Trump and the Houston Flooding

How do you teach a man-child to empathize? How does an immature narcissist in a position of leadership take command during a life-threatening crisis? More specifically, how has President Donald Trump been dealing with the “epic” flooding in Houston resulting from Hurricane Harvey?

Donald and Melania Trump showed up in Texas yesterday to survey the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, showcasing $40 caps that are for sale via the Trump campaign website: “USA/45/TRUMP” for Donald and “Flotus” for Melania. You can’t make this stuff up. Product placement for Trump commodities two days in a row on national television. Everything is for sale in Trump World.

We watched the President and his wife ascend from Air Force One onto the tarmac at Corpus Christi, the safest landing place in the greater Houston area. (The hats remained on all day, even during a conference with rescue and cabinet officials in Austin; the Trump family does not ignore a branding opportunity.)

Water levels at the Addicks and Barker reservoirs in Houston have reached record levels. Harvey has caused the most extreme rain event in U.S. history: over fifty (50) inches of rain and not over yet. One of the Houston reservoirs breached for the first time since it was constructed in the 1940s. The death toll continues to rise, and with many residents refusing to leave their homes, it is likely that many more deaths will occur in those closed-up houses.

While Donald sat at a long table hearing state and local officials’ assessments of flood damage and their ongoing efforts to keep Texas residents safe, the split camera on CNN showed two people perched dangerously on top of a small car, its chassis sunk in the water in what looked like a large lake, although it was actually the San Jacinto River in full flood stage.

After a short flight, Donald and Melania emerged from Air Force One again.

Split screen again: The two small figures still on the car tried hard not to move as water lapped at their feet. A man squatted on the hood of the vehicle, nearly underwater, carefully tying his shoelace and balancing to avoid pitching into the seemingly bottomless water. His companion, a woman who was holding a black umbrella over her head, dangled her legs on the front windshield while sitting precariously on the roof of the bobbing vehicle.

And they waited as shown in that small split screen, sharing cable space with Donald Trump who was pretending to know what he was doing as one official after another reported to him.

“Great,” would say Donald. “That’s terrific.” “The best.” Asking no questions, looking supremely bored, his USA hat still on his head. Not acknowledging his recent rollback of two Obama-era regulations issued for the purpose of mitigating flooding in urban areas such as Houston.

An hour went by and the Trumps vanished from the photos en route to Donald’s second gathering of officials at Austin.

And then, finally, a small rubber boat with three or four rescuers and flood victims aboard was shown approaching the nearly submerged vehicle in the San Jacinto River, and the two people who had remained alive by sheer willpower and luck were taken aboard to safety. The woman’s overturned black umbrella sailed away in the floodwaters, nodding on the waves.

All around the sprawling megalopolis that is Houston, suddenly inundated houses had been taking on water, often within a few hours, and people fled to their second floors and too often, if they had them, to attics—which could act as death traps as had those in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina blew in back in 2005, exactly twelve years ago.

Thousands of stranded Houstonians have been rescued by first responders, the National Guard, volunteers, and neighbors from apartments, houses, cars, and streets, frequently bringing along pet dogs and cats. Many of the rescued are elderly and not a few are on stretchers or in wheelchairs. Thousands more remain stranded and frightened, with multiple overlapping rescue commands trying to coordinate forays into flooded neighborhoods, the central command often in some disarray as the facts on the ground continue to change.

Tens of thousands of people are being housed in temporary shelters in Houston and elsewhere as volunteers provide bedding, clothing, meals, medical assistance, and reassurance. Even millionaire evangelist Joel Osteen, who initially claimed his megachurch was flooded, was finally shamed into opening his facility to the drenched, exhausted public.

A Houston bedding showroom went viral when its two branches invited the public to sleep on its mattresses and recliners and eat (free) at its adjacent restaurants. Six hundred people have been living in those showrooms for days thanks to the generosity of “Mattress Mack”—proprietor Jim McIngvale, owner of Gallery Furniture.

But did the Trumps stop by to give the newly homeless people some hope and cheer, and like previous presidents would, show some empathy and kindness? Maybe a hug? Nope.

Rather, as The Washington Post has pointed out, “[Trump] made virtually no mention of the storm’s victims, and there was no indication he met with any. He didn’t call for donations or volunteers. He didn’t mourn the dead.”

Instead, “President Trump grabbed a microphone to address hundreds of supporters who had gathered outside a firehouse near Corpus Christi and were chanting: ‘USA! USA! USA!’” He waved the state flag of Texas.

“Trump marveled at the size of Harvey (‘it’s epic, what happened,’ ‘the most rain ever’), gushed about the crowd that had gathered to see him (‘what a turnout’), offered hyperbole about the recovery effort (it will be ‘something very special’), and thanked his FEMA administrator (‘a man who has really become very famous on television over the last couple of days’).”

As of Tuesday afternoon, Trump had “talked favorably about the higher television ratings that come with hurricane coverage, predicted that he will soon be congratulating himself and used 16 exclamation points in 22 often breathless tweets about the storm. But [he] had yet to mention those killed, call on other Americans to help or directly encourage donations to relief organizations.”

Did Trump mention the bravery and self-sacrifice of Houston Police Officer Steve Perez, who died in the floodwaters trapped in his patrol car as he attempted to get to work early in the storm? Not a word. Not even a telephone call to his family.

What everybody fears will continue to unfold in the days and weeks to come—both in Texas and now in Louisiana—is the discovery of the dead bodies of residents who have been left behind in their homes. Many of the Katrina deaths in New Orleans were not determined for weeks as individuals who sought shelter in their attics succumbed from dehydration and starvation, unnoticed and invisible within their four walls.

At least eighteen hundred people died in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. This problem could be replicated many times over in the much larger city of Houston where thousands of rescues have already occurred and thousands more will no doubt be undertaken in the next three to four days as Harvey’s floods slowly release their grip on the city.

A number of people have refused to be rescued from their homes in some outlying areas approached by the Louisiana Cajun Navy, an informal organization of private recreation boat owners who assist in flood search-and-rescue efforts and brought their boats, gas, food, and gumption to the task. Other rescue groups report similar problems. Many people are more afraid of leaving everything behind than facing a problematic future in a public shelter.

With the floodwaters expected to continue to rise in some places, it is anybody’s guess what the final death toll will be.

Joe Arpaio and a Short History of Presidential Pardons

The most recent Friday night “news dump” by the Trump administration included the fact that Donald Trump has pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who terrorized Latinos in his state’s Maricopa County for decades, ordering that motorists be stopped for the “crime” of appearing to be illegal immigrants (many were not even Latino) and then reported to federal immigration authorities. The sheriff also ran notorious outdoor prison camps that denied their inhabitants the most basic rights and protections from the weather, both hot and cold.

According to The New York Times, “[Arpaio’s] Arizona jail once brutally abused a paraplegic prisoner. Prisoners at the jail died at a suspiciously high rate. Latino prisoners were marched into a segregated area with electric fencing. And Arpaio himself described the jail as a ‘concentration camp.’”

We have now learned that earlier this year Trump inquired of his weasely Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions whether Arpaio’s then-pending case for violating a federal court injunction against detaining anyone not suspected of a state or federal crime could be halted. Sessions advised Trump that the case could not be short-circuited, but that any resulting conviction could instead be pardoned. That gave Donald Trump a green light which he has just exercised following Arpaio’s recent conviction, to wit, he signed a get-out-of-jail card for Birther Buddy Joe—a full pardon.

Neither Arpaio nor Trump took the trouble to submit a pardon request in advance to the DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney for routine consideration. Nor did Arpaio comply with the regulatory requirement that the pardon request be delayed five years past the date when he would become eligible to apply for a presidential pardon, a waiting period “designed to afford the petitioner a reasonable period of time in which to demonstrate an ability to lead a responsible, productive and law-abiding life.” In fact, Arpaio applied for his pardon (at Trump’s suggestion, wink, wink) after conviction but before sentence had even been pronounced.

On the strength of that pardon, Joe is asking on social media that his defense costs be compensated by the public. And the money appears to be pouring in although The National Center for Police Defense had already raised a cool half-million for Joe. Nevertheless, Arpaio has continued sending emails to his supporters asking for more than $1 million for his latest defense fund.

Remind anyone of the James Comey imbroglio? The modus operandus in that matter was for Trump to ask Comey for an investigatory short-circuit to drop the Russia investigation (followed in short order by firing the FBI Director). Hence, when Trump’s suggestion to Sessions that DOJ somehow halt the Arpaio matter didn’t fly, Trump pivoted to a more dramatic exercise of executive power, i.e., a presidential pardon.

An Arizona ACLU lead lawyer in the Arpaio racial profiling case characterized the Trump pardon as “the official presidential endorsement of racism.”

Even more worrisome, the Arpaio pardon appears to be signaling to the prospective witnesses in the Mueller Russia investigation that they have nothing to fear and hence no need to turn state’s witness.

The Constitution provides that a President may pardon federal convictions for crimes or commute sentences for commission of federal crimes. (A President may not pardon impeachment or state or local convictions for crimes.)

And going back to the founding of the country, President George Washington issued a number of pardons including two for men who had been convicted of treason as part of the Whiskey Rebellion during which armed insurgents attacked the home of the tax inspector to protest imposition of a tax on distilled goods to pay for Revolutionary War debts before fleeing along with their fellow insurgents from thousands of armed state militiamen.

Thereafter, President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to persons who had participated in the rebellion against the United States (the Civil War), including three of the co-conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. President Ulysses S. Grant pardoned all but 500 former top Confederate leaders pursuant to the Amnesty Act of 1872. President Benjamin Harrison granted amnesty and pardon for the offense of engaging in polygamous or plural marriage to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church). President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned one Servillano Aquino two years after his death sentence conviction for anti-American activities in the Philippines.

Moving right along, in the twentieth century President William Howard Taft eventually pardoned the captain of the General Slocum, an excursion steamboat that had caught fire and sunk in the East River, killing more than 1,000 people. President Woodrow Wilson pardoned Frederick Krafft, who had been convicted of violating the Espionage Act, to wit, making disloyal remarks at a street corner speech in 1917 opposing participation of the U.S. in the First World War. President Warren Harding commuted the sentences of anti-war Socialists Eugene V. Debs and Kate Richards O’Hare for sedition under the same Espionage Act. President Calvin Coolidge commuted or pardoned the sentences of Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey (convicted of mail fraud) and Lothar Witzke, a German spy and saboteur. President Herbert Hoover pardoned the Governor of Indiana, convicted of mail fraud with the help of the KKK.

On December 23, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pardoned all persons who had been convicted during the First World War under the Espionage Act and the Selective Service Act. He also pardoned individuals convicted pursuant to Prohibition after its repeal in 1933.

“There is a long history of presidents granting pardons or amnesty to men still in prison following major wars.”

For example, in 1947 President Harry Truman granted pardons to 1,523 men still in prison for refusing to cooperate with the draft in World War II. (Truman even commuted the death sentence of Oscar Collazo, who had attempted to assassinate him, as well as pardoning Boston Mayor James Michael Curley after various fraud convictions.)

President Richard Nixon pardoned William Calley after three years of house arrest for the former soldier’s murder convictions in the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.

President Gerald Ford stunned the nation by granting a full and unconditional pardon to his predecessor Richard Nixon one month after his resignation as President and just before he could be indicted in the Watergate scandal. A week later Ford granted conditional amnesty to all those individuals who had been convicted in anti-Vietnam War protests.

In addition, Ford posthumously restored full rights of citizenship to Confederate President Robert E. Lee more than 100 years after the end of the Civil War.

Moreover, Ford pardoned Iva Toguri D’Aquino—known as “Tokyo Rose”—for her treasonous World War II broadcasts to GIs stationed in the South Pacific at least thirty years after her conviction. Thereafter, Ford pardoned Ernest C. Brace following his court martial from the U.S. Marine Corps because Brace had served nearly eight years as a Vietnam POW.

Not to be outdone, President Jimmy Carter declared an unconditional amnesty for Vietnam war protesters a day after his inauguration in 1977, and also pardoned over 200,000 Vietnam War draft dodgers, many of whom had established new lives in Canada and elsewhere. Carter even granted clemency or a pardon to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, G. Gordon Liddy, a convicted Watergate burglar, Patty Hearst, the kidnapped brainwashed heiress who robbed banks, and three people who opened fire in Congress in 1954, wounding five Congressmen.

President Ronald Reagan continued the tradition, pardoning two FBI officials who authorized illegal break-ins during the Watergate era, George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees who had been convicted of making illegal campaign contributions and obstructing justice during the Nixon presidency, and Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel, who had been convicted of mail fraud and racketeering.

Continuing the tradition, President George H. W. Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra participants including Elliott Abrams, Robert C. McFarlane, and Caspar Weinberger, as well as Myra Soble, who was involved in the Rosenberg spy ring.

President Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger from a drug offense, completed the pardon of Patty Hearst, and pardoned Marc Rich and his partner for tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran. Clinton also pardoned Illinois Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, Arizona Gov. Fife Symington III for bank fraud, the Clintons’ Whitewater partner Susan McDougal, HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros for lying to the FBI, Rep. Mel Reynolds, CIA Director John Deutch, and sixteen members of FALN—Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that set off 120 bombs in the U.S.—who had been serving long sentences for conspiracy and sedition.

President George W. Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby for his perjury in connection with the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, and issued a posthumous pardon of Charles Winters, who smuggled three B-17 heavy bombers to Israel during its War of Independence.

President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning for providing classified documents to Wikileaks, and the sentences of several other convicted felons for a variety of federal crimes.

Trump has set the bar at a new low and in record time even before sentence was pronounced on Sheriff Arpaio. We must all therefore ask, what’s next?

Trump Eclipsed by the Sun and the Moon

People all over the United States enjoyed a rare afternoon free of the bombast and self-destructiveness of their President Donald Trump yesterday when a total eclipse of the sun spun over the country in a southeasterly direction from the Oregon coast to South Carolina, and thence out to sea.

Millions of people drove to the nearest area of totality with their special glasses or homemade sun-viewers (many fashioned from cereal boxes) even as astronomers made a photographic record of the event from the ground, from airplanes chasing the eclipse, from the International Space Station, and from unmanned satellites orbiting the earth. It was a special day for the crowds in prime viewing areas to watch the moon’s shadow slowly cover the sun until only the sun’s “ring of fire” or annulus peeked out around the curvature of the moon.

The only appearance by our Great Leader was on a White House portico with wife Melania and son Barron, wherein Donald lifted his head to the heavens briefly (without using the protective glasses to keep his eyes from being permanently damaged).

Do self-made gods have divine protection even from the sun?

My thoughts went back to June 30, 1954, when I was a child in the midwest and saw my first solar eclipse. My school science teacher had organized a viewing event at our school’s playground beginning at dawn, to occur as a total eclipse ran its course beginning as the sun rose in Nebraska and thence moved northeast over Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montreal, and Newfoundland on its way across the North Atlantic via Greenland, looping over the Faroe Islands, Norway, Sweden, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, the Ukraine, the Soviet Union, Iran, Afghanistan, and once more into dusk and darkness.

We were located in a 75% totality viewing area as the sun rose, already partially obstructed by the moon, using our cereal box viewers as our teacher set up his telescope on the playground to view a clear sky devoid of clouds. We would take turns viewing the heavens through the telescope, awed by the celestial drama occurring overhead.

Yesterday’s sun was easily visible from my Queens, New York neighborhood, and I joined a variety of neighbors using their special glasses or jerry-rigged cereal boxes, lounging in front of their apartment buildings watching the sky.

It grew very quiet as the moon’s coverage area was maximized, small animals, birds, and even insects hushing, the light dimming, and crescents of shade reflecting the sun’s configuration dappling the sidewalks. It felt almost religious, a spiritual experience communing with the elements.

A nice breather in a universe of wonders that we tend to take for granted. A good day.

Scrambling for the Lifeboats in Trump World

Following Donald Trump’s lengthy unscripted press conference last week in the lobby of Trump Tower that astonished listeners with its demonization of the protesters who opposed Nazi and white nationalist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia—rattling the foundations of the American consciousness—Trump is finding that the rats are running amuck on the gunwales and the passengers are scrambling for the lifeboats.

A great many individuals and groups are making a public case for jettisoning all confidence in the man who occupies the Oval Office, and Narcissistic Donald must surely be taking note in his black heart even if he has not made any public acknowledgment.

Loss of Business for Mar-a-Lago and Other Trump Enterprises

Donald’s “Winter White House,” his gilded Palm Beach hideaway Mar-a-Lago, has just lost most of its major business events for the next year.

The following seventeen (17) organizations have announced their cancellation of yearly galas or organizational luncheon or dinner meetings that were scheduled to occur at the posh former winter mansion of the late Marjorie Merriweather Post, with one of the organization spokespersons citing Dante: “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis”:

(1) The Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation, (2) The Autism Project of Palm Beach County, (3) Big Dog Ranch Rescue, (4) Lois Pope Life Foundation and Leaders in Furthering Education, (5) The American Friends of Magen David Adom, (6) The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, (7) The Cleveland Clinic, (8) The American Red Cross, (9) The Salvation Army, (10) The Susan G. Komen Foundation, (11) Leaders in Furthering Education (LIFE), (12) The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, (13) The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, (14) The Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, (15) Morselife Foundation, (16) Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, and (17) Hearing the Ovarian Cancer Whisper.

Three (3) other organizations are wavering in their decisions to hold future events at Mar-a-Lago: (1) the Unicorn Children’s Foundation, (2) the Raymond F. Kravis Center, and (3) the Palm Beach Habilitation Center.

The same thing “may be happening at other Trump businesses,” according to The Washington Post:

“Outside Los Angeles . . . a golf course owned by Trump has seen a decline in golf revenue, big outdoor weddings and charity golf tournaments [beginning] in the summer of 2015, after Trump attacked Mexican immigrants during the speech that announced his campaign.” In Trump’s home town, New York City, “both Trump’s golf course in the Bronx and his hotel in SoHo appear to have experienced declines in banquet business and event-space rentals [with] the Trump SoHo hotel [seeing] a drop in companies renting out its ballrooms for meetings, and . . . officials . . . considering layoffs.”

Kennedy Center Honorees Avoid Association with Trump

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will not attend this year's Kennedy Center Honors on December 2d following the refusal or anticipated refusal of all five honorees to participate if the Trumps were to be present. This is Trump acknowledging that he would otherwise be humiliated in front of the entire country.

The 2017 honorees are TV producer Norman Lear, dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade, singer Lionel Richie, vocalist Gloria Estafan, and (potentially) rapper LL Cool J.

Two of these honorees—Norman Lear and Carmen de Lavallade—have also announced their intention to boycott the preliminary White House reception because the Trumps will be present, and a third is undecided.

This scenario is reminiscent of Trump's refusal to throw out the first ball last April at the Washington Nationals season-opening baseball game. He and the Secret Service understood the magnitude of the fans' disapproval, which would have been (at a minimum) huge waves of angry shouts and potentially the acts of a would-be assassin. Newsweek speculated that, “At the age of 70, though, we're not sure President Trump has the attention span or patience to appreciate baseball, especially if he considers football to be boring.”

(Query: Does Trump really give a damn about these public appearances? Highly unlikely. He can use the time to play golf and watch Fox News. I haven’t heard of the Trumps attending a single concert of any music or a play or any other staged performance. If the people on a stage don’t include Donald rousing his troops and burnishing his self-image, then Donald just isn’t interested.)

National Advisory Panels Appointed by Trump Self-Destruct

Vaunted national advisory panels set up by Trump imploded this past week.

First, the proposed Infrastructure Advisory Council was abandoned by Trump after failing to meet and after Trump failed to make a coherent proposal to shore up and improve America’s woefully inadequate roads, airports, trains, bridges, and tunnels, overshadowed by many far more modern European counterparts. Although Trump’s latest budget proposes $200 billion in federal funds to be invested in infrastructure over the next ten years, with additional incentives to encourage $800 billion in investment from the private sector, there will apparently be no industry input into planning and execution.

Second, both the presidential Manufacturing Council and the Strategy and Policy Forum imploded in recent days as member CEOs jumped ship faster than the press could keep up in the wake of Trump's unholy response to the white nationalist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one counter-demonstrator and two state police officers dead. The Strategy and Policy Forum had published a statement stating that it was disbanding because “intolerance, racism and violence have absolutely no place in this country and are an affront to core American values.”

“The advisory councils seem to have been largely symbolic, with few substantive initiatives on the table. . . . The business leaders had joined with the intention to do good work [one source said], but the president's lackluster response to Charlottesville, among other issues, made it hard to stay on board.” Ultimately, “[a] dozen members of [the] Strategy and Policy Council participated in a conference call last week, during which they all agreed to dissolve the group, . . . And after that, Trump tweeted that he was ‘ending both’ advisory councils ‘rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople’” who were members. Trump barely got his announcement on the electronic superhighway before the Council could formally dissolve.

Seven members of the Manufacturing Council had publicly quit their panel before Trump stanched the bleeding and disposed of the body.

Third, the White House announced its plans to disband a Federal Climate Change Advisory Panel, just as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration acting administrator Ben Friedman informed the chair of the Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment that the NOAA would not renew the panel’s charter, which expired August 20th. The National Climate Assessment should be issued every four years, but it has only been issued three times since it was authorized by a 1990 statute. Committee members intend to continue working on their report although it will no longer constitute the official position of the federal government.

“Administration officials are currently reviewing [the Climate Science Special Report] that is key to the final document . . . [which] was produced by scientists from [thirteen] different federal agencies and estimates that human activities were responsible for an increase in global temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010.”

Panel Chair Richard Moss of the University of Maryland’s Department of Geographical Sciences “warned of consequences for the decisions that state and local authorities must make on a range of issues from building road projects to maintaining adequate hydropower supplies.” Such decisions will be divorced from concrete guidance on “how to factor climate change into future infrastructure.”

Fourth, members of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities quit en masse, with a published resignation letter signed by all seventeen appointees, the first letters of the paragraphs in that letter spelling out RESIST. The committee was founded in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan to act as an advisory group to the administration on cultural issues. Each of the private sector members was appointed by President Obama.

Military Leaders and Republican Politicians Distance Themselves Publicly from Trump

Five U.S. Joint Chiefs of the Military issued public condemnation of white supremacist groups as “messages to the general public, the troops and potential recruits.”

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson tweeted that, “Events in Charlottesville unacceptable and mustn’t be tolerated @USNavy for ever stands against intolerance & hatred.”

Then Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Robert B. Neller tweeted that there was “No place for racial hatred or extremism in @USMC. Our core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment frame the way Marines live and act.”

He was followed by Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark Milley, who posted: “The Army doesn’t tolerate racism, extremism, or hatred in our ranks. It’s against our Values and Everything we’ve stood for since 1775.”

Air Force Gen. Dave Goldfein then stated the following: “I stand with my fellow service chiefs in saying we’re always stronger together—it’s who we are as #Airmen. Integrity, service and excellence . . . that’s what America’s Air Force is about.”

Finally, Chief of the National Guard Bureau Joseph Lengyel tweeted: “I stand with my fellow Joint Chiefs in condemning racism, extremism & hatred. Our diversity is our strength. #NationalGuard.”

The George Bushes, father and son, both former Republican Presidents, publicly enunciated their own principles about murderous bigots and domestic terrorists.

At least ten Republican Senators—“prospective jurors in any impeachment proceeding”—issued strong condemnatory statements against Donald Trump’s casual conflation of white supremacist and Nazi supporters with counterdemonstrators. They were:

Senator Robert Corker of Tennessee: Trump “"has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful."

Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona: “To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties and tremendous powers of denial.”

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah: “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

Senator Mike Lee, also of Utah: “Carrying a Nazi flag or any other symbol of white supremacy is a hateful act that cannot be morally defended, least of all by the leader of a diverse nation still healing from its original sin of racist slavery.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: “What the president said . . . was wrong. There is no moral equivalence between those who are inviting hate and division and those who took to the streets to make it clear that those views are unacceptable.”

Senator Dan Sullivan, also of Alaska: “Anything less than complete & unambiguous condemnation of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK by the @POTUS is unacceptable. Period.”

Senator Rob Portman of Ohio: “The response to this ideology of hate & bigotry, & the act of domestic terrorism, should be simple & united condemnation without ambiguity.”

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida: “Very important for the nation to hear @potus describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists.”

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina: “What we want to see from our president is clarity and moral authority. And that moral authority [was] compromised [by Trump at his final press conference]. There’s no question about that.”

Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina: “When it comes to white supremacists & neo-nazis, there can be no equivocating: they’re propagators of hate and bigotry. Period.”

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey: "In my view, the president's comments about 'both sides' were a mistake and they shouldn't have been said and I certainly wouldn't have said them and don't say them today and I don't agree with them and I don't adopt them."

Religious Leaders Condemn Trump

Top advisers to Pope Francis have published a strong criticism of President Donald Trump and the right-wing policies taking hold in the United States. “A message was published in an official Vatican news magazine, titled La Civilta Cattolica, which has authorized approval from Pope Francis himself.” Top Catholic leaders are calling out Trump specifically, and complaining that Republicans have created a “problematic fusion between religion and state, faith and politics, religious values and economy.”

A New York City megachurch pastor became the first religious leader to step down from President Trump's evangelical advisory board (the Evangelical Faith Council). Alphonso R. Bernard, Sr., the pastor of the Christian Cultural Center Megachurch in Brooklyn, New York, announced on Twitter Friday that "it became obvious that there was a deepening conflict in values between myself and the administration." The church claims 37,000 members, and is apparently the largest evangelical church in New York City.

Chicago-area megachurch pastor James MacDonald reminded his followers that he resigned October 13, 2016 after the Access Hollywood tapes were published during Trump’s campaign. MacDonald had called Trump “lecherous and worthless” in a letter to the rest of the council.

In the wake of the controversial public comments by Trump, several other evangelical leaders have spoken out against racism from their pulpits.

And a group of alumni from one of the country's most influential evangelical Christian universities, Liberty University, is condemning their school's president for his continued alignment with President Trump. A small but growing number of Liberty University graduates are preparing to return diplomas to their school, protesting University President Jerry Falwell Jr.'s ongoing support for Trump. They began organizing after Trump's divisive remarks about the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville and Falwell’s comments praising Trump’s remarks.

Some Liberty graduates see Falwell's association with Trump as both a personal liability and a moral embarrassment.

The Week’s Magazine Covers Feature a KKK Hooded Trump in Quadruplicate

This week’s New Yorker includes a blowhard Trump in a sailboat propelled by a sail shaped like a KKK hat with two eyeholes (“Hate in America”); The Economist, Trump bellowing into a white megaphone pierced by two black holes, to resemble a Ku Klux Klan hood; Time Magazine, Trump delivering a Nazi salute; and (by the same artist), for Der Spiegel, the president beneath a tall white hood in a piece titled “Trump’s True Face.”

Other Developments

Trump failed to reach out to the family of slain Charlottesville protestor Heather Heyer until her funeral was under way, by which time Heather’s mother Susan Bro had had her fill of Trump’s equivocations and lies, and refused to take his calls.

The Democrats have introduced a motion to censure Trump in the House.

The Mayor of Baltimore, with the consent of the Baltimore City Council, had all Confederate statutes in the city removed during the overnight hours shortly after the Charlottesville press events.

Trump’s temporary return to Trump Tower in Manhattan was met with large surging crowds protesting the week’s events. He soon left to return to his Virginia golf course (the one with the phony Civil War plaque commemorating a non-existent battle).