As it turns out, Donald Trump is the hope-and-change president.

According to James B. Comey, Trump hoped that the then-FBI director would find a way to drop his investigation of ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn and help blow away the cloud concerning the Trump campaigns possible ties to Russia. When Comey didnt, Trump changed Comey right out of a job.

Youre fired, the apprentice-president bravely conveyed to Comey via the very news media he so abhors, except when he doesnt. Was Trumps hope a direction, as Comey testified Thursday that he took it to mean? As in, The Don hopes ol Jimmy does the right thing? Or was it simply hope? As in, good golly, I hope it doesnt rain this weekend?

If one were a young child, one might go for the weather-forecast interpretation because what child wants it to rain on his or her parade? If one were an adult with full knowledge of the presidents pre-political history and the common sense of an investigator, one might reasonably conclude that the hoper in chief was making a strong suggestion, the ignoring of which could have dead-horse-in-your-bed consequences.

Comey, obviously, smelled a dead horse.

In his exchanges with the president, he carefully selected his words and took mental notes, after which he wrote down his recollections.

But Comeys concentration on the presidents hope may have doomed him. Not only did he lose his job, but also his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee seemed weak tea in the broader context of the presidents potential criminality. Expressing hope a word thats open to interpretation and nowhere near evidence of obstruction of justice is clearly not a crime.

In his testimony, Comey further revealed that he personally had leaked his memos, again to the benighted media via a Columbia University law professor and friend. Comey said he was concerned that Trump might lie about their discussions and other details leading up to his firing.

Regarding the two men and whose word to trust, theres no contest. But often what is obviously wrong isnt necessarily illegal. I dont doubt that Trump essentially threatened Comey, because thats what Trump does. (Count his lawsuits if you have a few free months.) Even as Comey testified, the president was regaling the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference with scripture and tough talk: We know how to fight better than anybody and we never, ever give up we are winners and we are going to fight. (Please, please, please read Elmer Gantry.)

During the hearing, several senators pressed Comey about why he didnt ask obvious follow-up questions, as when Trump allegedly said to the director, We had that thing. What thing? Comey also might have queried, Mr. President, what do you mean when you say you hope? Or, as various commentators have suggested, why didnt Comey say, Im sorry, Mr. President, but this is highly inappropriate and Im going to have to excuse myself?

Ask any reporter, whose skills are essentially investigative, and the answer is: You dont ever interrupt when the subject is spilling beans. Remember that Flynn was under investigation at the time, as was Trumps campaign, though apparently not Trump himself. All of this was surely in Comeys mind when Trump allegedly expressed his hope.

In real life, we rely upon our instincts, experience, interpretation of facial expressions and body language, and historical knowledge to make judgments and instruct our words and actions. We do this usually without conscious effort unless were driven by a purpose.

For Comey, what was the higher moral position? To stop the president of the United States from talking or keep the conversation going while you gather your wits and see what else might be forthcoming but could aid in an ongoing investigation? Most likely, Comeys mind was frantically trying to assess the situation and wondering, Lordy, why didnt I wear a wire?

He hinted as much Thursday, albeit with weirdly undermining self-deprecations. Comey said he felt he needed to pay attention and was too stunned to react to the hope comment. Maybe if I were stronger, he said, explaining why he didnt end his conversation with Trump. Please. Whats with the 6-foot-8-inch weakling act from a man routinely praised for his brilliance and integrity? Why telegraph feebleness to Trump, his lawyers and a skeptical public if hes secure in his rectitude?

Presumably, Comey was trying to convey his humility juxtaposed with the steamrolling Trump. What Comey may be constitutionally unable to fully grasp, however, is that integrity is no weapon in a knife fight.

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Boy Scout James Comey is no match for Donald Trump - Washington Post

During the presidential campaign, some imagined that the more overtly racist elements of Donald Trumps platform were just talk designed to rile up the base, not anything he seriously intended to act on. But in his first week in office, when he imposed a travel ban on seven majority-Muslim countries, that comforting illusion disappeared fast. Fortunately, the response was immediate: the marches and rallies at airports, the impromptu taxi strikes, the lawyers and local politicians intervening, the judges ruling the bans illegal.

The whole episode showed the power of resistance, and of judicial courage, and there was much to celebrate. Some have even concluded that this early slap down chastened Trump, and that he is now committed to a more reasonable, conventional course.

That is a dangerous illusion.

It is true that many of the more radical items on this administrations wish list have yet to be realized. But make no mistake, the full agenda is still there, lying in wait. And there is one thing that could unleash it all: a large-scale crisis.

Large-scale shocks are frequently harnessed to ram through despised pro-corporate and anti-democratic policies that would never have been feasible in normal times. Its a phenomenon I have previously called the Shock Doctrine, and we have seen it happen again and again over the decades, from Chile in the aftermath of Augusto Pinochets coup to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

And we have seen it happen recently, well before Trump, in U.S. cities including Detroit and Flint, where looming municipal bankruptcy became the pretext for dissolving local democracy and appointing emergency managers who waged war on public services and public education. It is unfolding right now in Puerto Rico, where the ongoing debt crisis has been used to install the unaccountable Financial Oversight and Management Board, an enforcement mechanism for harsh austerity measures, including cuts to pensions and waves of school closures. This tactic is being deployed in Brazil, where the highly questionable impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 was followed by the installation of an unelected, zealously pro-business regime that has frozen public spending for the next 20years, imposed punishing austerity, and begun selling off airports, power stations, and other public assets in a frenzy of privatization.

As Milton Friedman wrote long ago, Only a crisis actual or perceived produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable. Survivalists stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; these guys stockpile spectacularly anti-democratic ideas.

Now, as many have observed, the pattern is repeating under Trump. On the campaign trail, he did not tell his adoring crowds that he would cut funds for meals-on-wheels, or admit that he was going to try to take health insurance away from millions of Americans, or that he planned to grant every item on Goldman Sachs wish list. He said the very opposite.

Since taking office, however, Donald Trump has never allowed the atmosphere of chaos and crisis to let up. Some of the chaos, like the Russia investigations, has been foisted upon him or is simply the result of incompetence, but much appears to be deliberately created. Either way, while we are distracted by (and addicted to) the Trump Show, clicking on and gasping at marital hand-slaps and mysterious orbs, the quiet, methodical work of redistributing wealth upward proceeds apace.

This is also aided by the sheer velocity of change. Witnessing the tsunami of executive orders during Trumps first 100 days, it rapidly became clear his advisers werefollowing Machiavellis advice in The Prince: Injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less. The logic is straightforward enough. People can develop responses to sequential or gradual change. But if dozens of changes come from all directions at once, the hope is that populations will rapidly become exhausted and overwhelmed, and will ultimately swallow their bitter medicine.

But heres the thing. All of this is shock doctrine lite; its the most that Trump can pull off under cover of the shocks he is generating himself. And as much as this needs to be exposed and resisted, we also need to focus on what this administration will do when they have a real external shock to exploit. Maybe it will be an economic crash like the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Maybe a natural disaster like Superstorm Sandy. Or maybe it will be a horrific terrorist attack like the Manchester bombing. Any one such crisis could trigger a very rapid shift in political conditions, making what currently seems unlikely suddenly appear inevitable.

So lets consider a few categories of possible shocks, and how they might be harnessed to start ticking off items on Trumps toxic to-do list.

Police officers join members of the public to view the flowers and messages of support in St. Anns Square in Manchester, England, on May 31, 2017, placed in tribute to the victims of the May 22 terror attack at the Manchester Arena.

Photo: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

Recent terror attacks in London, Manchester, and Paris provide some broad hints about how the administration would try to exploit a large-scale attack that took place on U.S. soil or against U.S. infrastructure abroad. After the horrific Manchester bombing last month, the governing Conservatives launched a fierce campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party for suggesting that the failed war on terror is part of what is fueling such acts, calling any such suggestion monstrous (a clear echo of the with us or with the terrorists rhetoric that descended after September 11, 2001). For his part, Trump rushed to link the attack to the thousands and thousands of people pouring into our various countries never mind that the bomber, Salman Abedi, was born in the U.K.

Similarly, in the immediate aftermath of the Westminster terror attacks in London in March 2017, when a driver plowed into a crowd of pedestrians, deliberately killing four people and injuring dozens more, the Conservative government wasted no time declaring that any expectation of privacy in digital communications was now a threat to national security. Home Secretary Amber Rudd went on the BBC and declared the end-to-end encryption provided by programs like WhatsApp to be completely unacceptable. And she said that they were meeting with the large tech firms to ask them to work with us on providing backdoor access to these platforms. She made an even stronger call to crack down on internet privacy after the London Bridge attack.

More worrying, in 2015, after the coordinated attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, the government of Franois Hollande declared a state of emergency that banned political protests. I was in France a week after those horrific events and it was striking that, although the attackers had targeted a concert, a football stadium, restaurants, and other emblems of daily Parisian life, it was only outdoor political activity that was not permitted. Large concerts, Christmas markets, and sporting events the sorts of places that were likely targets for further attacks were all free to carry on as usual. In the months that followed, the state-of-emergency decree was extended again and again until it had been in place for well over a year. It is currently set to remain in effect until at least July 2017. In France, state-of-emergencyis the new normal.

This took place under a center-left government in a country with a long tradition of disruptive strikes and protests. One would have to be naive to imagine that Donald Trump and Mike Pence wouldnt immediately seize on any attack in the United States to go much further down that same road. In all likelihood they would do it swiftly, by declaring protests and strikes that block roads and airports (the kind that responded to the Muslim travel ban) a threat to national security. Protest organizers would be targeted with surveillance, arrests, and imprisonment.

Indeed we should be prepared for security shocks to be exploited as excuses to increase the rounding up and incarceration of large numbers of people from the communities this administration is already targeting: Latino immigrants, Muslims, Black Lives Matter organizers, climate activists, investigative journalists. Its all possible. And in the name of freeing the hands of law enforcement to fight terrorism, Attorney General Jeff Sessions would have the excuse hed been looking for to do away with federal oversight of state and local police, especially those that have been accused of systemic racial abuses.

And there is no doubt that the president would seize on any domestic terrorist attack to blame the courts. He made this perfectly clear when he tweeted, after his first travel ban was struck down: Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. And on the night of the London Bridge attack, he went even further, tweeting: We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety! In a context of public hysteria and recrimination that would surely follow an attack in the U.S., the kind of courage we witnessed from the courts in response to Trumps travel bans might well be in shorter supply.

This April 7, 2017, photo shows the USS Porter launching a tomahawk missile ata Syrian air base.

Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via AP

The most lethal way that governments overreact to terrorist attacks is by exploiting the atmosphere of fear to embark on a full-blown foreign war (or two). It doesnt necessarily matter if the target has no connection to the original terror attacks. Iraq wasnt responsible for 9/11, and it was invaded anyway.

Trumps likeliest targets are mostly in the Middle East, and they include (but are by no means limited to) Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and, most perilously, Iran. And then, of course, theres North Korea, where Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has declared that all options are on the table, pointedly refusing to rule out a pre-emptive military strike.

There are many reasons why people around Trump, particularly those who came straight from the defense sector, might decide that further military escalation is in order. Trumps April 2017 missile strike on Syria ordered without congressional approval and therefore illegal according to some experts won him the most positive news coverage of his presidency. His inner circle, meanwhile, immediately pointed to the attacks as proof that there was nothing untoward going on between the White House and Russia.

But theres another, less discussed reason why this administration might rush to exploit a security crisis to start a new war or escalate an ongoing conflict: There is no faster or more effective way to drive up the price of oil, especially if the violence interferes with the supply of oilto the world market This would be great news for oil giants like Exxon Mobil, which have seen their profits drop dramatically as a result of the depressed price of oil and Exxon, of course, is fortunate enough to have its former CEO, Tillerson, currently serving as secretary of state. (Not only was Tillerson at Exxon for 41years, his entire working life, but Exxon Mobil has agreed to pay him a retirement package worth a staggering $180 million.)

Other than Exxon, perhaps the only entity that would have more to gain from an oil price hike fueled by global instability is Vladimir Putins Russia, a vast petro-state that has been in economic crisis since the price of oil collapsed. Russia is the worlds leading exporter of natural gas, and thesecond-largest exporter of oil (after Saudi Arabia). When the price was high, this was great news for Putin: Prior to 2014, fully 50 percent of Russias budget revenues came from oil and gas.

But when prices plummeted, the government was suddenly short hundreds of billions of dollars, an economic catastrophe with tremendous human costs. According to the World Bank, in 2015 real wages fell in Russia by nearly 10 percent; the Russian ruble depreciated by close to 40 percent; and the population of people classified as poor increased from 3 million to over 19 million. Putin plays the strongman, but this economic crisis makes him vulnerable at home.

Weve also heard a lot about that massive deal between Exxon Mobil and the Russian state oil company Rosneft to drill for oil in the Arctic (Putin bragged that it was worth half a trillion dollars). That deal was derailed by U.S. sanctions against Russia and despite the posturing on both sides over Syria, it is still entirely possible that Trump will decide to lift the sanctions and clear the way for that deal to go ahead, which would quickly boost Exxon Mobils flagging fortunes.

But even if the sanctions are lifted, there is another factor standing in the way of the project moving forward: the depressed price of oil. Tillerson made the deal with Rosneft in 2011, when the price of oil was soaring at around $110 a barrel. Their first commitment was to explore for oil in the sea north of Siberia, under tough-to-extract, icy conditions. The break-even price for Arctic drilling is estimated to be around $100 a barrel, if not more. So even if sanctions are lifted under Trump, it wont make sense for Exxon and Rosneft to move ahead with their project unless oil prices are high enough. Which is yet another reason why parties might embrace the kind of instability that would send oil prices shooting back up.

If the price of oil rises to $80 or more a barrel, then the scramble to dig up and burn the dirtiest fossil fuels, including those under melting ice, will be back on. A price rebound would unleash a global frenzy in new high-risk, high-carbon fossil fuel extraction, from the Arctic to the tar sands. And if that is allowed to happen, it really would rob us of our last chance of averting catastrophic climate change.

So, in a very real sense, preventing war and averting climate chaos are one and the same fight.

A screen displays financial dataon Jan. 22, 2008.

Photo: Cate Gillon/Getty Images

A centerpiece of Trumps economic project so far has been a flurry of financial deregulation that makes economic shocks and disasters distinctly more likely. Trump has announced plans to dismantle Dodd-Frank, the most substantive piece of legislation introduced after the 2008 banking collapse. Dodd-Frank wasnt tough enough, but its absence will liberate Wall Street to go wild blowing new bubbles, which will inevitably burst, creating new economic shocks.

Trump and his team are not unaware of this, they are simply unconcerned the profits from those market bubbles are too tantalizing. Besides, they know that since the banks were never broken up, they are still too big to fail, which means that if it all comes crashing down, they will be bailed out again, just like in 2008. (In fact, Trump issued an executive order calling for a review of the specific part of Dodd-Frank designed to prevent taxpayers from being stuck with the bill for another such bailout an ominous sign, especially with so many former Goldman executives making White House policy.)

Some members of the administration surely also see a few coveted policy options opening up in the wake of a good market shock or two. During the campaign, Trump courted voters by promising not to touch Social Security or Medicare. But that may well be untenable, given the deep tax cuts on the way (and the fictional math beneath the claims that they will pay for themselves). His proposed budget already begins the attack on Social Security and an economic crisis would give Trump a handy excuse to abandon those promises altogether. In the midst of a moment being sold to the public as economic Armageddon, Betsy DeVos might even have a shot at realizing her dream of replacing public schools with a system based on vouchers and charters.

Trumps gang has a long wish list of policies that do not lend themselves to normal times. In the early days of the new administration, for instance, Mike Pence met with Wisconsin Gov.Scott Walker to hear how the governor had managed to strip public sector unions of their right to collective bargaining in 2011. (Hint: He used the cover of the states fiscal crisis, prompting New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to declare that in Wisconsin the shock doctrine is on full display.)

Taken together, the picture is clear. We will very likely not see this administrations full economic barbarism in the first year. That will only reveal itself later, after the inevitable budget crises and market shocks kick in. Then, in the name of rescuing the government and perhaps the entire economy, the White House will start checking off the more challenging items on the corporate wish list.

Cattle menacedby a wildfire near Protection, Kansas, on March, 7, 2017.

Photo: Bo Rader/Wichita Eagle/TNS/Getty Images

Just as Trumps national security and economic policies are sure to generate and deepen crises, the administrations moves to ramp up fossil fuel production, dismantle large parts of the countrys environmental laws, and trash the Paris climate accord all pave the way for more large-scale industrial accidents not to mention future climate disasters. There is a lag time of about a decade between the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the full resulting warming, so the very worst climatic effects of the administrations policies wont likely be felt until theyre out of office.

That said, weve already locked in so much warming that no president can complete a term without facing major weather-related disasters. In fact, Trump wasnt even two months on the job before he was confronted with overwhelming wildfires on the Great Plains, which led to so many cattle deaths that one rancher described the event as our Hurricane Katrina.

Trump showed no great interest in the fires, not even sparing them a tweet. But when the first superstorm hits a coast, we should expect a very different reaction from a president who knows the value of oceanfront property, has open contempt for the poor, and has only ever been interested in building for the 1percent. The worry, of course, is a repeat of Katrinas attacks on public housing and public schools, as well as the contractor free for all that followed the disaster, especially given thecentral roleplayed by Mike Pence in shaping post-Katrina policy.

The biggest Trump-era escalation, however, will most likely be indisaster responseservices marketed specifically toward thewealthy. When I was writing The Shock Doctrine, this industry was still in its infancy, and several early companies didnt make it. I wrote, for instance, about a short-lived airline called Help Jet, based in Trumps beloved West Palm Beach. While it lasted, Help Jet offered an array of gold-plated rescue services in exchange for a membership fee.

When a hurricane was on its way, Help Jet dispatched limousines to pick up members, booked them into five-star golf resorts and spas somewhere safe, then whisked them away on private jets. No standing in lines, no hassle with crowds, just a first-class experience that turns a problem into a vacation, read the companys marketing materials. Enjoy the feeling of avoiding the usual hurricane evacuation nightmare. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems Help Jet, far from misjudging the market for these services, was simply ahead of its time. These days, in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, the more serious high-end survivalists are hedging against climate disruption and social collapse by buying space in custom-built underground bunkers in Kansas (protected by heavily armed mercenaries) and building escape homes on high ground in New Zealand. It goes without saying that you need your own private jet to get there.

What is worrying about the entire top-of-the-line survivalist phenomenon (apart from its general weirdness) is that, as the wealthy create their own luxury escape hatches, there is diminishing incentive to maintain any kind of disaster response infrastructure that exists to help everyone, regardless of income precisely the dynamic that led to enormous and unnecessary suffering in New Orleans during Katrina.

And this two-tiered disaster infrastructure is galloping ahead at alarming speed. In fire-prone states such as California and Colorado, insurance companies provide a concierge service to their exclusive clients: When wildfires threaten their mansions, the companies dispatch teams of private firefighters to coat them in re-retardant. The public sphere, meanwhile, is left to further decay.

California provides a glimpse of where this is all headed. For its firefighting, the state relies on upwards of 4,500 prison inmates, who are paid a dollar an hour when theyre on the fire line, putting their lives at risk battling wildfires, and about two bucks a day when theyre back at camp. By some estimates, California saves a billion dollars a year through this program a snapshot of what happens when you mix austerity politics with mass incarceration and climate change.

Migrants and refugees gather close to a border crossing near the Greek village of Idomeni, on March 5, 2016, where thousands of people wait to enterMacedonia.

Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images

The uptick in high-end disaster prep also means there is less reason for the big winners in our economy to embrace the demanding policy changes required to prevent an even warmer and more disaster-prone future. Which might help explain the Trump administrations determination to do everything possible to accelerate the climate crisis.

So far, much of the discussion around Trumps environmental rollbacks has focused on supposed schisms between the members of his inner circle who actively deny climate science, including EPA head Scott Pruitt and Trump himself, and those who concede that humans are indeed contributing to planetary warming, such as Rex Tillerson and Ivanka Trump. But this misses the point: What everyone who surrounds Trump shares is a confidence that they, their children, and indeed their class will be just fine, that their wealth and connections will protect them from the worst of the shocks to come. They will lose some beachfront property, sure, but nothing that cant be replaced with a new mansion on higher ground.

This insouciance is representative of an extremely disturbing trend. In an age of ever-widening income inequality, a significant cohort of our elites are walling themselves off not just physically but also psychologically, mentally detaching themselves from the collective fate of the rest of humanity. This secessionism from the human species (if only in their own minds) liberates the richnot only to shrug off the urgent need for climate action but also to devise ever more predatory ways to profit from current and future disasters and instability. What we are hurtling toward is a world demarcated into fortified Green Zones for the super-rich, Red Zones for everyone else and black sites for whoever doesnt cooperate. Europe, Australia, and North America are erecting increasingly elaborate (and privatized) border fortresses to seal themselves off from people fleeing for their lives. Fleeing, quite often, as a direct result of forces unleashed primarily by those fortressed continents, whether predatory trade deals, wars, or ecological disasters intensified by climate change.

In fact, if we chart the locations of the most intense conflict spots in the world right now from the bloodiest battlefields in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Iraq what becomes clear is that these also happen to be some of the hottest and driest places on earth. It takes very little to push these regions into drought and famine, which frequently acts as an accelerant to conflict, which of course drives migration.

And the same capacity to discount the humanity of the other, which justifies civilian deaths and casualties from bombs and drones in places like Yemen and Somalia, is now being trained on the people in the boats casting their need for security as a threat, their desperate flight as some sort of invading army. This is the context in which well over 13,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean trying to reach European shores since 2014, many of them children, toddlers, and babies. It is the context in which the Australian government has sought to normalize the incarceration of refugees in island detention camps on Nauru and Manus, under conditions that numerous humanitarian organizations have described as tantamount to torture. This is also the context in which the massive, recently demolished migrant camp in Calais, France, was nicknamed the jungle an echo of the way Katrinas abandoned people were categorized in right-wing media as animals.

The dramatic rise in right-wing nationalism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and straight-up white supremacy over the past decade cannot be pried apart from these larger geopolitical and ecological trends. The only way to justify such barbaric forms of exclusion is to double down on theories of racial hierarchy that tell a story about how the people being locked out of the global Green Zone deserve their fate, whether its Trump casting Mexicans as rapists and bad hombres, and Syrian refugees as closet terrorists, or prominent Conservative Canadian politician Kellie Leitch proposing that immigrants be screened for Canadian values, or successive Australian prime ministers justifying those sinister island detention camps as a humanitarian alternative to death at sea.

This is what global destabilization looks like in societies that have never redressed their foundational crimes countries that have insisted slavery and indigenous land theft were just glitches in otherwise proud histories. After all, there is little more Green Zone/Red Zone than the economy of the slave plantation of cotillions in the masters house steps away from torture in the fields, all of it taking place on the violently stolen indigenous land on which North Americas wealth was built. And now the same theories of racial hierarchy that justified those violent thefts in the name of building the industrial age are surging to the surface as the system of wealth and comfort they constructed starts to unravel on multiple fronts simultaneously.

Trump is just one early and vicious manifestation of that unraveling. He is not alone. He wont be the last.

Residents of the Mangueira favela community, foreground, watch fireworks explode over Maracana stadium during opening ceremonies for the 2016 Olympic Games on Aug. 5, 2016, in Rio de Janeiro.

Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

It seems relevant that the walled city where the wealthy few live in relative luxury while the masses outside war with one another for survival is pretty much the default premise of every dystopian sci-fi movie that gets made these days, from The Hunger Games, with the decadent Capitol versus the desperate colonies, to Elysium, with its spa-like elite space station hovering above a sprawling and lethal favela. Its a vision deeply enmeshed with the dominant Western religions, with their grand narratives of great floods washing the world cleanand a chosen few selected to begin again. Its the story of the great fires that sweep in, burning up the unbelievers and taking the righteous to a gated city in the sky. We have collectively imagined this extreme winners-and-losers ending for our species so many times that one of our most pressing tasks is learning to imagine other possible ends to the human story in which we come together in crisis rather than split apart, take down borders rather than erect more of them.

Because the point of all that dystopian art was never to act as a temporal GPS, showing us where we are inevitably headed. The point was to warn us, to wake us so that, seeing where this perilous road leads, we can decide to swerve.

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. So said Thomas Paine many years ago, neatly summarizing the dream of escaping the past that is at the heart of both the colonial project and the American Dream. The truth, however, is that we donothave this godlike power of reinvention, nor did we ever. We must live with the messes and mistakes we have made, as well as within the limits of what our planet can sustain.

But we do have it in our power to change ourselves, to attempt to right past wrongs, and to repair our relationships with one another and with the planet we share. Its this work that is the bedrock of shock resistance.

Adapted from the new book by Naomi Klein,No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trumps Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, to be published by Haymarket Books on June 13. http://www.noisnotenough.org

Top photo: Firefighters from across Kansas and Oklahoma battle a wildfire near Protection, Kansas, on March 6, 2017.

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Twitter helped make Donald Trump president. It may also lead to his impeachment.

The president values Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram asways to bypass a hostile media and express his thoughts directly and authentically. But there is a difference between tweeting as a candidate for president and tweeting as the president. And there have been plenty of times since January when his Twitter habithas diverted President Trumpfrom his message and agenda.

It now looks like the most consequential Tweet of his presidency to date came a few days after he fired James Comey as FBI director. At 8:26 a.m. on Friday, May 12, Trumpwrote: James Comey better hope that there are no tapesof our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

That tweet, Comey told the Senate, prompted the now-private citizen to instruct a friend, Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman, to share with theNew York Timesthe contents of contemporaneous memoshe had written describing his interactions with the president. Thearticle, published a week to the day after Comey was fired, revealed that the president had asked the FBI director to end the criminal investigation into former national-security adviser Michael Flynn.

Why did Comey have Richman call theTimes? Because, he told the Senate, he hoped that the disclosure of the memo would prompt the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russias involvement in the 2016 election and possible collusion with associates of the presidents campaign. That is exactly what happened May 17,the dayafter theTimespiece, when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteinnamed as counsel former FBI director Robert Mueller.

And though Comey would not say if he believed President Trump obstructed justice by urging him to let go the investigation into Flynn, he did say he was sure that Mueller would investigate whether obstruction of justice had occurred.

Obstruction of justice, of course,being something past congresses have considered a high crime and misdemeanor worthy of presidential impeachment.

In other words: By firing Comey and then tweeting recklessly about it, Trump elevated a long-running but manageable problem the so-called Russia thing into an independent investigation that seriously endangers his presidency.

I call the Russia thing a manageable problem because, almost a year after the FBI launched the counterintelligence probe, no serious allegation of wrongdoing by Americans has been made. Indeed, the investigation seems to be headed in directions having little to do with Russias hacking of Democratic emails and election systems. Flynns troubles involve his statements to the FBI and his work for thegovernment of Turkey. The question for former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is whether he properly reported income made overseas. Senior adviser and Trump-in-law Jared Kushner is under the microscope for a meeting he had during the transition with a Russian banker who has a relationship with Vladimir Putin.

If President Trump had let the investigation develop as other presidents have done in the past, it seems unlikely to have reached him. This is especially the case now that we know that Comey had informed the president on multiple occasions that he was not a subject of the inquiry, that Comey, while disturbed by his encounters with Trump, did not see them as warranting his resignation, and that no one other than Trump ever told him to drop the Flynn inquiry.

But Donald Trump, as we know, is not like other presidents. He couldnt let it rest. Comeys refusal to say in public that Trumpwas not under investigation, combined with Comeys holier-than-thou demeanor on television, seems to have sofrustrated the president that he fired Comey impulsively and without warning to his White House communications team. His temper grew when staff (and he) could not get straight the reason for Comeys dismissal. And when Trump is angry, Trump tweets.

What I saw in Comeys testimony was a very skilled lawyer making the case by implication that the president obstructed justice by directing him to drop the Flynn investigation, then firing him after he had failed to do so. And Comey will of course make the same case in his deposition to his friend Bob Mueller. Who will combine that testimony with Trumps other questionable interactions with members of his cabinetwhen he reports his findings to the Justice Department and Congress.

A Congress that, by January 2019, might not be under full Republican control.

Need definitive proof that Twitter is bad for President Trump? Look no farther than the one tweet that may very well lead to his impeachment.

Matthew Continetti is the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, where this column first appeared. 2017 All rights reserved

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This One Tweet May Lead to Donald Trump's Impeachment - National Review

Political violence is a symptom of an ailing democracy. By that standard, America is not well. Donald Trump and the Republican Party injected it with poison. During the 2016 presidential campaign Trump appeared to threaten Hillary Clinton and his other opponents with violence even suggesting that his followers could use Second Amendment solutions to remove her from office if she won the presidency. Trump also encouraged his supporters to physically assault protesters and promised to pay their medical bills if they did so.

As documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Trumps eventual victoryunleashed a wave of hate crimes across the United States targeting Muslims, Jews and people of color. White supremacists have taken a cue from Trumps naked embrace of racism and bigotry and have killed at least four people since the election in November.

There have been violent clashes between Trump supporters and those who believe that he and his movement are fascists and represent a grave threat to American democracy and freedom. In keeping with his plutocratic authoritarianism, Trump has targeted journalists and the news media as traitors and enemies of the American people. Two weeks ago Greg Gianforte, a Republican congressional candidate in Montana, physically assaulted a reporter from The Guardian. Such violence did not appear to hurt his support among voters; Gianforte went on to win that states special election.

In many ways, Donald Trumps embrace of political violence is a reflection of his personal values. Trump proudly proclaimed that he could shoot a person in the middle of the street and still beelected. In 1989 he took out full-page ads in several New York newspapers calling for the death penaltyfor the Central Park Five, a group of young black and Latino men accused of an infamous rape. After being convicted and sentenced to long prison terms, all five men were later found innocent. Trump has refused to apologize for wrongly calling for their deaths. Trump has also embraced President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines,who has conducted a campaign of state-sponsored murder against drug dealers and drug users.

Donald Trump has been accused of sexually predatory conduct and has bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, an action he boasted he could get away with because of his fame and money.

What role does political violence play in Donald Trumps appeal to his voters? How is it related to his authoritarian politics? What does Trumps embrace of violence reveal about his masculinity? What does the future hold for a nation where political violence is becoming increasingly acceptable?

In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and an expert on the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. Ben-Ghiat is completing a forthcoming book on authoritarianism and political strongmen and has written extensively about Trumps rise to power and the dangers to American democracy he represents.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. A longer version can be heard onmy podcast, available on SalonsFeatured Audiopage.

How do you think Donald Trump rose to power? Was this something out of left field?

There are times in history where someone comes out of the blue who coalesces the forces of discontent and anxiety and hope. This kind of leader usually comes from outside traditional politics and knows how to be all things to all people. Then theres the charisma. Because the kind of attachment that Trumps followers form is based not on a party or a principle because Trump is not very dedicated to the Republican Party its based on an emotional bond. These men appear and theyre a kind of savior with this rhetoric of I will fix it. I will care for you. This has happened before in history and now in the United States with Donald Trump, we have an opportunity to analyze this in real time.

Hes really an expert in manipulating emotions. On a basic level his supporters are in love with him. He is their avatar. Do you think thats a reach?

No, I do not think that it is a reach. Im a historian of visual propaganda. When I look at a tape of a rally, I look for postures. I look for the T-shirts, and its quite extraordinary. Trump is a type of literal political strongman for his people. He appears as John Wayne. He appears as a bodybuilder, like a Schwarzenegger-type. At his rallies, people love to play with cardboard cutouts of his head.

In addition, Trump uses his body to convey a sense of heroic masculinity to other men. For example, he had a type of death match handshake with French President Emmanuel Macron, who is a handsome, younger man. Trump is always trying to best the other man. To do this he engages in a type of ritual humiliation of all men who want to be around him. This is a kind of bullying that I call the culture of threat.

What Trump is doing is telling a story. Its an extension of 1980s Reagan-era action movies. But we also have to call out the target of the violence. It is not white folks. Trump is signaling that he can enact violence against black and brown people and get away with it.

Trump is also using the genre of theWestern. When youre shooting someone in the street, its the showdown and Trump towers above in his fortress. A lot of his rhetoric of being threatened, being victimized its a morality play. The thing that is extraordinary is that the more familiar morality play and showdown dated back to the Cold War, where it was clear that Russia was the Evil Empire, according to Ronald Reagan.

Here we have a profound shift: Who is the evil person above all? The person of color in his own country. Then there is also a profound distrust or disdain for liberal democracy. At the local level, [Trumps] the avenger. Hes the person who sits with a gun in his hand and Fifth Avenue is his street. At the national level, he plays the cowboy whos going to defend our nation, except the joke is that hes a vessel of Vladimir Putin.

How do we locate Donald Trump relative to toxic white masculinity, authoritarianism and fascism?

Its a big question. I do not call Donald Trump a fascist because I want to respect the fact that historically under fascism you ended up with a one-party state. I think its important to respect that difference, in part . . . to show how things have changed.

However, today you do not need to have a dictatorship or a one-party state in order to accomplish your goals. You can take a democracy and change it through expansions of executive power and other repressions until you have the same effect on the subject population and a quasi-rubber-stamp parliament, without declaring a dictatorship.

Now with Trump, he uses fascist tactics. One of them is the testing of the population, the media and the elites at the beginning. This is so key. There are many things Trump does that are fascistic without having to become a one-party state dictator.

What would be a better word to describe him: a plutocratic authoritarian, an American fascist, something else?

Hes an authoritarian.

How is Trump similar or different to other authoritarians you have studied?

The classic dictators were usually very concerned with race. A lot of what Trump is doing is trying to turn the clock back on demographic change. Theres this panic around the world today about what I would label as mobile populations. These are refugees, people who are supposedly going to invade our borders. This explains the fixation with walls and controlling space.

How do we make sense of the connections between emotion and authoritarianism, either culturally or personally?

The whole spectacle of fascist aesthetics is designed to desensitize you. We still see that today, after 80 years. We havent progressed much from this. Think about it:If you live in a place where there are informers everywhere, you start to self-censor. This could be self-censorship if youre a journalist or if youre an ordinary citizen. You have to live in a kind of shut-down manner unless youre going to become what used to be called a dissident. Theres a sense of disaffection in America which Trump has been able to exploit.

Michael Moore in his movie TrumpLand called a certain type of white male, such as Newt Gingrich, for example, the dying dinosaurs. These are a group of people who suspect especially if they read the Census that by 2042 America will be a minority majority country. This is fundamental to Trumpism and to his supporters. Theyre in a panic about this. The dying dinosaur is also the man who can sexually harass women without any consequences.

That gets us to political correctness. When Trump says, Im not politically correct, hes really saying, Now you can do what you want. You can be self-actualized.

Thats right. Again it goes back to the point of how fake news is an alternate reality that people are very invested in. This is their certainty. Its a certainty that goes with their emotional state. Once people make these bonds of attachment with this kind of charismatic ruler, its hard to break them.

Lets consider Greg Gianforte in Montana. It was clear he was going to win anyway even though he had assaulted a journalist. There are a whole lot of Republican voters who are excited and titillated by violence and wanted to support Gianforte.

Greg Gianforte becomes a masculine hero. He becomes the heartland versus the elite, even though hes a wealthy businessman. Again this is suspending a lot of reality for this narrative to work. I think that right now with all the Russia investigations and Fox News imploding, the right-wing public is looking for heroes and heroes who first, of course, are also victims.

Somehow, as often happens, this assaulter becomes a victim, which is how he tried to spin it in his statement. He becomes a victim of the media. Then we go back to the media being vultures. Trump openly admires violent people. He himself says violent things. This becomes internalized and legitimated or rather was already internalized by people like Gianforte.

The SPLC has documented a huge increase in hate crimes since Trumps campaign began in 2016. There have also been the recent white supremacist murders in Maryland and Portland as well.

What happens is that the bar for behavior shifts. You can become used to seeing violence, but its also that doing violence becomes more acceptable. We think of normalization in a bureaucratic way. We decide to accept these institutions and these things which we thought were rogue before. Normalization is a form of decriminalization. Its when Trump can say, Ill shoot someone and he does not get booted out as a candidate. He wins. You decided to accept what used to be considered lawless. Theres trickle-down violence, just as theres trickle-down racism. Trump sets the tone.

How do you think America will be changed by Donald Trumps presidency? Are these changes permanent and irrevocable? Or are they temporary?

If Mike Pence becomes president, all of the social-racial agenda will likely continue because thats why he was put there. Pence is the mainstream Republican, for a party which has moved significantly to the right. That will go on and it will be a fight to preserve reproductive and other civil rights.

To end on something positive, theres been an undeniable, enormous resurgence of activism and also patriotism. Ultimately, I think that its doubtful that Trump is preparing the way for an even more hard-line authoritarian.

What do you think history can teach us? What sort of leverage can historians provide for us in this moment?

Thats a great question. We are living through one of these rare times in life when events are outstripping our capacity to understand them. First, it was the shock of the election. People were depressed. They didnt know what to do. Then the blitzkrieg of all the travel bans and all of the shocking events that Trump engineered. People feel very disconcerted and frightened. History is useful because youre able to step back and see patterns: This has happened before, and this is how it was defeated. This is what we have to look for.

Im not sure that people learn from the past even if its presented to them because I feel that the temptations that someone like Trump represents are only combated by looking within ourselves. The attraction is the attraction of power and to be more specific, an attraction to white male power. This proves very seductive to many. The attraction of wealth, of glamour, all these things go into why Trump has been successful as an image-maker and why he was able to be accepted as our protector.

Until those internal things are settled, its hard to say that just because I tell you he looks like Mussolini, youre going to say, Forget that. I dont like him anymore. Historians are able to look back and also to the future. I for one am glad that Ive been able to write and give comfort to people.

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Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Donald Trump looks like Mussolini but can be overcome - Salon

It may seem unnecessary to write about President Donald Trumps conflicts of interest when so much attention is being paid to the Russia scandal, but the fact remains that a president who has refused to fully divest himself from a massive business empire is one who will always be fraught with conflicts that may impede his ability to impartially serve the public interest.

Let us proceed.

The Kushner familys company is trying to find a way to reimbursea $250 million loan from Chinese investors

The EB-5 visa program ostensibly exists to help combat unemployment and poverty. It allows foreign investors who spend at least $500,000 on projects with high unemployment or which require development for other reasons to receive a permanent resident visa in return. That said, theKushner familys real estate company is having trouble obtaining a $250 million loan to reimburse Chinese investors who helped fund a tower in Jersey City, according to a report by Bloomberg. Although the Kushners would keep $50 million and use the rest to reimburse investors and pay off a mortgage, apparently the ongoing controversy over the Kushners using the EB-5 program for questionable means (the project does not necessarily help the less fortunate) is scaring away banks.

Saudi Arabia has spent a lot of money at the Trump International Hotel. . .

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is currently in the process of opposing an American terrorism law, has spent roughly $270,000 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.,according to a report by USA Today. This included catering, lodging and parking expenses for the period between Oct. 1, 2016 and March 31, 2017 that is, from a little more than a month before Trump was elected president to a little more than two months after he was inaugurated. The Trump Organization has said they will donate all of these profits at the end of the year, although it remains to be seen whether theyll follow through on that.

. . . butTrump International Hotels conflicts dont stop there

As a recent Time Magazine article pointed out, Trumps Washington hotel has become a bastion of power in its own right, even though the president issupposed to avoid mixing his private businesses with the official work of the government. One former Trump campaign adviser told the magazine that of course we hang out there. Everyone hangs out there. Being in the Trump hotels lobby is a way to get people to know you. The conservative Heritage Foundation has loaned an American flag to the hotel, and as this series has noted already, guests who are willing and able to pay top dollar can interact with powerful domestic and foreign officials within the hotel.

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This week in Donald Trump's conflicts of interest: Kushner may have problems, but Trump's hotel raises lots of questions - Salon

Is federal environmental review holding up megaprojects? Mostly not.

C-SPAN

In a speech on Friday dedicated to speeding up infrastructure construction, President Trump couldnt resist deploying one of his favorite props: a big stack of paper.

Henry Grabar is a staff writer for Slates Moneybox.

This time, the paper was the 10,000-page environmental report for the Intercounty Connector, an 18-mile highway in Maryland, enclosed in three binders that the president borrowed from a state highway official to demonstrate the waste and folly of federal bureaucracy.

Denouncing the report as nonsense, Trump unceremoniously dropped the binders on the floor, to applause, before kicking them out of the way as he returned to the lectern. Nobodys going to read it, except the consultants who get a fortune for this, the president said. "These binders could be replaced by just a few simple pages, it would be just as good. It would be much better."

The Intercounty Connector, or MD-200, is a$2.4 billion, 18-mile highway that was first proposed more than 50 years ago but not completed until 2014. Supporters of this tolled alternative to the Beltway, which slices through suburbs and wetlands parallel to the Washington ring road, have condemned its opponents as tree-huggers standing in the way of progress.

But with exaggerated traffic estimates furnished by consultants, the predictions for toll revenue failed to come true: Vehicle counts were 20 percent lower than what consultants had predicted. Revenue was one-third the low-end prediction. Its true that environmentalists battled the road in court for years, delaying it and raising the construction costs. But they also got the size of the highway reduced from 12 lanes to six.

Imagine if the ICC had been twice the size. As it is, Maryland had to raise tolls on other crossings to pay off ICC debt. The ICC only passed its year-one toll revenue estimate in its third year of operation. Around that time, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan canceled Baltimores Red Line project and shifted the states $1.35 billion contribution into highway funding instead, a decision that prompted an investigation from President Obamas Department of Transportation.

The ICC is slowly filling up, because new highways always do. They dont solve traffic congestion. But they do create more car-dependent lives, stemming from new personal choices and new car-dependent patterns of housing and employment. Or as the California Department of Transportation put it in a recent paper, Increasing Highway Capacity Unlikely to Relieve Traffic Congestion.

As a symbol, then, the ICC represents the overwhelming influence of the highway construction lobbymore than the obstructionism of environmental activists.

Trump was announcing the creation of a new office in the Council of Environmental Quality dedicated to rooting out inefficiency, clarifying lines of authority, and streamlining coordination between different levels of government.

The president bemoaned, as he has before, the glacial pace of public works construction in the United States, and spoke wistfully of the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge, built in five and four years, respectively.

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Trump no like books! TRUMP SMASH! More...

Could U.S. infrastructure be built more quickly? Yes. Is 10,000 pages too many pages for an 18-mile highway? Yes. And yet, according to a Congressional Research Service review of the subject, environmental reports prompted by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are mostly a scapegoat. Causes of delay, the CRS reports, "are more often tied to local/state and project-specific factors, primarily local/state agency priorities, project funding levels, local opposition to a project, project complexity, or late changes in project scope.And while phony environmental concerns are used as a pretext to forestall growth of all kinds, the bias in highways is definitively towards building.

But hey, the trade-offs involved in expediting the construction of public works are difficult. And dropping binders on the floor is easy. And fun.

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Watch Donald Trump Throw Binders Full of Highway Environmental Reviews on the Floor - Slate Magazine (blog)

Like many of Trump's tweets, this one immediately came to dominate the political conversation. Did he actually have a secret recording system in the White House? If not, why say it?

And, like many of Trump's tweets, it produced a chain reaction of events that backfired on Trump. The threat -- I guess that's the best way to describe what Trump did -- of the existence of recordings spurred Comey to pass along memos he had written detailing his conversations with Trump to a friend, with the express goal of them being leaked and, hopefully, triggering a special counsel to be appointed.

But, now, there's even more to the Trump tweet on "tapes" of his Comey conversations. Why? Because we have Comey and Trump saying absolutely contradictory things about the nature of those meetings and phone calls.

The easiest way to make this something other than a "he said, he said" situation is for Trump to authorize the release of any and all recorded conversations with Comey -- if, of course, they exist.

"Lordy, I hope there are tapes," Comey said in his testimony before the Senate intelligence committee Thursday. At another point, he added: "The President surely knows if there are tapes. If there are, my feelings aren't hurt. Release the tapes."

All of which makes the White House response to the question of whether a recording system exists all the more troubling. Asked Thursday about the possibility, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she had "no idea" if there was a taping system in the White House. When a reporter questioned whether Sanders could find out the answer to that question, she joked: "Sure, I'll try to look under the couches."

That response is broadly consistent with how the White House has played this story since Trump's initial tweet. "The President has nothing further to add on that," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said about the possibility of a taping system in the immediate aftermath of Trump's tweet.

And Trump himself hasn't shed any more light on the tweet, either.

Given Comey's testimony -- under oath -- that stone-walling strategy is no longer sustainable. At least one person in the White House -- HINT: His initial are DJT -- knows whether or not the President has been secretly taping phone calls and meetings.

If such tapes exist, they need to be heard by both the congressional committees looking into Russia's meddling into the 2016 election and by Mueller's investigators. They are the one thing that could provide definitive evidence of whether Trump or Comey is telling the truth about their interactions.

If the tapes don't exist, we need to know that, too.

Past is usually prologue. If so, Trump and his senior staff will bunker down on the issue -- simply refusing to say anything either way about the existence of a recording system. At which point the ball will be in the hands of Congress and Mueller to get the tapes -- if any tapes actually exist.

The Trump tweet on "tapes" is now a central part of the investigation into what exactly happened between he and Comey. And that's not going to change until we get a clear answer on whether they actually exist -- and, if they do, what's on them.

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So is Donald Trump secretly recording conversations or not? - CNN

Typically in these sorts of joint pressers, the American media gets two questions and the foreign press gets two questions. But I've got a lot more than just two questions that Trump really needs to answer.

Below are the 9 questions Trump could -- and should -- be asked this afternoon.

1. "Did you record anything? Are there tapes?"

Given that he and Comey, who was under oath, are now painting very different pictures of their interactions, Trump simply refusing to answer questions about a secret taping system isn't really an option.

2. "Do you regret that May 12 'tapes' tweet? Or any tweet you have sent?"

3. "Do you have confidence in Attorney General Jeff Sessions?"

4. "Do you believe in global warming?"

5. "You responded 'no' when asked if you asked Comey to end the Flynn investigation. Did you say you 'hoped' he could end it? And is there a difference?"

The Trump White House -- and Republican elected officials who continue, generally speaking, to stand by the President -- are pinning a whole lot on the fact that Trump said he "hoped" Comey would find a way to end the investigation into the former national security adviser. Here's Idaho Sen. Jim Risch making that point in his questioning of Comey on Thursday: "(Trump) said, I hope ... Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or, for that matter, any other criminal offense, where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome?" Comey responded that regardless of the words Trump used that it was clear his intention was to ask for the investigation to be closed. Why doesn't Trump agree?

6. "British Prime Minister Theresa May has been one of your staunchest foreign defenders. In the final days of the UK election, you became an issue for her due to your comments about the London attacks. What message do you take from May's setback?"

7. "When you praised Saudi Arabia for severing all ties to Qatar due to allegations that the country finances terrorism, were you aware that Qatar also houses the largest US base in the region?

8. "Speaker Paul Ryan defended your meetings with Comey by saying, 'he's new to this.' Is Speaker Ryan accurate in that assessment?"

9. "You and your attorney, Marc Kasowitz, said that Comey falsely testified under oath about his conversations with you. Will you testify under oath about your conversations with Mr Comey?"

It's one thing to accuse someone else of lying. It's another to accuse them of lying under oath, which is what Trump and Kasowitz have done. Lying under oath means you could wind up in jail. Remember, too, that Trump and Comey are not playing by the same rules. Comey has testified under oath about his meetings and interactions with Trump. Trump has not done the same in regards those same meetings.

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9 questions Donald Trump needs to answer at today's news conference - CNN

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn hasnt minced words when it comes to his views of President Donald Trump and his policies. | Getty

With U.K. election results showing a rocky road ahead for Prime Minister Theresa May, President Donald Trump may soon have to forge a closer relationship with a British politician who has repeatedly criticized him: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

An election exit poll Thursday night, released as polls closed, projected that May would lose her majority in parliament. Final results are expected Friday morning.

Story Continued Below

The hard-left Labour leader hasnt minced words when it comes to his views of the president and his policies. Here are five not-so-nice things Corbyn has said about Trump:

1. An "erratic" administration

While campaigning last month, Corbyn said this of the months-old Trump administration: The U.S. is the strongest military power on the planet by a very long way. It has a special responsibility to use its power with care and to support international efforts to resolve conflicts with care and to support international efforts to resolve conflicts collectively and peacefully. Waiting to see which way the wind blows in Washington isnt strong leadership. And pandering to an erratic Trump administration will not deliver stability.

2. Fake anti-elitism

Not long after the 2016 election was settled, Corbyn jabbed both UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Trump as rich, white men who practiced fake anti-elitism. The fake anti-elitism of rich, white men, like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, is farcical at one level but in reality its no joke at all, Corbyn said in a speech in November.

3. Neither the grace nor the sense to grasp communities' response to terror

Breaking his silence on last weeks London terror attacks that killed seven and injured dozens more, Corbyn both criticized Mays policies and Trumps Twitter response.

At this time it is more important than ever that we stay united in our communities. It is the strength of our communities that gets us through these awful times as London Mayor Sadiq Khan recognized, but which the current occupant in the White House has neither the grace nor the sense to grasp, Corbyn said.

4. Sorry, mate, youre wrong

Corbyn said if he were prime minister, his message to Trump on climate change would be simple: "youre wrong," BuzzFeed reported. Speaking at an election rally, Corbyn said: A Labour government wouldnt hesitate to ring up and write to Donald Trump to say, 'Sorry, mate, youre wrong stand by the Paris agreement.'"

5. Donald Trump should not be coming to the U.K.

In February, Corbyn said Donald Trump should not be coming to the U.K. Citing the presidents plan to build a wall along the U.S. southern border, among other things, Corbyn said Britains government should be challenging Trump on international law issues and we should also not be rolling the red carpet out. Trump is reportedly visiting the U.K. later this year.

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5 times UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn slammed Donald Trump - Politico

Rep. Elijah Cummings walks past a photograph of President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on May 17 in Washington, D.C.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Confronted by the glare of Thursdays dazzling Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, we all focused on the bright shiny object that was and is former FBI Director James Comey. His dramatic testimony struck more than one observer as part recitation, part theatrical performance. In todays political discourse, good television counts almost as much as good substance, all but guaranteeing Comeys eclipse of everything else in the Washington universe.

However, for all of the revelations in Thursdays hearing, it failed to shine light on the most important set of questions relating to Russian activities and the extent to which Russia has degraded U.S. national security through its espionage, influence, and cyberwarfare campaigns over the past two years. Even while Comey performed before the Senate, Russias schemes continued to unfold, undermining U.S. national security in myriad ways and places around the world. It may be the case that Trump lied; it may even be the case that he criminally obstructed justice and should be impeached. And yet we cannot let those important political questions consume all our attention, lest Russia do more harm while we are distracted.

Laffaire Russe began during the 2016 election campaign with investigations into alleged ties between Trump campaign officials, Ukraine separatists, and potentially the Russian government. These investigations focused on former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and policy adviser Carter Page, as well as their commercial affiliates.

Any one of these encounters would raise serious questions about the intent of the meeting, and its outcomes, whether a private deal or foreign policy quid pro quo.

Since then, we have learned of a series of high-level meetings between close Trump associates and the Russian government. Attorney General Jeff Sessions reportedly met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on three separate occasions during the campaign and transition. Deposed Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn met and talked repeatedly with senior Russian officials and also worked for myriad foreign interests during the campaign, actions that have now put him in considerable legal jeopardy. Trump aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner also met with senior Russian officials during this period, as well as prominent Russian bankers connected to Vladimir Putin and known for being agents of Russian influence abroad. Kushner reportedly went a step further, seeking to hide these communications at the time from U.S. intelligence agencies by asking to use Russian diplomatic facilities and secure communications channels. Of course, on the day after firing Comey, Trump met personally with Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office, reportedly revealing highly classified intelligence to the Russians regarding ISIS and the situation in Syria.

Any one of these encounters would raise serious questions about the intent of the meeting, and its outcomes, whether a private deal or foreign policy quid pro quo. Together, they signal something much more significant: a deliberate change of U.S. policy toward Russia, with these meetings serving as public acts of consummation for the new relationship between the two countries.

Judging by Russias string of foreign policy triumphs since last November, Putin appears to have the upper hand in his new relationship with Trump and the U.S. Since the election, Trump feuded with his own security agencies, which he and his advisers alternately accused of acting as a deep state to oppose Trumps agenda and orchestrating leaks to humiliate and undermine Trump personally. Trumps ill-considered wordsincluding his obstinate refusal to affirm Americas commitment to collective self-defenseand amateurish diplomacy have sprained the NATO alliance, with the possibly of a fracture growing by the day. White House discussions of Afghanistan, Syria, and other national security subjects have stalled as Trump has been consumed by other priorities, including responding to self-inflicted crises like the Comey firing. Trumps nine-day foreign trip made for a few good television moments like his sword dance in Saudi Arabiabut appears to have left a trail of wreckage, including a massive dispute between the Gulf states and statements by European leaders and erstwhile allies that they could no longer rely on the U.S. and must instead fight for our own future and our fate ourselves as Europeans. And, in perhaps the most clear quid pro quos reported yet, Trump officials allegedly pushed in the earliest days of his administration to roll back sanctions on Russiasanctions imposed over the Russian intervention in Ukraine and Russias meddling in the 2016 election.

No one of these triumphs resulted directly from Putin pushing a button and having Trump act. They reflect a more subtle success, borne of Russian influence upstream in the Washington ecosystem. Russian intelligence agencies successfully interfered with and influenced the U.S. election, according to a consensus position of the U.S. intelligence community. By subtly influencing the election outcome, cultivating relationships with top Trump officials, and creating distrust of core U.S. national security institutions like the CIAincluding among the president himselfRussia set in motion a complex chain reaction that is now paying off for the Russian regime. Whether they actively colluded with the Trump campaign or not, the Russians got what they wanted: a president who was more friendly to their interests, and more pliable in their hands too.

Leaders have used spectacle for centuries to entertain and distract their people. As a reality television star who used spectacle to rebrand himself and seize the presidency, Trump understands that power. Trump wins by refocusing public attention on Comey and his status as a leaker and reframing laffaire Russe as laffaire Comey. This public relations campaign against Comey may be shortsighted if and when the president comes under legal scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller. But for now, every day the media cycle churns over Comeys leaks is a day the public debate isnt focusing on Trumps substantive actionsor failuresat home and abroad. This provides the cover Trump needs to continue his deconstruction of the administrative state and the darkness he needs to avoid scrutiny for his blunders too.

Top Comment

I think it's time to admit Reagan didn't win the Cold War. The autocratic dictator-for-life of Russia is a former KGB agent. Our one arguable win? We changed their economic system from a Communist-ish kleptocracy to a Capitalist-ish kleptocracy. Yah! More...

Trumps responseand the response of his longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitzillustrates how well Trump is playing this drama for his advantage. As the special counsels inquiry unfolds and reaches into the White House, touching close associates and family members, Trump understands the risk. As his agenda stalls, approval ratings sink, and his administration swirls in turmoil, Trump must know by this point he needs to act lest his presidency sink into the swamp. Although the possibility of impeachment for obstruction of justice looms, Trump appears to discount this threat. He probably doesnt believe Speaker Paul Ryan would bring impeachment proceedings, let alone that Republicans would actually vote to remove him from office. And so a spectacle over alleged obstruction of justiceincluding direct comparisons of Trumps word with that of Comeyis preferable to a spectacle over Trumps myriad policy and governance failures. Just as he did on the campaign, quite successfully, Trump is using spectacle to distract the masses and divert attention from substance.

For members of Congress, and the rest of us, the only way to win is not to play Trumps game; to remain focused on the broader threats posed to U.S. national security, rather than the narrow, petty political intrigues peddled by Trump and his henchmen. If Comey is telling an accurate story, then Trump likely acted to obstruct a Justice Department criminal investigation into Michael Flynn and possibly a broader inquiry into the Trump administrations Russia ties too. That in and of itself is a huge matter. But it is dwarfed by the national security significance of the Russia ties themselves and the broader damage caused so far by the Russian government and its proxies. We cannot afford the luxury of being entertained by Trumps spectacle while our national security crumbles in the background.

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The Real Scandal Is Still Russia - Slate Magazine

Even before former FBI Director James Comey accused President Donald Trump of lying during his testimonybefore the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday,one prominent Republican had already come forward that he doubted Trumps fitness to be president.

That man was Karl Rove, the former top adviser to President George W. Bush.

On Wednesday, Rove wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal,arguing that Trump may have mastered the modes of communication, but not the substance, thereby sabotaging his own agenda. The former GOP wunderkindclaims that Trump lacks the focus or self-discipline to do the basic work required of a president and argued that his chronic impulsiveness is apparently unstoppable and clearly self-defeating. He specifically cited Trumps tweets about his proposed travel ban against six Muslim-majority countries, observing how the presidents use of the phrase travel ban undermined his legal case. He added that various self-contradicting tweets suggests the president is disregarding basic fact checking and exacerbates the already considerable doubts Americans have about his competence and trustworthiness.

Rove also denounced Trumps language when pulling America out of the Paris climate accord, saying that instead of questioning the motives of international partners he should have instead heralded Americas success in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

While Roves editorial occurred before the Comey testimony, it touched on themes that were remarkably similar to those broached by another right-wing pundit, Erick Erickson, in his analysis of that eventafter it happened.

Although Erickson opens by saying that he doesnt believe Donald Trump obstructed justice, he added that we . . .know President Trump lies regularly.

As a result, when it comes to the question of whether Trump is lying about asking Comey to shut down the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Erickson wrote he believedthat the public will latch on to Comey as the honest broker because Comey was willing to criticize both Democrats and Republicans. As Erickson concluded, the president only won because he convinced 70,000 people in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan that he was not as bad as Clinton, Erickson is concerned that if there are at least 70,001 voters who will take Comeys word over Trumps, the Republican Party will be in big trouble.

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Karl Rove, Erick Erickson slam Donald Trump - Salon

WASHINGTON FBI Director James Comey's Senate testimony Thursday certainly lived up to the hype.

The ousted FBI Director flatly accused President Donald Trump of firing him after he refused to drop an investigation that put too much pressure on the White House, and then lying about it and defaming the FBI.

But did Trump's actions break the law?

"I don't know. That's Bob Mueller's job to sort that out," Comey told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, referring to the special counsel recently appointed to look into Russia's meddling in last year's election and its potential ties to Trump's campaign.

Legal experts are divided. While many agree that Comey's testimony suggests Trump acted inappropriately, they point out it would be much harder to prove he acted illegally since obstruction of justice requires proving Trump's intent never an easy task.

And since presidents are charged not in a court of law, but in Congress through the impeachment process, the question may be as much a political one as a legal one.

The stakes are enormous since, as the old Washington adage goes "it's not the crime but the cover-up" that tends to ensnare politicians.

Richard Nixon resigned after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice. And Bill Clinton was successfully impeached for obstruction (along with a second count for perjury), even though an independent criminal investigation later declined to bring any charges against him for the underlying scandals around Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky.

Comey, who knows Mueller well and earlier sought his approval on what he could say publicly during Thursday's congressional hearing, suggested his fellow former FBI director is already investigating whether Trump obstructed justice.

"I'm sure the special counsel will work towards to try to understand what the intention was there and whether that's an offense," Comey said during the hearing.

Related: James Comey, Donald Trump and the Russia Investigation: A Timeline of Events

But Joyce Vance, who was the Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama until earlier this year, called Trump's actions "possibly lawful, but awful."

"His conduct indicates clearly here that he believes that he is above the law," she said. "You can't imagine Obama or Bush or any other president in our lifetime making these kind of requests directly to the attorney general, let alone the director of the FBI."

But are his actions obstruction?

"Maybe they're obstruction, maybe they're not technically illegal, maybe they're just completely inappropriate," she said.

John Lauro, who has been on both sides of obstruction cases as a former federal prosecutor that now runs a white collar criminal defense firm, was more definitive.

"Without a doubt in mind, it's not obstruction of justice," he said. "This doesn't even come within the zone of what obstruction is."

Legally, obstruction charges hinge on proving a person acted with "corrupt intent" to prevent the government from learning something.

"It's a very very high bar," Lauro said of proving someone's intentions. "It's a very very difficult statue to get convictions on."

Related: James Comey Testimony: Here Are 9 Key Moments from the Hearing

But Jens David Ohlin, a professor and dean at Cornell Law School, said the bar is completely different in this case, because it's set by Congress, not by the courts

"Would he be convicted? I don't know, but that's not the right question to be asking. He's not going to get prosecuted," Ohlin said. "The more relevant question is, is this the type of obstruction of justice which is so corrupt that the House should take the extraordinary measure of impeaching the president, and for the Senate to convict him and remove him from power?"

"It sounds like this is a person who is using his authority to stop an investigation," Ohlin added.

Many Democrats have already accused Trump of obstructing justice in firing Comey, but Republicans have, who control both chambers of Congress, have not.

Trump's defenders were quick to note that, according to Comey, Trump never ordered him to stop his investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, but simply said he hoped it would be resolved favorably.

Comey testified that he took that to be a direction from his superior, but Trump's camp has and will dispute both Comey's recollection and interpretation.

"Mr. Comey's testimony also makes clear that the President never sought to impede the investigation into attempted Russian interference in the 2016 election," Marc Kasowitz, the president's longtime lawyer who is now representing him this matter, told reporters on Thursday. "Consistent with that statement, the President never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone."

Meanwhile, Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie say, essentially, that as a former businessman with no government experience, Trump can't have acted with improper intent because he didn't know any better.

While ignorance is not often a successful defense, it could be here, according to Michael Wildes, a self-professed "very proud Democrat" who served as both a federal prosecutor and mayor in New Jersey.

"Trump is not a career politician," Wildes said. "It represents a naivete."

David Shapiro, a former FBI special agent who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, agreed.

"The case may be significantly weaker than I expected," Shapiro said after reviewing Comey's prepared testimony made public on Wednesday.

Former FBI Director James Comey speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Thursday, June 8, 2017, in Washington. Andrew Harnik / AP

But Joshua Dressler, the Frank R. Strong Chair in Law at Ohio State University, thinks the facts around Comey's firing present a compelling circumstantial case against Trump.

"Put those dots together and you have a perfectly reasonable interpretation is that that was done with the corrupt intent to obstruct justice," he said. "There is now what you would call a prima facie case enough evidence that a judge would say that a reasonable jury could convict this person of obstruction of justice."

Dressler moved in the opposition direction of Shapiro. A few weeks ago, he was skeptical, but said, "Today's testimony strengthened my feelings that in fact this may have constituted legally speaking obstruction of justice."

Related:

Steve Ryan, who once directed federal investigations against the mafia and served as general counsel to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, guessed Mueller would not move ahead with charges even though the case "certainly has a Limburger smell about it."

But he said Comey's testimony raises other serious questions, like who else did Trump demand loyalty from?

"I can't imagine that that question won't be asked of any Department of Justice nominee that comes forward. You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not have that question on the FAQ," he said.

And as Wildes said, there is still a long way to go.

"This is only the investigation of the investigation," he said. "It's only the beginning."

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Experts: Trump's Comey Firing 'Possibly Lawful, But Awful' - NBCNews.com

The last time Trump sent out a tweet was 8:17 a.m. on Wednesday. It said this: "Getting ready to leave for Cincinnati, in the GREAT STATE of OHIO, to meet with ObamaCare victims and talk Healthcare & also Infrastructure!" Between that moment and the time of this posting, roughly 37 hours have passed. That, according to calculations made by the one and only Philip Bump of the Washington Post, is the fifth-longest Twitter outage for Trump since he announced his candidacy in June 2015. To pass the fourth longest drought, Trump will need to stay away from Twitter for 2,312 minutes -- 38 total hours, or until 10:17 p.m. Thursday -- which looks doable. To break his all-time longest tweet drought, according to Bump, Trump would need to not tweet until 6:14 a.m. tomorrow.

What's fascinating about the past droughts is that they almost always have corresponded with slow news moments. Trump's longest break from Twitter, for example, came over the 2016 Thanksgiving Day weekend -- soon after he had been elected. The second longest was earlier that same month, the weekend after the election when Trump was, almost certainly, worn down from the just-concluded campaign.

If ever there was a time when you might expect Trump to take phone in hand and offer his own counter-narrative, this past 37 hours was it. And yet, nothing.

Theories abound to explain it.

The most common one is that someone took Trump's phone away, ensuring that he simply lacked the ability to tweet. I doubt it. He's the President of the United States. He's made clear -- in the face of much criticism -- that he isn't going to stop tweeting. I'm not sure anyone is in a position to simply tell the President to stop doing something and have him actually listen.

Or maybe Trump's staff, as they had hoped to do, successfully distracted the President over these past 37 hours -- keeping him from thinking too much, and therefore tweeting too much about the situation. But how is that even possible given that we know Trump is an absolutely avid news consumer and there has been so much (and so much bad) Trump news over that period of time?

The short answer is we don't know why Trump hasn't tweeted since 8:17 a.m. Wednesday. But with every passing minute of Trump Twitter silence, he edges closer to his own personal best (worst?).

One other thing we know: Silence isn't Trump's natural state. So when the drought breaks -- and it will break -- look out.

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Donald Trump hasn't tweeted in a very long time - CNN

New York Times

Donald Trump Wrote a Cookbook New York Times The Kanamits are the space aliens who come to Earth in an old Twilight Zone episode. We ask only that you trust us, only that you simply trust us, the benevolent-seeming Kanamit emissary tells United Nations delegates while promising to foster the ...

Excerpt from:

Donald Trump Wrote a Cookbook - New York Times

During his recent announcementaboutthe United Stateswithdrawalfromthe Paris climate agreement which makes our nation the third in the world to not be part of the accord, along with Syria and Nicaragua President Donald Trump repeatedly insistedthathis decision had to do with simple fairness. It was the same kind of sentiment that he frequently conveyed during his presidential campaign: The rest of the world has been disrespecting, mistreating and, worst of all, laughing atus for years.

At what point does America get demeaned? asked the president. At what point do they start laughing at us as a country? We want fair treatment for its citizens and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers. We dont want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they wont be.

Like candidate Trump, President Trump seems to hearsnickering voicesin his head (presumablyforeign, non-English voices) and believes they are laughing at him and his country. In Trumps paranoid mind, every nation on the planethastaken advantage of America in one way or another, and the Paris agreement is just the latest example of this abuse.Ironically, the insecure man who constantlydemands respect from the rest of the worldis actually in the process of driving his countrys reputation into the ground, and the Paris exit is simply the latestembarrassment.

It is often said it is easier to destroy than to create, and over the past months Donald Trump has proven this maxim correct when it comesto governing. Trumps presidency has been like a violent wreckingball demolishing everything in sight. And nothing has been more grievously damaged by Trump than the United States credibility in the world. Americas global image has collapsed in record time, and with the presidents decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, the most powerful country in the world is well on its way to becoming an international pariah. As the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson,declared,The U.S. reneging on its commitment to the Paris Agreement renders it a rogue state on the international stage.

As Americas standing in the world crumbles, many people will no doubt recall how Republican politicians regularly claimed during the previous administration that the country was no longer respected under the leadership of President Barack Obama. As with mostRepublican positions,this was flat-out delusional, and polling revealedthat the countrys global image steadily improved under Obama after having fallen to historic lows during George W. Bushs presidency.

One of the most vocal proponents of this fallacious line of attack was, of course, a conspiracy theorist named Donald Trump, who was convinced that everyone was laughing at his country because it had twice elected a Muslim foreigner as president. Today that unhinged man-child is making the world feel somewhat nostalgic for George W. Bushs America. According to Pew Research Center, countries around the world have almost no confidence in Trump(compared to theirhigh confidence in Obama), and the freshman presidenthas turnedthe U.S. intoalaughingstockthat can no longer be trusted by its allies, asGermanys Chancellor Angela Merkelindicatedlast week.

Of course, President Trump continues to maintain that he is restoring the countrys status in the world after the U.S. has been mistreated (and laughed at!) for so many years. For example, he claimed in his exit speech that the Paris agreement gives other countries an economic edge over the United States and handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our countrys expense. Not only that, continued Trump, but the nations that are asking America to stay in the agreement (that is, the rest of the world) are countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and in many cases lax contributions to our critical military alliance. Like most of his speeches, this one was full of falsehoodsand exaggerations, and the president cited industry-funded studies and misinterpreted other onesto make his harebrained case.

The great irony of Trumps begrudging speech (and his parochial worldview in general) is that America has long been the worlds leading imperialist force. If any country qualifies as a bully that has treated other nations unfairly over the past halfa century, it is the United States. This is evidencedby the many overseas coupsthat have been orchestrated by the U.S. government,often to serve the interests of American business,withthe classic case involvingthe United Fruit Company and Guatemala. The majority of Americans have not benefited personally from U.S. foreign policy; it has been themultinational corporations and the power elite, as C. Wright Millsonce called the countrys political and corporate establishments, that have benefited from such interventions.

Consider Americas economy, which Trump claims has been losing for decades because other countries have treated us horribly, stealing our jobs and thenlaughing at us to add insult to injury. This view is so facile and childishit seemsunworthy of comment. But, alas, it is espoused bya very powerful man. Itgoes without sayingthat American workers have suffered over the past 40 years due to numerous factors, including globalization andcorporatetrade deals; that doesnt mean the United Stateshas been losing to other countries. In fact, American businesses have done exceedingly well over the past three decades, as havethe top 1 percent of earners. Only working- and middle-class Americans have been losing in any real sense of the word and not because foreign governments are so cunning and inconsiderate but because of our capitalist economy.

In addition to arguing that the Paris agreement is designed to hurt Americaseconomy, Trump bitterly complained that it was unfair to the U.S. ascompared withthe fate of less-developed countries like China and India. China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years, said the president, claiming that the Chinese will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. The president then declared that the agreement doesnt eliminate coal jobs; it just transfers those jobs out of America . . .and ships them to foreign countries. This, in typical Trumpian fashion, is extremely misleading. China isactuallyin the process of canceling projects to build coal plants, and its coal consumption has declined since 2013, but such pesky facts are unwelcome in Trumps reactionary, zero-sum worldview.

Once again, the irony here is that America has contributed more than any other country in the worldto climate change and is responsible for nearly a third of the excess carbon that has built up in the atmosphere.In cumulative terms, we certainly own this problem more than anybody else does, saidclimate scholar David G. Victor to The New York Times. Furthermore, Americas per capita carbon emission is more than double that of China (and about eight times that of India).If one were truly interested in fairness, as Trump has claimedto be, thenthe U.S. would be doing much more than it agreed to in the Paris accords.

Withdrawing from the Paris agreement not only erodes Americas credibility and standing in the world, but is an importantstep toward dooming the planet or more accurately dooming the human species. It is somewhat fitting that the United States, under the leadership ofa vulgar and self-absorbedman who epitomizes the ugly American, may end up ensuring the collapse of human civilization. During the election campaign, many speculated that the narcissistic Trump was running for president because he had realized in old age that he would quickly be forgotten after he died. Whether that was true,Trumpwill doubtless be remembered now as the man who signaled the end of the American epoch and perhaps the human era as well.

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Donald Trump is destroying America's standing in the world and may end up destroying the world - Salon

Abipartisan group of senators has introduceda bill that would guarantee Americans the right to travel to Cuba.

Eric, 3, waves the V sign while posing in front of the Cuban and United States flags in Havana, Cuba, March 25, 2016. (Reuters / Ueslei Marcelino)

In late May, the conservative media outlet The Daily Caller reported that President Donald Trump was planning to make good on his campaign promise to terminate the Obama administrations opening of engagement with Cuba. Just two and a halfyears after the United States finally took steps to end more than a half-century of hostility and restrictions on trade and travel, President Trump wants us to go backward.

Luckily, theres some momentum pushing back. Lawmakers in Congress recently reintroduced the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act (Senate Bill 1287). The bipartisan bill now has 55 cosponsors and would guarantee Americans the right to travel to Cuba.

We need to expand, not contract, our engagement with Cuba. As Peter Kornbluh reported at The Nation, the economic impact of increased restrictions on travel would be dramatic: He cites a study that says the travel industry alone could lose $3.5 billion and over 10,000 jobs. And the damage goes far beyond that, as Kornbluh writes:

Trump is threatening to undermine years of concerted effortinside and outside of governmentto establish a civil, peaceful coexistence with an island neighbor after more than half a century of intervention, embargoes, and assassination plots. At stake is a model of responsible US foreign policyto be emulated, not repudiated.

1. The Nation is partnering with theLatin America Working Group to demand that senators cosponsor the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act. Click here to join us by writing to your senators today.

2. To have an even greater impact, call your senators about the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act. You can reach them at 202-224-3121 or find their direct numbers here. Follow our script below or craft your own message.

SCRIPT: I am calling to urge you to co-sponsor the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act. Currently co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of fifty-five senators, the bill would guarantee Americans the right to travel to Cuba.

Public opinion polls show that 81 percent of Americans support free travel to Cuba. A recent letter to Congress signed by 46 travel agencies stressed the economic benefits of free and increased travel to the country, claiming that it would lead to them hiring more American workers. They also asserted that tightening restrictions on travel, as the Trump administration is threatening to do, would lead to significant layoffs.

I hope that youll make a commitment to co-sponsoring the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act.

3. Read and share Peter Kornbluhs latest at The Nation, Trump Threatens to Rescind Obamas Cuba Engagementand Activists Fight Back. In it, he cites studies on the economic impact of restricting travel to Cuba and lays out the importance of resisting this wrongheaded change. Already read it? Share the article on Facebook or Twitter.

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Tell Your Senators: Don't Let Donald Trump Take Our Cuba Policy Backwards - The Nation.

In BriefAccording to sources, U.S. President Donald Trump has pitchedthe idea of building a wall along the Mexican border using solarpanels, which would generate clean power for the surrounding area.The announcement has proven extremely divisive. Trumps Solar Wall

President Trump has proposed using solar panels in the construction of a wall along the 3,200 kilometer (1,988 miles) border separating Mexico and America a key point in his election campaign. According to three individuals who have direct knowledge of the meeting with Republican leaders, Trump claimed he wanted to cover the wall segments with solar panels so theyd be beautiful structures.

Trump cited the walls economic benefits as well as its environmental ones. Thomas Gleason, managing partner of Gleason Partners LLC, the company that proposed the design, told Business Insider that each solar panel on the wall would produce 2.0MWp per hour of electricity, and, because of this, the wall would pay off the cost of its construction in 20 years through the energy it sells.

The cost of solar panels has decreased rapidly over the last nine years, from around $8 per watt in 2009 to roughly $1.50 per watt in 2016, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, and Gleason believes the cost will continue to diminish over time.

While the bottom of the wall would still be built out of stone, the solar panels situated on the Mexico-facing side would be double tiered, with the upper layer moving to capture maximum sunlight.

Though any wall between Mexico and the United States is likely to still be controversial, one equipped with solar panels would have benefits on both a small and large scale. It would provide those on both sides of the border, which is currently underserved by electricity companies, with greater access to power. On a larger scale, it would contribute to the amount of electricity the U.S. generates from clean energy sources, which would in turn contribute to fighting climate change.

Opinions on the proposal are split.

Wunder Capital CEO Bryan Birsic told Business Insider, While we would prefer a different location and purpose for a large solar installation, we strongly support all additional generation of clean power in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Nezar AlSayyad, a UC Berkeley professor of architecture and planning, told The Guardian that the wall was still indefensible and that trying to embellish it with a technical function or a new utility is a folly. Political theorist Langdon Winner was even more outspoken in his criticism: Im wondering what the solar electricity would be used for? Electrocuting people who try to climb the wall?

Although the wall itself is controversial, any move by the U.S. government to promote solar energy is positive as it would lessen the countrys own carbon footprint and help the world combat climate change.

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Donald Trump Proposes Covering Mexican Border Wall With Solar Panels - Futurism

On Wednesday Voxs Ezra Klein publisheda long pieceabout the current crisis in our government. He wrote that our president lacks legitimacy, our government is paralyzed, our problems are going unsolved. I would say that legitimacy, the first of those issues,is the source of all the others.

Donald Trumps legitimacy problem is not just a matter of losing the popular vote. Other presidents have assumed office after such an outcome. In 1824 John Quincy Adams became president after the election decision was thrown to the House of Representatives. In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes became president after losing the popular vote to Samuel Tilden by more than 250,000 votes although corruption was so rife in that election its fair to say no one will ever know for sure who got the highest tally. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison won 233 electoral votes to Grover Clevelands 168, but lost the national count by about 90,000 votes. It didnt happen again for 112 years when George W. Bush was installed by the Supreme Court after a virtual tie in Florida and a dubious vote count. And then just16 years later, it happened again.

Throughout that last 16 years questions have been raised about our democracy, including the workings of the anachronistic Electoral College, the fact that every locality and state seems to have a different system, andthe way Republicans have systematically disenfranchised voters whom they believe would be likely to vote for their opponents. There has been underlying doubt about the integrity of Americas electoral system simmering for a long time. This year it has come to a boil.

For at least a year weve been aware of social-media propaganda and foreign actors hacking the systems of various arms of the Democratic Party in order to influence the presidential campaign. The experts tell us that the Russian government has directed a number of similar cyber operations around the worldand that this one was their most sophisticated. Evidently, the idea was to sow chaos and undermine Americans already sorely tested faith in our electoral system.

According toa highly detailed investigative reportby Massimo Calabresi of Time, the evidence suggests that Russias President Vladimir Putin had a particular ax to grind against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what he termed a signal she sent in 2011, which he claimed sparked protests against him. The extent to which Putin truly favored Donald Trump is still unknown, and the question of whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government is now the focus of various investigations of Congress and a Justice Department special counsel. The odd behavior of Trumps close associates as well as his obsession with shutting down the investigation certainly raise suspicions. But at this point it is pure speculation to think about what kind of deal might have been made.

This weeks story byThe Intercept,reporting on an National Security Agency document that showed evidence the Russian military had made serious attempts to infiltrate voter information rolls around the country, suggests, however, yet another way the goals of Donald Trump and the Russian government were the same. Former FBI counterterrorism officer and cybersecurity expert Clinton Watts (best known for his quip follow the bodies of dead Russians in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee) raised some additional questions ina piece for the Daily Beast this week.He believes that the main objective of this operation was not to alter the vote count but rather to instill more doubt about the process.

Wattswrote, I noticed a shift in Kremlin messaging last October, when its overt news outlets, conspiratorial partner websites, and covert social-media personas pushed theories of widespread voter fraud and hacking. He cited aReuters articleindicating that a Kremlin-backed think tank report drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. The think tank also advised it would bebetter for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral systems legitimacy and damage Clintons reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency.

Its interesting to note that at the same moment the operation shifted in that direction, Trump himself was relentlessly flogging exactly the same accusation, saying in every rally from October on that Clinton and her campaign had rigged the system in her favor. Over and over againhe would suggestthat the outcome was predetermined:

When the outcome is fixed, when the system is rigged, people lose hope they stop dreaming, they stop trying

He routinely told his followers stories likethis:

One of the reasons Ive been saying that the system is so corrupt and is so rigged, is not only what happens at the voters booth and you know things happen, folks.

He passed alongtweets like this:

Trumpeven made bizarre accusations that Hillary Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta rigged the polls by oversampling and notoriouslyrefused to saywhetherhe would abide by the results if Clinton won. It was obvious that Donald Trump was planning to challenge her legitimacy.

In fact, Trump did more to create mistrust and doubt in the U.S. electoral system than the Russian governments highly developed hacking and misinformation campaign. Whether they were working together is still unknown but they were definitely rowing in the same direction. As much as the president likes to whine and complain about the Democrats being sore losers, the irony is that Trump himself played the greatest role in undermining the legitimacy of his win.

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Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton and the true cause of Donald Trump's legitimacy crisis his own actions - Salon

The testimony, which Comey is set to deliver Thursday in one of the most highly-anticipated Congressional hearing in decades, reads like a point-by-point dismissal of Trump's version of events -- casting Comey as wary from the get-go of a chief executive who seemed to presume too much and know too little.

In the wake of their first interaction, ever, on January 6, Comey decided that it was necessary to have written documentation of any time he spent with Trump.

"I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-Elect in a memo. To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting. Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward. This had not been my practice in the past. I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone) -- once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016. In neither of those circumstances did I memorialize the discussions. I can recall nine one-on-one conversations with President Trump in four months -- three in person and six on the phone."

It only gets worse from there for Trump in Comey's opening statement.

Comey says that he was surprised to learn that a dinner invitation extended to him by Trump on Jan. 27 was for just the two of them ("It turned out to be just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the center of the Green Room," Comey writes. "Two Navy stewards waited on us, only entering the room to serve food and drinks.") and that the goal of the meeting was "an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship."

Twice in that meeting Trump, recounted Comey, made a direct request for loyalty from the FBI director. "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty," Trump told Comey. Later, he returned to the subject. Here's Comey's recollection:

"He then said, 'I need loyalty.' I replied, 'You will always get honesty from me.' He paused and then said, 'That's what I want, honest loyalty.' I paused, and then said, 'You will get that from me.'"

Comey also confirmed in his written testimony that Trump directly asked him to "let go" of the investigation into deposed national security adviser Michael Flynn. Quoting Trump, Comey writes of the Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office: "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."

I mean. Holy crap.

Then there is this, from Comey's after-action report of that meeting: "I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December."

While Comey noted that he did not believe Trump was asking for the entire Russia investigation to disappear, that the sitting FBI director did believe the sitting president was asking to have a federal investigation of any sort dropped is, well, stunning.

In their final conversation -- a phone call from Trump to Comey on April 11 -- the president again sought to secure Comey's loyalty, according to the former FBI Director's re-telling.

After Comey tells Trump that he should contact the deputy Attorney General's office in regards to his repeated request to "get out" the news that he was not a target of the federal investigation, here's how Comey remembers the president's response:

"He said he would do that and added, 'Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.' I did not reply or ask him what he meant by 'that thing.' I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House Counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. He said that was what he would do and the call ended."

"We had that thing you know."

If there is a single sentence that will become the symbol of Comey's testimony -- or even of Trump's broader interactions with the FBI director -- it's that. Trump trying to establish some rapport or, really, some sense of "you owe me" while Comey stares blankly.

The broader picture presented by Comey's testimony is deeply damaging to Trump.

That Trump and Comey had nine one-on-one conversations in the space of just over three months -- as opposed to the two one-on-one chats Comey had with Obama in eight years -- is hugely telling. And, in those conversations Trump is repeatedly cast as attempting to secure Comey's loyalty -- and, at times, suggesting his job depends on it. (FBI directors are appointed for 10 year terms but, as we know, can be fired at any time by a president.) That he asks for Comey to end the probe into Flynn is, at minimum a massive breach of protocol.

Trump and his allies will work to dismiss Comey's testimony -- and his answers in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee tomorrow -- as, at best, a "he said, he said" situation and, at worst, "fake news."

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James Comey just went nuclear on Donald Trump - CNN International