John Bolton’s tell-all book was leaked yesterday (at least the part about Trump’s extortion of Ukraine) by someone, likely WH staff, and it says exactly what you think it does.  How did the WH get a copy? A transcript of the book had been provided to the WH on December 30, to review for classified information.  According to the NY Times, Bolton confirms that Trump told him personally that he was going to withhold military aid to Ukraine until Zelensky announced investigations of Joe Biden and his son Hunter.   The account apparently runs dozens of pages, describing not only Trump’s role, but also Giuliani, Mulvaney, Pompeo, and others describes events around Trump’s extortion plan from the Spring of 2019 up until his departure in September.  Of course, Trump lied via Twitter last night that he didn’t discuss Ukraine with Bolton.  Right. Trump NEVER talked about his Ukraine plan with his national security advisor.  That’s believable.

This should ratchet up pressure to allow witnesses in the impeachment trial, but it won’t and you can bet that Cornyn and Cruz will lead the way off the cliff.

The impeachment trial has adjourned for the weekend after only two hours.  Impossible to listen to for more than 2 or 3 minutes at a time, Trump’s lawyers alternated between yelling “Nuh Uh!” and lying.  In the face of a mountain of evidence, they kept repeating that Trump did nothing wrong without actually refuting any of the charges or said evidence.  It’s going to be a long 22 hours left.  The lies will be neck-deep by then.

Trump’s accomplishments in Davos:

1. Announced “reforms” (translation: cuts) to Social Security and Medicare will come early in his next term.
2. Announced further unwinding of EPA clean water rules to allow more free fouling of our waterways, returning to the bad old days.
3. Complained that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have not been awarded the Pulitzer prize.  Yes, you read that correctly.
4. Downplayed brain injuries to US servicemen who were in bunkers on the base attacked by Iranian missiles.
5. Called his Senate trial on impeachment a hoax (for the thousandth time).

Here endeth the lesson.

In Davos yesterday, Trump bragged to the press on global television that he has withheld documents from Congress, saying, “…we have all the material; they don’t have the material.”  Knowing that the fix is in, he is blatantly boasting about getting away with impeachable behavior, and he’s doing it in front of the entire world.

In early 2018 Steve Bannon gave away the entire game plan for Trump in an interview with Michael Lewis of Bloomberg News.  In that interview, Bannon said a lot of things, but summed up his entire strategy in this one sentence:

“The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

That’s it.  That is the entire strategy for TrumpWorld.  Not surprisingly, that’s Vladimir Putin’s strategy, too.  In fact, he’s the guy who perfected it.  In the bad old days of Soviet communism, propaganda was directed in monolithic terms.  The government had it’s own version of truth, and repeated it 24/7.  But that stopped working as the few large media outlets lost the volume battle to alternative sources of “news” and with the rise of social media.  Putin’s strategy now is to confuse and contradict so much that people get numb to it all and start believing that the truth is unknowable.  In his new book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Peter Pomerantsev describes this strategy in the modern Russia which is now completely controlled by Putin.  Putin controls all the mainstream media in the country, and his military hacks into social media around the globe to spread the same misinformation used to control his own people.

The Bannon/Trump strategy keeps Americans off balance by spewing a mountain of bullshit on a daily basis which is why you hear Trump complaining about everything from low water use toilets to windmills killing millions of birds.  He’s done it at least 16,000 times since he became president, and his entire group of enablers from Giuliani to Kellyanne do it in a continuous stream.  There is so much bullshit that people are exhausted trying to keep up, and those he has brainwashed amplify the amount of bullshit circulating television, radio, and social media, repeating said bullshit millions of times.  They did it to Hillary with the debunked uranium story, and they’re trying to do it to Biden right now with the false Ukrainian corruption fiction they’ve whipped up.

The strategy works almost flawlessly.  This is how you get Trumpists, in the face of a tsunami of evidence that Trump illegally extorted Ukraine for his own political benefit, deny he did, and if he did, they say “so what?”    Think about it – what used to be headline news just ten years ago is now just a little dust you brush off your sleeve.  The disinformation is so perfectly delivered and maintained that people actually believe that everyone, including all of the mainstream press, all Democrats, all nonpolitical people, intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, and the courts are lying.  The ONLY source of truth is Donald Trump and his talking heads.  Confusion propaganda is designed to sideline the truth and convince otherwise normal people that the only way to get unconfused is to believe only one leader who, in his “great and unmatched wisdom” is the only person to know true truth.

This is how democracy is destroyed.  When the people no longer trust the system, especially when it comes to voting, the news, and the common good, then the bad guys win.  Trump, Bannon, Giuliani, and the rest of the criminals in TrumpWorld want you to be stupid.  And they keep you stupid by feeding you mountains of bullshit. When you believe that bullshit, he’s got you, and you then virtually can’t be saved.