We all know that John Bolton hates everyone and everything Iranian.  He desperately tried to get GWB to bomb Tehran back to the stone age, but still licking his wounds from his folly in Iraq, even HE wasn’t stupid enough to fall for Bolton’s bullshit on Iran.

Well, Bolton’s got a president now who is remarkably more stupid that GWB, so it’s Deja Vu all over again, and this time Trump IS stupid enough to go along with him.  Even while he denies he’s planning on sending in 120,000 troops into the Middle East, the defense department is planning on…sending 120,000 troops to the Middle East.  As we talked about yesterday, he’s already moved a carrier battle group into the region, and B-52 bombers are being staged into the area.

Now the State Department has ordered the consulates in Iraq be evacuated.  US central command in the Middle East has troops on high alert citing threats from Syria and Iran.  The problem, though, is that no one outside of the US government sees ANY increased threat from Iran.  In fact, the senior British officer in the coalition anti-terrorism operation in the Middle East confirms there is no increased threat; Trump responded to his comments as “fake news”.

In 2002, I was highly skeptical of all the bullshit that Bush/Cheney was peddling to whip up a war with Saddam Hussein.  Nothing they said made any sense, and there was NO evidence that Iraq had anything whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks.  This drumbeat to war feels the same to me.  No one with the government has given ANY evidence that Iran or Syria are doing anything that is more threatening that their normal hostility.  Because of these circumstances, I’m going to continue calling bullshit on Trump and call this what it is – Wagging the Dog to win the next election.  Nothing more, nothing less.

“Resistance is not futile.”  A great read from Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the Red Hen Restaurant who asked Sarah Sanders to leave.

Remember when Trump kept repeating the lie that Barack Obama was going to start a war with Iran to get re-elected in 2012?  Here it is:

Later, when he decided to run for the office, Trump released continuous Twitter salvos of all kinds of lies and taunts, but the Iran theme was a common one.

One thing we’ve learned from Trump (and other Republicans, BTW) is that when he accuses someone of doing something vile, he’s doing that very thing.  Now, with his polls in the tank and still going down, Trump is so desperate that he’ll try anything to get re-elected and stay out of jail for a while longer.  As we’ve discussed before, Trump is even trying to get impeached so he can cast himself as a “victim” of the big, bad, Democrats.  Since that’s not working, his next stunt is doing exactly what he accused Obama of doing – starting a war with Iran.  What’s really scary is that he’s got Iran hater, John Bolton, continually whispering in his ear achieve his ultimate dream of bombing the crap out of Iran.

Trump’s already moved a carrier battle group and Air Force bombers to the Middle East to “counter Iran’s threat”, and now, Bolton is pushing for deploying 120,000 US troops to the Middle East.  The drumbeats of war for politics are now being heard, even as Pompeo and Bolton whip up fears of Iran, just in time for the 2020 election.  The only real threat we have is allowing Trump another 4 years in the WH.

File under “Tone Deaf to Tone Deafness”, Rudy Giuliani thought it would be a really good idea to go to Ukraine to dig for dirt on Hunter Biden, Joe’s youngest son, who has been on the board of Burisma, a Ukranian oil company.  He was also seeking out Ukranian prosecutors to urge them to launch investigations of the younger Biden.  Apparently, he was also seeking information about who in Ukraine may have spoken to Robert Mueller’s investigators.  You read that correctly; even after two years of investigations into Trump’s connections to the Russians and Ukrainians (and thousands of denials from Trumpland), Rudy Giuliani thought it would be a good idea to…wait for it…ask the Ukrainians for help in the 2020 election.

When word got out about the trip, the press pounced, causing a media storm, and the Dems piled on, shaming Rudy to the point where he cancelled the trip.  He attributed the cancellation to “spin” from the Dems, not to his own tone deafness and stupidity.

ProPublica is on the case, digging in on Trump’s personal self enrichment using his own resorts to reap millions in government money and stuff in his own pockets full of American taxpayer cash.   One textbook example of how he does it is described in detail, and it goes like this:  Trump and his merry band of criminals descend on Mara Lago for the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in April 2017.  Late in the evening of the state dinner (profits to Donald Trump), Steve Bannon and unknown number of his cronies take over the posh Library Bar in the resort, order the bartender out and post the Secret Service at the door.  In the ensuing hours, they consume 54 premium cocktails (self served) while the agents block the door from entry, including the bartender himself.  The bill, totaling over $1,000 (with the service charge) was later toted up and sent to the State Department which it refused to pay.  It was forwarded to the White House, which, of course approved the bill without question, writing the check, taxpayers paying the bill.

The article goes on the describe how the Trump administration has lifted the caps on hotel bills at Trump resorts, allowing trump to profit, selling rooms to the government for $500 dollars a night and more.

Trump is nothing more than a mobster, stealing money from Americans while 42% of them cheer him on in his criminality.  The corruption is jaw dropping, while his sycophants look wide-eyed saying “What?  You were serious about that?”

Today, Christopher Wray, Trump’s own appointee as FBI Director, warned that the Russians were continuing their efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, even announcing that he’s transferred other agents from their normal duties to counter intelligence to stop the effort to meddle.  Wray said in a statement,

“We recognize that our adversaries are going to keep adapting and upping their game. So we are very much viewing 2018 as just kind of a dress rehearsal for the big show in 2020.”

Trump has stubbornly and continuously ignored the problem, fearing that acknowledging it would make it obvious that his election in 2016 was illegitimate.  He’s even cut budgets to stop the Russians from interfering.  If anyone has any doubts about Trump’s allegiance to the Russians, one only need listen to and read his words.  He’s not going to do a damn thing to stop the Russians, because he knows that their interference is the only way he has a prayer of winning again in 2020.

It’s hard for me to believe that I’m even typing these words that the Fucking President of the United States is conspiring with a hostile foreign power to cement his own victory to maintain power.  The damage that he has done to our nation (especially our judiciary) will take decades to repair, if we even can.  In the meantime, I have a bottle of champagne set aside that we’re going to crack open when we see this treasonous son of a bitch walked out of the White House, hopefully in handcuffs.