Tweety openly defyies the law by "asking" the FBI to stop investigating Flynn, the Russian agent. Some Tweety supporters can say it was not a direct order, Tweety was just expressing his appreciation of Flynn. Is America supposed to believe, in the context of this President's bullying behavior, his threats, his bold [or dumb] in-your-face contempt for the truth, that Tweety was just saying Flynn is a nice guy, so the investigation of his Russian connections and interference in our democracy should cease?
Tweety said Flynn's a "good guy?"
Come on man! Stop being conned!
Tweety is weakening our national security by giving Russia, an enemy to democracy everywhere, secret information from Israel, and boldly daring anyone to do anything about it. So America is supposed to believe he was just using Russia to fight ISIS?
Come on man! Stop being conned!
"A coup in real time?"
Historian Timothy Snyder says the Comey firing is Trump’s “open admission of collusion with Russia”
Yale historian says Trump has now admitted guilt; former intelligence officer says Flynn was a Russian agent
Chauncey DeVega, Thursday, May 11, 2017 09:00 AM EDT
"Trump is a plutocratic authoritarian. As I have previously argued, it is fair to call him a fascist. He has repeatedly demonstrated this fact through his words and deeds both during the 2016 presidential election and now while serving as president.
Like the leader of a banana republic or a Mafia boss, Trump has surrounded himself with a small group of advisers and confidantes comprised mainly of his family members. He has contempt for journalists and the concept of a free press. He leads a cult of personality, marketing himself as an autocratic who will protect and defend his “forgotten Americans” against all threats foreign and domestic. Trump has no respect for the standing norms of American democracy. He and his supporters evidently believe that the rule of law does not apply to him.
Authoritarians are paranoid by definition. To that end, they ruthlessly consolidate power and eliminate any threats to their power. In keeping with this script, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, in a hastily written letter of dismissal delivered to FBI headquarters by Keith Schiller, the leader of the president’s personal Praetorian Guard. Comey’s firing was also endorsed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a man who has no credibility after having been caught repeatedly lying about his own contacts with representatives of the Russian government."
Tweety is feeling strong given Republican continuing unwavering support, and key sycophants like Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
"Snyder also predicted: Donald Trump will stage his own version of Adolf Hitler’s Reichstag fire — a manufactured crisis or some other type of political or social upheaval — to enact a state of emergency or otherwise consolidate his power by subverting America’s political institutions."
More . . .
"Snyder also said that Trump’s recent moves are consistent with the predictions made in his book “On Tyranny”:
First, the continued attack on truth, twisting it and undermining it. Using Comey as a source for his argument that he is innocent and then firing Comey. Praising and blaming Comey for how he handled the Clinton case. Undermining an investigation that is after a simple and important truth.
My Russian friends refer to agencies like the FBI as siloviki. The agencies that use force. For Trump to build an authoritarian state in the USA, the FBI must cease to be a police agency that investigates according to law, and become a top-down instrument of force: siloviki. That I think is what Trump would regard as normal.
Or to use the example of Communist takeovers: Communists always first went for what they called the power ministries.
Is firing James Comey Trump’s Reichstag fire moment? Look, we have here a president with no interest in democracy and no popular policies to get him through 2018 or 2020, who admired foreign dictators and their approach to terrorism — which means their exploitation of terrorism to create an authoritarian state. That’s the template Hitler left from his use of the Reichstag fire. But for that to work here, agencies like the FBI would have to go along."
"I asked Snyder how the American people should respond. “Realize that the presumption now must be that this man is covering up a meaningful relationship with a foreign power that helped get him elected,” he wrote. “Read the press. Pay for it. Support investigative journalists. Demand an independent investigation. Urge multiple institutions to investigate. Continue resisting in all other areas.”"
"Slow-Motion Coup d'Etat"
The firing of the FBI director furthers Trump's gradual assault on our democracy.
By Austin Sarat | Opinion Contributor
May 10, 2017, at 12:00 p.m.
"The abrupt dismissal of FBI Director James Comey late Tuesday is the latest move in President Donald Trump's coup d'etat against the rule of law and constitutional democracy in the United States. When we hear the phrase "coup d'etat," we generally think of a sudden, decisive overthrow of an existing government. While such an effort is not beyond Trump, his ongoing effort is an example of what journalist Ole Dammegard has called a coup d'etat in "slow motion."
Trump's coup unfolds gradually, through an intermittent series of attacks on the basic values of the rule of law, the most important of which is that no person, no matter how powerful, is above the law. In this conception, power is always accountable to law."
More . . .
"There are, I think, three basic elements of the unfolding coup d'état:"
"First, the assault on language and meaning. Trump thinks he can say anything and then insist that his words do not mean what they clearly say. His language should be taken "seriously not literally," in the words of journalist Salena Zito.
As such, Trump could sign off on the Justice Department letter recommending that Comey be fired – a letter that flatly contradicted what Trump has said throughout the fall of 2016. The letter criticized Comey for disclosing the discovery of additional Hillary Clinton emails, 11 days out from the election and called it "a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.""
"Second, the assault on, but also the crafty use of, the media to change the public narrative. Much has been made of the president's claim that the media is the "enemy of the people." Less has been made of Trump's cagey use of the media. Firing Comey yesterday all but obliterated the attention given to Sally Yates's damaging testimony before Congress about the Russian connections of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The slow-motion coup unfolds as Trump both tries to intimidate the press and also prey on its vulnerabilities, its eagerness for the latest, attention-grabbing outrage."
"And third, Trump values loyalty much more than legality. Bharara, Yates and Comey all ran afoul of that maxim. Each showed themselves to have a fierce devotion to the rule of law and to the ideals of independence and impartiality on which it depends.
It is now time to stand up to the unfolding coup. But the real work of doing so falls not to Trump's opponents, but to his allies, to Republicans in Congress."
Republicans MUST speak and do so soon, against the Tweety version of a coup against the Constitution of the United States and the American Democracy.
