Category Archives: Donald Trump

Steven Bannon said on Sunday morning that he believes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is "winning" the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump and "will impeach the president."

Bannon, who previously served as a top strategist and senior counselor for the president, made the remarks during an interview with radio talk show host and billionaire John Catsimatidis on The Answer in New York. The Trump official, who co-founded the alt-right website Breitbart News, went on the show to promote his news podcast called War Room: Impeachment, which intends to defend the president.

Pelosi, the top Democrat in Washington, "will impeach the president of the United States on two counts: one, abuse of power, the other obstruction of power," Bannon told Catsimatidis. He classified her impeachment inquiry as the "most sophisticated political warfare" and "the most sophisticated political disinformation campaign."

"They're winning right now," the former White House strategist asserted. He said his podcast was set up to provide the American public with "the facts and the details of the witnesses, the testimony, the legal arguments." Bannon argued that he would defend Trump until he was "acquitted."

Democrats launched the fast-moving impeachment inquiry against Trump at the end of September after an anonymous government whistleblower raised concerns that the president was abusing his office to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations in an effort to damage his political rivals. It was also alleged that the president temporarily withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine as part of the pressure campaign. Bill Taylor, the current top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, have both confirmed to investigators that the aid was withheld to pressure the leaders of the Eastern European nation to open the probes.

The military aid to Ukraine was approved by Congress with bipartisan support, and several prominent Republicans have raised serious concerns about the president's actions. However, Trump and his supporters have argued that the impeachment inquiry is purely "partisan." Bannon told Catsimatidis that Trump's goal right now should be to pressure all Republicans to vote against impeachment, so the entire investigation will be viewed as merely political.

Numerous polls have shown that the majority of Americans support the impeachment inquiry against Trump. However, the support is divided along party lines, with the vast majority of Democrats approving of the congressional probe, while the majority of Republicans disapprove.

Bannon departed from the Trump administration in August of 2017 following the violent Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville. The event brought together neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right, many of whom felt emboldened by Trump's victory. A counter demonstrator was killed during the protests, but Trump insisted there were "very fine people" on both sides. Bannon had reportedly encouraged the president to spread blame for the violence, instead of specifically condemning the white nationalists.

Despite Bannon's departure from the White House, he has continued to be a supporter of the president. Trump has also reportedly stayed in contact with the alt-right figure.

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Steve Bannon Says Nancy Pelosi Is 'Winning' And 'Will Impeach' Donald Trump - Newsweek

President Donald Trump claimed that the Saturday killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by US forces was more significant than the US assassination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden under former President Barack Obama during a Sunday morning press conference.

"This is the biggest there is. This is the worst ever," Trump said. "Osama bin Laden was very big, but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center. This is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, a country, a caliphate, and was trying to do it again."

US forces killed bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in a 2011 raid in Pakistan under Obama's watch.

And Trump again falsely claimed that he "predicted" the threat Bin Laden posed to the US before 9/11 in his 2000 book, "The America We Deserve." He suggested to reporters on Sunday that if the US government had "listened to me," 9/11 wouldn't have happened.

"I wrote a book, a really very successful book, I said, there is somebody named Osama Bin Laden, you better kill him or take him out, something to that effect, he's big trouble," the president said on Sunday morning. "And I'm saying to people, take out Osama bin Laden, that nobody ever heard of ... nobody listened to me ... let's put it this way, if they'd listened to me, a lot of things would've been different."

The president also tweeted that false claim last November.

"Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center," the president tweeted on November 19, 2018. "President Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!"

And on the campaign trail in 2015, Trump also falsely claimed that he urged the US government to "take him out, referring to Bin Laden, before he "crawl[s] under a rock."

In fact, Trump made just one passing reference to Bin Laden in his book, which was more than 300 pages long. At the time, Bin Laden was well-known as one of the world's most dangerous terrorists and, as Trump wrote, had been pursued by US forces.

"One day we're all assured that Iraq is under control, the U.N. inspectors have done their work, everything's fine, not to worry. The next day the bombing begins," Trump wrote. "One day we're told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jet fighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it's on to a new enemy and new crisis."

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Trump claims the killing of ISIS leader al-Baghdadi is more significant than Osama bin Laden's assassination - Business Insider

President Donald Trump seems to have recently switched to an iPhone without a home button, and he doesnt seem to like it very much. So much so that he decided to casually subtweet Apple CEO Tim Cook with a bit of light tech commentary.

We cant tell if Trump recently upgraded to the iPhone XS, iPhone XR, or one of the iPhone 11 variants. But all the top-of-the-line Apple smartphones since last year have ditched the home button last seen on the iPhone 8 for the edge-to-edge design first introduced with the iPhone X in 2017.

We learned in March 2017 Donald Trump switched from Android to iPhone, but we didnt know which iPhone he switched to. It definitely had a home button, since the iPhone X wasnt out at that time.

Perhaps Trump will be first in line for the rumored iPhone SE 2, which will reportedly look like an iPhone 8. That means itll have the home button Trump sorely misses.

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Donald Trump wants the iPhone home button back - The Verge

Alan Jacobs: What a clash between conservatives reveals

While that may be true for some, it neglects a little-known but long-standing constitutional argument for an all-powerful, redemptive executive, one rooted in fundamental law and high principle, and one that has underwritten the thinking rights steadfast support of this president. This argument long predates the rise of this real-estate developer turned politician, and its origins lie not within the nations premier law schools or the Federalist Society, but in the pages of major mid-century conservative publications such as Triumph and Modern Age; on radio and television programs such as Fulton J. Sheens Life Is Worth Living; in books; and in academiaand, crucially, within the philosophy and political-science departments, not the law schools.

In these places, students of the Jewish German migr philosopher political philosopher Leo Straussin particular, the Claremont McKenna political scientist Harry V. Jaffaand a diverse array of Christian thinkers insisted, often in high, prophetic dudgeon, that the ultimate foundation of the U.S. Constitution was not structural, institutional, or procedural, as other conservatives were arguing at the time, but moral. To them, the Constitutions foundational principles were to be found not in the shallow, democratic soil of what we the people happened to want at any given timeincluding the 1789 Foundingor in the Constitutions first three articles, but in the eternal principles of natural law and right set out in 1776 in the stirring language of the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.

In practicing and tolerating chattel slavery in 1789 and afterwards, Jaffa argued, the American Founders had betrayed the bedrock moral commitments of the Declaration, the countrys foundational constitutional text. Only when President Abraham Lincoln belatedly pronounced slavery morally wrong was the regime redeemed. Others echoed his views: Both other Straussians and touchstone Christian-right thinkers such as the evangelical Francis Schaeffer, a seminal figure in the anti-abortion movement, and the Thomist Catholic theologians Sheen and John Courtney Murray, insisted that only those who likewise affirmed and attested to the natural-rights and natural-law foundations of the American republic earned our approbation as statesmen, guardians, and defenders of the American constitutional republic.

Jaffas seminal 1959 book, Crisis of the House Divided, set out these understandings in an extended moral-philosophical exegesishe called it his teachingof the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Trained by Strauss at the New School for Social Research (before Strauss moved on to a long career at the University of Chicago and then, briefly, at Claremont and later St. Johns College, in Annapolis), Jaffa read those debates as a world-historical clash very nearly in form identical with the issue between Socrates and Thrasymachus recounted in Platos Republic. Jaffa pronounced the debates one of the most profound texts in human history, pitting against each other the respective claims of merely positive, human-fashioned lawwhat the majority of the people willand natural, divinely ordained law, which is to say what is true, right, and good, or what the people should will. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois argued for positive law in propounding his theory of popular sovereignty concerning slavery in the countrys western territories. Lincoln argued for natural law, insisting that the people had no right or power to enact any law that violated the equality of natural rights by providing for the enslavement of other human beings.

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The Overlooked Conservative Tradition That Embraces an Executive Like Donald Trump - The Atlantic

At 1:48 p.m. on October 23rd, Donald Trump posted a tweet that, in any other political moment, would be a strong contender for the worst public statement ever made by a President of the United States. Attacking enemies within his own party, Trump wrote, The Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats. Watch out for them, they are human scum!

But, of course, this is not any other moment. The Times has tracked hundreds of insults that Trump has already made since entering public life. He has called his critics dogs, losers, and enemies of the people; praised racists and trafficked in casual misogyny; derided people from nations he calls shithole countries; and labelled American cities where he is unpopular as rat-infested hellholes. This is not even the first time that Trump has used the word scum; in June, 2018, he referred to the lead F.B.I. officials who had investigated him as the scum on top of the agency. Perhaps its unsurprising, then, that, with such a record, his Never Trumper tweet was not treated as major news (although a Republican House member from Illinois, Adam Kinzinger, did say on CNN that it was beneath the office of the Presidency). Arguably, the tweet was not even his most offensive and inflammatory of the week, a distinction that might belong to Trumps self-pitying, racially charged, and willfully ahistorical lament, from Tuesday, that the impeachment proceedings against him in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives amounted to a lynching. In some ways, these Trumpisms have become so abhorrentand frequentthat it may be easier to ignore them than to contemplate them.

Still, the Presidents human scum tweet bears noting. First of all, it is quite simply the language of tyrants and those who aspire to be tyrants. Hitler called his enemies human scum, and so did Stalin. In recent years, the Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, often referred to as the Trump of South America, denounced refugees as the scum of humanity, and the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, denounced Sergei Skripal, the former spy recently poisoned by Russian agents, in Britain, as a disloyal scumbag. The North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, with whom Trump says he has a love affair, executed his uncle after a show trial in which he was called despicable human scum... worse than a dog. Kims regime, it should be noted, also called Trumps former national-security adviser John Bolton, who differed with the President on the subject of North Korea, a bloodsucker and human scum.

The other reason to consider Trumps words this week is because of what is happening around him. In the twenty-four hours between Trumps lynching tweet and his human scum tweet, William B. Taylor, Jr., the acting Ambassador to Ukraine, offered the most damning testimony against the President yet in the month-old congressional impeachment inquiry. Taylor, a Vietnam veteran and career Foreign Service officer, was called out of retirement by the Trump Administration to serve in Ukraine after the President fired the previous Ambassador at the behest of his private attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Taylor flew in from Kiev in defiance of a State Department demand that he not coperate with the House probe, and he brought with him a fifteen-page opening statement, which offered specific, detailed evidence of the pressure campaign waged by Trump and Giuliani to force Ukrainian officials to investigate the former Vice-President Joe Biden, and which discredited conspiracy theories about Ukraines role in the 2016 U.S. election. This campaign, Taylor said, included explicitly linking Ukraines willingness to undertake these investigations to nearly four hundred million dollars in security assistance and a Presidential meeting. Trump even personally insisted that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, announce the probes himself, to put Zelensky in a public box. Committee sources told reporters that there were gasps in the room when Taylor testified. The diplomat was describing not one but multiple quid pro quos, in which Trump appeared to condition American assistance to a beleaguered, war-torn ally on actions that would be taken for his personal political benefit. Even the Senate Majority Whip, the Republican John Thune, of South Dakota, called the emerging picture not a good one for Trump.

The Presidential freakout of recent days can only be understood in that context. Trump is adjusting to a new political reality, one that is taking shape in a secure conference room on Capitol Hill, and it is a dangerous one for him: he now faces the very real possibility of impeachment in the House and a trial in the Senate, and just in time for the start of the 2020 election year.

For the first thousand or so days of the Trump Presidency, it has been a near-certainty in Washington that Trump might someday be impeached in the House, but he could never be convicted by the Republican-controlled Senate. And by near-certainty I mean as close to absolutely, a hundred-per-cent positive as is possible in an uncertain world. There might be one or two or five wobbly Republicans, it was believed, but never twentythe number of votes needed to convict him, assuming all Democrats and Independents also vote for his removal. Essentially, the political world agreed with the premise of Trumps tweetthat the Never Trump opposition to him within the Republican Party had faded to the point of political irrelevance, leaving those remaining against him within the G.O.P. an outnumbered minority, if not actually on respirators.

As a strict matter of numbers, that is still correct. Public polls have shown a dramatic increase in support for impeachment, but largely among Democrats and, increasingly, Independents. Most surveys now find a majority of Americans in favor of Trumps impeachment and removal from office, but still the number is well below the percentage of Americans who disapprove of his performance as President. Even more significantly, Trumps backing among Republican voters has yet to suffer much, with fewer than ten per cent of themso farsaying they would favor impeachment. Republican members of Congress have largely held firm with Trump, too, though each day brings more examples of isolated individuals like Thune and Kinzinger publicly expressing concern. In terms of the Senate, the jury pool that may ultimately be called on to render a verdict on Trump in the Ukraine affair, most Republicans have either stayed resolutely silent or ostentatiously demonstrated their loyalty to Trump. Mitt Romney has been the only Senate Republican to forcefully question Trumps actions. When Trump furiously attacked Romney over it, not a single one of his Senate colleagues rose to his defense.

And yet something does feel different around Washington. Republicans, and not just Trump, seem visibly nervous. This is shaping up to be a very dark moment for the Trump White House, a Republican source close to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the National Journal Hotlines Josh Kraushaar. Even the Senate vote in an impeachment trial shouldnt be taken for granted, the source said. Its getting to be a harder choice for more people. Whether thats enough for enough senators to take decisive action... every single move has been in the wrong direction for Trump.

Its early days yet, of course, but since Taylor testified, political operatives have openly struggled to figure out whether this time might really be it. Everyone has his or her own little anecdotal data points, like the veteran Republican who told me he now thinks theres about a twenty-five per cent chance the dam breaks in the Senate and they turn on him and convict, or the fervent Never Trumper who, buoyed by the recent news, texted me that he was sure DT will be CONVICTED! Although, he added, in a nod to a more likely reality, unless, of course, that doesnt happen. Another Never Trumper, the former Republican senator Jeff Flake, said a couple of weeks ago that thirty-five Republican senators would probably vote to convict the Presidentif the vote were held in secret. Only 7 (!) Republican Senators are ruling out removing Donald Trump a headline on an article by the CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza read. The Senate Minority Whip, the Democrat Dick Durbin, from Illinois, claimed in a TV interview this week that Republican leaders were having second thoughts about the President.

But Trumps outbursts can still produce the shows of loyalty that the insecure President craves. On the same day as his human scum tweet, some two dozen Trump supporters in the House stormed into the closed-door secure facility where the impeachment depositions are being taken and disrupted the planned testimony of a Pentagon official for more than five hours. The representatives complained about the unfairness to the President of taking impeachment testimony in private, which has been Trumps constant gripe. In fact, it soon was reported that Trump had been in on the stunt before it occurred, and the President took to Twitter to thank the protesting House Republicans afterward for their vigorous defense of him. There is no room for wobbling, as far as Trump is concerned. By Thursday, John Thune appeared to have got that message, and CNN reported that he walked back concerns he raised in the wake of Taylors testimony, which Thune now called, in keeping with the Party line, secondhand information. He joined other senators, including a number of moderates, such as Ohios Rob Portman and Tennessees Lamar Alexander, at an Oval Office lunch with the President, the message of which was a not-so-subtle show of theyre still with me. As for Trumps hateful tweet, not a single Republican senator called him out on it, even as his press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, went on Fox News on Thursday morning to underscore the point. Those Republicans working against the President, she said, are in fact human scum, adding, They deserve strong language like that.

All of which is to say that Trump was crude in his tweet, but he was also right: his internal enemies in the Republican Party are weak and few in number. For now. One thing missing from all the Republican complaints about impeachment this week, however, was a robust defense of what Trump actually did. And that, in the end, is exactly what the Senate jurors will ultimately have to make up their minds about.

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On Human Scum and Trump in the Danger Zone - The New Yorker

Mrs Clinton turned 72 on Saturday. On her 69th birthday, just 14 days before the 2016 Presidential election, she tweeted a photo of herself as a young girl. The caption attached to the image was: Happy birthday to this future president.

Team Trump retweeted and replied to the three year old tweet with a thirty nine second video.

The video showed television coverage from CNN of the results.

The voice piece announces Trump had won the electoral college votes in Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, Missouri, Ohio, Idaho, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Utah, Wisconsin and Arizona.

The shot then cuts to cheering crowds.

A female reporter interjects to say Mrs Clinton was calling Trump to concede.

The clip ends with Trump giving a thumbs up, flanked by his Vice-President Mike Pence and his youngest son Barron Trump.

Though Mrs Clinton gained 2.1 percent more of the votes than Trump, Trump secured 304 electoral votes to Mrs Clintons 227.

Each state in the US plus the District of Colombia has an electoral college, a body of electors mandated to award the states votes in the election.

READ MORE:Sadiq Khan calls Donald Trump 'far-right poster boy' as feud reignites

Some have speculated he may poll better if he replaces Mr Pence as his running mate.

Commentators have suggested Nikki Haley, who was his ambassador to the UN and Governor of South Carolina would result in him fairing better.

Mrs Haley has dismissed the suggestion.

Trump is favourite to win the Republican nomination.

According to Oddschecker, he is favourite to beat his Democrat opponent.

Bookies think he will face Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

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Team Trump savagely trolls Hillary Clinton on her birthday with gloating election tweet - Express.co.uk

Donald Trump. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Long before this week, when he referred to himself as the victim of a lynching, Donald Trump has been fluent in the language of a racist mob. It ran underneath the full-page newspaper ads he paid $85,000 for in 1989, in which he called for the execution of the five black teens about to be tried for the rape of a white female jogger in Central Park. In that ad, he fretted for families who could no longer enjoy strolls in the park thanks to the presence of wild criminals roaming the streets. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand [these men], Trump wrote. I am looking to punish them I want them to understand our anger. I want them to be afraid.

The anger Trump wanted these kids who would spend 13 years in jail before being fully exonerated in 2002 and the public to understand was the anger of a powerful white New Yorker who did not want to tolerate the presence of less powerful New Yorkers. More than that, he wanted millions of readers to understand the potency of that anger: its money, its influence, its public reach, its ability to cast the mere presence of people he didnt like on the street as a violent threat to him and others like him.

These were the dynamics fury at any disruption to his presence or preferences in the world, or to a social order which would keep him at the top that Trump was so adept at conveying on a campaign trail in 2016, when he encouraged his massive, screaming, mostly white crowds to enact physical violence against any protesters who might take up space or challenge them. After one Black Lives Matter protester was beaten following one of his events, Trump told Fox News, Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. At another rally, in Las Vegas, Trump told his jeering crowd, as a man was led out by police, You know what they used to do to a guy like that in a place like this? Theyd be carried out on a stretcher, folks.

These calls echo the language and thinking of lynching, the extrajudicial torture and murder of mostly nonwhite people, and especially African-Americans, that was most common in the Jim Crow South. According to the King Center in Atlanta, More than 4,400 African-American men, women, and children were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950. This is the greatness of American history to which Trump has promised his fans a return; these are the flames he has consciously stoked: the return of the mob, and with it the ability, via public spectacle, to punish and hurt those with less power who would challenge or inconvenience an old kind of authority. The cruelty, as Adam Serwer has written, is the point. Yet when Trump is leading the mob, he is rarely fully explicit in his evocation of an era of racist violence.

On Tuesday, he made his reference plain, at the moment that he decided to reverse the lynching framework by casting himself, and imagined future Republican presidents, as powerless victims of a punitive Democratic crowd. So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, Trump tweeted, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here a lynching. But we will WIN!

This was the text of Trumps barely cogent missive, which not only made the vile comparison between a House impeachment inquiry and extrajudicial murder, but was also inaccurate in its assessment of congressional power dynamics and everything else, including spelling. Tactically, this gambit was not so different from Trumps previous claims that he was victim of mobs and witch hunts, but when he used the word lynching outright, it was too much even for a couple of his party peers, including Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins, both of whom offered (extremely) tepid rebukes.

Yet it was just the thing for some other Republicans, chief among them South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who wasted no time getting in front of news cameras: When [an investigation is] about Trump, Graham said, claiming to describe the Democrats approach to impeachment, who cares about the process, so long as you get him. So yeah, this is a lynching. In case anyone wasnt clear, Graham also said, This is a lynching in every sense, and later told Bob Costa, If [the word] lynching bothers you, Im sorry its literally a political lynching.

The willingness to abuse power and then protect ones power by casting oneself as abused, via a fantasy of victimhood, surely has a lengthy history, but has become a particular hallmark of the post-Obama political era. The inversion of vulnerability so that it applies nonsensically, ahistorically, yes, but too often, persuasively to the least vulnerable is pervasive and effective. Those who were lynched were, definitionally, powerless. This makes it both particularly rich and particularly potent imagery for the powerful. It enables them to appropriate one of the only tools available to the powerless: the moral claim to a tale of injustice. Often, and often more subtly than how it unfolded on Tuesday, we are seduced by those with the loudest voices into seeing them the most mighty as the most mistreated.

Trump and Graham are not even the first politicians this year to compare the experience of public censure in response to alleged abuses to being lynched. Virginias lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax, a Democrat who in 2019 was accused on the record by two women of sexual assault, gave a speech in front of the Virginia State Senate in February in which he compared himself to a lynching victim. And its not just elected officials. In 2018, the musician R. Kelly, who has since been indicted on ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse against minors, claimed that the Times Up Women of Color Branch, which was then advocating a boycott of his music, was tantamount to the attempted public lynching of a black man who has made extraordinary contributions to our culture. That public lynching is the same language that Bill Cosbys publicist used about his conviction on sexual-assault charges in 2018; Cosbys wife, Camille, wrote a three-page statement comparing her husbands treatment to lynching. And one of the most famous uses of the lynching metaphor as defense of power came from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who asserted in 1991 that the accusations of sexual harassment made against him by Anita Hill (and corroborated by three other women who were not asked to testify at his Judiciary Committee hearing) constituted a high-tech lynching.

Thomas, Cosby, Kelly, and Fairfaxs use of the lynching comparison is different than Trumps; they are black men, recognizing in the metaphor its very real history, in which (mostly fantasized or invented) claims of sexual aggressions against white women were used to justify the torture and murder of black men. These men deployed the analogy in the face of multiple, credible allegations lodged against them, strategically using the history of racist violence as a shield, while in all cases except Cosbys, these mens accusers were primarily black women. (This is crucial, as Salamishah Tillet has argued, citing the journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, because while white womens sexual violability has too often been used as the justification for racist violence, the very real sexual violence done to black women has just as often gone not only unpunished, but unnoticed).

None of this particular subtext applies to either Donald Trump or Lindsey Graham, both of whom are white men. Nor does it apply to the many lawmakers, including current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who defended Bill Clinton during his 1998 impeachment proceedings by comparing that inquiry to a lynching (a partisan lynching, was Bidens phrase). What they all have in common is a readiness to turn to a metaphor that erases their power, when charged with abusing it, and presents them instead as the real victims of injustice.

Trump has repeatedly called the investigations into him by special counsel Robert Mueller and now House oversight panels a witch hunt, and Trumps private counsel Rudy Giuliani tweeted that Even Salem witch trials didnt use anonymous testimony. The reference to a period of 17th-century violence in Salem, Massachusetts, carries far less historical weight than the callback to lynching a widespread practice that was common for decades and arguably extends to this day. But it relies on the same strategy: the pretense of defenselessness against a mob. Giuliani, appearing on Fox News with Laura Ingraham, would double down on his preposterous witch-trial assertion, telling her that the women and men accused of sorcery in 1692 Salem had more rights than President Donald Trump in 2019. (For what its worth, many of the women and men who were imprisoned, tortured, and killed in the 17th century were convicted based on spectral evidence, i.e., the testimony of spirits who appeared to random people sitting in the courtroom.)

The performance of inequity and injustice invites the public to view the powerful with a kind of sympathy that, ironically enough, is rarely available to those who have less power. This is the truly grotesque factor: It is power itself that renders people recognizable to us, affords them our sympathy and empathy; its power that makes them more likely to be believed when they tell us of the injustice they have suffered.

This is why Brett Kavanaugh, a wealthy white federal judge who was credibly accused of sexual violence yet was nonetheless elevated to the most powerful court in the country, managed to so successfully present himself to the nation as mortally imperiled. My family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed, Kavanaugh said, while Trump postulated that its a very scary & dangerous time for young men in America, describing those who opposed Kavanaughs appointment as a liberal mob and suggesting that those on the right who defended him should get security to protect themselves. (Its certainly not just big bad Republicans who do this kind of inversion. In 2018, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw described himself as having been taken to the guillotine after having been accused by one woman of having kissed her against her will in the 1990s; the British director Terry Gilliam claimed in 2018 that actor Matt Damon, after having been criticized on Twitter for comments he made about Me Too, had been beaten to death.)

The impulse to revert to falsified claims of vulnerability and physical suffering reflects the sense of many who believe themselves to have some innate claim to power or maybe even just the experience of holding it that that claim is being compromised, and that that loss of unchallenged primacy is tantamount to actual harm. The claim that established power is being threatened is also, circularly, the very imagined conviction that undergirded the practice of lynching itself. Black Americans were often lynched in response to the imagined or invented sexual incursions on white bodies, but also simply after moving into or nearby white communities, attempting to vote, or building successful businesses that interfered in any way with unfettered white profit.

Its this sense that is, to some degree, the distinguishing undercurrent of the era were living through.

Its behind the MAGA hats and the nostalgia for a more officially stratified America; it underpins the drive to build courts that will reverse voting and reproductive and collective bargaining rights; its what permits Trump to brag about grabbing women and hearken back at his rallies to the days when protesters would be taken out on stretchers and compare himself to a victim of lynching and not suffer for it with his base, but in fact become more warmly embraced as an expressor of their own convictions. Its what gives a crowd of white, suited Republican men the idea of barging into legitimate, regulated impeachment inquiry hearings in an effort to shut them down as they did on Wednesday, delaying the deposition of a Defense Department official by five hours. It was simultaneously a piece of inane political theater, but also a frightening visual reminder: a taste of what a mob of powerful white men claiming to be seeking justice for a man who says hes been victimized are capable of.

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Why Donald Trump and Other Powerful Men Love to Cast Themselves As Victims - New York Magazine

Legendary singer and songwriter Bruce Springsteen says Americans are living in "a frightening time" because of the country's leadership. In an interviewwith "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King, Springsteen responded to President Trump's comments at a Minneapolis rallyearlier this month on how he "didn't need little Bruce Springsteen" and other celebrities like Beyonc and Jay Z, who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

King asked, "So he's going back to 2016. And this is now 2019. You surprised that he's trash-talking you after all this time?" Springsteen laughed.

"Not really. Anything's possible," he said.

"I know. I mean, a lot of people are very concerned about the direction of the country," King said.

"It's just frightening, you know? We're living in a frightening time," Springsteen replied. "The stewardship of the nation is has been thrown away to somebody who doesn't have a clue as to what that means ... And unfortunately, we have somebody who I feel doesn't have a grasp of the deep meaning of what it means to be an American."

Springsteen is out with a new film, "Western Stars," which hits theaters nationwide this weekend. It features his first collection of new music since 2012.

Watch the extended conversation with Springsteen on our streaming network, CBSN, at 8 p.m. on Friday.

2019 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Bruce Springsteen: Donald Trump "doesn't have a grasp" on what it means to be American in Gayle King interview - CBS News

SportsPulse: It's time to stop betting against the Nationals, who just went into Houston and beat Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander on back to back nights, and time to start seeing them as eventual champions, says Trysta Krick. USA TODAY

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he plans toattend Game 5 of the World Series on Sunday at Nationals Park in Washington.

With the Washington Nationals holding a 2-0 lead over the Houston Astros, there's no guarantee that Sunday's game will be played. Houston would need to win one of the next two games to assure a fifth game in the series.

Every president since William Taft in 1910 has thrown out a ceremonial first pitch, either for Opening Day, the All-Star Game or the World Series, but Trump won't be doing so on Sunday, according to the Nationals.

"They got to dress me up in a lot of heavy armor. Ill look too heavy. I dont like that, Trump saidwhen asked whetherhe planned to throw the first pitch.

Trump's presence at the game may overshadow the baseball, as the Nationals seek their first World Series title.

"I don't want to attack him like I got something against (him)," Nationals pitcher Anibal Sanchez said. "I'm from Venezuela, I'm out of this country, but then I respect all those situations. And like I say, he's the president and if he want to come, why not?"

2019 World Series: Must-see photos from Astros-Nationals

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Game 4 Victor Robles makes a catch in center field in the sixth inning. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Astros players hold up "Stand Up To Cancer" signs during the sixth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Nationals players hold up "Stand Up To Cancer" signs during the sixth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Yan Gomes reacts after flying out in the fifth inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Trea Turner makes a throw in the fourth inning. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Astros players celebrate Robinson Chirinos' two-run homer in the fourth. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Robinson Chirinos celebrates his two-run homer in the fourth. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Robinson Chirinos hits a two-run homer in the fourth. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Patrick Corbin bunts in the third inning. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Carlos Correa celberates with Jake Marisnick after making a catch to end the third inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Astros catcher Robinson Chirinos catches a pop-up in the first inning. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Jose Urquidy pitches in the first inning. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Trea Turner reacts after popping out in the first inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman reacts after a double play ended the top of the first. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Jose Altuve and Michael Brantley celebrate a run in the first inning. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Jose Altuve reacts after scoring a run in the first. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Yuli Gurriel hits an RBI single in the first inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Jose Altuve reacts after scoring a run in the first inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Michael Brantley hits a single in the first inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Patrick Corbin pitches in the first inning. Will Newton, USA TODAY Sports

Game 4 Jose Altuve and George Springer on the field prior to the top of the first. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 The Astros outfielders celebrate the final out. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Carlos Correa and Josh Reddick celebrate the final out. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Astros closer Roberto Osuna celebrates after recording the final out. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Alex Bregman makes a throw in the eighth inning. Tommy Gilligan, Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Joe Smith pitches in the eighth inning for Houston. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Trea Turner reacts after fouling a ball off himself in the sixth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Victor Robles steals second in the sixth inning as Carlos Correa fields the throw. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Fans dance during "Baby Shark" in the sixth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Kyle Tucker is tagged out between third and home plate by Trea Turner in the sixth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 A Nationals fan wears a shirt mocking Bryce Harper. Amber Searls, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Fernando Rodney pitches in the sixth inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Asdrubal Cabrera can't field the throw as Kyle Tucker steals second base in the sixth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Anibal Sanchez comes out of the game in the sixth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Robinson Chirinos celebrates after hitting a solo home run in the sixth. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Robinson Chirino hits a solo home run in the sixth inning. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Nationals center fielder Victor Robles waves to the crowd. Amber Searls, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Ryan Zimmerman reacts after an inside pitch in the fifth inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Zack Greinke comes out of the game in the fifth. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Juan Soto strikes out in the fifth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Asdrubal Cabrera reacts after hitting a double in the fifth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Adam Eaton reacts after hitting a single in the fifth. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Trea Turner makes a leaping throw to first for the final out in the fifth. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Jose Altuve celebrates with Alex Bregman after scoring a run in the fifth. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Jose Altuve hits a double in the fifth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Zack Greinke throws to first to escape trouble in the fourth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Victor Robles reacts after hitting an RBI triple in the fourth inning. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Ryan Zimmerman walks in the fourth inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Asdrubal Cabrera reacts after striking out with the bases loaded to end the third inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Nationals fans cheer during the third inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Juan Soto reacts to an inside pitch in the third inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Trea Turner singles in the third inning> Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Anibal Sanchez reacts after getting the final out in the top of the third. Patrick Semanskey, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Michael Brantley steals second base in the third inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Carlos Correa scores a run in the second inning. Tommy Gilligan, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Carlos Correa slides to score a run in the second inning. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Anthony Rendon celebrates after a double in the first inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Zack Greinke pitches in the first inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Alex Bregman reacts after striking out in the first inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Washington center fielder Victor Roles makes a leaping catch in the first inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Anibal Sanchez can't field George Springer's infield single in the first inning. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Anthony Rendon is introduced before the game. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 Buzz Aldrid throws out the first pitch. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 3 A view of Nationals Park before the game. Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Nationals players celebrate after the win. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Nationals players celebrate after the win Erik Williams, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Anthony Rendon throws to first for the final out. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Chris Devenski reacts after giving up a home run to Michael A. Taylor in the ninth inning. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Astros infielders chat during a pitching change in the eighth inning. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Nationals fans cheer during the eighth inning. Thomas B. Shea, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Adam Eaton rounds the bases after his homer in the eighth. Thomas B. Shea, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Ryan Pressly comes out of the game in the seventh. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Brian Dozier celebrates with Victor Robles after a run in the seventh inning. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Kurt Suzuki hits a go-ahead solo homer in the seventh. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Kurt Suzuki touches home plate after hitting a solo home run in the seventh inning. Erik Williams, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Justin Verlander reacts after giving up a solo home run to Kurt Suzuki in the seventh. Thomas B. Shea, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Trea Turner singles in the fifth inning. Erik Williams, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Justin Verlander throws a ball off his leg on Ryan Zimmerman's infield single in the fourth. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Justin Verlander throws a ball off his leg on Ryan Zimmerman's infield single in the fourth. Thomas B. Shea, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Ryan Zimmerman can't field a throw in the third inning. Thomas B. Shea, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Juan Soto reacts after hitting a double in the third inning. Thomas B. Shea, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Fans cheer during the second inning. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Alex Bregman celebrates with Michael Brantley after his two-run homer in the first. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Alex Bregman reacts after hitting a two-run homer in the first. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Alex Bregman connects on a two-run home run in the first inning. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Jose Altuve tries to steal third in the first inning. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Stephen Strasburg pitches in the first inning. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Adam Eaton scores a run in the first inning. Erik Williams, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Anthony Rendon hits a two-run double in the first. Erik Williams, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Justin Verlander pitchers in the first inning. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

Game 2 Jake Marisnick high-fives Simone Biles after she threw out the first pitch. Troy Taormina, USA TODAY Sports

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President Donald Trump plans to attend but won't throw first pitch if there is a World Series Game 5 - USA TODAY

Trump and impeachment: Can President Trump block witnesses and subpoenas, and what can Congress do about it? Lawyer and author David Stewart explains. Hannah Gaber, USA TODAY

"I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." President Donald Trump, July 23, 2019

WASHINGTON The Constitution of the United States of America does, indeed, have an Article II. It's the president's job description, circa 1787, and it gives him sweeping powers.

But not whatever he wants. In fact, it defines something he doesn't want: the terms for his impeachment, conviction and removal from office.

AsHouse Democrats prepare their case for impeachment, attention increasingly will focus on the nation's founding document, which outlines the unique roles of Congress, the president and the federal courts.

And so, the question: Has Trump violated the Constitution?

And does that justify ending his presidency?

Not if his lawyers have anything to say about it. In federal appeals court in New York Wednesday, they argued that Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without criminal consequence because he is immune from prosecution while in office.

Immunity: President Donald Trump could shoot someone in public and escape prosecution, his lawyer tells federal court

Article II spells out the president's oath of office, which concludes with his duty to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." It also specifies that he "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

Then it sets out the potential reasons for his removal: if he is impeached by the House, and convicted by the Senate of"treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Impeaching a U.S. president might not be the be-all-end-allfor their career. We explain why this is the case. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Throughout Trump's presidency,investigations into Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 election and other matters relating to his business dealings have made impeachment a possibility. This summer's revelations that Trump asked Ukraine's president to investigate past and future political opponents made it probable, if not inevitable.

Ukraine: Trump's conspiracy theories thrive in Ukraine, where a young democracy battles corruption and distrust

"We believe the acts revealed publicly over the past several weeks are fundamentally incompatible with the presidents oath of office, his duties as commander in chief, and his constitutional obligation to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,'" 16 conservative and libertarian lawyers wrote earlier this month under the imprimatur of the group Checks and Balances.

University of Southern California law professor Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department official and a member of the group, putsit simply: "Hes taking care of himself, not taking care of the country."

But Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett says Trump's accusers "have been alleging impeachable offenses since before President Trump took the oath of office."

"They have their conclusion in hand," Barnett says,"and now theyre just trying to fill out the bill of particulars.

"When the president does it, that means that it isnot illegal." Former President Richard Nixon, May 19, 1977

What Trump did on July 25 was ask Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the Democrats' leading presidential candidate at the time, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter. Trump also asked indirectly for a probe of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

In the same conversation, the president noted that "the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldnt say that its reciprocal, necessarily."

More: Key takeaways from Ukraine diplomat Bill Taylor's 'explosive' opening statement

Jonathan Adler, a Case Western Reserve Universitylaw professor and a member of Checks and Balances, saysthe persistent efforts to use foreign policyas a means of advancing or protecting his own political interests" conflicts with the presidential oath.

"'High crimes and misdemeanors' has never been understood to be limited to or consigned to things that are crimes in the narrow legal sense," Adler says. "They encompass actions that are violative of the solemn obligations that a public official takes."

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"Im taking money from here and there and there and there.... We have all these different sources coming from all over the place because they wont approve it." President Trump, July 23, 2019

The president was referring at the time to financing his long-sought wall along the border with Mexico spending power that the Constitution largely reserves for Congress. He has moved funds from the Pentagon and other agencies to the Department of Homeland Security for that purpose.

That's another constitutional violation, saysGeorge Mason University law professor Ilya Somin, another Checks and Balances member. Trump, he says, is using the federal budget as "his personal piggy bank" going so far as to withhold nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine previously appropriated by Congress.

This is a big deal, frankly a bigger deal than some of the stuff thats more in the headlines, Somin says, calling it "an unconstitutional usurpation of Congress' power of the purse."

"You people with this phony Emoluments Clause." PresidentTrump, Oct. 21, 2019

That would be Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution, whichbars federal officeholders from accepting gifts from foreign governments. It is derived from the Latin word "emolumentum," meaning "profit" or "gain." Andanother prohibition in Article II prohibits the president from receiving domestic emoluments.

Trump's continuing ownership of hotels and restaurants,such as Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., where foreign leaders often stay, has spurred three federal lawsuits. Two courts of appeals are scheduled to hold oral arguments in December.

Deepak Gupta, an attorney litigating two of the lawsuits, says Trump's presidency is "a walking, talking Emoluments Clause violation" because Trump never divested himself of his real estate holdings.

"The Framers were obsessed with the possibility of corruption," Gupta says.

Rather than retreat in the face of the Emoluments Clause, Trump last week sought to double down by scheduling the upcoming Group of 7conference of Western global economic powers at Trump National Doral, his Miami-area resort. Only in the face of withering criticism from Republicans as well as Democrats did he reluctantly back down.

"President Trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances." Pat Cipollone, counsel to the president, Oct. 8, 2019

An eight-page letter from the White House counsel earlier this month basically declared war on House Democrats' impeachment inquiry. The president, Pat Cipollone said, won't cooperate.

If that constitutes obstruction of justice, critics say, it wouldn't be the first time. They cite special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which outlined Trump's efforts to withhold evidence and influence aides' testimony.

The Article IIpower does not extend to telling subordinates and others to lie about what occurred, Adler said, referring to the president's attempt to have former White House counsel Don McGahn say that Trump did not seek to have Mueller fired.

But others defend the president's resistance. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in July, Chapman University law professor John Eastman said "Mueller was not fired, and even if he had been, the investigation would not have been stopped."

"If that is obstruction, it pales in comparison to recent examples of real obstruction that have gone largely unremarked," Eastman said.

"An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." Former President Gerald Ford, April 15, 1970

Alexander Hamiton wrote extensively on impeachment in the Federalist Papers, but the Constitution gives it only six brief mentions. The references leave plentyof leeway.

"The Constitution gets violated all the time," Barnett says. "That doesnt make the violation of the Constitution a high crime or misdemeanor."

Some don't see the need for specificity.Its about abusing the office, not about violating a technical provision of a particular clause," Kerr says.

While Trump's critics see obvious cause for impeachment and his defenders do not, others simply see a reason for disagreement. University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson wrote in the journal Democracy in August that the problem is the Constitution itself.

The impeachment clause "has been captured by lawyers who simply shout at one another about what in fact constitutes such a 'high crime or misdemeanor,'" Levinson wrote. "The correct answer is that nobody really knows."

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Article II of the Constitution: Trump's 'right to do whatever I want?' Or a roadmap for impeachment? - USA TODAY