THE COHEN COLUMN--A riddle: You're in a dark alley late at night, there is a chill in the air and a fog is rolling in. You hear the echo of heavy footsteps behind you, faint at first, but with every step you take they grow distinctly louder and louder

Who are you, and whose footsteps are behind you?

If you are that person we described (aren't you glad you are not) you are Donald Trump. The increasing footsteps you hear pounding on your heels is the truth catching up to you.

For Trump's entire life he has systematically lied about everything, and gotten away with it, more or less, whether it was about who he was dating or how much money he had. But now he has every
investigative journalist in the country working overtime to ferret out the real truth.

Now Trump's lies are about the vital national security interests and the constitutional honor of the United States, not just fodder for society column gossip. And no matter how many times he tries to smear real reporters with integrity as "fake" news, they will ultimately succeed in reporting reality.

Add to that those major investigative committees in both chambers of Congress. With even Republicans mouthing the words that we need to get to the bottom of Russia's role in all this so that it won't ever happen again.

Let's paint a picture, shall we? Let's suppose that Trump's minions did no more than communicate to Russia and said that if Trump was elected it would be better for Russian interests. We've practically had confessions of that already, for example Michael Flynn talking about sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

What face is appearing in the picture frame? And the answer is the face of treason. That’s Treason with a capital “T”, that’s Treachery with a capital “T” and Betrayal with a capital “B”.

Treason + Treachery + Betrayal = Congressional neck tie party

During Trump's campaign he publically encouraged Russia to interfere on his behalf, remember? 

Why would we be surprised to learn that he did the same thing secretly? We are not.

This is all before we talk about Trump associates taking tons of money from Russian operatives, shady business dealings and everything else.

“FBI Director Comey learned about his firing from a TV screen. Comey was addressing a group of FBI employees in Los Angeles when a television in the background flashed the news that he had been fired. In response, Mr. Comey laughed, saying he thought it was a fairly funny prank.” 

It never would have occurred to him that the guy he massively helped get elected would turn on him so coldly and rudely. But then again Trump is also the Commander of Insults.

But now we are told Trump was thinking of firing Comey the very day he was elected. Only he waited until he learned that Comey was digging deeper into the Russia thing, and then he panicked and acted precipitously.

He directed his own Justice Department appointees to make him a case for firing, and like the patsies they now clearly are, they did. That news has come out too. Jeff Sessions, who himself was supposed to be recused grabbed his hatchet again.

We'll say it again, there was good cause for firing Comey, based solely on his public bias of the Clinton investigation. But the TIMING of this firing is what is so incriminating of Trump.

On the morning of May 12, 2017, President Donald Trump tweeted, "James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Already primed to look at the parallels between Trump’s presidency and Richard Nixon’s, observers jumped on the suggestion that Trump could be following Nixon’s lead in secretly taping conversations in the White House.

This is NOT going away. We're not going away.

Still  not sure if Trump’s activities are that serious?

President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey is “much more serious” than Watergate and could arguably be enough to see him impeached now, says the historian who predicted the Republican’s shock election win. 

Lastly, we'd like to credit Stephen Colbert for one of the best jokes we're heard recently. He was talking about Trump's tweet that everyone would thank him someday for firing Comey. "Yes," Colbert said, "let's get him something special, like a special prosecutor.”

(Michael N. Cohen is a former board member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, founding member of the LADWP Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee, founding member of LA Clean Sweep and occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

-cw

GELFAND’S WORLD-Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday. There was an attempt to blame the timing on a newly installed Assistant Attorney General. That story broke down. There was an attempt to explain the reasoning for the firing on the way the Hillary Clinton email investigation was covered. People laughed. 

How to start? 

George Smiley relit his pipe and ruminated . . . How had his arch-nemesis Karla gotten his hooks into the American president, and how much critical information would be passed to the descendents of his old enemies in the KGB? 

Maybe not. Still, it's almost believable. 

Jack Ryan lifted a vodka and nodded at Marko Ramius. Ramius broke the silence -- "I've something to tell you that had to wait until now, when we both are safe on American soil. Before I took my sub on her last voyage, I heard rumors of a breach in your security that goes all the way to the top." 

If only we had the facts in book form. 

But when you apply logic to the situation, the most obvious conclusion is that this president has something big to hide. And going down that path, the most reasonable conclusion is that Donald Trump had a long-time, ongoing relationship with the Russians that either resulted in a secret deal or in blackmail. 

By Wednesday, numerous commentators, pundits, and the Late Show's Steven Colbert had carefully nailed the firing and the president himself to the scandal over Russian election influence. Heather Digby Parsons (now writing for Salon.com among others, but famous as a blogger early on as "Digby") summarized.  "It's a frantic effort to sidetrack us -- and it won't work." 

The Republicans, who are so dedicated to electoral purity that they question the legality of hundreds of thousands of voters who are a little too old and a little too poor to have a drivers license -- well, they are now so very OK with Russian interference in a presidential election that they are willing to join the coverup. They are willing to excuse the president's firing of the man who was overseeing the investigation. Not all, but quite a lot right now. 

Without stealing from John Le Carre or The Manchurian Candidate, let's consider as a working hypothesis that the treason is at the top, and has been there for at least the better part of a year: The best explanation for the known data is that Trump was compromised by the Russians, perhaps years ago, and cut a secret deal with them sometime between the day he announced his presidential run and the convention. Considering Trump's personality quirks, we should assume that Trump's secret is financial. 

The evidence, if not overwhelming as of now, is at least getting stronger: 

1) The appointment of people to the Trump campaign who were close to the Russian war machine and Putin (Manafort for example). 

2) Trump's questioning of Nato's existence. Remember that this is the same guy who spoke from the fantail of the battleship Iowa, pledging a defense that is so great that nobody would dare challenge us. 

3) Trump's manipulation of the Republican Platform at the convention. 

4) The series of secret communications between Trump operatives and representatives of the Russian government in the period before the inauguration. 

5) Trump acts out the tough guy image except when it comes to Putin, where Trump reverses a century of American policy. He blusters about North Korea and the Chinese, while mewing that it would be nice to have a friendly relationship with Russia. 

6) The timing of the firing of James Comey: This is the man who handed the presidency to Trump through his Hillary Clinton letter. But Comey asked the Department of Justice for additional funding to continue the investigation of the Russian connection a few days ago, and within a few dozen hours he is gone. 

7) Donald Trump's mention in the firing letter that he (Trump) is not under investigation. It seems like a strange topic to include in a notice of termination, but Trump tends to project his actual motives. The investigation into his Russian ties was driving him crazy, so he had to try to undercut it. He would have been better served separating the lies about Russian influence from the termination notice, but that is not how Trump's mind works. 

Admittedly, this is a working hypothesis, but it arises out of multiple independent lines of evidence. There is the family history of financial ties to the Russian oligarchy, the odd events at the Republican National Convention, the staff interactions with a Russian intelligence operative, and the sudden firing of the one man most likely to put a lance into the pustulent boil of Russian interference in western elections. 

Television news anchors have been attaching the word Watergate to Comey's firing due to its eerie similarity to the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox by president Richard Nixon. It's been amusing in a depressing kind of way to watch White House spokesmen try to deal with the stress. Sean Spicer agreed to speak to the press as long as they turned the cameras off. Kelly Anne Conway pretended that there was nothing particularly interesting about the firing. 

There is one group that is having a hard time these past few hours -- Republicans in congress coming up for reelection. They already were forced to deal with angry constituents who want to keep their Medicaid and their coverage for preexisting conditions. Now, all of a sudden, congressmen have to deal with a situation that begins to look more and more like that T word, treason. 

Perhaps the most amusing gaffe was committed by a congressman who pointed out that things aren't as bad as they were in Germany in the 1930s.  Now that's grasping at straws.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

STUDENT PRESIDENT--Our president says he wants to run the country like a business. But it turns out running the government isn’t like running a business after all.

Trump, for his part, says he’s located the source of the problem: the Constitution. All those checks and balances our founders are cramping his style. “It’s an archaic system,” he complained.

Unfortunately for Trump, unlike on his reality TV show, when he doesn’t like a member of Congress, he can’t simply say, “You’re fired.”

Yes, Trump was elected by… well, not a majority of Americans. Or even a plurality of voters. But he was legally elected, and he has some power. Yet he cannot erase or overrule the power of our representatives in Congress.

How does Trump feel about that? “It’s really a bad thing for the country, in my opinion.” 

Yes, he actually said that about our system of government — which, admittedly, is less efficient than running a business. That’s the idea.

A publicly traded corporation has one goal: to make money for the shareholders.

A government, on the other hand, has many goals: economic prosperity, reducing poverty and hunger, keeping the public safe, preserving human rights and civil rights, and so forth.

A successful business leader may excel in making money. It doesn’t follow that they can achieve the many other objectives the leader of a nation must work toward.

A business can pick and choose who it deals with. The CEO can hire and fire employees at will and choose which other companies to work with. It can target its products towards a particular customer base, instead of attempting to sell its products to the entire public. And the CEO is the boss.

The government gets no such choices. The voters are the bosses. Our leaders have to deal with all of us, and they can’t pick and choose which segments of the population they want to represent. We’re all Americans.

Furthermore, Trump doesn’t get to choose who’s in Congress. We do.

Whether our members of Congress are Republicans or Democrats, they’re supposed to represent their districts. If Trump wants something that will harm their constituents, and potentially get them voted out of office, they won’t (or shouldn’t) go along with it. The president can’t simply issue orders and have them immediately followed like the head of a company can do.

In a company, it ultimately doesn’t matter if the marketing and the accounting departments disagree with the CEO. They have to do what they’re told to keep their jobs.

In a democracy, it does matter whether the representatives from Montana or Florida agree with the president. If the majority of Congress doesn’t agree with the president, they won’t roll over and do as he likes. And he cannot fire them, because they’re accountable to their voters.

So, welcome to Civics 101, Mr. President. You’re right. Our Constitution is “archaic” and it limits the powers of the presidency. That’s what our founders intended.

Maybe you ought to take some time out of your busy golfing schedule to read it some time.

(OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It and an occasional contributer to CityWatch. Distributed by OtherWords.org.) 

-cw

COHEN TALK-It is a matter of ongoing astonishment to us that anyone, even his most diehard supporters, could believe a single word that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. That's what's really "sad" -- a word he has singlehandedly beaten to death. Even blind, unthinking partisanship cannot fully explain trying to defend a person who says things such as, speaking about Andrew Jackson, “He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War." The problem is, by this time, Andrew Jackson, a mass slave holder, had been dead for 16 years. Trump
says he does not understand why the Civil War happened.

Not content with merely being ignorant of history, Trump makes up history, just like he makes up everything else. He will say whatever crazy thing that will get a roar out of the rally crowd of the moment – and that includes saying the exact opposite moments later.

It's gotten so bad that Trump accuses the media of being "fake news" when they play previous clips of Trump himself speaking. 

The latest Trump ass over tea kettle bloviate happened on Monday, May 1 when he actually claimed a victory even though Congress appropriated nothing to build his wall. Why this claim? Because Congress appropriated $15 billion more money for the military, although it was still less than the $54 billion he had asked for at the end of February. 

The only way to explain why anyone would have voted for him (except for total Republican automatons) is to recognize the cataclysmic failure of the Democratic Party to be responsive to its own constituents. Nancy knows best, Hillary knows best, Chuck knows best, including when Schumer actually said before the election, "For every blue collar Democrat we lose in Western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin." 

We heard with our own ears the audio recording of him saying this. Listen yourself on youtube.  Okay, Chuck, so at least you didn't lose Illinois, the home state of President Obama, but you lost Michigan instead, which is just as bad.

Who will save us from these tone deaf political losing geniuses?

The answer is the same as it has always been. We must save ourselves with our activism. People are speaking out to the Republicans in Congress. They are demanding that they not completely gut health care and education -- and it’s working. They are forcing the Republicans to reconsider, repent and reverse themselves.

But what is missing are more people willing to speak out to their own Democratic politicians, demanding better health care -- specifically Medicare for All. When we find all those people, we will find the missing votes and the needed election victories.

Help us find more of those people, our people. Share this message.

(Michael N. Cohen is a former board member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, founding member of the LADWP Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee, founding member of LA Clean Sweep and occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

TRUMP CORRUPTION WATCH--Just another little data point in the ongoing Trump corruption watch: Investors looking to buy a condo at Trump Tower in the Philippines would have found, until this week, some high-powered video testimonials on the project’s official website. 

There was Donald Trump, in a message filmed several years before he was elected president of the United States, declaring that the skyscraper bearing his name near the Philippine capital would be “something very, very special, like nobody’s seen before.” Then there was his daughter Ivanka Trump, now a senior White House adviser, lavishing praise on the project as a “milestone in Philippine real estate history.”

Four months into President Trump’s tenure, his business relationship with a developer who is one of the Philippines’ richest and most powerful men has emerged as a prime example of the collision between the private interests of a businessman in the White House and his public responsibility to shape U.S. foreign policy.

The potential conflict first came into focus shortly before Trump was elected, when the Philippines’ iron-fisted president, Rodrigo Duterte, named the Trump Organization’s partner in the Manila real estate venture his top trade envoy.

The connection burst back into public view this week, after Trump stunned human rights advocates by extending a White House invitation to Duterte, known for endorsing hundreds of extrajudicial killings of drug users, following what aides described as a “very friendly” phone call. Trump aides have said the outreach to Duterte is part of a broader effort to isolate North Korea.

Although the promotional videos were posted online in 2013, the continued presence of Trump and his daughter in marketing materials for the Manila tower reflects the extent to which they remain key selling points even as they have vowed to distance themselves from their global real estate and branding businesses.

After The Washington Post inquired Monday about the use of the Trumps in promoting the Manila project, the links and videos on the corporate website could no longer be accessed. Nonetheless, their lingering connection to the property’s sales pitch shows how difficult it is to separate the president from Trump-branded projects, particularly in foreign markets where there is less oversight of how his image is used.

Amanda Miller, vice president of marketing for the Trump Organization, said the material was “historical clips” that were not related to ongoing sales and marketing activity. Ivanka Trump was not aware that she was still featured in materials touting the Manila project, according to someone familiar with her views. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s company does not own or invest in the Manila project, a luxurious 57-story tower nearing completion in Makati, a bustling financial center that is part of metropolitan Manila.

In a long-term licensing deal, the project’s development company agreed to pay royalties for use of the Trump brand. Trump reported receiving $1 million to $6 million in payments from the project between 2014 and mid-2016, according to his financial disclosures.

Jose E.B. Antonio, chairman of the development company, has retained his leadership of the firm even as he functions now in his official capacity as a Duterte appointee. Kris Cole, a spokeswoman for the developer, said that Antonio’s envoy role is an unpaid, nongovernmental position promoting Philippine business interests in the United States.

Antonio, who Cole said was traveling and could not comment, told Bloomberg News in November that his role is to “enlarge the relationship between the two countries,” adding of his business relationship with Trump: “I guess it would be an asset.”

+++++++++

Ethics watchdogs have all weighed in on what's wrong with this. Here's one from The Brennan Center that lays it out succinctly: 

The first significant risk Trump’s continued business ties pose is of a direct conflict of interest. The Trump Organization is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that does business through over 400 entities in at least twenty countries, including vital partner nations and antagonistic dictatorships. Meanwhile, President Trump enjoys the tremendous powers of the executive branch — robust authority in matters of foreign affairs and domestic policy alike. So long as Trump continues to track the progress of his business empire, he can surely assess how his actions as president might benefit or harm his company’s fortunes. Even intentions to the contrary aside, research shows that, when faced with a financial conflict of interest, individuals demonstrate unconscious bias toward reaching conclusions that benefit them. As such, a cloud of suspicion will engulf some of President Trump’s most momentous decisions, leaving observers wondering whether his personal business interests influenced his policy choices.

The second concern with Trump keeping tabs on his business is that it creates opportunities for bribery. Far from the anachronisms of Tammany-era bribery — a stuffed envelope traded for a quick favor — bribery in this sophisticated context occurs on an industrial scale. Such “indirect lobbying,” as academics who studied media mogul Silvio Berlusconi’s government in Italy politely termed it, is the practice of providing business to a firm that a politician controls, with the expectation that the given politician will, in return, act favorably for the lobbyer’s interests. With Eric Trump keeping his father abreast of the family business’ progress, there exists a credible risk that President Trump may direct the power of the federal government to reward those who benefit his bottom line and punish those who threaten it.

Some might argue it is premature to project these risks onto Trump’s presidency. But, even if one grants President Trump the fullest benefit of the doubt, his awareness of the Trump Organization’s vital financials is damaging to our democracy. When it comes to corruption, optics are critical. Evidence of an opportunity for President Trump to act in an underhanded manner, even absent bad motives, degrades faith in our democratic institutions.

Everyone will be very relieved to find out that nobody involved ever made a contribution to a charity devoted to helping millions of poor people around the world so this is perfectly fine. And as far as I know the Trumps and the Kushners haven't been using a personal email server as they enrich themselves by selling the presidency to the highest bidder. You can relax.

(Heather Parton blogs under the pseudonym Digby at the blog site she created: Hullabaloo and also writes for Salon and ourfuture.org) 

-cw

FURTHER--Gone is that loathsome sea of smug, suited, doughy, self-righteous, chortling, older white men in the Rose Garden gleefully celebrating the "moral travesty” of passing a billionaires' tax cut bill uncleverly disguised as a health reform bill that will rob 24 million people, many in the most dire need, of health care.

The House passage of the AHCA will abandon millions to their so-called pre-existing conditions, from AIDS, addiction, asthma and autism through cancer, kidney disease, MS, Parkinson's and yes pregnancy to schizophrenia, sexual assault and ulcers. It will hit a disproportionate number of women and Medicaid recipients particularly hard.

A Washington Post editorial headline cogently sums up the latest cruelty of an already- cruel GOP: "Betrayal, Carelessness, Hypocrisy: The GOP Health Care Bill Has It All." 

Before the obscene "party" "celebrating" a trillion-dollar tax cut to the top 2% of Americans came the spectacle of its accomplices blithely streaming out and down the Capitol's broad majestic steps after the vote to the rising sound of protesters chanting, "Shame!" Critics and other sentient beings swiftly joined in the outrage. Talking Points Memo offered crunched numbers and annotated photos of the "Butcher Block Celebration" to show how many constituents of each leering House member will suffer. Enraged constituents flocked to the Facebook pages of House members who voted for the bill, and caustic sites sprang up allowing you to choose your casket or send your remains to Paul Ryan - mailmetothegop.com - after you die of lack of care.

Among the angry hashtags were #ThingsJesusNeverSaid - "The poor shall receive bread and wine, but first we'll give it to the rich and it'll trickle down to you eventually ... Donald my orange son, go forth, take from the sick, bestow their gold on the wealthy, and destroy the world with hate ... Bless the men w/ pills to make their penis stand at attention, but end the place for women to get cancer protection" - and #IAmAPreExistingCondition, documenting hundreds of accounts of adults and, often, children, suffering from illnesses for which they may no longer be able to afford treatment - and, cue reality check, from which any among us may one day suffer.

Among the grievous stories and photos of kids fighting leukemia, Crohn's Disease, cerebral palsy are many brief, grim lists: "2nd trimester pregnancy loss, childhood cancer survivor...Clinical depression, anxiety, scoliosis..Born with a weakened immune system, mental illness, arthritis, migraine...Survived breast cancer ... Stage 4 colon cancer ... I am a woman. Apparently #IAmAPreExistingCondition.

Perhaps Charlie Pierce, often calm before the indignities visited by "an incompetent and vulgar talking yam," best voiced the pure rage sparked by "a bill constructed to be as cruel as possible to as many people as possible ... an altogether remarkable piece of American political history that should follow the people celebrating it to their graves."

"Goddamn them all," he wrote. "Goddamn the political movement that spawned them ... Goddamn anyone who believes that blind, genetic luck is a demonstration of divine design. Goddamn anyone who believes in a god who hands out disease as punishment. Goddamn anyone who stays behind the walls and dances while the plague comes back again."

Above all, say progressive groups, make them pay. Donations to support Democrats for upcoming open Congressional seats - and take back the House from these cretins - are pouring in. You may want blood. Take power instead.

A list of pre-existing conditions no longer covered under #Trumpcare:

AIDS/HIV, acid reflux, acne, ADD, addiction, Alzheimer's/dementia, anemia, aneurysm, angioplasty, anorexia, anxiety, arrhythmia, arthritis, asthma, atrial fibrillation, autism, bariatric surgery, basal cell carcinoma, ipolar disorder, blood clot, breast cancer, bulimia, bypass surgery, celiac disease, cerebral aneurysm, cerebral embolism, cerebral palsy, cerebral thrombosis, cervical cancer, colon cancer, colon polyps, congestive heart failure, COPD, Crohn's disease, cystic fibrosis, DMD, depression, diabetes, disabilities, Down syndrome, eating disorder, enlarged prostate, epilepsy, glaucoma, gout, heart disease, heart murmur, heartburn, hemophilia, hepatitis C, herpes, high cholesterol, hypertension, hysterectomy, kidney disease, kidney stones, kidney transplant, leukemia, lung cancer, lupus, lymphoma, mental health issues, migraines, MS, muscular dystrophy, narcolepsy, nasal polyps, obesity, OCD, organ transplant, osteoporosis, pacemaker, panic disorder, paralysis, paraplegia, Parkinson's disease, pregnancy, restless leg syndrome, schizophrenia, seasonal affective disorder, seizures, sickle cell disease, skin cancer, sleep apnea, sleep disorders, stent, stroke, thyroid issues, tooth disease, tuberculosis, ulcers.

These creeps are coming up for reelection, are vulnerable, and need to go.

(Abby Zimet writes for Common Dreams … where this perspective was first posted.)

-cw