Take a Look

For years, I've told my children that bullies cannot succeed without enablers -- the people who look away, who titter like Billy Bush did in the face of something disgusting and wrong, because they lack the character themselves to stand up for what is right. It's harder to stand up for what's right when you are the only one doing so. That takes some actual moral courage, especially if you are in a social dynamic -- typically the case with a bully -- where it's you against the bully, with everyone else watching, weighing your interaction with the bully, and how he treats you (how you fare) before they decide whether to stand with you or go with the bully. Or when the bully has power over you, economically or in some other way.

Here, with Trump, especially now, it takes no moral courage whatsoever to denounce him and stand up for what is right. The abhorrent nature of this man is absolute; he defiles everything he comes near; he has debased not only himself, but us all, and there is more to come. He is poisonous; cancerous.

And yet, still so many defend him. Since it takes no moral courage to say no, to stand up, to disavow, we must take a hard look not at him, but at those who choose to defend him or overlook his vileness. So look not only at him. Look at his surrogates; at his sickening coterie of misogynistic, anti-Semitic and racist campaign advisers; at the members of the GOP who still stand with him; at these media pundits, including women, trying to spin his repugnant and immoral behavior, or deflect it on to Bill Clinton, still trying to put this steaming malignancy in the White House. At his supporters, offended to their teeth that anyone might consider them deplorable for supporting a deplorable man; more offended at that than by any thing Trump has done or said.

The cancer of Trump is spreading even as his chances of victory dim. He's the largest tumor, and maybe we can remove him, but the rest of these people are polyps that are growing in virulence. It is terrifying but it is more than that. It is soul-crushing to see such an outpouring of hatred, deflection, and simple not giving a damn about this man's repulsive character and corrosive statements.  I had no idea there were so many people in this country who do not think women, and so many others, are full human beings, or that so many of them are also women themselves.  I had no idea there was so much ugliness in America.  I have taken a long look.  I am saddened and repulsed by what I see.  

Into the Heart of Darkness

I cannot get over Trump's televised threat to prosecute and jail Hillary Clinton.  It is so beyond the pale, such a descent into authoritarian/banana republic/dictatorship territory, that it, along with audience's reaction, was the watershed moment of the debate for me. The audience had been absolutely silent before then, as the moderators had requested, but when Trump followed up his fusillade of attacking lies and threat to prosecute her, with the comment that if he were in charge she would be in jail, his supporters whooped with glee. It made me feel physically ill when they did that.  Because there was no collective intake of breath or shock at the suggestion; no, it was raw approval.

That moment crystallized for me two fundamental and intertwined truths at the exact same time. Number one:  the hatred of Hillary Clinton is the product of a misogyny so extreme and so rooted and so elemental that Trump's supporters--who include female misogynists-- would rather violate the bedrock democratic values of our nation than see her elected.   Number two: Trump and what he stands for are antithetical to our democracy.  Though I have long known that the damage Trump has done to our country is already incalculable, and will continue whether he wins or loses, it became clearer than ever last night that the threat to democracy itself is upon us now, even if he loses, as he is likely to do.  Because Trump's supporters are ready, willing, and able to discard the Constitution to elect this man, and the GOP has been complicit in this process. Trump's campaign is built on the rejection of American values necessary to our democracy's functioning, and also necessary to a healthy and fair society, and yet they embrace him. Their embrace of him is also, necessarily, a rejection of competence, of intelligence, of character, of science, of truth, of fairness, of equal rights, of equal dignity, of decency, of empathy, of kindness, of restraint, of  both progress and conservatism, and of love.  It is an embrace of authoritarianism and the darkest, ugliest, most selfish and base impulses that we have.

I wish it were the case that this starts and ends with Donald Trump.  But we all know that it does not and will not.  His supporters want, even demand, the anger, hatred, threats and abusiveness that authoritarianism requires--as long as it is the historically marginalized groups that are the victims, so that his supporters can be the "winners." The Republican Party has not denounced, renounced, or even acknowledged that Trump has repeatedly made statements and threats inimical to a democratic state, and that are unprecedented in the United States from a major party candidate.  The risk to our republic is embedded within the Republican Party itself.   But to really understand this, we need to look at the GOP's role in demonizing Hillary Clinton (and before that, Barack Obama).  We also need to look at the way in which Trump's candidacy -- in particular his racism and misogyny-- are extensions of the same strategy that the GOP has deployed against both Clinton and Obama.  Trump is unquestionably far beyond the pale of what any prior Republican candidate has ever been willing to say or do; he has mainstreamed the ideas that fester in the fever swamp of the extreme rightwing, and at which Republican elites typically only dog whistle. But those ideas are what drive the base, and the GOP has been happy to use, exploit, and encourage that extremism for the purpose of getting elected, whatever the consequence to the country.  In that regard, this election has been no different from usual.

What the debate did for me last night is distill these issues to their essence.

The GOP is Responsible for the Demonization of Hillary Clinton

As I said the other day, Trump's supporters have been chanting "lock her up!" and "Hang the  bitch" and far worse for months.  Trump has called her a criminal repeatedly and threatened prosecution at various times.  Chris Christie laid out the "prosecution" against her at the RNC convention, soliciting chants of "guilty!" for each separate "indictment" he had pulled from the Fox News playbook.  Guiliani has also said outright that she should be prosecuted. Trump has pushed this issue like he pushed birtherism, deliberately and without remorse, and just as with birtherism, the Republican leadership has been content to use and exploit these lies and attacks, as well as the racism and misogyny that undergird them.

The current Republican-controlled House has repeatedly used its oversight authority to engage in witchhunt after witchhunt against Clinton, seeing the Benghazi attacks not as a tragedy in a long line of tragedies at U.S. embassies in hotspots around the world, from which we need to learn so that we can do better, but as an opportunity to investigate, punish, and destroy Clinton for political purposes.

The longstanding Republican desire to destroy her is itself a form of misogynistic derangement, as they have hated her since she was a FLOTUS who dared to publicly state she was an autonomous person with her own contributions to make, have convinced themselves that she is singlehandedly responsible for Iraq as if Bush, Cheney, the entire Republican establishment and most Democrats had no role in it whatsoever, and have pushed the idea that as Secretary of State her use of a private email server to receive three emails that did not have a "c" in the subject matter line is tantamount to treason and worthy of imprisonment if not execution, notwithstanding that Bush circumvented the law by using a private RNC server for government business and deleted 22 million emails, and that Powell and Rice used private email and many members of Congress use it to this day.   The hatred of Clinton is beyond any measure of rationality, disproportionate to any of the worst things she has ever even alleged to have done because the men who do the same do not elicit a fraction of the same vitriol. But it certainly cannot be denied that the hatred for Clinton is deep, and seething, and has been an animating force for the GOP's base for 25 years now. Indeed, Clinton-hating is a cottage industry and anti-Hillary books routinely top the best seller lists.

The GOP leadership has been happy to exploit this.  In fact, we have a current Republican leadership that has a played a critical role in the current misogynistic treatment of Clinton. It cringes that Trump has bragged about being a sexual predator on tape (as it should), but not that Trump's own surrogates call Clinton a cunt and his advisers openly salivate for her imprisonment and even her execution, because in their minds she is already guilty.  And how do Trump's supporters know she is guilty?   Because the unholy alliance between the rightwing media and the GOP leadership tells them so, and because all three -- the leadership, the rightwing media, and the base -- want her to be guilty.  Jason Chaffetz, Trey Gowdy, Paul Ryan, and the whole sick lot of them have participated in the lies for their own ends, orchestrating partisan investigations designed to destroy her, as disgraced almost-speaker Kevin McCarthy admitted in a telling "gaffe."  These people have, like Trump, suggested Clinton is a criminal to serve their own political purposes, and so when Trump's supporters chant "lock her up" at every rally, the GOP leadership says nothing; those chants are just a rawer version of what they themselves have done.  

The Republican-controlled Congress abused its oversight powers to hound her; they instigated repeated investigations; selectively leaked emails to create false impressions; planted false stories about her in the New York Times; pushed the criminal narrative themselves; gave multiple press conferences attacking her as a liar and a criminal over Benghazi; and when eight investigations, multiple hearings and 11 and a half hours of Clinton's sworn Congressional testimony yielded nothing criminal on Benghazi, and when an FBI investigation yielded nothing criminal on emails, they demanded that James Comey, lifelong Republican, who served as Deputy Attorney General in the Ashcroft Justice Department under Bush, account for himself at hearings because they did not get the answer they yearned for:  a criminal prosecution of their rival so that their nominee would not have to face her during the 2016 election. And they are still threatening and demanding more investigations from the FBI.  (Talk about fear of a woman president; has any party apparatus ever spent more effort trying to destroy one woman?)

Trump Used The Debate To Attempt to Humiliate Clinton 

Trump's campaign has been fueled by racism from its inception, and its attacks on Clinton have focused on longstanding sexist memes about the looks, stamina, weakness, untrustworthiness, and inappropriate ambition of women.

We all knew the campaign was going to get even uglier as Trump surrounded himself with a cabal of white, male racists, serial sexual harassers and adulterers, alt-right and anti-Clinton conspiracy pushers, and tabloid liars -- Rudy Guiliani, Roger Ailes, Sean Hannity, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, David Bossey; a nasty collection of haters if ever there was one.

We know that in the rightwing gutter, there is a febrile desire to publicly castigate Clinton for the litany of her so-called crimes, and those "crimes" include any and all Republican spin on any event, no matter how trivial, if it can be twisted against her regardless of truth or context or reality.  It includes false allegations and conspiracies that also border on the insane, such as her alleged murder of multiple people including her good friend Vince Foster, who committed suicide.

We knew before last night, because the desire to hold Hillary Clinton to account for her husband's alleged sexual transgressions -- notwithstanding his impeachment in the 1990s by a cadre of secret adulterers and child molesters -- has been discussed for years in Republican circles.  In 2014, Conor Fridersdorf lamented that the temptation would exist on the right in 2016 to go this route and urged against doing so. In fact, at the end of the first debate, Trump himself told us that he had considered raising the issue of Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct, but had "resisted" out of respect for Chelsea; and the next day, his son tweeted about how proud he was of his father's "courage" in supposedly restraining himself.  Trump and his surrogates then pushed their absurd narrative that he had refrained from going low in talking about, thereby talking about it and keeping the idea of front and center in the press for the next week -- even as Trump went into a tailspin attacking Alicia Machado after Clinton trounced him in the debate.

But after the video and hot mic came out on Friday, the likes of Bannon and Bossey, aflame with the desire to destroy Clinton, awash in the bile of their misogyny, and salivating at the prospect of a having a national platform for what used to exist only in the murky swamp of the extremist right, did not even try to resist that temptation.  Surely they knew that Trump was imploding; surely they knew that wading into this muck in an effort to degrade Clinton would do Trump no favors nationally, but neither they nor he cared.  He might be disgraced, but if there was a way to destroy, to humiliate, to debase Hillary Clinton, they were going to try.  Even if they could not ultimately stop her victory, they could do their best to destroy her in the process of losing, and amplify the hateful messaging outside of the feverswamp and push it into the mainstream.

And so last night before, during, and after the debate, we saw women who have claimed to be harassed or abused by Bill Clinton -- women whose claims were investigated and litigated 20 years ago -- letting themselves be used as political props by an accused and self-acknowledged abuser in order to deflect attention from his own abusiveness, and to help him to visit sexualized humiliation upon their own alleged abuser's wife.  We saw this abhorrent man whose life has been spent degrading women weaponize other women to savage his female opponent for her husband's alleged conduct, as well as for not playing the role of the perfect wifely victim herself decades ago when her husband's politically-affiliated accusers came forward with the assistance of rightwing operatives to accuse him.  Even worse, if possible, also appearing was a woman who was raped at 12, who blames Clinton,  ordered by a court to serve as the rapist's public defender in the 1970s, for the fact that the rapist's sentence was inadequate. Donald Trump trotted this still-traumatized victim out like a doll to exploit, even as he stands accused of raping a thirteen year-old himself (he denies it), in order to attempt to indict Clinton for another man's acts of sexual abuse, and dared to imply that she, who has devoted her life to achieving equality for women, does not actually care about women.

The spectacle was nauseating, infuriating, heartbreaking, deeply disturbing, and highly orchestrated for maximal punishment and destruction of Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton, a supposed murderess, liar, enabler, conniver; yet unable to satisfy her husband; a woman so powerful, apparently, that she is, according to Trump in the debates, singlehandedly responsible for every bad thing that has happened in this country for the last 30 years, who could and should have solved every problem in America and in the world herself and who, at the same time, despite her awesome superpowers, is also the most ineffectual person of all time, her accomplishments not accomplishments at all, an evil demon who has ruined the whole world with her emails; a woman who, he actually said, is the "devil."  He then added, in a moment of gaslighting so outrageous that it made me gasp, that she has "hatred in her heart."

Trump and His Supporters Reject Bedrock Values Essential to a Functioning Democracy

Against this backdrop of hatred and sleaze, we had on the screen at all times Trump, a hulking menace, standing too close on the stage, close enough to hit her, looming over her, sniffing constantly, his face a twisted grimace.  His accusation of criminality was a mix of lies straight from the Breitbart/Fox/GOP playbook, a word salad of email and Benghazi.

And then, on that same national stage in front of an audience of tens of millions, the Republican Party's nominee to be the President of the United States of America announced that if he is elected, he will ensure that his political rival is put in jail.

This is the threat of a dictator, a Putin, a Pinochet, a Baby Doc -- not a presidential candidate in a functioning democracy.

Trump's supporters loved every minute of it.  Their seething hatred of Hillary Clinton exceeds any concept of America or American values.  Theirs is the mentality of a mob that wants blood.  This mob is ready to discard the very idea of America in exchange for Hillary Clinton's destruction.

It is this same mob that Trump has whipped up with hatred toward so many categories of people in our country.  His supporters' willingness to abandon democratic values to punish and oppress others is the centerpiece of Trump's candidacy, what guides and drives it, and it is also the reason that we as citizens are sickened and afraid, the reason the comparisons to Hitler are so on point.  It's the reason Holocaust survivors look at this man and know fear even though his most direct threats are visited upon Muslims and not upon Jews. It's the reason the reporters at his rallies are recoiling in disgust at what they are seeing.

This is the ugly truth:  millions of people in this country are willing to throw democratic values away in support of a man who knows less than nothing, a pathological liar and violence inciter, because of their own resentment and bigotry.  They have no problem with threatening to jail or actually jailing a political opponent; they crave it.

Trump's statement was shocking, and yet it is also the culmination of threats he has made continuously throughout this election.  These threats, while directly threats against Clinton, are also threats against the integrity of our democracy itself.  And not once have I heard a Republican leader condemn this, because winning the White House through the destruction of Hillary Clinton -- even if it means the potential destruction of the country -- is all that has mattered to them.  

 Trump has not only said he would imprison Clinton.  He has encouraged his supporters to assassinate Clinton -- and then pretended he was talking about voting, or being sarcastic.  Most of the GOP played along.  He has invited the Russians to meddle in the election by hacking into Clinton's emails  -- and then pretended he had not.  The GOP (while rejecting any embrace of Russia) played along with the spin.

 He has said that if he does not win, the system is "rigged."   When he says that, what he means is that African-Americans and Latinos are stealing the election.  In this way -- though his claims come straight from the extreme right wing -- he exploits the Republican party's longstanding lie that "voter fraud" exists even though there is a one in 33 million chance that a single fraudulent vote will be cast; this is the pretext on which the GOP destroyed ACORN, a venerable community organizing and voter registration group; it is the pretext on which Republicans across the country have passed targeted, discriminatory voter-suppression laws since the second the Roberts Court, in a 5-4 decision (Shelby County v. Holder), gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  It is central to the lie that the Republican leadership has consistently fed its base for years in order to delegitimize Barack Obama and other Democratic victories that are fueled by the support of people of color.

This strategy is explicitly and deliberately racist, and its insidiousness cannot be overstated. It builds on the idea that people of color cheat the system and it provides the fake moral highground that allows racists to tell themselves that they are not undermining democracy by preventing other people from voting --especially when those people do not look like them. This is an explicit Republican strategy, along with flagrant gerrymandering, that the GOP has been using for years to thwart the popular vote and maintain its power despite the fact that a majority of the population does not actually want them in office.  This is fundamentally anti-democratic.  The GOP has not disputed or condemned Trump's claims that an election lost by him is an election rigged by others.  

Trump has also encouraged vigilantism by urging his supporters to "monitor" the polls in certain areas -- meaning areas in which many Democratic-leaning, minority voters are concentrated.  This is an invitation to voter intimidation and is illegal. It is the stuff of dictatorships, as well.  Did you hear any condemnation of Trump from Republican leaders when he said that?  You know you did not.

And make no mistake about just how deeply dangerous and insidious this rhetoric is, and do not dismiss it as mere rhetoric.  What you are hearing is an active call to undermine, repudiate and possibly rise up against this country's first female president. Campaign advisers like Roger Stone are openly saying a Clinton victory would be illegitimate and promising a bloodbath if she wins.  This is an extension of birtherism because the deligitimization of Hillary Clinton's victory depends on and is directly tied to the otherization and dehumanization of her biggest supporters -- people of color, and especially women of color. 

Do you see what is going on?  It goes like this:  "Hillary Clinton is a criminal who should be in jail or killed.  If he does not win the election, it is rigged, and it is rigged by allowing Those People ('you know who I mean') to vote.  Hillary Clinton can be prevented from stealing this election if you monitor Those People and prevent them from casting their illegal votes. But if we do not stop this monstrous criminal from attaining office, there are other ways -- the Second Amendment people know what this means. It's okay to take up arms against an illegitimate government --that's how our country was formed, after all."

There is an actual risk that Donald Trump will not accept the results of the election and will exhort his followers to do the same. That is why, at the end of the first debate, Lester Holt felt he had to ask Trump if he would accept the results of the election.  That Holt had to ask the question should have sent shivers down spines and warning bells ringing across America. Has anyone ever had to ask a U.S. presidential candidate that question before?

Trump answered yes, but four days later as it the reality of how poorly he had done at the debate began to sink in, he told the New York Times, "We're going to have to see" and returned to the claims of voter fraud and election rigging with renewed fervor.  

Not a word of condemnation about any of this from the GOP leadership.  Yes, some have bolted because of the sexual predator comments. But jailing Clinton?  Mike Pence today called Trump's vow to imprison Clinton one of the better moments of the debate.  KellyAnne Conway insisted it was a quip. 

Re-watch the debate video; you know that was not a quip. All campaign long, Trump's surrogates have been telling us not to believe our own eyes and ears, just as Trump himself does, just as  Pence did at the VP debate.   Every time one of these GOP enablers goes on TV and tries to spin what Trump said into something else and translate his appalling conduct into something palatable, or pretend it did not happen, or minimize it, or say it was a joke, they contribute to the defiled public sphere in which lies substitute for discourse.  

Even now, many of them cannot bring themselves to repudiate him, though certainly the numbers have increased as his prospects dim.  Paul Ryan, the walking definition of a spineless coward, is still endorsing him, though he won't campaign or fundraise for him. McConnell hasn't repudiated him.   Reince Priebus has reaffirmed the RNC's support.  Mike Pence cancels fundraisers, but "is proud to stand with" Trump and applauds Trump's promise to emulate a petty dictator.  Because let's face it:  although every credible newspaper and magazine recognizes Trump as the national and global security and economic threat that he is, the prospect of a win in which Pence and the rest of the GOP could get total control over women's reproductive choices and eviscerate the rights of gay citizens is so tantalizing that they have been willing to risk the country for it all along.

Neither Pence nor Ryan nor any one of these hollow men still trying to have it both ways will stand up to speak honestly.  They are afraid of the very base whose rabid bigotry they have nurtured, because that base is ready to discard them the minute they repudiate Trump, and because although they know that he is morally repugnant in an overt and personal way, and shockingly unfit, ignorant, and unqualified, Trump's policies are aligned with the party's.

These so-called leaders are in a very bad situation.  But it is a situation of their own making. I would feel tremendous schadenfreude if I could only be assured that they themselves would be voted out, and that a Trump defeat would not be a combustible situation fraught with the potential for rioting and violence by his angry and hate-filled supporters, whose desire for blood does not seem like it is going to abate any time soon.

We're Not Gonna Take It

The debate was dark, it was hideous, it was ugly, and it was abusive. 

Asked afterward just before her plane took off by the press if anything surprised her, Clinton said "Nothing he says surprises me," (or something similar).  Then she corrected herself, observing that while she expects him to lie -- and noting that Politifact has found he lies more than any other candidate, something like 70% of the time -- he seemed to have surpassed himself in the debate. She described it as "an avalanche of lies." (Post-debate fact-checkers agreed.)

It seems clear that the Clinton camp made the decision not to challenge all of his lies during the debate, or the torrent of abuse Trump unleashed.  Indeed, how could she have challenged it all -- it was unrelenting, and it looked and felt like an assault.  Engaging specifically on any particular line of attack, especially the ugliest ones, would have sucked her in and had her debating on his terms, by his rules.  I think it was politically wise for her to do that, and, instead of merely repeating in her mind Michelle Obama's wise words (as I expect she's had to do many times now), "When they go low, we go high," she said them aloud, and did not engage in the disgusting spectacle.

But my God.  My God. Watching him disrespect her repeatedly, watching his abusive attacks, as he menaced over her and paced back and forth with a thundercloud scowl on his face, sniffing repeatedly, I felt like I was watching a man barely holding back from a physical assault.  It was like watching an abuser or the Salem witch trials. I felt that I was being made a witness to abuse, and it was sickening.  

Clinton's ability to stand there poised, and not retaliate in kind, and remain Presidential, bordered on the superhuman.  But I wanted, I needed, I was desperate, for her to eviscerate him, which did not happen.  I believe that but for the advice of her team and her own political savvy, she would have done so, but she held back, because she felt she had to, to avoid being drawn into his cesspool. Watching her face settle into an expression of quiet steel as she endured that onslaught of disrespect and attempt to humiliate her, I felt an anger rise within me so deep that I lack the words to describe it. I can only say it was and remains primordial.

It had been triggered by the preceding 48 hours in which his bragging about sexual assault -- and casual dismissal of it as mere locker room talk -- had resulted in Kelly Oxford's tweeting about her "first assault" and had garnered 9.7 million impressions in 24 hours.  In a secret pro-Hillary FB group, women still too traumatized to share their abuse publicly in 140 characters poured out harrowing stories of sexual predation starting from their childhoods -- a litany of violent sexualized attack and silencing by grandfathers, uncles, friends, friends of siblings, friends of their parents, boyfriends, and schoolmates.  This outpouring of stories about what women are made to endure as a result of the rape culture that Donald Trump has used and abused and been a beneficiary of and exploited is what preceded what I knew, from press stories, and from his own non-apology, was likely going to be a grotesque sideshow of gaslighting and deflection by attacking Clinton on the basis of her husband's alleged actions years ago. 

After all that has been revealed about this man, and after that 48 hours, for him to get up on stage without an ounce of humility or decency or humanity and even try to engage with or take responsibility for his own decades of abhorrent behavior, then weaponize both his own physical presence and his misogyny against the first Democratic female presidential candidate, was not only an actual act of abusive verbal assault on Clinton, it was an act of abusive verbal assault on all women. That is what it felt like to me, and from the reaction I have seen from all my female friends, I am not alone. I don't know if you men can understand fully what this looks like to us.  His assault on Hillary Clinton was the rabid response of a caged male animal fighting with every last breath for its privilege to dominate, sexualize, silence, objectify, and humiliate women with impunity.   

And I will tell you that I was and I remain in state of absolute and total fury.  And neither I nor the rest of us are going to take it. We are not going to take having this racist abuser as our president and we will not be silenced by his threats or those of his supporters.  When Hillary Clinton stood there like a statue composing her features into the mask of self-protection that she needed to wear, she had tens of millions of women standing metaphorically beside her, in a rage that you cannot imagine, and if we had had knives, we would have plunged them into his diseased heart.  He was there, an avatar of millenia of abuse, and she stood there, taking it all, for us, not risking her presidency by getting angry or rising to the bait, enduring his despicable, desperate, debased and indecent attacks, not so much for herself, but for all women, everywhere, so she can shatter that glass ceiling and cut his hating ego into shards.  We saw what he did.  And we saw what she did and had to do.  

He did not "win" this debate with his attacks and it was not a draw, and it is disgusting to even talk about the debate in those terms.  This man's performance was a disgrace and further exposed what a threat to women he is from start to finish, and we will not forget it and we do not excuse it and we will not allow him to be president.

Apology Not Accepted

I want you, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the GOP who think demanding an "apology" is the way to thread the needle between your support for Trump and your knowledge that he is a threat to the world, between placating your deplorable base and putting our democracy at risk, between pretending you give a rat's ass about rape culture and the damage it does, and then offering Trump a way to retain your support if he just utters some words a speechwriter puts on a teleprompter for him.

No apology is going to make Trump okay, or your support for him okay. No apology can make this right. What kind of a fool would believe any apology coming from him, anyway? Has this man done or said a single thing in his campaign to suggest he is actually sorry, that he "gets" it or is capable of change or wants to do so?

The man who tweeted from 3 to 5:30 am after the debate that Alicia Machado was a fat slut who made a sex tape? Who obviously views women as slabs of meat available for male consumption at their will, but only the best meat, the meat he rates a 10, and if he doesn't like the meat, it's worthless anyway? The man who looks to fire women who he thinks aren't attractive enough? The man who says pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers? Who says that women who are sexually harassed should get new jobs? The man who tried to have Nancy O'Dell fired for rejecting his advances, on the pretext that he didn't like her looks? (And what kind of "advances"? Did he try kissing her? Or, did he try to "grab [her] pussy"?) The man who, a May 2016 New York Times article reveals, has a multi-decade legacy of unwanted "sexual advances" toward women? The man who smirked when asked by Megyn Kelly about calling women fat pigs, dogs, and slobs, and then yucked it up on the debate stage because it was ok to attack Rosie O'Donnell that way -- because hey, everyone knows she's fat, amiright, and then complained that his female interrogator wasn't "nice" and had "blood coming out of her wherever"? The man who mocked Carly Fiorina's face? The man who says Clinton doesn't look presidential and lacks stamina and who uses his adultering, spitting surrogates to suggest she is unhealthy, or even has epilepsy? The man who has several times urged his supporters to assassinate his female rival? The man who laughs at and encourages "Trump that Bitch" and "kill the bitch" and "hang the bitch" and "lock her up" and whose most visible supporters in the media also call Clinton a "cunt" (Ted Nugent, Roger Stone,etc)? The man who was asked about what part of his infant daughter came from his then-wife Marla Maples and started talking about her breasts? The man who is right now facing a lawsuit for raping a 13 year-old girl? The man whose ex-wife accused him of raping her? The man whose close adviser is serial sexual harasser Roger Ailes? The man whose mouthbreathing repulsive misogyny is worn like a mantle of pride on his privileged orange skin, but for whom this is just what a rich man is entitled to? We are supposed to believe any apology coming out of the mouth of this man?

I didn't see you asking for his apology before now. Why is that, GOP?

Answer me, what kind of an idiot do you think I am that I would buy a fraudulent apology from a man whose entire existence was built on fraud? And even if I were stupid enough to buy it, why would that ever be enough to overcome everything else he has done and never apologized for and is still saying, and that you are still willing to ignore?

Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers? Can we get an apology and can he eat a taco, and then it will magically be ok; what do you think, Mitch? Would a "I've grown so much on this campaign, Judge Curiel, I'm now sure that even though you are Mexican you might be able to adjudicate my case" make it all okay, Mitch? Would that justify calling for the deportation of millions? Equating immigrants with criminality? Lying about the immigration rate? Would that apology help the man Trump's supporters attacked and beat in his name, which Trump then shrugged off as them being "passionate"?

How about for Muslims? Where is the demand that he apologize for suggesting they be banned from the U.S., or placed on a registry, or their places of worship surveilled? Where is the demand that he apologize for his Islamophobia subjecting Muslims to increased threats and hate crimes across the country? Where is the demand that Trump apologize for lying that he saw "thousands" of Muslims cheering 9/11? Where is the condemnation for Trump's promise to torture people, violate international law, order the commission of war crimes, and violate the Constitution? Oh, you didn't need an apology for those statements and ideas! Those comments and that violence was directed toward Muslims! Those are awesome! (Yes, I know you thought the attacks on the Khans were bad, I know you hated those, but only because he attacked a Gold Star family; not because he attacked a Muslim family. That was embarrassing, for you, I know, but even then, only a couple of you "even suggested" -- the NYT's words -- that he apologize to the Khans.)

How about for African-Americans? Where is the demand that he apologize for his birtherism? Did you ever demand it? No, other than Ben Carson and John Kasich this past September, you did not. And you gave that press conference, that non-apology, media-pwning hotel infomercial in which he "declared" Obama is a citizen, a total pass. Where is the demand that he apologize for taking out a full-page ad supporting the execution of the Central Park Five, or that he acknowledge that they were innocent victims of coerced confessions? Because he doubled down on that just this week. Where is the demand that he apologize for discriminating for years against African-Americans seeking to rent in his buildings? Where is the demand that he apologize for his treatment of African-Americans at his casinos? Where is the demand that he apologize for suggesting that African-Americans' lives are a twisted dystopian hell of drugs, poverty, guns, and desolation, devoid of accomplishment? Where is the demand that he apologize for inciting attendees at his rallies to beat up African-American protesters? Where is the demand that he apologize for inciting violence and offering to pay the legal fees of those who engage in it? Where is the demand for the apology for his lie that BLM activists instigated the deaths of Dallas police officers? Is there any apology that would make all this okay? Well, you haven't asked him for one, so I guess it doesn't matter to you, anyway. Bring on Guiliani and his racist screeds! Let's not disavow him, either, right GOP? We should just stop all this nonsense about racism and implicit bias, right, Mike Pence? As if any of you would ask Trump to apologize for racism toward African-Americans, after eight years of your collective mistreatment and disrespect of our President.

And what about for Jews? Where is the demand from the GOP that Trump disavow the KKK, the alt-right, and the rising tide of anti-Semitism that he has brought out of the shadows, so that Jewish journalists' lives are routinely threatened, and kids are experiencing anti-Jewish hatred for real for the first time in their lives? Ha, ha, ha! Don't be silly! Steve Bannon, of Breitbart News, is now CEO of his campaign, and Bannon is a hero of the alt right, but whatever, he brought some discipline to the campaign, so that's all cool -- no need to worry about the company Trump keeps. Oh, and where is the demand that he stop using anti-Semitic imagery to signal to his hating followers that he is one of them -- and lying about it and defending it at the same time? Where is the demand that he stop lying that that is what he is doing? Oh, silly, no apology needed! He has a Jewish son-in-law, and his daughter converted. So that makes it all A-Okay. Guess what, if having a Jewish son-in-law and daughter means he can't be an anti-Semite or support anti-Semitism, then it must mean he can't be a misogynist, either -- hey, he has a daughter, right? And no one with a daughter could possibly be a misogynist.

What about Trump's fraud victims? Do they get an apology? Would that make their victimization okay?
What about the disabled? Do they get an apology? Of course not! Trump was not actually mocking the disabled when he was mocking the disabled; who could possibly think that?

And all those business owners and vendors he cheated? Do they get an apology? That will make it all all right, won't it?

And what about for the American public, generally? Where is the demand that he stop lying to us? That he stop saying he did not say things we all watched him say? Ha ha ha! How silly of me to suggest that -- his oh-so-pure-and-Christian running mate, Mike Pence, also likes to lie and pretend that things Trump said that we all saw him say were not actually said. Of course you can't demand that Trump stop lying, when the way you deal, as a party, with Trump's lies is to lie about his lies. "He didn't say that." or "He didn't mean that." or "He is telling it like it is." or "People are tired of political correctness." Or "he was kidding" or "he was being sarcastic" or "He actually did great in the debate" or "He is a great businessman." Why ask for an apology or deal with his pathological lying, when instead, you can deflect with "Benghazi! Emails!"

Where is the demand that he disclose his taxes?

Where is the demand that he disclose his conflicts of interest so that the American public and Congress can know where Trump's business interests are at stake?

Where is the demand that he stop fomenting insurrection and violence by encouraging his supporters to "monitor" voters "in certain areas" and telling them that if he loses the election will be rigged?

Where is the demand that he apologize for his McCarthy-esque tactics against his critics -- lies, character assassination, and threats?

We all know that you have made no such demands. You have not turned from him, through all of this. You know what he is, and you have stuck with him. You have agreed to vote for him.

How dare you people suggest that an apology could magically erase what Trump has shown us about who he is. That an apology would somehow make this unqualified and repulsive excuse for a man, so transparently unfit to hold any office, acceptable.

And now that he has fake-apologized, GOP, you cannot possibly believe that you have threaded this needle successfully. Did you read that joke of a non-apology? You cannot spin that as a real apology, even if an actual apology could have made a difference--which it could not. When Trump said his comments do not reflect who he is, do you think there is a a person alive who believed him? You know you do not believe him. Neither do we.

And if you stick with him now? What of it? You have stuck with him up until now. Why should this make a difference; why is this the final straw? Should we believe this is the final straw, when none of his other indecencies were deplorable enough for you to walk away? What is different now?

What's different is that his poll numbers tanked after the debate and the election is a month away. I believe this video is the final straw the way I believe Trump's apology. Forget it, GOP. You may not say the things Trump says, but you enabled him every step of the way, and you did it because you want the White House even if it means giving an unhinged hateful fraud and ignoramus access to the nuclear codes -- the country and the world be damned. You were not all as eager as Billy Bush, but you were with Trump just the same, and you never once did the right thing this entire endless election season; you would not take a stand.

Just like Trump, you have shown us who and what you are. I hope you all go down. God knows you deserve to.

Trump's Machado Meltdown

Trump's attacks on Alicia Machado are just like his attacks on the Khans were. They are a perfect distillation of his depravity. His treatment of them shows us exactly who and what he is--which is a person unfit for society, much less for the office of the presidency. 

Look at what happens when regular, American citizens dare to point out that he has behaved badly, which is all Machado or the Khans did. He doubles down, won't apologize or admit error, levels ludicrous excuses for attacking them, starts to savage them, and then goes increasingly berserk in his compulsion to destroy them. This need need to inflict damage on others for daring to criticize him is twisted.  If this is what he does to ordinary citizens for speaking their minds, trying to warn the public about his character, what do you think he will do to ordinary citizens, or journalists, who dare to voice criticism when he holds the most powerful office in the world?

Democracy requires, at a minimum, the ability and willingness to tolerate different views, including criticism. It is messy, annoying, painful, often maddening, and necessary for a free state. Authoritarian states require compliance and subservience. Trump has had the latter his whole life and compliance and lack of criticism are what he wants. His contempt for democracy oozes from his very pores.

This is an absolutely grotesque human being. The spectacle of his cruelty and unhinged self-love are nauseating. Picture them in power. Know fear. Know shame. And get the hell out and help defeat him.

Trump Is A National Security Threat

On September 14th, when Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek reported on the Trump Organization's extensive business interests in regions around the world, and the potential conflicts of interests between the Trump Organization and the United States, few other news outlets seemed to care. There was little beyond some thin coverage on MSNBC, mainly in the form of a pre-publication "scoop" of the article's contents. Major papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post did not carry the story. This should have been major news: the Trump Organization's business interests extend well beyond its problematic ties with Russia (itself disturbing in light of Trump's statements and proposed policies; more below) into zones that are political hotbeds and, as a result, Trump and his family would have a personal, financial stake in the outcome of virtually every foreign policy decision that he would make as president, including decisions affecting our national security.
Trump's conflicts of interest are an unprecedented and extraordinary issue, and raise fundamental questions about whether he would, or even could, make decisions that are in the best interests of the United States, rather than in the best interests of himself. These conflicts also raise questions about whether he is even capable of recognizing that his own personal business interests are not necessarily aligned with the broader interests of the United States. That these questions need to be raised at all would (like so many other issues involving Trump) either sink a regular candidate, or, at a minimum, result in wall-to-wall press coverage, increased scrutiny, and overwhelming pressure on the candidate for explanations and transparency, including the release of his tax returns.

Yet this has not happened.

I've previously suggested that the Trump birther press conference held two days after the Newsweek article came out was a tactic to shift the narrative from the question of his conflicts of interest (i.e., where his loyalties lie) to the familiar territory of racism and dominance politics (classic Trump). But since few pundits even carried the Newsweek story, maybe I was wrong. What the networks and newspapers were focused on just before the birther nonsense was the increasing revelations about Trump's abuse of the Trump Foundation for personal gain. This is a genuine, bona fide scandal that merits the substantial news coverage it is finally receiving and further inquiry. But while the misconduct in which the Trump Foundation is mired stands on its own, the deeper significance of Trump's abuse of the Trump Foundation is what that misconduct says about his likely approach to governance.
It's therefore critical to consider the Trump Foundation abuses together with the Trump Organization's conflicts of interest, as well as the campaign's responses to the reporting on these issues, and the GOP's response as well. The reason I say this is that, taken together, they reveal more about what we can likely expect from Donald Trump's approach to potential governance than any statements he has actually made about a specific goal or "policy" -- and they further reveal how the party he now heads would respond to the near-certain abuses and ethical if not legal breaches that a Trump presidency would bring. And what looking at all of these together reveals is -- this will shock you --that Trump is even more unfit for the presidency than his temperament, ignorance, cruelty, bigotry, and narcissism already indicate. Trump appears to be constitutionally incapable or willing to either to recognize, or act within, ethical boundaries, just as he seems also to be constitutionally incapable of or willing to tell the truth.

A lifetime of apparent lying, self-dealing, cheating, and fraud is more than force of habit; it's just that, a way of life, and there is no evidence from which one can conclude that he has the capacity or the desire to make a change at the age of 70 years. To the contrary, the serial lies, denials, non-disclosures, and deflections that the campaign deploys in the face of scrutiny tell you that the lying, cheating, defrauding, and self-dealing that have defined his life will continue if he is elected.

These traits make Trump not merely morally repugnant and unfit for office; they make him a profoundly disturbing and dangerous threat to our national security. And the fact that most of the Republican leadership, from Mitch McConnell to Reince Priebus to Paul Ryan to John McCain to Ted Cruz to Marco Rubio, does not discuss or acknowledge this threat tells you all you need to know about the likelihood that the GOP will be willing or able to hold Trump to account if he is elected. Do not expect a Republican-controlled Congress to rein in this man's conflicts and abuses, when they will not even acknowledge that those conflicts and abuses exist.

The Trump Foundation Looks Like a Scam

So let's take a look at the Trump Foundation, and what it reveals about Trump. The Washington Post has reported that Trump hasn't personally contributed to the Trump Foundation (which is public charity, not "foundation" per se), since 2009, but instead has repackaged donations from others to make himself look like a philanthropist without actually contributing his own money. We also know that Trump used the Trump Foundation to make a political donation to Florida attorney general Pam Bondi while she was considering whether to open an investigation into Florida residents' allegations of fraud against Trump University, and that she declined to investigate Trump after receiving the $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation. We know this because the Washington Post broke the story that the Trump Foundation had paid the IRS a penalty for using Trump Foundation funds to make that political contribution. We know that Bondi and Trump have given conflicting public statements about the issue. We know that NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into the Trump Foundation and that the issue of whether Trump bribed Bondi is a real question that is also being investigated. And last week it was revealed, again by the Washington Post, that Trump used over $250,000 of Trump Foundation funds to settle Trump's personal legal disputes and engaged in other acts of self-dealing.

These all seem like pretty clear-cut cases of self-dealing/tax fraud. Other than the possible Bondi bribe, I'm not sure that this conduct is criminal, though it is certainly not lawful -- after all, all that happened after the Trump Foundation used charitable funds to make a contribution to Bondi was that it paid a fine, and everything I've read about the potential consequences of self-dealing and misuse of charitable funds for personal benefit points to the payment of penalties and (maybe) the shut-down of the foundation, but not criminal charges.
What matters here is not so much whether the conduct carries criminal versus civil penalties, but the fact that Trump has engaged in illegal conduct through his foundation and doesn't even seem to get or care that he did. Indeed, the Trump foundation adviser Lynne Patton's purported defense of Trump's naked self-dealing is shocking: she said that the money is "his" and therefore whatever he does with it is okay. This is both untrue and most certainly not okay: first, the money is not "his" (he's donated nothing since 2009, so the funds used come from others); second, the funds, once donated for charitable purposes, are not taxed; third, even if he had donated funds in the last six years, once donated, the funds belong to the foundation; fourth, foundation funds cannot be used for campaign contributions; fifth, foundation funds cannot be used for the personal benefit of those who run it. So this is just an absurd response, which reveals either flagrant ignorance of or disregard for legal constraints. Neither is okay and either is shocking coming from a presidential candidate. When you accompany this conduct with the use of Trump Foundation funds to disguise a political contribution to a sitting AG who has a Trump-related investigation in front of her her desk, it looks very bad indeed. And when you further combine this with the fact that Trump's claims of having given millions to charity were outright lies -- WaPo found evidence of only $10,000 in giving over seven years -- and that he will not even make good on public promises to give until he is publicly exposed as a liar or sued, then it starts to look more and more like the Trump Foundation is not a vehicle for charitable contribution by Trump but instead a tax-avoidance, Trump-branding, self-dealing scam.
And to the extent Trump himself engages in charity at all, as he claims, the reporting on the Trump Foundation indicates not only that that charity is done with other people's money, but that (i) Trump has grossly exaggerated the amounts; (ii) Trump makes these claims for his own personal benefit; and (iii) Trump's supposed gift-giving both starts and finishes with whether or not the spotlight/publicity is trained on Trump. Meanwhile, when reporters uncover the gap between his bragging and his deeds, Trump repeats the exaggerated claims and attacks Clinton. In other words, investigative reporting yields neither explanation nor apology from Trump, but instead, denial and deflection.

The broader questions raised by Trump's illegal and duplicitous conduct, as well as by his and advisers' apparent indifference to the misconduct, seem to be lost on his supporters. Maybe it's not surprising that they don't understand, or don't care, that it is not okay for Trump to use Trump Foundation money for these purposes -- kind of in the same way Trump himself does not seem to understand or care. But if Trump does not see or care that he engaged in illegal conduct concerning the Trump Foundation, what possible basis do we have for concluding that Trump will see or care about other potentially self-dealing situations when he is in the White House?

The Trump Organization's Business Interests Raise Major Conflicts of Interest With the U.S.

This brings me to the Trump Organization. The reporting to date indicates that potentially self-dealing situations will abound in a Trump White House based on his extensive business interests -- or desire to expand his business interests. Some of that reporting involves some speculation, because Trump has refused to disclose either his and the Trump Organization's tax returns, or any other information indicating the nature and scope of his business interests. The fact that Trump has raised a litany of false and ever-shifting rationales for his lack of transparency is a red flag of duplicity in and of itself, but here's what we do know: After Trump's pro-Russia policy preferences, encouragement of Russian hacking of Clinton's emails, lavish praise for Putin, and employment of multiple advisers with financial interests with Russians raised eyebrows and gave rise to widespread concern as to whether he is a Manchurian candidate or an unwitting agent of Putin or his stooge, the Trump campaign claimed that Trump does not have business interests in or ties to Russia. Investigative reporting by Kurt Eichenwald, ABC News, the Washington Post and others reveals that Trump's claims that he does not have business interests in Russia is a lie. We knew this anyway given that Trump's son Donald Jr. gave an interview in 2008 discussing the family's extensive business ties to Russia ("we see a lot of money pouring in from the Russians").

Trump's lie about his lack of Russian business interests should be a "danger Will Robinson" moment for the country, including for the entire GOP. This is lying on steroids, a lie that could endanger the country. It is a lie that displays Trump's potential for a treasonous willingness to pretend no conflicts of interests exist when they do, thereby precluding the American public, Congress, and career foreign policymakers and advisers from learning about, assessing, and dealing with those conflicts of interest for the good of the United States. Embedded in that lie, moreover, is the potential for Trump to appease Russia's interests or worse, all for the benefit of Trump's financial interests, at the potential expense of our country's.

Now, it could be that Trump believes that we need better relations with Russia, including the easing of sanctions; indeed, I know several Russian-language experts with business ties to Russia who feel the same way. And that is a perfectly legitimate view to hold. But what is not legitimate is for a presidential candidate to lie to the American public about whether he stands to gain millions of dollars from improved relations with Russia, and to refuse to provide the public, national security experts, and our allies with the information necessary to enable us all to consider whether and the extent to which Trump's foreign "policy" will be shaped by his own financial interests.

When you look at Trump's advisers -- the now-gone Paul Manafort, with his shady ties to pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, and the mysterious Carter Page, who may or may not have actual ties to Russia and with whom, the campaign said today, it has cut ties --as well as the change to the GOP platform on the Ukraine, his oft-repeated, vocal hero-worship of Putin, his suggestion that as president he might not adhere to U.S. obligations under NATO to provide support in the face of Russian aggression, his apparent support for Russia's annexation of Crimea, and his invitation to Russian hackers to interfere in the election by hacking and publishing Clinton's emails), a deeply, deeply, deeply disturbing picture emerges of a man who does not seem to put the interests of the United States first.

And when you combine that picture with the reporting that confirms Trump Jr.s prior statements about the Trump Organization's business interests in Russia, the fact that Trump lied that he has no business interests in Russia is shocking and must be spotlighted and put under a microscope -- because, frankly, this is nuts. Why is Trump lying that he has no business ties to Russia when he does? Is it because he wants to preserve and enhance those interests while president, without disclosing them? Every single thing we know about the man suggests he will use the White House for personal gain first, and only secondarily, if at all, for good of the country. He has made money on his campaign, including off the U.S. taxpayer through the Secret Service's reimbursements to his campaign; he used his disgraceful birther press conference as an ad for his hotel in D.C; his campaign has paid to use his hotels and more, which means the contributions of his supporters are lining his pockets.

But that's child's play compared to the ways in which he and his family stand to gain and enrich themselves if he is elected -- not just through business ties to Russia, but in countries throughout the world, because his money is built off of his brand-name, a brand that will be enhanced exponentially if he becomes the president. And that gain will come at the expense of our national security. As Eichenwald elaborated in a follow-up article on September 16, 2014:

"The Trump Organization sells two things: the Trump name and, until he began his national campaign, the reality television show The Apprentice, for which Trump was host and executive producer. The global conflicts that could undermine national security are in Trump's branding business. He has many overseas partners with undisclosed ties to factions within their governments, a troubling number of them are criminals or under indictment. All of them are paying, have paid or are about to start paying millions of dollars to the Trump Organization for the privilege of putting his name on their buildings.

"So, if Trump gets into the White House, the president of the United States will be in a business deal with an Azerbaijani billionaire whose father is a prominent government official identified by American intelligence as a money launderer for the Iranian military. The Trump Organization's partners in India would place America's crucial but shaky alliance with Pakistan at risk. Relations between Trump and Turkey's government are deteriorating in part because of his business connections there, and that country's president has told people close to him that he will not allow a Trump-led America to use a military base that has been a critical staging area for the bombing campaign in Syria against the Islamic State group, known as ISIS. In other words, all these entanglements would imperil the national security of the United States."

While Eichenwald's reporting tells part of the story, no one knows the full extent of Trump's financial interests, and thus his potential conflicts of interest, and the risks they pose to the U.S., because he refuses to release his tax returns or other information. And on top of this nondisclosure, we have the spectacle of the Trump campaign's flat-out denials of any business ties to Russia, and, by extension therefore, of any conflicts of interest arising out of those ties (since the supposedly do not exist). We could not rely on any nominee's mere word about such potential conflicts -- but with Trump in particular, there is no basis for his "word." Politico's most recent review demonstrates that in the last week Trump told a lie once every three minutes and fifteen seconds, and the New York Times found he told 31 major lies over a 6 day period, often repeatedly. There have been multiple other fact-checking organizations demonstrating that Trump lies about 80% of the time. Accordingly, the probability that he is lying in any given statement he makes -- including about the existence and extent of his potential conflicts of interest -- is exceptionally high.

Trump's pathological lying constitutes its own form of national security threat. How can we be secure when Congress, the cabinet, our allies, and we ourselves cannot rely on the word of the President, and indeed, we will need to assume that he is lying whenever he speaks, and fact-check his every word? How will allies and enemies alike respond to a man whom they know they cannot trust to honor our treaties, or even our less formal agreements?

And what's almost impossible to get your head around here is that in addition to actively preventing anyone but the most dogged reporters from even beginning to piece together his conflicts of interests, Trump simultaneously simply blithely says there is no issue because if elected, he will put his business in a "blind trust" run by his kids, -- "trust me," it will be okay. First, a trust administering the business that you and your kids own, by those very kids, is not a blind trust. A blind trust is administered by an independent trustee. So if his kids run it, all the same conflicts will remain. Second, even if such a trust were independently administered, Trump will still know what is in the trust, and, because its beneficiary will be himself and/or his family, the same conflicts of interest will remain. Third, the trust cannot solve the national security conflicts, as Eichenwald demonstrates, because the arise from the nature of the Trump Organization's branding business, and its relationships in foreign countries -- which will not go away merely because that business is administered by a trustee. The national security threats posed by a Trump presidency are therefore profound. When Trump says he wants to ease sanctions on Russia, do you really think there is any basis for that viewpoint other than his own business interests with the country? Even if he is informed of the likely political and international ramifications of easing those sanctions, can we have any confidence that his business interests, in addition to shaping his views, would not take precedence over every other consideration? When Trump is asked to weigh in on policy concerning countries in the Middle East where he does business, what do you think will drive his decision-making? And his and his kids' risible answer to this -- the supposedly "blind trust" run by his business partner children -- demonstrates (i) a lack of understanding of the depth and nature of those conflicts, or (ii) an indifference to adequately addressing those conflicts, or (iii) worst of all, a concerted effort to maintain those conflicts while pretending to address them.
I don't know which of these three options is the basis for Trump's blind trust suggestion, but I do know that his refusal to release his tax returns, his failure to pledge not to be beneficiary of any such trust, and his failure to offer any mechanism for verifying his business holdings and potential conflicts of interests all point toward the third one. Our choices -- that Trump cannot properly address these conflicts of interest because he either does not see them, or does not understand them, or will not disclose them -- are unacceptable. We must not accept them. How can we have a commander in chief who fails to understand a conflict when he sees one, or, when he does, who lies about it to protect his own financial interests? How can we feel any comfort or confidence in the Republican Party, which is willing to look the other way when their nominee's potential conflicts could endanger the country, placing their desire to win the presidency over the security of the United States itself?

If Trump is elected, all available evidence suggests that he will use the office as a method to further line his own pockets without regard to the geopolitical or national security interests of the United States, and that his party will do nothing to try to stop him. Indeed, I haven't been able to find anyone of note in the GOP going on record to acknowledge, much less express a plan for addressing, Trump's conflicts of interest or his pathological lies. And that should both disgust us and make us all very afraid. I can tell you that, like so much else about Trump and the party that serves increasingly as his lapdog, it disgusts and terrifies me.