Lest We Forget the Horrors

McSweeney's catalog of Trump's worst cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes.

Some of the items on this list aren't a big deal, but if you overlook the nit-picky crap you will find a good accounting of Trump's dirty deeds.

The Immigration Debate

Some articles about Trump's immigration policy, the history of immigration in the US, statistics and how Trump differs from past presidents on immigration.

A 5-minute podcast about the history of immigration policy beginning with Carter.
https://www.pri.org/node/183033/popout

That podcast is expounded upon in this article.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-07-12/trumps-hard-line-immigration-policies-build-history-former-us-presidents

As Trump clamps down on refugees, centers that assist refugees with resettlement are forced to close.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-09-27/us-refugee-agencies-wither-trump-administration-cuts-numbers-historic-lows

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-trump-has-deported-fewer-immigrants-than-obama-11564824601

A running list of Trump administration firings and departures

Over 40% of the top positions have turned over. We're talking just a little over a year. Thank you Vice News for giving us such a concise list of the top cabinet and major figures!

TRUMP LIES: The Definitive List

The New York Times has done the legwork for us and created the definitive list of Trump's lies since his presidency.

Trump is Staging a Coup

The nightmare continues, and I figure that it's easier for me to just let those who can say it so much better and who are so much better informed than me do the talking.

Today it's an article in the Salon by Chauncey Devega about a conversation with historian Timothy Snyder, who has suggested that "it's pretty much inevitable" that Trump will try to overthrow democracy, given the opportunity.

Trump's First 100 Days

There has traditionally been a standard of "100 days" set whereby a President is given a bit of a "honeymoon" period where much of the public withholds judgment to see what the President can do. Trump doesn't seem to have had much of a honeymoon period. Perhaps this has a lot to do with the fact that the majority of Americans did not vote for him, or perhaps is due to his hateful rhetoric and threats on our democracy, but Trump already has historically low approval ratings in his first 100 days, and history would also show that a President's approval numbers usually drop after the first 100 days. So things are likely to only get worse as Democrats and Independents who voted for him become disillusioned.

Donald Trump has said “I don’t think anyone has ever done this much in 100 days.” So below we cover just what he's done in his first 100 days. Note that this list is partially compiled from a list offered up by Amin Mosharaf on a Rachel Maddow post on Facebook. I’ve included what he compiled to save myself time recompiling the info, but edited the info with some of my own additions and wording.

The first 100 days:

• He appointed a foreign agent as National Security Advisor, and then his administration appears to have hidden the fact and lied about it, before being forced to confront the issue and fire Mike Flynn.
• He has the lowest approval ratings of any president in recent history in his first 100 days.
• He has launched an all-out attack on the EPA and the concept of climate change, leading to marches across the country against his stance.
• He has continued to appoint unqualified and incompetent individuals such as Pruitt, Devos, Carson, and Perry.
• He rolled back protections for transgender students.
• He has refused to release his taxes just like all other presidents have for the past 40 years.
• He would seem to be losing the respect of the leaders of the Free World and denigrating the title of President of the United States.
• He entered office under investigation by the FBI, and under a cloud of suspicion after it was found that Russia interfered with our election process to get Trump elected, and Trump's campaign members and administration had contact with Russia throughout the campaign and after election.
• He's authorized a failed mission in Yemen.
• He's attempted to institute two failed Muslim bans and had both shot down by the courts.
• He's signed disastrous anti-middle class and anti-environment executive orders.
• He tried and failed to repeal Obamacare.
• He authorized the bombing of an already empty airbase in Syria to distract from low ratings and the cloud of Russiagate. He then creepily bragged to Chinese president Xi Jinping about the bombing while they ate chocolate cake at his Mar-a-lago resort.
• He's had awkwardly embarrassing meetings with foreign dignitaries.
• He's welcomed clowns like Ted Nugent and Palin to the White House, and supported them posing for disrespectful photos inside the White House.
• He's hired racist clowns like Bannon and Sessions.
• He's played a ton of golf.
• He's obsessed with taking credit for President Obama's accomplishments, and blaming him for all of his own failures. The mission in Yemen failed? Obama's fault! Mike Flynn was discovered to be a foreign agent? Obama's fault!
• He accused Obama of wiretapping him with no evidence whatsoever.
• He just can't stop tweeting, and the majority of the time they are juvenile barely-literate tweets and tantrums.
• He can't stop lying-- all. the. time.
• He has the least transparent administration in recent memory.
• He has created the most secretive administration in US history.
• He has the most ethically challenged administration in US history.
• He has broken nepotism laws by giving family members important jobs and deals.
• He has displayed cronyism by appointing billionaires to his cabinet.
• He has proposed massive tax cuts for the rich like himself.
• He allowed a banned pesticide proven to be dangerous to be used again.
• He falsely claimed Navy ships were heading toward North Korea when they were actually heading to Australia. They were later turned around and headed toward Korea.
• He said he had a plan for wiping out ISIS. ISIS remains strong despite his naive promises, and he has shown he is as clueless on how to handle ISIS as everything else.
• He has introduced connotative terminology such as snowflakes, alternative facts, fake news and bigly...
• He is targeting national monuments created by Obama and Clinton, and given to the people for their use and enjoyment.
• He signed a bill that allows your private data sold to the highest bidder.
• He has proposed cutting after-school programs and Meals on Wheels, among many other things.
• He is wasting millions of taxpayer money every week by not moving his wife and son into the White House.
• His administration was caught promoting his personal recreational property Mar-A-Lago on the State Department website.
• He settled multi-million dollar lawsuit against his fraudulent university.
• He dropped a $16 million bomb on 94 ISIS terrorists.
• He is allowing offshore drilling. (Remember the BP leak? What has changed?)
• He is the man in charge when we are suffering the slowest GDP growth in 3 years. (Fair to blame him since he took credit for good jobs numbers in January and February)
• He produced the worst jobs report in a year in March.
• He made it easier for the mentally insane to buy guns.
• He has been taking $1-3 million weekly trips to Florida. Additionally each trip is bankrupting some small businesses, who get no business when the roads are shut down around Mar-a-lago and the airport, and is costing the city a fortune in police protection.
• He is allowing the wholesale slaughter of entire bear and wolf families while they sleep in their dens.
• He has been verbally attacking and threatening allies like Canada, South Korea and Australia.
• He continues to vilify our national media outlets.
• The coal miners are saying that he’s let them down. “He took care of the coal companies, but he’s done nothing for the miners.”
• He has refused to divest himself of his business interests, so he is profiting off of the presidency and participating in the same “pay for play” behavior for which he’s criticized others.
• He is eradicating regulations that protect our waterways, and that secure workplace equality.
• He has reversed his stance on many of the things that got him elected. Among other things, one of his biggest campaign promises was building a border wall paid by Mexico. Now if the wall is built, it seems it will be paid for by the American people, with promises of recouping the money from Mexico at a later date (ain't happening).
• He has discussed sensitive security matters in public, in view of patrons at Mar-a-lago, and had the guy carrying his nuclear codes hanging out at Mar-a-lago having his picture taken.

Russian Breadcrumbs

Follow the breadcrumb trail...

• In September 2016 there was a warning by the FBI that the election had been hacked, and IP addresses related to the hack had been traced back to Russia.
• In October 2016, the Dept of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security warned before the election that there was evidence of an effort by Russia to affect our election, including emails that were hacked and stolen from the DNC.
• In December 2016 the CIA released a report claiming that they have evidence that Russia interfered with our election process.
• In January 2017, a Joint Intelligence Report was released with allegations that Russia, and Putin himself, conspired to influence our election and prevent Hillary Clinton from being elected.
• A well-respected British Op, Christopher Steele, gathers info on Trump and releases the dossier to BuzzFeed, claiming that Russia has dirt on Trump. Then Steele promptly goes to ground, apparently fearing for his life. He is said to have obtained his information from Russian entities.
• Now Rex Tillerson, who is a close ally to Putin, is pegged to be our next Secretary of State.
• It came out today that Sergey Yuryevich Mikhailov, deputy director of the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation), was in a meeting when he suddenly had a bag thrown over his head and was dragged from the building, never to be seen again. It's been reported that he has been arrested for "treason". (http://www.prevendra.com/russias-fsb-cybersecurity-team-im…/) So the question is "whether the government that he's charged with aiding and abetting is our foreign government." (Rachel Maddow) The non-state controlled Russian press is reporting he was arrested for tipping off the US to what Russia was doing to influence our election.
• And today the Trump administration purged the State Department of many high-level career diplomats, who have been with the department for 30 or 40 years (no replacements have been selected to fill their positions).

Laura Kennedy (@AmbKennedy_ret) tweeted today:
"As a career diplomat, I experienced many transitions & never saw anything like this dangerous purge of public servants now underway at State"

• In their urgency to vacate the offices, well-respected long-timer Tom Countryman was on a plane to Rome for a meeting when he was ordered to turn back and unceremoniously let go. He was told today to leave his position by tomorrow. He's been serving since 1982.
• Susan Glasser of Politico has now reported in a tweet:

"update: several sources reporting the proposed order would unilaterally lift sanctions."

This has become real life.

UPDATE 2/11/17:  Since this list was compiled, there have been a few other developments:

• In an interview with Bill O'Reilly released on 2/4/17, Trump defended Putin by saying that America is a killer, too.

"There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?"

• Putin's good friend Rex Tillerson was confirmed as our new Secretary of State.
• It has been learned that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn called Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on 12/29/17, the same day that President Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for Russia's hacking. It is believed that Flynn may have spoken with the ambassador about the impending sanctions and reassured him that Trump would back off on the sanctions once he was in office.
• It was announced that Russia was considering handing over Edward Snowden as a "gift" to Trump.
• And, though it isn't related to the Trump-Russia connection, it bears noting that Putin seems to have done it once again and has poisoned another "enemy". Putin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza fell ill a couple of weeks ago after being poisoned by an unknown substance. The thing is, this is the second time he was poisoned, having narrowly survived a poisoning in 2015.

UPDATE 2/15/17: Michael Flynn resigned on 2/13/17 amid allegations that not only had he spoken to Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but he had indeed implied that the Trump administration would back off on sanctions against Russia, and the call was recorded by intelligence offices. Putin then backed off on his threats of retaliation, and Trump tweeted how smart Putin was for not retaliating. Flynn also put Pence in a bad position by lying to him about the nature of his phone call with the ambassador, causing Pence to lie to the American public about it. Then apparently Trump knew about the phone call for weeks before telling Pence.