It's probably no coincidence that damaging reports about Trump are once again coming out, just at the time when he recently got some media coverage by appearing at the CPAC conservative convention and winning the straw poll. (Which is probably why Ted Cruz suddenly discovered an urgent scheduling conflict and did not appear.)
But still, the newer revelations are even more appalling than what we already knew, so it's certainly clear why career officials in defense, intelligence, and diplomatic circles would like to draw Americans' attention to the dangers.
Once again, it's hard to see how any Republicans could ever support the man after knowing these things. And once again, all the Republican politicians who hope to stay in power and be reelected will probably do it regardless, unless he's actually indicted and prosecuted. /-:
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The person to ‘weaken’ America: what the Kremlin papers said about Trump
Documents appear to show how Russian intelligence worked to install their preferred candidate as president ...
That he was the Kremlin’s preferred candidate is not in doubt. What has been a source of endless conjecture is the lengths Russiawas prepared to go to to help Trump win. The Guardian has spent months seeking to verify the authenticity of papers that may provide an answer to this question.
Our investigation has revealed that western intelligence agencies have known about the papers – and have been examining them – for some time. ...
The document describes how Putin’s expert department was urging a multi-layered plan to interfere in the race for the White House. The goal: to “destabilise” America.
One candidate above all might help bring this about, the experts confidently believed – the “mentally unstable”, impulsive” and “unbalanced” Trump.
This plan was presented as being entirely defensive. The Obama administration had inflicted damage on the Russian economy by imposing sanctions. Living standards were falling, regional elites were unhappy and the sugar rush from Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea had worn off, the report said. Potential domestic political dangers lay ahead. ...
The documents indicate that on 14 January Vladimir Symonenko, the expert department chief, shared a three-page summary.
“At the moment the Russian Federation finds itself in a predicament. American measures continue to be felt in all areas of public life,” it starts. Next, Putin ordered the head of his foreign policy directorate, Alexander Manzhosin, to arrange an urgent meeting of the national security council, Russia’s top decision-making body. At some point over the next few days Putin appears to have read the document himself.
By 22 January, other security council members had had a chance to digest its contents. The early part dealt with Russia’s economy. The secret American measures were contained in a special section beginning on page 14.
The report seemed to confirm what Trump would later deny: that Putin’s spy agencies had gathered compromising material on him, possibly stretching back to Soviet KGB times.
Trump’s personal flaws were so extensive – also featuring an “inferiority complex” – that he was the perfect person to feed divisions and to weaken America’s negotiating position. ...
The allegation that the Russians had kompromat on Trump would haunt his four years in the White House. True or false, his flattering treatment of Putin was one riddle of his chaotic presidency.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15...
Two Accounts of Donald Trump’s Final Year in Office, One More Vivid and Apt Than the Other
Two new books about the final year of Donald J. Trump’s presidency are entering the cultural bloodstream. The first, “Landslide,” by the gadfly journalist Michael Wolff, is the one to leap upon, even though the second, “I Alone Can Fix It,” from the Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, is vastly more earnest and diligent, to a fault.
This is Wolff’s third book about Trump in as many years. It’s Leonnig and Rucker’s second, after the excellent “A Very Stable Genius,” which appeared in early 2020. This one, alas, reads like 300 daily newspaper articles taped together so that they resemble an inky Kerouacian scroll. ...
A primary and not insignificant achievement in “I Alone Can Fix It,” however, is its bravura introduction of a new American hero, a man who has heretofore not received a great deal of attention: Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ...
Wolff is a sometimes-mocked figure in the worlds of journalism and politics. He’s been accused of being less than diligent in his fact-checking. He’s been ticketed for careless writing violations. These complaints are valid, up to a point. But “Landslide” is a smart, vivid and intrepid book. He has great instincts. I read it in two or three sittings. ...
Wolff doesn’t have Mark Milley. He’s not so interested in the Covid narrative. He zeros in on the chaos and the kakistocracy, on how nearly everyone with a sense of decency fled Trump in his final months, and how he was left with clapped-out charlatans like Sidney Powell and Giuliani. Giuliani’s flatulence is a running joke in this book, but the author doesn’t find him funny at all. ...
In this accounting, Trump belittles his followers. “Trump often expressed puzzlement over who these people were,” Wolff writes, “their low-rent ‘trailer camp’ bearing and their ‘get-ups,’ once joking that he should have invested in a chain of tattoo parlors and shaking his head about ‘the great unwashed.’”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/books/revi...
‘I Alone Can Fix It’ book excerpt: The inside story of Trump’s defiance and inaction on Jan. 6
Terror at the Capitol, delay at the Pentagon, resistance in the Oval Office and democracy hanging in the balance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/...
‘A madman with millions of followers’: what the new Trump books tell us
Books show how close the US came to disaster, and document an unprecedented moment in US history that is not yet over
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/17...
How a book about evangelicals, Trump and militant masculinity became a surprise bestseller
When historian Kristin Du Mez’s latest book, “Jesus and John Wayne,” came out in the summer of 2020, it received little attention from mainstream gatekeepers and reviewers.
But the book, which explores evangelical fondness for former president Donald Trump and strong masculine figures, has since sold more than 100,000 copies through word of mouth, podcasts and book clubs. When it came out in paperback last month, the book shot up to No. 4 among nonfiction paperbacks on the New York Times bestseller list.
As journalists and academics tried to explain how evangelicals could bring themselves to vote for Trump, Du Mez argued that evangelical support was not a shocking aberration from their views but a culmination of evangelicals’ long-standing embrace of militant masculinity, presenting the man as protector and warrior.
“In 2016, many observers were stunned at evangelicals’ apparent betrayal of their own values,” Du Mez wrote. “In reality, evangelicals did not cast their vote despite their beliefs, but because of them.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/...
