, 2017





If you've been waiting for another Republican Senator to follow Bob Corker's lead by coming out swinging against Donald Trump, then wait no more. On Wednesday, John McCain hit Trump firmly but narrowly over his failure to abide by Russian sanctions. But then Ben Sasse stepped to the plate late on Wednesday night, and let's just say that he was more direct in his condemnation of Trump.


After Trump spent the day lamenting how awful it is that the media has freedom of the press, and explicitly threatening to shut down broadcast networks such as NBC, Senator Ben Sasse fired back at him at the end of the day. Sasse tweeted a a brief press release after 10pm eastern time. It was titled "Sasse to Trump: are you recanting of your oath?" Then came the press release itself.


The press release text said "U.S. Senator Ben Sasse issued the following release tonight after President Trump yet again attacked the First Amendment: Mr. President, words spoken by the President matter. Are you tonight recanting of the oath you took on January 20th to preserve, protect, and defend the First Amendment?" (link). Sasse's statement is far more carefully worded than Corker's all-out rant, but here's what really matters: Sasse has directly accused Trump of violating the Constitution, in exact words. That's everything, because it's specifically impeachable, and Sasse knows it.


Bob Corker condemned Donald Trump for being a psychologically unstable infant, but impeachment is supposed to be for committing crimes. Ben Sasse just accused Trump in exact words, albeit in the form of a question, of committing a specific crime against the Constitution: trying to deny citizens the First Amendment. This lays the groundwork for an eventual impeachment effort. It's the first sign that the Republicans might actually try to strategically impeach Trump before the midterms after all.

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: We spend the rest of the hour discussing what our next guest calls the "apocalyptic twins: nuclear and climate threats." This week, NBC News reported President Trump called for a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal during a meeting with high-ranking military leaders. It was after this that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called Trump a "moron." On Wednesday, Trump lashed out at NBC on Twitter, suggested NBC's broadcast license should be revoked as punishment for its reporting.
Today, Trump is slated to announce the U.S. will decertify the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal, although it appears Trump has now backed away from his plans to withdraw the U.S. from the deal entirely. Instead, the White House is expected to instruct Congress to leave the agreement intact, for now, after he came under enormous domestic and international pressure not to unravel the landmark deal.
In the last week, Trump has also repeated threats of war against North Korea, tweeting, quote, "Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid...... …hasn't worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, making fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!" he tweeted. In brief comments to reporters Saturday, Trump was asked to clarify that remark, as well as a cryptic comment he made last week during a meeting with top generals in which he warned about "the calm before the storm."

REPORTER: Can you clarify your "calm before the storm" comment?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Nothingnothing to clarify.

REPORTER: What is the "one thing" that will work regarding North Korea?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, you'll figure that out pretty soon.

AMY GOODMAN: "You'll figure that out pretty soon," he said, when asked about "the calm before the storm," what it was.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is struggling to recover from a series of hurricanes, and now wildfires, that climate scientists have linked to climate change. The 10th hurricane this year, Ophelia, has just been named. There have not been 10 hurricanes in one season since 1893.
Well, our next guest wonders if the storms have contributed to what he calls a shift in our awareness of climate truths. On Thursday, Democracy Now!'s Nermeen Shaikh and I sat down with Robert Jay Lifton, leading American psychiatrist, author of more than 20 books about the effects of nuclear war, terrorism and genocide. His new book is titled The Climate Swerve: Reflections on Mind, Hope, and Survival. His past books, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, for which he received the National Book Award; The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide; and Witness to an Extreme Century: A Memoir. Dr. Lifton is also a distinguished professor emeritus of psychology and psychiatry at the City University of New York. I began by asking him to talk about what is now happening between the U.S. and North Korea, and Iran, and President Trump's closest aides expressing concern that Trump is unraveling.

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: I also belong to a group called the Duty to Warn, which is a group of psychiatrists and psychologists who feel we have the right and the obligation to speak out about Trump's psyche when it endangers the country and the world. And what we're seeingyou mentioned the potential unraveling of the pact with Iran. There's also the potential unraveling of Donald Trump, which seems to be occurring. It's hard to read him, because his behavior, as I understand it, is completely solipsistic. He sees the world through his own sense of self, what he needs and what he feels. And he couldn't be more erratic or scattered or dangerous.

So, the exchange with North Korea has to be terrifying to all of us. It's not something that can be controlled. You have two leaders who are bent on hyperbole and intense threat to the other and have their own motivations, each of which is hard for us to read. But we can read the danger that they represent, particularly since we've learned recently that Trump is on record for demanding something like 10 times the number of nuclear weapons. And that's what I call extreme nuclearism, a kind of embrace of the weapons to do everything that they can't do. The only thing nuclear weapons can do is destroy countries, cities, destroy human beings. But since they came into being, there has been an impulse to embrace them and see them as saviors, that prevent war, keep the world going, maintain authority on the part of the nuclear weapons-possessing nations. So Trump is into that extreme nuclearism.

And at the same time, as you mentioned, with the other apocalyptic twin, the terrible and very real threat of climate change, global warming, he and his followers are blocking every reasonable effect that was put forward at Paris in 2015 and which the worldthrough which the world seeks to confront what may be the gravest danger it's ever faced. That's where we are.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: To go back to what you said initially, the group that you're a part of, the psychiatric group, you're a contributor to a book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. What are some of the key concerns about Trump that you and your colleagues raise?

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Well, I wrote a letter, together with Judith Herman, to The New York Times, in which we raised two issues. One was his relation to reality, which is, I would say, solipsistic and untenable and very dangerous to everyone.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, "solipsistic"?

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Solipsistic, from within the self. In other words, he only sees the world from within his sense of self. He can't have empathy for others. He can't really think into the future the consequences of his actions, because he's totally preoccupied with the immediate event and how he can deal with it or manipulate it as emerging through the perception on the part of his sense of self. That's very extreme. People who are psychotic behave that way. And yet, for the most part, Trump is not psychotic. That combination makes him really dangerous. So that relationship to reality is one thing.

And the other thing that Judith Herman and I wrote about was his difficulty with crises and his extreme behavior and attack mode, instead of any kind ofany kind of a balance, which a president needs to deal with a crisis. So those were two.

And in this regard, I write about what we call malignant normality. So, he's the president. A president takes actions. There's a tendency to normalize them, because, after all, he is the president, he's in charge, when what is called normality is completely malignant and harmful. And I came to that idea through work on Nazi doctors. They were expected to reverse healing and killing, and really take the lead in killing in Auschwitz. I'm not accusing any Americans of being Nazi doctors. I'm saying that this is a model of malignant normality, and we now face it with Trump and his administration.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about your group Duty to Warn. Vanity Fair has a piece where Steve Bannon, the disgraced White House aide, said he told President Trump that his concern should be the 25th Amendmentnot being impeached, but the Cabinet voting him out. He says something like Trump has a 30 percent chance of making it through his term. You are a psychiatrist. Can you talk further about what it would take, if it wasn't an impeachable crime, forto remove President Trump, why you believe he is a danger right now?

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: It's unclear whether or how Trump will be removed from or resign from the presidency before the completion of his term. One doesn't know that. It will probably, in my judgment, be a political rather than a psychological act. I mean, one could take the 25th Amendment, and his Cabinet and vice president could attest to his unfitness for being president. That doesn't

AMY GOODMAN: But the Cabinet are his appointees.

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Yeah, it doesn't seem very likely, does it? But rather, what's happening now is that there's a dialogue between this psychological-psychiatric group and congresspeople in which theywe are bringing information about Trump's unfitness, which becomes part of the political dialogue. It will probably be

AMY GOODMAN: Are you talking to congressmembers?

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Yes, yes, people from this group are talking to congresspeople. And it will probably be a political decision that removes Trump. And that means an election process and the issue of whether you get a Democratic House or Senate, and other political issues that will become very important. But this is now part of the dialogue. Everybody knew that Trump was bizarre, strange, was unreliable, unfit to be president. It's been known by the hypocritical Republicans for a very long time. But putting it forward by psychologists and psychiatrists gives it a certain greater authority and becomes part of that dialogue and recognition. That's the way that I see it, rather than a clear-cut removal through the 25th Amendment. Though one doesn't know, because there's more and more evidence about Trump's campaign's collusion in Russia and potentially about obstruction of justice, and all these could play a part. He could attempt to fire Mueller, as he's threatened to do, and that could bring about a constitutional crisis. So, we don't know. We can't predict what process will occur. The psychological now is in dialogue with the political.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read to you The New York Times editorial on Thursday, "One Finger on the Button is Too Few." And they write, "The broad debate over President Trump's fitness for the difficult and demanding office he holds has recently been reframed in a more pointed and urgent way: Does he understand, and can he responsibly manage, the most destructive nuclear arsenal on earth?

"The question arises for several reasons. He has threatened to 'totally destroy' North Korea. He has reportedly pressed for a massive buildup in the American nuclear arsenal, which already contains too many4,000warheads. And soon he will decide whether to sustain or set a course to possibly unravel the immensely important Iran nuclear deal."

It goes on to cite Corker, who said he's leading to World War III, and Rex Tillerson, who reportedly called him a "moron."

And he saysand the Times goes on to say, "Mr. Trump's policy pronouncements during the campaign betrayed either profound ignorance or dangerous nonchalance: At one point he wondered why America had nuclear weapons if it didn't use them; at another he suggested that Japan and South Korea, which have long lived under the American security umbrella, should develop their own nuclear weapons. But nothing he said has been quite as unsettling as his recent tweetstorms about North Korea, … 'fire and fury' … 'the calm before the storm.'"

And so, they are sayingthey're calling for"Many have hoped, and still hope, … Trump's aggressive posture is mostly theater, designed to slake his thirst for attention, keep adversaries off guard … But there is no underlying strategy to his loose talk, and whatever he means by it, Congress has been sufficiently alarmed to consider legislation that would bar the president from launching a first nuclear strike without a declaration of war by Congress. It wouldn't take away the president's ability to defend the country."

They say, "That's a sound idea, and could be made stronger with a requirement that the secretaries of defense and state also approve any such decision. As things stand now, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, passed when there was more concern about trigger-happy generals than elected civilian leaders, gives the president sole control. He could unleash the apocalyptic force of the American nuclear arsenal by his word alone, and within minutes."

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Well, any restriction on the presidentany president, but especially Trumpon his capacity to initiate a nuclear war, any restriction on that is profoundly desirable. It's a strange world, to say the least, when the generals are there to restrain the civilian. The generals aren't, on the whole, known for their military restraint. There are exceptions. With the Vietnam War, as you know, it was initiated by civilians, "the best and the brightest," as it was called. The military was at first a little reluctant, then entered it and became corrupted by it, and created what I came to call atrocity-producing situations. That could happen here, too, with the generals, who are ostensibly restrainers, allowing him, being unable to prevent him from initiating some form of war, being themselves drawn in and then corrupted by it. That's a really dangerous sequence. Anything that holds that back or in check is desirable.

[Peter Lemkin]

OCTOBER 19, 2017 | DICK RUSSELL

THE MAN WHO CALLED DONALD TRUMP A "MORON"

A Close Look at Rex Tillerson and ExxonMobil

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from U.S. Department of State / Flickr
Rex Tillerson has reportedly called Donald Trump a "moron." And, in the interest of accuracy and completeness, NBC amended that to a "f*cking moron."
But what epithet might apply to Rex Tillerson?
For many years, Tillerson headed ExxonMobil, a company that he knew was contributing to global warming. And nothing changed under his leadership with devastating and possibly irreversible results.
Recently, the Los Angeles Times released a detailed report on the extent to which ExxonMobil misled the public, for decades, on what it knew about how it was affecting the climate:
Reviewing 187 ExxonMobil documents, we found that 83% of peer-reviewed papers authored by ExxonMobil scientists and 80% of the company's internal communications acknowledged that climate change was real and human-caused.
For a closer view of this phenomenal deception, and one of the people responsible for it, please see the following story, which we first posted earlier this year.
WhoWhatWhy Staff

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Rex Tillerson likes his privacy. Career diplomats working in the same building with him were given special instructions: Do not try to make eye contact with him, and do not speak to him directly.
On his first three trips abroad, Tillerson did not even meet with State Department employees in their embassies. Nor did he allow the usual press corps to accompany him on those trips. He took along only one reporter, one who was from the conservative website, Independent Journal Review. He does not like to answer questions.
To many, appointing the former CEO of Exxon as Secretary of State was about as appropriate as putting Bernie Madoff in charge of the treasury.
Tillerson is too close to Russia, and he's too close to the oil business. He was with Exxon for 41 years. Since 2011, his company has been entering into multibillion-dollar deals with the Russian firm Rosneft, allowing Exxon access to the Russian Arctic, Siberia, and Russia's far east. The Russian arctic alone contains approximately 22% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
This association presents a conflict of interest. Because the US imposed sanctions against Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2014, Exxon is reported to have lost $1 billion. Tillerson is opposed to the sanctions.
And there is another potential conflict of interest. Terry Collingsworth, a lawyer with International Rights Advocates, is concerned that a State Department under Tillerson may "intervene to side with big companies like Exxon Mobil in future human rights abuse cases."
Collingsworth is the lawyer for plaintiffs involved in a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil for "damages" inflicted by Indonesian military hired to perform "security services" on behalf of Exxon. The "security services" involved "human rights abuses, including genocide, murder, torture, crimes against humanity, sexual violence, and kidnapping." (According to a progressive website, this is just one of many lawsuits.) Collingsworth believes the appointment of Tillerson sends a message:
"The world is open for business environment and human rights be damned."

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Dick Russell has just published a book on the very people who embrace that attitude including Rex Tillerson and the devastating consequences it has had on our planet: Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Men Who are Destroying Life on Earth and What It Means for Our Children (with an Introduction by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) (Hot books, April 2017) He says of them:
"These dark lords like to pose as good family men, benefactors of charities and the arts, upstanding pillars of their community. But first and foremost they are enemies of life on earth. This book has sought to put a face to the entrenched evil that has pushed us to the point of no return."
Below is the first of two parts excerpted from Chapter One of this book. To see the second part, go here.
Dick Russell has many passions, as demonstrated by his many books, but he is perhaps best known for his thrilling, The Man Who Knew Too Much (Carroll & Graf, 2003). His other books include My Mysterious Son: A Life-Changing Passage Between Schizophrenia and Shamanism (Skyhorse Publishing, 2014); The Life and Ideas of James Hillman:Volume I: The Making of a Psychologist (Arcade Publishing, 2013); On the Trail of the Assassins: A Groundbreaking Look at America's Most Infamous Conspiracy (Skyhorse Publishing, 2010); Striper Wars: An American Fish Story (Island Press, 2005); Black Genius and the American Experience (Carroll & Graf 1998).
WhoWhatWhy introduction by Milicent Cranor

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Rex Tillerson

.

Rex Wayne Tillerson, a product of small towns in Texas and Oklahoma whose father worked four decades as a professional organizer for the Boy Scouts of America, is himself an Eagle Scout. Indeed, Tillerson the former ExxonMobil CEO still denotes this on his resumé. His corporate speeches often cite the Scout Oath and Scout Law. But when it comes to his business practices, Tillerson is not a good Scout. Doesn't a Boy Scout leave a place cleaner than they found it?
Tillerson has shown he can be a good steward of the earth, however, if he happens to own the plot of earth. He leaped into action in 2014, when a 15-story water tower was slated to be built adjacent to his ranch. The tower's purpose? Providing water to a nearby natural gas drilling site that utilized hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as "fracking."
ExxonMobil had lately become America's largest homegrown producer of natural gas, and Tillerson had publicly said of attempts to curtail fracking, "This type of dysfunctional regulation is holding back the American economic recovery, growth and global competitiveness."
However, in his backyard, fracking would apparently create "a constant and unbearable nuisance to those that live next to it," including "traffic with heavy trucks" which would devalue his property. So Tillerson joined a lawsuit aimed at shutting down the project, along with co-plaintiff Dick Armey, the former Republican House Majority Leader. (Adding to the richness of the irony, Armey is currently chair of FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group that loudly supports fracking. But Armey's $2 million, 78-acre ranch also lies adjacent to the water tower site, which puts things in a different perspective.)
But when it comes to the health of the planet, Tillerson has little concern for future generations. In August 2015, 21 young people from around the U.S. filed a still-ongoing lawsuit against the Obama administration, alleging that the federal government has violated their rights by failing to protect present and future generations from human-caused climate change.
Ranging in age from 8 to 19, the youth addressed conditions near their own homes: extreme drought, a threatened forest leading to water scarcity, an unswimmable river due to fish die-offs.
ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and dozens more oil and gas companies were worried enough about the children's crusade to join the government's effort to defeat the lawsuit. The fossil fuel powerhouses called the youth's case "extraordinary" and "a direct threat to [their] businesses."
In response to the energy industry aggressive counterattack, retired NASA scientist James Hansen, who has been sounding the alarm about climate change for decades, declared, "I am not surprised that fossil fuel corporations seek to derail this case, but the fundamental rights of my granddaughter and future generations to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness must prevail."
Joliet Exxon Mobile Refinery Photo credit: airguy1988 / Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)

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Rex Tillerson joined Exxon in 1975, upon graduating from the University of Texas. He would rise quickly through the ranks of the multinational energy giant's oil-and-gas discovery division. Kenneth Cohen entered the corporation as legal counsel in 1977, ultimately going on to run its public affairs department. Cohen would also serve as a national trustee of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
Tillerson and Cohen, so-called youth advocates, would become primary players in denying to this day the catastrophic risks that climate change poses to the very survival of future generations.
Nor are they alone. Jack Gerard has been at the helm since 2008 of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry's leading lobby. Gerard, who has been named one of Washington, D.C.'s "Power 100," and his wife have eight children, including twin boys adopted from Guatemala. He is a past chairman of the National Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which hosts thousands of youth in Washington, Maryland, Virginia and the Virgin Islands, and he continues to serve as a Boy Scouts board member.
In delivering a State of American Energy address in January 2016, Gerard spoke of how fossil fuels must "remain the foundation upon which our modern society rests for decades to come" despite "an ardent few who continue to believe that keeping our nation's abundant energy resources in the ground is a credible and viable national energy strategy. There are some in government who will advance their favored forms of energy to that dubious and untested end, heedless of the potential harm it could cause to our economy."
Against all scientific wisdom, Gerard also demanded the elimination of all government obstacles to future carbon energy exploitation, decrying the "dangerous combination of outdated policies and anti-fossil fuel political ideology that discourages American companies from investing in tomorrow's pipelines, marine terminals and other energy infrastructure projects."
Be prepared, Boy Scouts are taught. This has become a particularly urgent lesson as the human race is forced to prepare for one natural disaster after the next linked to our changing climate.

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Humble Oil and Refining Company advertisement about melting glaciers, 1962. Photo credit: Sociological Images

All the way back in 1958, Bell Laboratories funded a series of TV science specials produced by the legendary Frank Capra. One of the episodes, titled "The Unchained Goddess," featured Dr. Frank B. Baxter, a professor at the University of Southern California. Over a half century ago, Baxter told a national audience,
"Even now, man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through the waste products of his civilization. Due to our release, through factories and automobiles every year, of more than six billion tons of carbon dioxide….our atmosphere seems to be getting warmer. It's been calculated that a few degrees rise in the earth's temperature would melt the polar ice caps, and if this happens, an inland sea would fill a good portion of the Mississippi Valley. Tourists in glass-bottomed boats would be viewing the drowned towers of Miami through 150 feet of tropical water."
Four years later, Humble Oil and Refining to be "rebranded" in the early 1970s as Exxon took out a two-page color ad in Life Magazine. Below a beautiful color photograph of Alaska's cloud-bedecked Taku Glacier, its headline read:

EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGYTO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER!

The small print continued:
This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries. Yet, the petroleum energy Humble supplies if converted into heat could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second!
Was it prescience? Or a kind of Freudian slip? We'll never know.
For Part 2 please go here.

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[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

WASHINGTON Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who has tangled with President Trump for months, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek re-election in 2018, declaring on the Senate floor that he "will no longer be complicit or silent" in the face of the president's "reckless, outrageous and undignified" behavior.
Mr. Flake made his announcement in an extraordinary 17-minute speech in which he challenged not only the president but also his party's leadership. He deplored the "casual undermining of our democratic ideals" and "the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency" that he said had become prevalent in American politics in the era of Mr. Trump.
The announcement appeared to signal a moment of decision for the Republican Party. Last week, Senator John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, spoke in Philadelphia, denouncing the "half-baked, spurious nationalism" that he saw overtaking American politics. Former President George W. Bush, in yet another speech, lamented: "We've seen nationalism distorted into nativism."
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump had renewed his attacks on another critic in the Republican Party, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, saying he "couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee." Mr. Corker, appearing more weary than angry, said the president "is debasing our country."
But Mr. Flake, choosing the Senate floor for his fierce denunciation of the president, appeared to issue a direct challenge to his colleagues and his party.




"It is often said that children are watching," he said. "Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you speak up?' What are we going to say?"
Without mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Flake, 54, took direct aim at the president's policies, notably his isolationist tendencies, but also his behavior and that of his aides. In his time in Washington, Mr. Flake embodied an old-line conservatism. He avidly pitched smaller government, spending cuts and an end to home-district pork-barrel projects, but also supported free trade, engagement with the world and an openness to immigration.
Those positions stood in marked contrast to Mr. Trump's inward-looking, anti-immigration nationalism. The senator had already touched on such themes in a book he published in August, "Conscience of a Conservative," that was highly critical of the president. In his speech, he was at turns somber and passionate.
"We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal," Mr. Flake said. "They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy."
As he spoke, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, Mr. McCain and Mr. Corker sat listening on the Senate floor. Mr. Corker had jousted with the president only hours before.
"Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!" Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning, fearing that Mr. Corker's vow to oppose any tax plan that increases the federal debt could imperil his tax push.
Mr. Corker snapped back, "Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president."
"I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and is debasing our country," Mr. Corker said in a CNN interview, suggesting that he would soon convene hearings to examine the ways Mr. Trump "purposely has been breaking down relationships around the world."
"It's unfortunate that our nation finds itself in this place," he added.
After the speech, Mr. McConnell praised Mr. Flake and said he regretted the senator's decision to leave. "We have just witnessed a speech from a very fine man, a man who clearly brings high principles to the office every day," the leader said.
But privately, some Republicans were growing angry at the displays of disunity from Senators Flake and Corker as the party was trying to come together to pass a major overhaul of the tax code. Only minutes before Mr. Flake's address, the president had been in the Capitol for lunch with Senate Republicans and a discussion about tax reform.

Read Jeff Flake's Speech

• Here is a full transcript of the speech Mr. Flake, the Republican senator from Arizona, delivered on the Senate floor.
  

The announcement did please Republican officials in Arizona and Washington, who believe that they now have a better chance at retaining the seat.
Mr. Flake's private polling had steadily become worse this year as he intensified his criticism of Mr. Trump. His firm stand against the president had alienated Republican voters, but his long, conservative track record dissuaded Democratic voters in the state from coming to his side. One poll showed he had just an 18 percent approval rating among Arizona residents, and a survey that the senator conducted last month led some of his own allies to conclude that he could not win a Republican primary, according to multiple officials directly familiar with the situation in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's speech.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said that she had not spoken with Mr. Trump about the senator's decision but that she was not lamenting the announcement.

"Based on previous statements and certainly based on the lack of support that he has from the people of Arizona, it's probably a good move," she said.
She said history would remember Mr. Trump for his achievements and the strong economy that he was presiding over, "not some petty comments from Senator Corker and Senator Flake."
At home in Arizona, Mr. Flake was facing threats from both the right and the left. His main primary challenger, Kelli Ward, an osteopathic physician and a former state senator who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. McCain last year, kicked off her campaign last week with two conservative luminaries Laura Ingraham, the radio host, and Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump's former chief strategist at her side.
"Steve Bannon adds another scalp to his collection," said Andy Surabian, a senior adviser to the Great America Alliance, a Bannon-aligned group that has endorsed Ms. Ward. "This is a direct result of the political pressure put on Jeff Flake over the last several months."
On Tuesday, Breitbart News, the website that Mr. Bannon oversees, reported his reaction to Mr. Flake's announcement as defiant: "Our movement will defeat you in primaries or force you to retire."
Now, a race that had been expected to fall along familiar establishment-versus-insurgent lines, with Mr. Flake pitted against Ms. Ward, has been blown wide open. Mainstream Republicans believe that Ms. Ward will be overwhelmed by a flood of other candidates. Representative Paul Gosar, a conservative firebrand, and former Gov. Jan Brewer, for example, could enter the race.
But there is considerable uncertainty among establishment Republicans, too. Most party leaders suggest Representative Martha McSally, a former Air Force pilot, would be their most formidable contender to take on Representative Kyrsten Sinema, the likely Democratic nominee. But some Republicans privately say the safer course is for Ms. McSally is to wait for the ailing Mr. McCain to vacate the seat and eventually ascend to the Senate via appointment.
To many conservatives who support Mr. Trump, Mr. Flake was an especially desirable target. Few in the Senate had spoken more candidly about their misgivings with Mr. Trump, first as a candidate and then as president. He had particularly elicited conservatives' ire with his book, in which he equated Republicans' acceptance of Mr. Trump as their nominee to a Faustian bargain.
Mr. Trump himself encouraged a primary challenge to Mr. Flake, calling him "a non-factor" and "WEAK on borders," while lauding Ms. Ward on Twitter.
What Mr. Flake's retirement made clear, though, was something potentially much more significant than an individual senator's standing in the angry and restless conservative movement. It suggested that under Mr. Trump, the Republican Party has little room for voices that dissent from the president's crass style of politics and his polarizing agenda.
Mr. Flake's decision to step down was, in a sense, a tacit admission that crossing the president had put him in political peril. But in an interview in Phoenix this month, he said he had no regrets and always knew that crossing the president would be dangerous politically. He reiterated that sentiment on the Senate floor on Tuesday.
"We're not here to simply mark time," the senator said. "Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office, and there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time."

[Peter Lemkin]

WASHINGTON Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who has tangled with President Trump for months, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek re-election in 2018, declaring on the Senate floor that he "will no longer be complicit or silent" in the face of the president's "reckless, outrageous and undignified" behavior.
Mr. Flake made his announcement in an extraordinary 17-minute speech in which he challenged not only the president but also his party's leadership. He deplored the "casual undermining of our democratic ideals" and "the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency" that he said had become prevalent in American politics in the era of Mr. Trump.
The announcement appeared to signal a moment of decision for the Republican Party. Last week, Senator John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, spoke in Philadelphia, denouncing the "half-baked, spurious nationalism" that he saw overtaking American politics. Former President George W. Bush, in yet another speech, lamented: "We've seen nationalism distorted into nativism."
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump had renewed his attacks on another critic in the Republican Party, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, saying he "couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee." Mr. Corker, appearing more weary than angry, said the president "is debasing our country."
But Mr. Flake, choosing the Senate floor for his fierce denunciation of the president, appeared to issue a direct challenge to his colleagues and his party.




"It is often said that children are watching," he said. "Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you speak up?' What are we going to say?"
Without mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Flake, 54, took direct aim at the president's policies, notably his isolationist tendencies, but also his behavior and that of his aides. In his time in Washington, Mr. Flake embodied an old-line conservatism. He avidly pitched smaller government, spending cuts and an end to home-district pork-barrel projects, but also supported free trade, engagement with the world and an openness to immigration.
Those positions stood in marked contrast to Mr. Trump's inward-looking, anti-immigration nationalism. The senator had already touched on such themes in a book he published in August, "Conscience of a Conservative," that was highly critical of the president. In his speech, he was at turns somber and passionate.
"We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal," Mr. Flake said. "They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy."
As he spoke, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, Mr. McCain and Mr. Corker sat listening on the Senate floor. Mr. Corker had jousted with the president only hours before.
"Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!" Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning, fearing that Mr. Corker's vow to oppose any tax plan that increases the federal debt could imperil his tax push.
Mr. Corker snapped back, "Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president."
"I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and is debasing our country," Mr. Corker said in a CNN interview, suggesting that he would soon convene hearings to examine the ways Mr. Trump "purposely has been breaking down relationships around the world."
"It's unfortunate that our nation finds itself in this place," he added.
After the speech, Mr. McConnell praised Mr. Flake and said he regretted the senator's decision to leave. "We have just witnessed a speech from a very fine man, a man who clearly brings high principles to the office every day," the leader said.
But privately, some Republicans were growing angry at the displays of disunity from Senators Flake and Corker as the party was trying to come together to pass a major overhaul of the tax code. Only minutes before Mr. Flake's address, the president had been in the Capitol for lunch with Senate Republicans and a discussion about tax reform.

Read Jeff Flake's Speech

• Here is a full transcript of the speech Mr. Flake, the Republican senator from Arizona, delivered on the Senate floor.
  

The announcement did please Republican officials in Arizona and Washington, who believe that they now have a better chance at retaining the seat.
Mr. Flake's private polling had steadily become worse this year as he intensified his criticism of Mr. Trump. His firm stand against the president had alienated Republican voters, but his long, conservative track record dissuaded Democratic voters in the state from coming to his side. One poll showed he had just an 18 percent approval rating among Arizona residents, and a survey that the senator conducted last month led some of his own allies to conclude that he could not win a Republican primary, according to multiple officials directly familiar with the situation in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's speech.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said that she had not spoken with Mr. Trump about the senator's decision but that she was not lamenting the announcement.

"Based on previous statements and certainly based on the lack of support that he has from the people of Arizona, it's probably a good move," she said.
She said history would remember Mr. Trump for his achievements and the strong economy that he was presiding over, "not some petty comments from Senator Corker and Senator Flake."
At home in Arizona, Mr. Flake was facing threats from both the right and the left. His main primary challenger, Kelli Ward, an osteopathic physician and a former state senator who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. McCain last year, kicked off her campaign last week with two conservative luminaries Laura Ingraham, the radio host, and Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump's former chief strategist at her side.
"Steve Bannon adds another scalp to his collection," said Andy Surabian, a senior adviser to the Great America Alliance, a Bannon-aligned group that has endorsed Ms. Ward. "This is a direct result of the political pressure put on Jeff Flake over the last several months."
On Tuesday, Breitbart News, the website that Mr. Bannon oversees, reported his reaction to Mr. Flake's announcement as defiant: "Our movement will defeat you in primaries or force you to retire."
Now, a race that had been expected to fall along familiar establishment-versus-insurgent lines, with Mr. Flake pitted against Ms. Ward, has been blown wide open. Mainstream Republicans believe that Ms. Ward will be overwhelmed by a flood of other candidates. Representative Paul Gosar, a conservative firebrand, and former Gov. Jan Brewer, for example, could enter the race.
But there is considerable uncertainty among establishment Republicans, too. Most party leaders suggest Representative Martha McSally, a former Air Force pilot, would be their most formidable contender to take on Representative Kyrsten Sinema, the likely Democratic nominee. But some Republicans privately say the safer course is for Ms. McSally is to wait for the ailing Mr. McCain to vacate the seat and eventually ascend to the Senate via appointment.
To many conservatives who support Mr. Trump, Mr. Flake was an especially desirable target. Few in the Senate had spoken more candidly about their misgivings with Mr. Trump, first as a candidate and then as president. He had particularly elicited conservatives' ire with his book, in which he equated Republicans' acceptance of Mr. Trump as their nominee to a Faustian bargain.
Mr. Trump himself encouraged a primary challenge to Mr. Flake, calling him "a non-factor" and "WEAK on borders," while lauding Ms. Ward on Twitter.
What Mr. Flake's retirement made clear, though, was something potentially much more significant than an individual senator's standing in the angry and restless conservative movement. It suggested that under Mr. Trump, the Republican Party has little room for voices that dissent from the president's crass style of politics and his polarizing agenda.
Mr. Flake's decision to step down was, in a sense, a tacit admission that crossing the president had put him in political peril. But in an interview in Phoenix this month, he said he had no regrets and always knew that crossing the president would be dangerous politically. He reiterated that sentiment on the Senate floor on Tuesday.
"We're not here to simply mark time," the senator said. "Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office, and there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time."

[Ivan De Mey]

Former US ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman expects Joe Biden to run for president in 2020. His running mate would be either Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama. In his opinion Biden is the only Democrat able to stop Trump from re-election, even though Biden will be 78 at the time.

The interview was on Belgian television, but it's in English, with Dutch subtitles.



https://www.vrt.be/vrtnu/a-z/de-afspraak...639d745e2/

[Paul Rigby]

Former US ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman expects Joe Biden to run for president in 2020. His running mate would be either Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama. In his opinion Biden is the only Democrat able to stop Trump from re-election, even though Biden will be 78 at the time.

The interview was on Belgian television, but it's in English, with Dutch subtitles.



https://www.vrt.be/vrtnu/a-z/de-afspraak...639d745e2/

I do hope the old groper selects Lady Gaga for his running mate.

[Paul Rigby]

Former US ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman expects Joe Biden to run for president in 2020. His running mate would be either Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama. In his opinion Biden is the only Democrat able to stop Trump from re-election, even though Biden will be 78 at the time.

The interview was on Belgian television, but it's in English, with Dutch subtitles.



https://www.vrt.be/vrtnu/a-z/de-afspraak...639d745e2/

I do hope the old groper selects Lady Gaga for his running mate.

Gutman is bonkers:

[video=youtube_share;vSVcXjlWD4w]http://youtu.be/vSVcXjlWD4w[/video]

[video=youtube_share;xy07yHAgM4E]http://youtu.be/xy07yHAgM4E[/video]

[video=youtube_share;osL1u3dJsos]http://youtu.be/osL1u3dJsos[/video]

[Peter Lemkin]

After saying he'd release all the documents [really not ALL - but those that had been listed by the various agencies as 'withheld'], Trumpty Dumpty gives agencies another six months to find a good reason to never release them.