The Swamp Effect

Chief of staff John Kelly (left) grimaces and looks away
as Trump makes baseless accusations against Germany 

Ah, remember the lofty aspirations of "Drain the swamp" ?

As you know, Donald Trump repeated those words like some kind of mantra or magical right-wing incantation during his campaign.

But the term was actually one of a number of simple catchphrases (including "Build the wall") coined by the technology firm Cambridge Analytica prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential race.

They weren't intended to be accurate or complicated, nor did they have to be - kind of like Trump's buffoonish, uninformed tirade Wednesday morning at a breakfast in front of America's NATO allies.

As Rebecca Tan observed in a Washington Post article, Trump opened the breakfast meeting by loudly making the baseless accusation that Germany is "captive to Russia because it's getting so much of it's energy from Russia." - causing White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to grimace in frustration and look away from the table (pictured above) as NATO reps stared at His Orangeness with a mixture of disbelief and disgust.

Trump relies on sewing chaos and "blowing things up" in situations where he's the most uninformed politician in the room (which he always is) in an effort to shift attention from his weaknesses.

So constantly falling back on his signature Cambridge Analytica-created catchphrases like "We have to build the wall" are easy things for him to remember, and quick ways to cultivate the anger of his voter base - who connect emotionally to Trump's keywords for bigotry, xenophobia and authoritarian tough-guy talk.

If Trump seems oblivious to the effect that his words have on those around him, it's because he is - his catchphrases are like handy flashcards he can use to connect with his base anywhere, and coveting their approval is about all he does now.

Again, those words sound deceptively simplistic, but they're actually the result of complex computer algorithms that sift through mountains of data to determine keywords that conservative voters are most likely to react and connect to.

Right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer and his equally
fringe-conservative activist daughter Rebekah

Words designed as easy-to-digest verbal / mental red-meat slogans for the white, working class, (mostly) non-college-educated, conservative-leaning voter base that Cambridge Analytica was helping the Trump team to target in the 2016 presidential race.

Cambridge Analytica faced widespread criticism for illegally hoovering up the personal profile data of an estimated 86 million Facebook users in an effort to rally support for Trump.

That kind of flagrant rat-fucking, a term for underhanded political trickery used to win elections made famous by former Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their account of their exposure of the Watergate scandal, "All the President's Men", doesn't come cheap.

Fortunately for the notoriously-cheap Trump, it was funded by right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer.

Mercer and his daughter Rebekah (pictured above), are cut from the same cloth as Charles and David Koch or Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos - billionaires obsessed with spending millions of dollars of their own money to erode responsible government in order to try and replace it with a fringe, right-wing cultural-political ideology that functions as a mask for their true mission.

Which is paying no taxes on their billions and having a small cadre of like-minded wealthy conservative elite run the country's courts and political system so they can enrich themselves.

Check out Chris Daly's March 26th blog post, "Congress Is Questioning the Wrong Guy"
 if you want to get a more detailed understanding of the Mercer's murky role in funding not only Cambridge Analytica, but also Trump campaign strategist / white supremacist Steve Bannon and fake-news / misinformation factory Brietbart News.

It's an excellent tutorial on the kind of right-wing nut-baggery that helped get Trump elected president by (in part) appearing at rallies repeating words like "Drain the swamp" over and over and over.

San Bernardino County prosecutor Michael Selyem
and Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters 

By now, that grandiose and non-specific campaign promise seems borne of a distant past far removed from the actions, behavior and rhetoric of the Trump administration.

In recent weeks there's been a disturbing
spike in incidents of white people calling the police on African-Americans for doing stuff like using a pool, barbecuing or mowing a lawn etc.

But over the past few days there've been some troubling examples of members of law enforcement getting their Trump on.

Last week a San Bernardino County (California) prosecutor named Michael Selyem was disciplined and placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation of racist, sexist comments that he posted publicly on social media about the outspoken Democratic California Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

Lately a number of conservatives in the U.S. have gotten their panties in a twist after Waters publicly called on people to peacefully and non-violently confront members of the Trump administration on their roles in the heinous policy of incarcerating asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants - and worse, separating them from their children.

In response to one conservative post criticizing Waters for encouraging Americans to exercise their right to free speech and public assembly protected by the First Amendment, Michal Selyem wrote:

"Being a loud-mouthed cunt in the ghetto, you would think someone would have shot this bitch by now..."

(Being a county prosecutor who graduated from law school, you would think Selyem had the presence of mind to realize that venting his bigotry on social media publicly might not be the best career move.)

Now obviously Selyem has a right to free speech.

On-duty Officer Patrick Connor looks
away as Mia Irizarry pleads for help

But he's a county prosecutor whose views on race could cloud his ability to prosecute people of color based on the law.

Or put into serious jeopardy other cases that he's prosecuted in the past on the grounds that his views demonstrate the kind of racial bias that could get a case overturned in court.

People who work in the court system or law enforcement are clearly entitled to their own political views - but not when it clouds their ability to serve as public servants on behalf of all people; regardless of race or ethnicity.

Earlier today, the Forest Preserves of Cook County (Chicago) announced that Officer Patrick Connor resigned in the wake of national outrage over a video showing him ignoring a Hispanic woman's pleas for help as an enraged white man verbally harassed and followed her because she was wearing a t-shirt with a Puerto Rican flag on it.


As CBS News reported, Mia Irizarry was waiting for family members at a picnic area in a park that she had rented for her birthday when she was accosted by an intoxicated 62-year-old white man named Timothy Trybus who was apparently upset that she had a Puerto Rican flag on her shirt.

Not only did he question her status as a U.S. citizen (as if a drunk guy in a park has the right to do so), he told her she didn't have a right to be wearing the shirt in the United States.

Irizarry remained calm and filmed the incident on her cell phone.

"Why is she wearing that shit?" he asks aloud at one point, evidently unaware that Puerto Rico has been a U.S. territory since 1952...

When Trybus begins to approach her and get more combative, Irizarry calls out to Officer Connor who is standing nearby with his uniform on - clearly on duty.

He simply looks away and begins to casually wander off - clearly sending the signal that he condones Trybus' behavior and words - but what if Trybus had punched or assaulted Irizarry, or worse?

When you have a county prosecutor publicly writing racist, misogynist things about a female member of Congress, or an on-duty police officer ignoring a woman's plea for help, the swamp isn't drained.

It's getting deeper, and the toxic catchphrases constantly repeated by Donald Trump have clearly affected the ability of some individuals in this country to draw a line between their personal views and their humanity.

Like the shocked representatives of NATO member nations Wednesday morning, many Americans recognize that the swamp is in full effect in some parts of this country - let's just hope those folks are registered to vote in November.

So we can really start the process of draining that swamp.

The Caravan & The Wall: Fact Versus Trump's Fiction

Weary Central American refugees from the "Caravan"
lining up at a soccer field in Mexico    [Photo - AP]

As an American raised to believe in the idea of a country that welcomes refugees seeking safety and freedom from violence or political persecution within our borders, it's not easy living with a president who promotes lies and fiction over the truth.

It's been hard enough seeing the images of hundreds of Central American refugees making their way north through Mexico in what's being described as a "caravan" in an effort to flee violence and destabilized government authority in their homeland to seek asylum in the U.S.

It's difficult to even imagine the kinds of circumstances and human suffering that would compel people to pack up only what they can carry, take their children and start a treacherous journey hundreds of miles north on foot just for a chance to enter the U.S. to join family members already here, or apply for residency or asylum.

Donald Trump's efforts this past week to seize on their plight and use it as some kind of media prop to ruthlessly cultivate anti-immigrant hysteria in order to selfishly promote his politically-dead-in-the-water border wall, is low even by his almost nonexistent standards.

None were lower than his attempts to resurrect, exonerate and defend his widely-condemned 2016 claims that Mexican migrants were "rapists" - which he used to kick off his presidential campaign.

As was widely reported, during off-script remarks last Thursday, Trump made the absurd claim that women in the caravan "are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before".

Unsubstantiated claims which even drew criticism from the likes of former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who himself was famously fired for repeated sexual harassment. 

WH Press Secretary defending Trump's made-up
claims of a fictional mass rape of refugees 

Trump seemed oddly unaware that the entire purpose of hundreds of refugees banding together in one large group was for their own security - to prevent such things from happening.

On Friday, when astonished journalists demanded an explanation from Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, (whose job now seems to entail defending and justifying Trump's almost non-stop lying) she cited a newspaper article on which her erratic boss based his bizarre claims of mass rape.

The article in question, an LA Times article published on Tuesday by Kate Linthicum, while referring to a 2010 kidnap and massacre of 72 Central American migrants in northern Mexico, mentioned that in Mexico, "Rapes, assaults and robberies of immigrants are common."

It said nothing about a single member of the current caravan being raped.

Let alone the fictional mass rapes Trump seemed to be referring to, without even having any first-hand information to back up his claims - a reflection for his utter disregard for the truth.

Kudos to CNN president Jeff Zucker for using his network's vast resources to try and fact-check Trump - take a look at this clip posted on DailyCaller.com of CNN's Leyla Santiago reporting live as some of the hundreds of Central American immigrants making their way north exit a bus that has brought them to the Mexican city of Puebla.

Where immigration personnel from the Mexican government as well as volunteer immigration legal experts from the U.S. were on hand to help advise the refugees on their status and options.

Some of the hundreds of people Trump tried to
paint as security threat 

Santiago asks a woman holding her child if any of the women in the caravan have been raped and she said none of the women have been assaulted. Not one.

Now that's not to suggest that border security isn't important.

But much of the current chaos is a direct result of Congressional Republicans blocking multiple attempts to pass comprehensive border legislation over the past decade.

It's not just U.S. domestic policy either.

Many of the hundreds of refugees in this caravan are from Honduras, where anger over the disputed election of the incumbent Juan Orlando Hernandez as president last November prompted a wave of criticism at the U.S. after the State Department (under former Sec. of State Rex Tillerson) sanctioned the elections despite widespread evidence of election fraud.

The Organization of American States announced the election results to be invalid as well.

Based in part on accusations that Hernandez had used his power to place his own supporters on Honduras' Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

The Tribunal declared Hernandez the winner over popular opposition challenger Salvador Nasralla by a margin of 1.66%

They also altered the Honduran constitution to allow Hernandez to run for a second term.

Opposition presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla
at a political rally in Tegucigalpa, Honduras 

Many Hondurans felt Nasralla had won the election and the results plunged parts of the country into violence as police cracked down on anti-Hernandez demonstrators - at least 24 demonstrators were killed by police.

The point is that the people in the caravan fleeing north were justifiably seeking asylum from the kind of authoritarian violence that has claimed so many innocent civilian lives in Central American countries like El Salvador or Nicaragua.

Yet Trump pronounced the refugees a security threat, and in yet another poorly-planned and seat-of-the-pants policy decision, used the caravan as an excuse to request that National Guard troops be deployed to the southern border for some kind of undefined mission until his precious wall is funded and built.

The silence from Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is deafening at this point.

It bears mentioning that there a couple things about Trump's lingering obsession about building a wall along the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico that are both fascinating and disturbing.

Let's start with the facts: as Susan Ferriss of the Center For Public Integrity reported on Wednesday, data from both the U.S. Border Patrol and the Pew Research Center clearly show that illegal border crossings from Mexico into the U.S. have been declining for years - in fact they're at a 50-year low.

Refugees cling to the side of a freight train heading
north through Mexico known as "The Beast"

So it's actually not surprising to watch Trump try and paint a caravan of hundreds of men, women and children from Central America openly making their way to the U.S. as some kind of invasion force.

There's a reason that both Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate didn't allocate the tens of billions of dollars in the recent budget bill needed to undertake such a massive project.


Neither party wants to be associated with it, or pay for it because the facts show it isn't needed, won't actually be an effective deterrent to illegal border crossing and is politically unpopular.

Whether it's people clinging to the side of a freight train (pictured above) to make their way north through Mexico into the U.S., refugees will find a way to cross borders.

Second, the whole idea of the wall isn't based on some kind of sound policy analysis or strategic research cooked up by some think-tank.

The idea for the wall was one of many political themes first analyzed as part of test language used by the controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica as it explored themes that potential conservative voters for Trump would go for by presenting them to focus groups.

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix and
co-founder Chistopher Wylie

As journalist Jason Le Miere reported in an article for Newsweek in March:

"The focus groups were also asked to respond to the idea of a border wall to prevent illegal immigration, as well as attitudes to race, including so-called 'race-realism', which trumpets the fact that races should be considered different from one another."

So the reality is that Trump's wall wasn't an idea developed by military strategists in the Defense Department.

It was one of the intentionally-divisive political wedge issues (including "draining the swamp") cooked up by Cambridge Analytica's data-crunchers as they looked for ways to sell Trump to American voters in 2016.

Who was one of the top executives at Cambridge Analytica when all this data was being harvested?

Former Trump campaign manager and senior White House advisor Steve Bannon.

So there's a reason Trump never stopped talking about the wall during the campaign, and was perfectly willing to flagrantly lie about mass rape of refugees last week in a desperate ploy to try and drum up for support for something the majority of American people don't want, and even Republicans have no intention of funding.

It's just a shame that outrage over Trump's concocted fiction seems to overshadow the brutal realities many of these caravan refugees are fleeing - and obscure the larger issue that Congress needs to get it's act together and come up with a way to draft and pass meaningful immigration reform.

Until then, the ever-more erratic Trump will continue to sew chaos where order is so desperately needed - and spread his fiction in an attempt to subvert facts that don't fit into his narrow ideology.