There is one word that isn’t used much to describe the Trump administration, but a powerful one.  I mean, we all use descriptors like criminal, corrupt, bankrupt, immoral. deplorable, cruel, and many other accurate terms.  One word we don’t use much, but is appropriate, and that’s chickenshit.  Trump, his goons, and sycophants are truly chickenshit, boasting and talking big on television and Twitter, but shrinking from facing the music when the time comes.  Trump always fires people on Twitter or gets someone else to do the deed because he’s too weak to do it in person, like when he fired James Comey on Twitter.  It happened again yesterday when Bill Barr stupidly tried to fire Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York by press release.  Barr lied in the press release saying that Berman had “resigned”.  The problem is that Berman hadn’t resigned and responded to Barr’s chickenshitiness with a Screw You response that he most certainly had NOT resigned and had no intention of resigning.  It was a rare golden moment in a vast landscape of darkness.

Since his appointment, Berman has drawn Trump’s ire by aggressively investigating his personal businesses, Giuliani, and Giuliani’s associates.  He’s the one who indicted Michael Cohen drawing his guilty plea.  Trump’s been wanting to get rid of him for months.

The hilarious part is that Barr can’t fire Berman because he was actually appointed by federal judges, not Trump, and confirmed by the Senate. To avoid oversight, Trump’s primary tactic is to make everyone in his cabinet and many leadership positions “acting”.  Like every other tradition and rule, Trump has shattered norms of past presidents by violating these traditions, rules, and even federal laws in plain sight, defying anyone with actual authority to do anything.  And, up until last night, it has worked like a charm.  Trump fired Preet Bharara in 2017, and has since not nominated a replacement for him. Joon Kim took his place, but stepped down in 2018.  Berman was appointed as acting US Attorney, but that was only good for 120 days.  Trump never forwarded his appointment to the Senate, so the US District Court for the Southern District stepped in and appointed Berman to the post.  In other words, Trump didn’t do his damn job, so the court did it for him.  Since the court appointed Berman, he is defying Barr by refusing to step down until the Senate confirms a new US Attorney.  I find this development and humiliation of Barr exceedingly entertaining.

Perhaps all this corruption is plain sight is now finally at least slowing?  Maybe, but one characteristic is stubbornly hanging on and that is Trump’s Chickenshitiness.

We all know that generally, Trump is in poor health.  He’s obese, and lies about his weight and his height to conceal that.  He wears lifts in his shoes to appear taller which throws off his posture.  At the G7 summit in Italy in 2017, he rode in a golf cart while other world leaders strolled through the town where it was being held.  His diet is terrible, and he was rushed to Walter Reid Hospital last November for an unknown reason, only that it was for pre-work for his annual physical.  That physical is reported to have occurred in April, but results weren’t released until June 3rd, showing weight gain but stating the he “remains in good health”.

There have been a lot of questions about his true health as frailty, unsteadiness, and slurring his words have come to light regularly.  At It happened again on Saturday during the West Point graduation that Trump invited himself to attend, demanding that graduates already released to protect them from COVID-19 were ordered back to provide a backdrop for another of his rambling, self-aggrandizing word salad speeches.  This time, though, he struggled to drink water out of a glass, unable to raise it to his mouth with one hand, struggled to pronounce the word “ceremony” and then, after the speech unsteadily negotiated a shallow ramp down from the stage.  Here’s the walk.

Some make the excuse that he’s 74 years old; some think that he’s unsteady with those lifts in his shoes; I think he has some kind of health issue that he’s concealing from the public.  The slurring of words and weakness on his right side are telling, and feed speculation about Trump’s health on social media.  The lies and bombastic rhetoric pouring out of the White House  and his enablers tend to numb the public to his outrageous behavior; add that to his doctors exaggerating his “good health” and you get what you have today – speculation about his true condition.  Trump even gaslights the American people about his own health.  It’s time for him to come clean before the election, but I’m not holding my breath.

Many of the stormtroopers that cleared Lafayette park the other evening to make a path for Trump to do his photo op in front of St. John’s Church were wearing tactical gear, but no badges, ID plates or insignia.  The press immediately noticed and began investigating.  The Washington Post got to the bottom of it this week – they’re from the federal Bureau of Prisons, called up personally by Bill Barr.  The BOP confirmed this shocking news and lied that they weren’t wearing BOP insignia or identification because they were being used “in a broader mission.”  NO, they wore no insignia to make it harder to figure out who to hold accountable for police violence.

Adding to his mountain of lies, Bill Barr actually denied ordering the BOP officers and others to clear Lafayette Park to give Trump a clear lane to carry out his stunt for the photo op. He said that park police were already clearing the park when he arrived. That assertion doesn’t pass the straight faced test, and that wasn’t the question.  The question is, did he give the order to clear the park so Trump could safely strut over to the church?  Of course he did, and while they were at it, cordoned off the park with heavy security fencing to permanently distance the White House from Americans Trump is hiding from.  And he did all that with his employees from his prisons in unmarked uniforms to conceal their identities.  This is the exact same tactic that Putin used when he deployed “little green men” into Ukraine in 2014 in his attempt to take over that country and Crimea.  The Russian government later admitted that those soldiers were indeed Russian military.

Welcome to the new normal of Trump’s America.

Well, he just couldn’t stand it.  Unable to control his congenital obsession with jumping in front of any television camera he can reach, Trump came to the Kennedy Space Center for the second time this week to watch the first launch of Americans from American soil in 9 years.  He posed with Pence and Mother to watch the launch, and then did what Trump does.  He opened his mouth, taking credit for what GWB started in 2006 and Obama continued throughout his two terms – to retire the super expensive space shuttle and replace it with more commercial spaceflight alternatives.  Characteristically, Trump actually didn’t do shit to get us to what we, as the United States accomplished except for maybe not screwing it up before SpaceX and Nasa could get it off the ground.

The live feed of the launch was inspiring.  From the countdown to orbit was perfect, all live beamed to 10 million homes around the world.  The entire operation was flawless, that is, until Trumpian NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, did a live interview after the Crew Dragon had made orbit.  It made me want to puke.  He went on and on about how Trump was committed to space and how the last 3 1/2 years was so important to building back the manned space program.  He even said that Trump “took a big risk” to even be there to watch the launch.  The ass kissing was disgusting, but especially disappointing as Bridenstine had actually morphed over the last couple of years from climate denying mouth breathing congressman from Oklahoma to actual human being after being exposed to undeniable science after being named Trump’s overseer at the agency.  That transformation went right down the drain today pandering to his spray painted boss.

Then it happened.  Both Pence AND Trump spoke at the famous vehicle assembly building taking full credit for the last 15 years of  planning and development of a commercial manned space program.  In full Blatant Lie Mode, Trump declared that HE saved the space program by simply not shipwrecking what Bush II and Obama had put in motion.  Yes, I turned it off.

The conclusion from today?  You can’t get away from the cretin anywhere, not even in space.

Dana Boente, 38 year veteran of the FBI and its top lawyer was fired yesterday after he was criticized by Trump Toad Lou Dobbs on Fox News.  The order to fire him came from a “high level”, and not FBI director Christopher Wray.  Boente led the investigation of Russian colluder Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI  about his role with the Russians.

The firing happened on the same day that a new transcript of Flynn’s conversation with Sergey Kislyak was released by the White House that showed he actually WAS colluding with the Russians.

You just can’t make this up.

In yet another step toward Trumpist fascism, Trump has announced he’s signing an executive order to curb Twitter’s (and other social media platforms) ability to moderate content posted there.  Trump has regularly violated community standards on Twitter, spouting lies, conspiracy theories, personal attacks, and even accusations of murder.  Twitter, and Facebook for that matter, regularly police their platforms for fake news, bots, trolls, and threats.  Frankly, the job they do is inconsistent and generally piss-poor, allowing shocking content to stay posted.   The cancer within social media is the persistent presence of bots and troll which sow discontent, conflict, and dis-information to billions of users.

Up until this weekend, Twitter has allowed Trump to run rampant with no moderation, spreading bile sometimes hundreds of times a day.  The tipping point was his posting of lies and conspiracy theories this weekend about voting by mail.  Trump knows that the more people who vote, the less his chance of being reelected.  Let’s be clear about his intent.  He’s not concerned about non-existent voter fraud. He’s concerned about Americans voting. Period.  If there were free and fair elections with easy access to a ballot Trump will get walloped by double digits.  He and this toads know that, so he’s waging an all out war against voting by mail, even illegally threatening states by withholding appropriated funds from them (just like he did when he has attempting to extort Ukraine to get at Joe Biden).

My belief is this executive order will be just more Trump double speak to rile up his base and give him and Press Room Barbie more bile they can spread on national television and Twitter.  Trump is an ignorant, boorish, self-centered blowhard and everyone knows it, including actual lawyers.  Those lawyers know that the President of the United States attempting to stifle private parties that displease him is the textbook example of government violation of free speech rights.

Let’s review.  The First Amendment says,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The highlight is mine.  The First Amendment is designed to prevent the Congress from passing laws that abridge freedom of expression,  but case law over the centuries has established a general foundation that prevents the government from controlling what individuals can say or do.  Twitter and other social media platforms are private and establish terms of service and community standards of conduct.  Trump isn’t forced to use Twitter, he CHOSE it rather than what previous presidents have done by communicating to the People through press briefings and official statements.  He has cynically used Twitter specifically to spout bullshit that the press would (and does) immediately call him on.  He hates that, continuously trying to circumvent any fact checking by spewing his bile directly through the platform.

If Twitter is guilty of anything, it’s allowing this to go on far too long.  Any other individual spreading the kinds of personal attacks, libel, and outright falsehoods would have been banned long ago.  If Twitter would just cut him off, he would be forced to go back to conventional means of communication.  They opened this can of worms to drive more traffic to the platform and have looked the other way for years, so this crisis is as much their fault as Trump’s.

Trump’s executive order won’t really change anything except intimidate Twitter from any further attempts at moderation of his stream of daily manure that he spews.  I predict that, like his other jaw dropping conduct, will work and Twitter will back down, even though they should ban him today.