Wow! What a great explainer of how the neocons laid waste to JFK's peace plans and overall direction. Knew about the Neocons and how abhorent and evil they were during the GW Bush years with their "Project For The New American Century," but didn't know this history of how they subverted JFK's plans. Thank you, Jim, for yet another great article!
good work 2 most liberal presidents,when term still meant something unlike today,were FDR and Jfk. when FDR dies because he had too sick to fight for henry wallace to remain as vp we got truman to succeed him who was a n arrogent on foregin police useful idiot for the dulles brothers and others.and witth jfk they had to get rid of him in dallas.
dems today are to right of fdr,jfk and rfk though those brainwashed by msm will scoff at it but i stand by it.
and you show rumsfield and cheny as i said scum of neocons who helped led us to where we are now.unlike those willing to rehiblite bush and cheney i refuse to do it another reason i left dems and now independent.
Jul 31·edited Jul 31Liked by James Anthony DiEugenio
Totally agree. I always call myself an "FDR/JFK Democrat." I wasn't around for FDR - my parents and grandparents were and they loved him. I was 7 when JFK was assassinated, and loved him then, and have since come to worship him as an adult, as I've learned his entire history. The Dems aren't liberal enough for me - I'm more of a Bernie/Elizabeth Warren Democrat, but I'm still a Democrat. It's either Dems or dictatorship under psychopathic authoritarian Trump.
Oh, and speaking of the Neocons...have you noticed that the architect of their Torture Memos, John Yoo, is now in the Heritage group's fascistic "Project 2025"? It figures he would find a new slimy group to move into! Yoo is now a law professor at University of California, Berkeley (WTF happened to liberal Berkely?!) Hard to believe!
I just checked his Wiki page to see if they state he's connected with them & there's not a thing about any connection to Heritage Foundation OR Project 2025! The only suggestion he's even a Trumpster is this: "Yoo's latest book, Defender in Chief: Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power, was published in July 2020. [109]" Yoo should rightly be in prison for his Torture Memo. He is pure evil and a huge danger to our democracy!
Jul 31·edited Jul 31Liked by James Anthony DiEugenio
Trump is NO JFK! He IS a threat to our Democracy. This is the man who promised he would "TERMINATE THE CONSTITUTION"! and be a DICTATOR on day 1. And he's appointed three new extemist right wing Justices, who along with christo-fascist Justices Alito & Thomas, have eliminated a woman's right to choose and virtually destroyed privacy rights, taking us back to the 1800s.
In her scathing dissent, which Justices Katanji Brown Jackson and Kagan joined, Justice Sotomyor concluded "With fear for our Democracy I dissent." Here are the high points of her
dissent:
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.
Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President … The Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.
The indictment paints a stark portrait of a President desperate to stay in power. … That is the backdrop against which this case comes to the Court.
The Court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the Nation’s history: Whether a former President enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution. The majority thinks he should, and so it invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law. …
Argument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force. Under scrutiny, its arguments crumble. … No matter how you look at it, the majority’s official-acts immunity is utterly indefensible.
Historical evidence reinforces that, from the very beginning, the presumption in this Nation has always been that no man is free to flout the criminal law. The majority fails to recognize or grapple with the lack of historical evidence for its new immunity. With nothing on its side of the ledger, the most the majority can do is claim that the historical evidence is a wash.
The majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them.
Today’s Court … has replaced a presumption of equality before the law with a presumption that the President is above the law for all of his official acts.
The majority’s dividing line between “official” and “unofficial” conduct narrows the conduct considered “unofficial” almost to a nullity. … Under that rule, any use of official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt purpose indicated by objective evidence of the most corrupt motives and intent, remains official and immune. Under the majority’s test, if it can be called a test, the category of Presidential action that can be deemed “unofficial” is destined to be vanishingly small.
I am deeply troubled by the idea, inherent in the majority’s opinion, that our Nation loses something valuable when the President is forced to operate within the confines of federal criminal law.
The public interest in the federal criminal prosecution of a former President alleged to have used the powers of his office to commit crimes may be greater still. “[T]he President … represent[s] all the voters in the Nation,” and his powers are given by the people under our Constitution. …
When Presidents use the powers of their office for personal gain or as part of a criminal scheme, every person in the country has an interest in that criminal prosecution. The majority overlooks that paramount interest entirely. … Yet the majority believes that a President’s anxiety over prosecution overrides the public’s interest in accountability and negates the interests of the other branches in carrying out their constitutionally assigned functions.
If the former President cannot be held criminally liable for his official acts, those acts should still be admissible to prove knowledge or intent in criminal prosecutions of unofficial acts. … Imagine a President states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act). Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. That is a strange result, to say the least.
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents immunity for their official acts is deeply wrong. … In the hands of the majority, this new official-acts immunity operates as a one-way ratchet.
The long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding.
The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution.
Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.
Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune.
Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.
Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. WITH FEAR FOR OUR DEMOCRACY, I DISSENT." (my emphasis)
For the record I'm no fan of Trump, I never much cared for ‘dude’ even in the early 2000s when his 'Apprentice' show [which I never watched] was one of the most IMO 'over-hyped' / over-rated yet most watched shows on TV. And it's clear that Trump's can't be compared to JFK [despite what Chomsky & Patrick Ben-David say], IMO Trump's a 'loose-cannon' nuisance &/or embarrassment to the 'deep-state', vs JFK was a real threat to the deep-state or at-least to their cold-war imperialist, pro big-biz agenda.
That being said when did Trump ever say [on the record] that as POTUS he intended to 'terminate the Constitution & be a dictator'? And IMO the main distinction between Trump & JFK was not the 'Roe v.Wade' issue. The SCOTUS Roe vote came-down nearly a decade after JFK's death, so no-one knows for sure what JFK would have thought of the Jan 1973 SCOTUS Roe vote. What we do know is that JFK was a Catholic & we know what the Vatican's position on abortion was & still is. And we also know that SCOTUS judge Byron White, who JFK nominated, was one of two SCOTUS judges who dissented & strongly criticized the SCOTUS Court's Roe decision [FYI ironically most of the SCOTUS judges who did vote for Roe were appointed by GOP POTUSes Eisenhower & Nixon]. In any evet let's talk about how the Dems [duplicitously?] let Repubs Trump & Bush Jr & Sr stack the SCOTUS Court w [per you] so-called 'christo-fascists'. Dem Sen Joe Biden [yeah that Joe Biden] kinda-sorta ran cover for Clarence Thomas during his contentious senate vetting hearings, by blocking corroborating witnesses for Anita Hill while allowing Repubs’ unrestrained attacks vs her. - And both ‘liberal Dem’ senators Obama & Kerry failed to try to block Bush Jr’s picks of Alito & Roberts to the SCOTUS Court, even after indicating they would. Then the late ‘liberal’ SCOTUS judge RBG refused to resign & give Obama the chance to replace her, even tho she knew she was in poor-failing health. Her untimely death gave Trump the chance to pick Brett Cavanaugh for the SCOTUS Court. And there’s the IMO wacked {non}‘strategy’ Dems used to challenge Cavanaugh’s nomination by relying on IMO dubious ‘salacious’ claims by Christine Blassey Ford re an alleged 35 yr-old ‘rape-beef’ that wasn’t even rape, when ‘Brett’ was a 17 yr old high-school kid. IMO Ms Ford’s allegation vs Cavanaugh wasn’t even the best corroborated of the 3 women known to have made sexual misconduct allegations against him [IMO that was Ms Deborah Ramirez's]. In any event there were other well substantiated & IMO more substantive ways to challenge Cavanaugh’s nomination than ‘sexual-titillation’, yet the feckless Dems failed to go that route & we see how that turned out.
Then there’s the failed strategies the Dems used to take on Trump himself. Wikileaks made it known Billary HRC’s DNC crew actually encouraged Trump’s POTUS run in 2016, while knee-capping Bernie who likely would have beat Trump in 2016. Still the 2016 POTUS election was Billary HRC’s to win, yet she managed to ‘snatched defeat from the jaws of victory’. And what was her & her DNC crew’s response to her 2016 failure? The bogus ‘Russia-gate’ hype! Then there were the Dems’ 2 impeachment attempts vs Trump. First of all the Dems could have legitimately impeached Trump on after his 1st day as POTUS, due to his failure to comply w the US Constitution’s emoluments clause. Had the Dems pursued that course of action, IMO Trump would likely had gotten w his legal & biz advisors to quickly address the issue, but Dems would have sent him a clear early message based on real principles, yet failed to do so. Instead they chose to try to impeach Trump based the bogus & highly politicized ‘Russia-gate’ hype, which was bound to fail in a GOP controlled congress. Then there was the Dems’ attempt to impeach Trump again based on the Jan 6th Capitol Hill fiasco in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss to Biden, that IMO was indeed legit. But IMO the Dems took a half-assed approach to it, guaranteeing its failure in a GOP controlled House & a slim Dem advantage in the senate. Had the Dems made a better case for Trump’s 2nd impeachment case, perhaps enough Repubs may have voted to impeach such that Trump could not even run for POTUS again this yr. But now in the wake of Biden’s obvious mental decline & Trump surviving a ‘curiously timed’ assassination attempt, IMO he’s practically unbeatable now.
PS-RE: The Trump assassination attempt… By studying the JFK assassination case I’m quite familiar w all the secret-service’s [the SS] ‘curious’ failures & suspect actions & inactions in Dallas Nov 22, 1963… And IMO there are too many ‘curious’ SS failures re Trump’s SS protection on July 13 in Butler Penn St. This has got jack to do w whether I like ‘dude’ [as I said above, I don’t], I’m just calling it the way I see it.
In Part 4 I am going to examine JFK's Middle East policy--Nasser vs Assad-- and I will probably compare that with Trump. If you do not know, Benjy N as a young diplomat used to sleep in Jared Kushner's bed.
Jim I'm not saying anything you don't know, but Trump's policy decisions to appease Bibi, has real current consequences. Trump as POTUS moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem [much to the delight of Bibi], but even more consequential he 'officially' recognized Israel's 'right' to annex the Golan Heights which 'legally' is occupied Syrian territory. A week or so ago, an apparent Hezbollah drone strike in the Golan Hts, killed a dozen Druze people [apparently mainly young kids]. The IDF responded by launching a missile strike in the heart of Beirut killing a top Hezbollah chief among others [FYI the Druze are a NON-Jewish minority], & then followed that up w a missile / drone strike in Tehran killing top Hamas chief Haniyeh [who was negotiating a Gaza cease-fire & hostage release / exchange deal] on the same day. So now the whole region's on edge anticipating how / if Iran & Hezbollah will respond in kind, possibly leading to a full scale regional war.
IMO had Trump not given Bibi & crew the green light to annex the Golan Hts, this current scenario / situation re Hezbollah may not have occurred. - And per Scott Ritter among others, the Trump-Kushner hyped so-called 'Abraham 'Peace' Accords' was a key back-drop [among other factors] that led to Hamas' deciding to launch the Oct 7, 2023 attacks in southern Israel.
FYI-2: The Druze are a NON-Jewish ARAB minority. Many / Most Druze in the Golan Hts are NOT Israeli citizens. After the strike that killed a dozen Druze youth, their community heads asked Israeli Govt & IDF officials not to attend the funeral services, but Smotrich & others tried to 'crash the party' anyway. Golan Ht Druze leaders didn't want their tragedy to be used as a 'pretext' to escalate the war by any side -But- We saw how much that request was dissed.
PS: Is it just a 'coincidence' that the IDF chose to kill Haniyeh & the Hezbollah chief right after Bibi addressed the US Congress & had a personal meeting w Trump & Kushner too, where Bibi sang his 'same ole stale song' he's been singing for decades now, that: Iran & Hezbollah are the world's worst regimes that are an imminent danger to not just to Israel, but to the US too, as well as the entire so-called 'civilized world'. Of course re being a real threat to the US & EU, this bogus rhetoric is false, not just re Hamas & Hezbollah, but IMO Iran too- So long as Iran's not attacked on behalf of Bibi.
Oh Jim, I know about the Kushner family's long ties to Bibi [Jared K's Trump's son-in-law & was a key advisor to Trump as POTUS]. That's a big reason why the bogus 'Trump's Putin's Puppet' meme was so ludicrous. Just compare everything Trump did as POTUS that made Bibi happy, vs everything he did that displeased Putin- It's not even close.
I never trust anyone with 'neo' in front of them.
Thank you for such an informative analysis.
Welcome.
Wow! What a great explainer of how the neocons laid waste to JFK's peace plans and overall direction. Knew about the Neocons and how abhorent and evil they were during the GW Bush years with their "Project For The New American Century," but didn't know this history of how they subverted JFK's plans. Thank you, Jim, for yet another great article!
Welcome Linda.
good work 2 most liberal presidents,when term still meant something unlike today,were FDR and Jfk. when FDR dies because he had too sick to fight for henry wallace to remain as vp we got truman to succeed him who was a n arrogent on foregin police useful idiot for the dulles brothers and others.and witth jfk they had to get rid of him in dallas.
dems today are to right of fdr,jfk and rfk though those brainwashed by msm will scoff at it but i stand by it.
and you show rumsfield and cheny as i said scum of neocons who helped led us to where we are now.unlike those willing to rehiblite bush and cheney i refuse to do it another reason i left dems and now independent.
Thanks Chris.
Totally agree. I always call myself an "FDR/JFK Democrat." I wasn't around for FDR - my parents and grandparents were and they loved him. I was 7 when JFK was assassinated, and loved him then, and have since come to worship him as an adult, as I've learned his entire history. The Dems aren't liberal enough for me - I'm more of a Bernie/Elizabeth Warren Democrat, but I'm still a Democrat. It's either Dems or dictatorship under psychopathic authoritarian Trump.
Oh, and speaking of the Neocons...have you noticed that the architect of their Torture Memos, John Yoo, is now in the Heritage group's fascistic "Project 2025"? It figures he would find a new slimy group to move into! Yoo is now a law professor at University of California, Berkeley (WTF happened to liberal Berkely?!) Hard to believe!
I just checked his Wiki page to see if they state he's connected with them & there's not a thing about any connection to Heritage Foundation OR Project 2025! The only suggestion he's even a Trumpster is this: "Yoo's latest book, Defender in Chief: Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power, was published in July 2020. [109]" Yoo should rightly be in prison for his Torture Memo. He is pure evil and a huge danger to our democracy!
I did not know that about John. But it figures. Thanks.
Trump has the same enemies JFK did. I know you don't see that. I wish you did. Appreciate all your work.
Trump is NO JFK! He IS a threat to our Democracy. This is the man who promised he would "TERMINATE THE CONSTITUTION"! and be a DICTATOR on day 1. And he's appointed three new extemist right wing Justices, who along with christo-fascist Justices Alito & Thomas, have eliminated a woman's right to choose and virtually destroyed privacy rights, taking us back to the 1800s.
In her scathing dissent, which Justices Katanji Brown Jackson and Kagan joined, Justice Sotomyor concluded "With fear for our Democracy I dissent." Here are the high points of her
dissent:
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.
Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President … The Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.
The indictment paints a stark portrait of a President desperate to stay in power. … That is the backdrop against which this case comes to the Court.
The Court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the Nation’s history: Whether a former President enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution. The majority thinks he should, and so it invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law. …
Argument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force. Under scrutiny, its arguments crumble. … No matter how you look at it, the majority’s official-acts immunity is utterly indefensible.
Historical evidence reinforces that, from the very beginning, the presumption in this Nation has always been that no man is free to flout the criminal law. The majority fails to recognize or grapple with the lack of historical evidence for its new immunity. With nothing on its side of the ledger, the most the majority can do is claim that the historical evidence is a wash.
The majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them.
Today’s Court … has replaced a presumption of equality before the law with a presumption that the President is above the law for all of his official acts.
The majority’s dividing line between “official” and “unofficial” conduct narrows the conduct considered “unofficial” almost to a nullity. … Under that rule, any use of official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt purpose indicated by objective evidence of the most corrupt motives and intent, remains official and immune. Under the majority’s test, if it can be called a test, the category of Presidential action that can be deemed “unofficial” is destined to be vanishingly small.
I am deeply troubled by the idea, inherent in the majority’s opinion, that our Nation loses something valuable when the President is forced to operate within the confines of federal criminal law.
The public interest in the federal criminal prosecution of a former President alleged to have used the powers of his office to commit crimes may be greater still. “[T]he President … represent[s] all the voters in the Nation,” and his powers are given by the people under our Constitution. …
When Presidents use the powers of their office for personal gain or as part of a criminal scheme, every person in the country has an interest in that criminal prosecution. The majority overlooks that paramount interest entirely. … Yet the majority believes that a President’s anxiety over prosecution overrides the public’s interest in accountability and negates the interests of the other branches in carrying out their constitutionally assigned functions.
If the former President cannot be held criminally liable for his official acts, those acts should still be admissible to prove knowledge or intent in criminal prosecutions of unofficial acts. … Imagine a President states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act). Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. That is a strange result, to say the least.
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents immunity for their official acts is deeply wrong. … In the hands of the majority, this new official-acts immunity operates as a one-way ratchet.
The long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding.
The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution.
Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.
Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune.
Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.
Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. WITH FEAR FOR OUR DEMOCRACY, I DISSENT." (my emphasis)
For the record I'm no fan of Trump, I never much cared for ‘dude’ even in the early 2000s when his 'Apprentice' show [which I never watched] was one of the most IMO 'over-hyped' / over-rated yet most watched shows on TV. And it's clear that Trump's can't be compared to JFK [despite what Chomsky & Patrick Ben-David say], IMO Trump's a 'loose-cannon' nuisance &/or embarrassment to the 'deep-state', vs JFK was a real threat to the deep-state or at-least to their cold-war imperialist, pro big-biz agenda.
That being said when did Trump ever say [on the record] that as POTUS he intended to 'terminate the Constitution & be a dictator'? And IMO the main distinction between Trump & JFK was not the 'Roe v.Wade' issue. The SCOTUS Roe vote came-down nearly a decade after JFK's death, so no-one knows for sure what JFK would have thought of the Jan 1973 SCOTUS Roe vote. What we do know is that JFK was a Catholic & we know what the Vatican's position on abortion was & still is. And we also know that SCOTUS judge Byron White, who JFK nominated, was one of two SCOTUS judges who dissented & strongly criticized the SCOTUS Court's Roe decision [FYI ironically most of the SCOTUS judges who did vote for Roe were appointed by GOP POTUSes Eisenhower & Nixon]. In any evet let's talk about how the Dems [duplicitously?] let Repubs Trump & Bush Jr & Sr stack the SCOTUS Court w [per you] so-called 'christo-fascists'. Dem Sen Joe Biden [yeah that Joe Biden] kinda-sorta ran cover for Clarence Thomas during his contentious senate vetting hearings, by blocking corroborating witnesses for Anita Hill while allowing Repubs’ unrestrained attacks vs her. - And both ‘liberal Dem’ senators Obama & Kerry failed to try to block Bush Jr’s picks of Alito & Roberts to the SCOTUS Court, even after indicating they would. Then the late ‘liberal’ SCOTUS judge RBG refused to resign & give Obama the chance to replace her, even tho she knew she was in poor-failing health. Her untimely death gave Trump the chance to pick Brett Cavanaugh for the SCOTUS Court. And there’s the IMO wacked {non}‘strategy’ Dems used to challenge Cavanaugh’s nomination by relying on IMO dubious ‘salacious’ claims by Christine Blassey Ford re an alleged 35 yr-old ‘rape-beef’ that wasn’t even rape, when ‘Brett’ was a 17 yr old high-school kid. IMO Ms Ford’s allegation vs Cavanaugh wasn’t even the best corroborated of the 3 women known to have made sexual misconduct allegations against him [IMO that was Ms Deborah Ramirez's]. In any event there were other well substantiated & IMO more substantive ways to challenge Cavanaugh’s nomination than ‘sexual-titillation’, yet the feckless Dems failed to go that route & we see how that turned out.
Then there’s the failed strategies the Dems used to take on Trump himself. Wikileaks made it known Billary HRC’s DNC crew actually encouraged Trump’s POTUS run in 2016, while knee-capping Bernie who likely would have beat Trump in 2016. Still the 2016 POTUS election was Billary HRC’s to win, yet she managed to ‘snatched defeat from the jaws of victory’. And what was her & her DNC crew’s response to her 2016 failure? The bogus ‘Russia-gate’ hype! Then there were the Dems’ 2 impeachment attempts vs Trump. First of all the Dems could have legitimately impeached Trump on after his 1st day as POTUS, due to his failure to comply w the US Constitution’s emoluments clause. Had the Dems pursued that course of action, IMO Trump would likely had gotten w his legal & biz advisors to quickly address the issue, but Dems would have sent him a clear early message based on real principles, yet failed to do so. Instead they chose to try to impeach Trump based the bogus & highly politicized ‘Russia-gate’ hype, which was bound to fail in a GOP controlled congress. Then there was the Dems’ attempt to impeach Trump again based on the Jan 6th Capitol Hill fiasco in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss to Biden, that IMO was indeed legit. But IMO the Dems took a half-assed approach to it, guaranteeing its failure in a GOP controlled House & a slim Dem advantage in the senate. Had the Dems made a better case for Trump’s 2nd impeachment case, perhaps enough Repubs may have voted to impeach such that Trump could not even run for POTUS again this yr. But now in the wake of Biden’s obvious mental decline & Trump surviving a ‘curiously timed’ assassination attempt, IMO he’s practically unbeatable now.
PS-RE: The Trump assassination attempt… By studying the JFK assassination case I’m quite familiar w all the secret-service’s [the SS] ‘curious’ failures & suspect actions & inactions in Dallas Nov 22, 1963… And IMO there are too many ‘curious’ SS failures re Trump’s SS protection on July 13 in Butler Penn St. This has got jack to do w whether I like ‘dude’ [as I said above, I don’t], I’m just calling it the way I see it.
In Part 4 I am going to examine JFK's Middle East policy--Nasser vs Assad-- and I will probably compare that with Trump. If you do not know, Benjy N as a young diplomat used to sleep in Jared Kushner's bed.
Jim I'm not saying anything you don't know, but Trump's policy decisions to appease Bibi, has real current consequences. Trump as POTUS moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem [much to the delight of Bibi], but even more consequential he 'officially' recognized Israel's 'right' to annex the Golan Heights which 'legally' is occupied Syrian territory. A week or so ago, an apparent Hezbollah drone strike in the Golan Hts, killed a dozen Druze people [apparently mainly young kids]. The IDF responded by launching a missile strike in the heart of Beirut killing a top Hezbollah chief among others [FYI the Druze are a NON-Jewish minority], & then followed that up w a missile / drone strike in Tehran killing top Hamas chief Haniyeh [who was negotiating a Gaza cease-fire & hostage release / exchange deal] on the same day. So now the whole region's on edge anticipating how / if Iran & Hezbollah will respond in kind, possibly leading to a full scale regional war.
IMO had Trump not given Bibi & crew the green light to annex the Golan Hts, this current scenario / situation re Hezbollah may not have occurred. - And per Scott Ritter among others, the Trump-Kushner hyped so-called 'Abraham 'Peace' Accords' was a key back-drop [among other factors] that led to Hamas' deciding to launch the Oct 7, 2023 attacks in southern Israel.
FYI-2: The Druze are a NON-Jewish ARAB minority. Many / Most Druze in the Golan Hts are NOT Israeli citizens. After the strike that killed a dozen Druze youth, their community heads asked Israeli Govt & IDF officials not to attend the funeral services, but Smotrich & others tried to 'crash the party' anyway. Golan Ht Druze leaders didn't want their tragedy to be used as a 'pretext' to escalate the war by any side -But- We saw how much that request was dissed.
PS: Is it just a 'coincidence' that the IDF chose to kill Haniyeh & the Hezbollah chief right after Bibi addressed the US Congress & had a personal meeting w Trump & Kushner too, where Bibi sang his 'same ole stale song' he's been singing for decades now, that: Iran & Hezbollah are the world's worst regimes that are an imminent danger to not just to Israel, but to the US too, as well as the entire so-called 'civilized world'. Of course re being a real threat to the US & EU, this bogus rhetoric is false, not just re Hamas & Hezbollah, but IMO Iran too- So long as Iran's not attacked on behalf of Bibi.
Oh Jim, I know about the Kushner family's long ties to Bibi [Jared K's Trump's son-in-law & was a key advisor to Trump as POTUS]. That's a big reason why the bogus 'Trump's Putin's Puppet' meme was so ludicrous. Just compare everything Trump did as POTUS that made Bibi happy, vs everything he did that displeased Putin- It's not even close.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hannity-dictator-authoritarian-presidential-election-f27e7e9d7c13fabbe3ae7dd7f1235c72
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQkrWL7YuGk
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/top-republicans-stay-silent-trumps-call-terminate-constitution-rcna60019