If there will ever be justice for the violations of the Trump Administration, part of that will include William Barr spending the rest of his sorry ass life in a deep, dark hole. I’d call for a firing squad if I weren’t a Buddhist. So the deep, dark hole will have to do.

It was on the advice of Barr’s Justice Department that the Director of National Intelligence refused to pass on a properly filed whistleblower complaint to the intelligence committees in Congress, as required by law. It’s because of Barr’s Justice Department that Corey Lewandowski could get away with being openly contemptuous of the House Judiciary Committee, sneeringly refusing to answer questions and generally behaving like a bratty eight-year-old. He should have been charged with contempt, but he knew William Barr would never prosucute him. Ditto for all the people who have refused to answer subpoenas.

The whistleblower and Lewandowski episodes are related, according to Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare:

What links the Lewandowski testimony to the new whistleblower issue? They both involve allegations of outrageous presidential behavior. And they both feature aggressive efforts by the administration to impede congressional inquiry into those allegations by using claims of executive branch confidentiality. If Congress is to engage the current moment remotely effectively, it needs to think about them together.

In one case—that of Lewandowski—the Mueller report spells out with exquisite precision what the allegations consist of. In the other case, that of the whistleblower, we don’t know precisely what the allegation is, though the contours of the complaint are beginning to take shape. We know that the inspector general of the intelligence community regarded the whistleblower as credible and the matter as raising an issue of “urgent concern.” And thanks to the Washington Post, we know some other stuff as well: that the whistleblower is an intelligence community employee who was working in the White House, that the matter concerns the conduct of President Trump, that it involves a promise of some kind to a foreign leader, and that it involves specifically a call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25.

There is much speculation that the whistleblower is former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who was either fired on resigned on July 28; or else it was former deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon, who resigned on August 8. That was the same day Trump announced that Joseph Maguire, the current director who sat on the whistleblower report, would be the new DNI.

At this point, the story is that in the July 25 phone call, Trump pressured Zelensky to dig up dirt on Joe Biden that Trump could use in his re-election campaign. Trump was sitting on $250 million in military aid to Ukraine that was allocated by Congress, and it’s presumed release of the funds was to be payment for the dirt. Threat of a bipartisan censure inspired Trump to finally release the funds ten days ago.

The particular dirt appears to relate to the time Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden spent on the board of a Ukranian energy company, which I wrote about a few months ago. Unless there is more to the story I don’t know, there doesn’t appear to be a real scandal there, but it’s the sort of thing that could easily be spun to look scandalous. And it appears Trump wanted Ukraine to help him with the spinning in exchange for the $250 million.

The next matter for consideration is, how badly did Trump screw up here? Tom Nichols:

The president of the United States reportedly sought the help of a foreign government against an American citizen who might challenge him for his office. This is the single most important revelation in a scoop by The Wall Street Journal, and if it is true, then President Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office immediately….

…As the Ukrainian Interior Ministry official Anton Gerashchenko told the Daily Beast when asked about the president’s apparent requests, “Clearly, Trump is now looking for kompromat to discredit his opponent Biden, to take revenge for his friend Paul Manafort, who is serving seven years in prison.”

Clearly.

If this in itself is not impeachable, then the concept has no meaning. Trump’s grubby commandeering of the presidency’s fearsome and nearly uncheckable powers in foreign policy for his own ends is a gross abuse of power and an affront both to our constitutional order and to the integrity of our elections.

The story may even be worse than we know. If Trump tried to use military aid to Ukraine as leverage, as reporters are now investigating, then he held Ukrainian and American security hostage to his political vendettas. It means nothing to say that no such deal was reached; the important point is that Trump abused his position in the Oval Office.

Yes, lots of threats to the constitutional order, in the actions of Donald Trump, aided and abetted by William Barr. Our constitutional order has been helpless to function in the face of people, including Mitch McConnell, who simply refuse to follow it. Donald Trump is immune from everything because he is president. He doesn’t have to answer to anybody because he is president. He can order people who never even worked for the government to not respond to subpoenas, call it “executive privilege,” and Barr will back him up. Because he is president. He can openly accept money from Saudis and divert the military to spend money at his bleeping Scottish golf resort because he is the bleeping president. And nobody can touch him, because Mitch McConnell controls the Senate and Bill Barr controls the Justice Department. They should all spend the rest of their miserables lives in a deep, dark hole.

Next: Suspending the Bill of Rights (except for the 2nd Amendment, of course). Why not? If you can ignore any of the Constitution at will, why not just ignore the whole thing?

And Nancy Pelosi still refuses to consider impeachment.

At Slate, Tom Scocca suggests that somebody should do something.

After seeing the events of the past few days, in the light of the events of the days before those, in relation to the events that took place in the weeks, months, and years before that, I am strongly considering writing something that would address the question of whether Nancy Pelosi is bad at her job. If I did, I would argue that the House of Representatives, under Pelosi’s leadership, has come to function as a necessary complement to the corruption and incompetence of President Donald Trump—that a lawless presidency can only achieve its fullest, ripest degree of lawlessness with the aid of a feckless opposition party, which the Democrats are eager to provide.

My editor thinks that I should write this article. I understand that in a week when one of the president’s most dedicated flunkies went before Congress to openly sneer at the idea that he should answer questions, making a show of obstructing what was supposed to be an investigation into obstruction of justice—a week now ending with reports, confirmed by the president’s jabbering ghoul of a lawyer on television, that the president tried to force a foreign country to act against the Democrats’ leading presidential candidate—there is good reason to feel that something needs to be written. It is certainly the sort of situation that someone could write about: the opposition party sitting on its hands and issuing vague statements of dismay while the entire constitutional order is revealed to be no match for the willingness of a president and his enablers to break the law.

Yes, it is certainly that sort of situation. We should be doing something.

(Credit: www.dailykos.com)

Mike Pompeo flew to Saudi Arabia for instructions, and today he called the drone attacks on the Saudi oil field and processing plant “an act of war” and “an Iranian attack on Arab soil.”

Now, many of us might think that attacks on Arab soil are the Saudi’s problem. As loathe as I am to agree with a conservative, I think Daniel Larison is right:

The U.S. is not obliged to come to Saudi Arabia’s defense. No matter who was responsible for the attack on their oil installation, the U.S. has no business responding with military action. Saudi Arabia is not an ally in any sense of the word. We have no mutual defense treaty with them, and we are not required to come to their aid when they are attacked. In all likelihood, this attack was the result of Saudi Arabia’s ongoing aggression against Yemen, but even if it wasn’t there is no American commitment to fight on their behalf.

But Trump apparently considers Saudi Arabia to be a U.S. ally and has called them that on occasion. And of course that has nothing to do with relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States but between Saudi Arabia and Trump.

But the Saudi royal family does seem to have a special relationship with Trump, who has repeatedly bucked bipartisan congressional majorities to back the Kingdom on topics ranging from its disastrous war in Yemen to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. … And his official explanation of the need for a cozy relationship with the Saudis — that they are a valuable customer for American arms merchants — makes very little sense, though it does cohere with his larger nonsensical views about international trade as a whole.

And …

And while Saudi Arabia does not pay “us” — in the sense of the American people — any kind of fortune, they do seem to pay Donald Trump a fair amount of money.

The manager of Trump’s hotel in New York credited a timely stay by members of the Saudi Crown Prince’s entourage (though not the prince himself) with lifting revenue there by 13 percent in one quarter last year. Lobbying disclosures showed that Saudi lobbyists spent $260,000 at Trump’s hotel in DC back in December 2016 during the transition. Separately, the Kingdom itself spent $190,273 at Trump’s hotel in early 2017.

At The Nation, Jeet Heer writes that Trump is treating foreign policy like a mafia protection racket. This is hardly news. Trump’s bizarre idea that NATO owes the United States money for protecting Europe indicates this is the only way he understands foreign relations — like a protection racket.

Trump also seems to think that the Saudis make him look good. This is from a White House transcript, September 16.

TRUMP: They’ve been a great ally. They spend $400 billion in our country over the last number of years. Four hundred billion dollars. That’s a million and a half jobs. And they’re not ones that, unlike some countries, where they want terms; they want terms and conditions. They want to say, “Can we borrow the money at zero percent for the next 400 years?” No. No. Saudi Arabia pays cash. They’ve helped us out from the standpoint of jobs and all of the other things. And they’ve actually helped us.

I would call and I would say, “Listen, our oil prices, our gasoline, is too high. You got to let more go.” You know that.

CROWN PRINCE SALMAN: Yeah.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I would call the Crown Prince and I’d say, “You got to help us out. You got to get some more.” And, all of a sudden, the oil starts flowing and the gasoline prices are down. No other President can do that. No other President was able to do that, or maybe they didn’t try. But I’ve done it.

Why Trump was going on about Saudi Arabia with the Crown Prince of Bahrain sitting next to him isn’t clear. But now it appears the Saudis want a favor. And like Enzo the Baker, Trump may think he owes the Godfather …. er, the Saudis, and can’t say no. But this favor is a really big one.

Further, do not lose sight of the fact that it’s only the Trumpies and the Saudis claiming the drone attacks came from Iran. And we should believe them, why? The Houthis have claimed responsibility, and Juan Cole argues that it’s entirely possible the Houthis were indeed the perps.

Back to Jeet Heer:

Saudi Arabia is the nexus between Trump’s personal corruption and his flailing, incoherent foreign policy. As The Washington Post points out, Trump’s response to the latest Middle Eastern crisis has been a divided one because he “is caught between a political imperative to confront Iran—pleasing hawkish Republican supporters and allies Israel and Saudi Arabia—and his own political instincts against foreign intervention and toward cutting a deal.” The uncertainty is whether his desire to please Saudi Arabia, Israel, and hawkish Republicans will override his preference, shown in previous foreign policy disputes, to avoid crossing the line between bluster and open conflict.

Yesterday’s conventional wisdom was that Trump wouldn’t go to war with Iran because his base doesn’t want it.  That may prove to be the winning favor in this mess; that re-election thing is starting to get real. And this may be an issue that voters across the political spectrum will agree on.

Meanwhile, Trump has appointed a new National Security Adviser. If you are in the mood to be frightened to death, read about the new NSA’s friendship with right-wing wackjob Hugh Hewitt.

Robert O’Brien – now the outgoing Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs and a longtime corporate lawyer – worked with Hewitt at the Arent Fox law firm and, later, at O’Brien’s own O’Brien Larson firm.

The pair’s friendship extends back years. O’Brien also appears to have benefitted from Hewitt’s praise for their shared, hawkish foreign policy views, while appearing on the conservative talking head’s show dozens of times over the years.

By all accounts, O’Brien (no relation, I’m very sure) is John Bolton without the mustache. Be afraid.

Someday, when historians document how a once great nation was brought down by corruption and hackery, I do hope some of them note the enabling role played by Cokie Roberts.

The best obituary for Roberts was written by Eric Alterman back in 2002, on the occasion of her supposed retirement:

Call me sentimental, but I’m going to miss the old gal. With no discernible politics save an attachment to her class, no reporting and frequently no clue, she was the perfect source for a progressive media critic: a perpetual font of Beltway conventional wisdom uncomplicated by any collision with messy reality.

Lippmann/Dewey fans will remember that the very idea of a watchdog press breaks down when the watchdog starts acting like–and more important, sympathizing with–the folks upon whom he or she has been hired to keep an eye. With Cokie, this was never much of an issue. Her dad was a Congressman. Her mom was a Congresswoman. Her brother is one of the slickest and wealthiest lobbyists in the city. Her husband, Steve Roberts, holds the dubious honor of being perhaps the only person to give up a plum New York Times job because it interfered with his television career. And together they form a tag-team buck-raking/book-writing enterprise offering up corporate speeches and dime-store “Dear Abby”-style marriage advice to those unfortunates who do not enjoy his-and-her television contracts.

Cokie came to public attention at NPR, where she developed some street cred as a Capitol Hill gumshoe, but apparently grew tired of the hassle of actual reporting, which only helped her career. With no concern for the niceties of conflicts of interest, she and her husband accepted together as much as $45,000 in speaking fees from the very corporations that were affected by the legislation she was allegedly covering in Congress. Moreover, she claimed something akin to a royal prerogative in refusing to address the ethical quandary it obviously raised. (A spokesman responding to a journalist’s inquiry said that Queen Cokie’s corporate speaking fees were “not something that in any way, shape or form should be discussed in public.”)

Apparently, nobody ever told Cokie that the job of the insider pundit is to at least pretend to be conversant with the major political, economic and intellectual issues in question before putting these in the service of a consensually derived story line. The pedantic George Will and the peripatetic Sam Donaldson at least give the impression of having considered their remarks ahead of time, either by memorizing from Bartlett’s or pestering politicians. Not Cokie. Once, when a reporting gig interfered with one of her many social and/or speaking engagements, she donned a trench coat in front of a photo of the Capitol in the ABC studios in the hopes of fooling her viewers. She was not a real journalist; she just played one on TV.

Roberts was nothing but a mass of class privilege. She had no real interest in policy, facts, ordinary people, or anything that happened west of the Potomac. Her brand of gossip-columnist punditry took up space where real information was needed. Do read Alterman’s column all the way through for more examples.

Today, I’m seeing all kinds of headlines identifying Cokie Roberts as a “journalist.” Even in death she’s corrupting the news media. Remarkably, Roberts often was identified by the Right as a “liberal hack,” even though I would argue she helped the Right more than hurt it. She was the sort of content-free spaceholder bobblehead that cable news shows liked to book to “balance” screaming right-wing hacks. But Roberts didn’t represent the Left; she represented class privilege and insiderism. She made the Right look good.

I understand that over the next few days we’re going to be subjected to fervent odes to Roberts’s canny political commentaries and her trailblazing role as a woman in journalism. I suggest stocking up on Pepto Bismol.

Update: Another of Cokie’s Greatest Hits.

So this just happened —

State prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed President Trump’s accounting firm to demand eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.

The subpoena opens a new front in a wide-ranging effort to obtain copies of the president’s tax returns, which Mr. Trump initially said he would make public during the 2016 campaign but has since refused to disclose.

The subpoena was issued by the Manhattan district attorney’s office late last month, soon after it opened a criminal investigationinto the role that the president and his family business played in hush-money payments made in the run-up to the election.  …

… The state prosecutors are seeking a range of tax documents from the accounting firm, Mazars USA, including Mr. Trump’s personal returns and those of his business, the Trump Organization. The subpoena seeks federal and state returns for both the president and the company dating back to 2011, the people said.

At least, William Barr can’t shut down state prosecutors. This tidbit is from TPM:

House Democrats have also subpoenaed Mazars for Trump financial records. Trump’s personal attorneys are fighting that subpoena in court and are awaiting an appeals court decision on the matter, after a federal judge upheld the subpoena.

I’m looking forward to further developments.

This isn’t an idle question. I think Jerry Nadler has been thinking about impeaching Brett Kavanaugh since the Senate confirmed his nomination to the Supreme Court. And this was reported about five weeks ago:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., who chairs the subcommittee on the courts, issued a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration seeking records related to Kavanaugh’s time as staff secretary and in the White House counsel’s office. Kavanaugh served in the White House from 2001 to 2006.

In particular, Nadler and Johnson are asking for all emails Kavanaugh sent or received as well as the “textual records contained in [his] office files.”

“In the coming year, the Supreme Court will again address important matters regarding civil rights, criminal justice, and immigration,” the two lawmakers wrote. “The Court may also review certain high-profile cases related to reproductive rights, the separation of powers, and the limits of executive authority — all topics within the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee.”

Nadler and Johnson wrote that they are seeking the records under the Presidential Records Act. The law provides congressional committees access to records that “contain information that is needed for the conduct of [their] business and that is not otherwise available.”

Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush White House came up during the so-called Senate conformation hearints, but the Trump administration was able to keep most of the records of that time hidden.

Now there is new reporting in the New York Times that Kavanaugh’s history of alleged sexual assault is more extensive, and far better documented, than previously reported. And there are new accusations that Kavanaugh perjured himself to Congress.

The Saturday report retraced Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, detailing a fast-tracked FBI investigation failed to interrogate more than two dozen potential witnesses in Ramirez’s case, one that ultimately gave Republican senators enough cover to confirm Kavanaugh. It also publicly recounts allegations by Max Stier, CEO of the nonpartisan Washington, DC, nonprofit Center for Presidential Transition, who says he saw Kavanaugh push his penis into the hand of a female student at Yale during a separate incident that didn’t involve Ramirez. Stier talked to the FBI about his allegation, but they did not investigate the matter.

Kavanaugh has categorically denied engaging in any sexually inappropriate behavior, from Ramirez’s allegations to those of Christine Blasey Ford, who said he drunkenly assaulted her in high school. He’s also denied that he drank excessively (to the point of blacking out) in high school and college — claims that several of his classmates and friends have denied.

Democrats called for an investigation into Kavanaugh’s “truthfulness” during the confirmation process, but got nowhere. As new information — and another allegation — comes out, there have been renewed calls to reopen investigations into the Supreme Court justice.

Once the New York Times story came out, the Democratic candidates wasted little time calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment. Amy Klobuchar said the confirmation process was a sham and that she wants the Department of Justice investigated for its role in withholding relevant documents.

The timing of the New York Times report is especially sweet, considering that the Department of Justice had just announce it was going to hang awards around the necks of the team that got Kavanaugh nominated.

The Justice Department will present one of its most prestigious awards to the lawyers who worked on the highly contentious Supreme Court nomination process of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Next month, Attorney General William P. Barr will present the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service to those who worked “to support the nomination” of the judge, according to an email reviewed by The New York Times.

All those people up for the award should be investigated as well.

Trump has been having a major twitter fit over this, of course, and thinks Kavanaugh should sue everybody accusing him of anything. I suspect Kavanaugh will not be doing that. There’s probably no hope of getting Kavanaugh removed from the court given the current Congress. However, the current Congress won’t be there forever.

It’s up to you, Congressman Nadler.

I want to put aside talking about the awful Trump administration to instead talk about the awful Christian Right, specifically Jerry Falwell, Jr. A few days ago Politico published a long exposé on Falwell that accuses him of multiple ethical lapses and possible criminal activity.

Falwell is president of the nonprofit Liberty University, a 501(c)(3) organization. Under Falwell’s direction, Liberty has become less of a school and more of a real-estate empire.

Falwell presides over a culture of self-dealing, directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains. Among the previously unreported revelations are Falwell’s decision to hire his son Trey’s company to manage a shopping center owned by the university, Falwell’s advocacy for loans given by the university to his friends, and Falwell’s awarding university contracts to businesses owned by his friends.

“We’re not a school; we’re a real estate hedge fund,” said a senior university official with inside knowledge of Liberty’s finances. “We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.”

Falwell also has other interests, as summarized at TPM:

Jerry and his wife Becki seem to have a pattern of striking up intimate relationships with younger, extremely fit men; nude or provocative pics of Becki get into the mix somehow and then suddenly the younger guy is set up with his own business courtesy of a few million from the Falwells or Liberty University. …

…Provocative or nude photos of Becki Falwell also seem to be an open secret among top Liberty executives and even present in many inboxes.

Falwell also enjoys clubbing, which wouldn’t be a scandal except that Liberty University students are not allowed to drink and dance. So when Jerry and his son Trey are photographed at a Miami night spot, the photos have to be made to disappear.

Jerry brings in his cyber fixer from Liberty to make the pictures disappear. This is the same cyber-fixer who Michael Cohen hired to fix a series of online polls for Donald Trump back in 2015. How did he do that since the cyber-fixer works for Liberty University?

Well, he has a private consulting business on the side. He’s also now been promoted to the top at Liberty.

And then there is Falwell’s endorsement of Trump. The endorsement itself wouldn’t be a scandal, but he managed to drag Liberty University itself into Trump’s online poll fixing scheme by using a university social media account to promote one of the rigged polls. Politico quotes a tax expert: “A 501(c)(3) organization trying to influence a poll so that a candidate’s fortunes are promoted or demoted is not permitted.”

See also Jerry Falwell Jr., and the allegations against him, explained at Vox.

What is more American than big-name evangelicals getting caught in sex-and-money scandals? Certainly Falwell is part of the rich tradition of Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggart, and Jim Bakker. However, it should be said that Fallwell is not ordained; he’s a lawyer. Jesus is just the family business.

I take it from reading several articles that the students and faculty are very upset with Falwell. I’d feel bad for them except that they all appear to venerate the late Jerry Falwell, Sr., a despable segregationist whose political influence is still warping this country.

I’m going to be out and cannot watch the third (or fifth, depending on how you count them) Democratic debate. Feel free to comment here if you are watching. I’ll check in when I get home.

Tonight’s debaters, in no particular order, are Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, and Julián Castro.

In case you care, the candidates who didn’t make the debate “cut” but have not yet dropped out are billionaire vanity candidate Tom Steyer, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, author Marianne Williamson, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam, and former Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak. It is not impossible that some of these lower-tier candidates will make it to the October debate, and indeed, according to Vox, Steyer has already qualified for October.

The debate is being billed as the long-awaited matcup between the two top guns, Joe Biden and Liz Warren. I predict the other candidates will be piling on both of them. Biden still leads in the polls, but there are indicators Warren may be the stronger contender over the long haul.

Update: Also, over on the right sidebar of the home page I have added a widget for my new book, The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World. You can pre-order it now; it will be published November 12. If you don’t like Amazon you can order from an independent book store owner at this link.

Naturally, the creature used his remarks on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to glorify himself.

I was looking out of a window from a building in Midtown Manhattan, directly at the World Trade Center, when I saw a second plane, at a tremendous speed, go into the second tower.  It was then that I realized the world was going to change.  I was no longer going to be — and it could never, ever be — that innocent place that I thought it was.

Soon after, I went down to Ground Zero with men who worked for me to try to help in any little way that we could.  We were not alone.  So many others were scattered around trying to do the same.  They were all trying to help.

He was allegedly in Trump Tower, on 5th Avenue between 56th and 57th streets. Trump Tower is said to have 58 floors. Trump has said he had a window that looked toward lower Manhattan and saw the planes strike the towers. Maybe. I’m skeptical he could have seen much, or anything, from that far away, about four miles. He has claimed elsewhere he could see bodies falling, but I was watching from West 17th street — a great deal closer — and I couldn’t see bodies falling.

But let’s say he could see that the towers were on fire from one of the upper floors in Trump Tower. I am more hysterical over the thought that the guy who made his mark on Manhattan real estate and Atlantic City casinos with the help of the mob ever thought the world was “innocent.”

The part about going to Ground Zero to help is complete bullshit, of course. He’s made these claims before; they’ve already been fact-checked.

Trump claimed that he assisted in cleanup efforts during the 2016 campaign. “Everyone who helped clear the rubble – and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit – but I want to tell you: Those people were amazing,” Trump said.

Trump was near Ground Zero soon after the attacks took place, but the White House has not corroborated the claim that he helped clear out rubble.

Richard Alles, a New York Fire Department retired deputy chief, was on the scene after the attacks. He told us he “was there for several months” and had “no knowledge of (Trump) being down there.”

See also:

According to Richard Alles, a retired deputy chief with the New York Fire Department, Mr. Trump was not a presence at ground zero.

“I spent many months there myself, and I never witnessed him,” Mr. Alles, who was at the Rose Garden event on Monday, said in an interview. “He was a private citizen at the time. I don’t know what kind of role he could have possibly played.”

If he had been there at all, even for an afternoon, somebody would remember it. They don’t. Indeed, for several weeks after the attacks private citizens who had no official business at Ground Zero were kept at a distance from the site. Firefighters and NYPD and members of trained rescue organizations were there, but most of us couldn’t just show up and start helping. The work was too dangerous and required protective gear (of which the responders didn’t get enough). It is absolutely not possible that Trump and Trump employees actually did anything at Ground Zero, especially without people taking note of it at the time.

Back to Trump’s remarks:

We saw American perseverance in the valiant New York firefighters, police officers, first responders, military, and everyday citizens who raced into the crashing towers to rescue innocent people.

I doubt that any “everyday citizens” were allowed to “race” into the towers while they were still standing to “rescue” anybody. Indeed, people who got out did so by walking down the stairs with their own feet. The only people “rescued” were a few people with severe burns who were sent away on ambulances while the towers were still standing, and the handful — twenty people, I believe — who survived the collapse. There really wasn’t a lot of rescuing. With that tragedy, you either were able to get yourself out, or you didn’t. This might seems like a minor quibble, and maybe it is, but it reflects the fact that Trump really doesn’t grasp what happened.

But we all do remember this:

On the day of the attack, Mr. Trump called into WWOR-TV to say that he had a window in Trump Tower that looked directly over the World Trade Center.

As the buildings burned, the show’s anchors praised his real estate prowess in a wide-ranging interview. Mr. Trump said that if he had decided to run for president in 2000, he would have taken a “hard line” on the perpetrators, and that he had “somebody down there” near the attack who had witnessed at least 10 people jumping out of the World Trade Center towers.

He also discussed a building he had in the area.

“40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest — and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest,” Mr. Trump said. “And now it’s the tallest.” (It wasn’t.)

Also, Trump gave NO MONEY to 9/11 charities. This has been checked exhausitvely. Nor has he ever retracted his false claim that he saw “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in Jersey City cheering as the towers collapsed.

But now Trump has so corrupted the government he is bullying federal agencies to lie for him. And see especially Greg Sargent, “Trump’s war on truth just got a lot more cult-like.”

So this happened:

President Donald Trump has thrown almost a year of delicate peace negotiations with the Taliban into doubt after canceling a summit with leaders of the militant group, leading to fears of renewed Taliban violence in Afghanistan ahead of elections later this month.

Trump surprised everyone on Saturday night when he announced that a previously secret summit with Taliban leaders, due to take place in Camp David on Sunday, had been canceled, citing an attack by the terrorist group in Kabul last Tuesday that left one U.S. soldier dead.

The idea of inviting representatives of the Taliban to Camp David on the eve of the September 11 anniversary left a lot of conservative pundits sputtering. I’m almost sorry the big reveal at Camp David didn’t happen, because the explosion in Trump’s face would have been nuclear. And to think we probably wouldn’t have learned that Taliban had even been invited to Camp David had Trump not tweeted about it.

The original excuse for canceling an agreement with the Taliban was that Trump learned of a suicide attack that killed an American serviceman. But subsequent reporting revealed that the real reason was that the Taliban wanted the deal to be announced before they made the trip. For Trump, the whole point was that he wanted to get credit for the negotiation that would (he was no doubt ready to claim) end the war in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials told the New York Times that the meeting was canceled abruptly because the Taliban balked at Trump’s desire for a made-for-TV moment that would make it look like he finalized the peace deal at Camp David. The Taliban had wanted the deal signed before they traveled to the U.S., so that the Camp David meeting would a celebration of the agreement.

The Taliban wouldn’t go along with Trump’s Art of the Deal theater, so Trump lost his temper and pulled the curtains on the farce.

I’ve read that the government of Afghanistan had not been included in the negotiations, which seems rather hinky to me. The President of Afghanistan had been invited to the Camp David summit, presumably to rubber stamp whatever was agreed to and then smile for the camera. What the President of Afghanistan really thinks of all this I do not know.

According to a writer at Informed Comment, this was the deal that had been struck before Trump blew it up:

Within 135 days of signing a peace accord, the US would withdraw 5,400 of its 14,000 troops now in Afghanistan. It would depart from five military bases or give them to the Afghan military. If the Taliban meets US conditions, then all US troops would be withdrawn in 16 months.

This timetable would have had troops withdrawals going on during the November 2020 election, which I suspect was the point. And while I’m all in favor of getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, seems to me the real deal needs to be between the Taliban and the Afghani government, not us.

But inviting the Taliban to Camp David so near the September 11 anniversary also reveals that Trump is insensitive to how that would have felt to most Americans — like a capitulation. And now it’s believed the Taliban will have no reason not to ramp up the violence. People are going to get killed.

In other Trump news, we have learned that a top secret spy had to be removed from Russia because of intelligence Trump shared with the Russians. And there’s a new report on how Trump is trying to shake down Ukraine to give him dirt on Joe Biden.

This is in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The big-box giant says it will stop selling handguns and ammunition for military-style weapons, and will discourage open-carry of guns in stores. It’s also calling on Congress for stronger gun safety measures.

To put it mildly, Walmart isn’t generally considered a socially progressive corporation. Which is what gives this announcement a certain Nixon-to-China credibility. If even Walmart, that defining icon of rural middle America, is standing up to the National Rifle Association and saying enough is enough, then the company has determined that, to a big portion of its customers — meaning, a big portion of America — enough is, indeed, enough.

The NRA took great umbrage at Walmart’s decision and fired a barrage of condemnation at Walmart that the Post-Dispatch writer, Kevin McDermott, takes apart. Very basically, McDermott points out that Walmart wouldn’t have made this decision out of the goodness of its heart or if there were any chance it would drive its blue-collar, largely small-town customers away. They are looking out for Walmart. And they have decided this is what the blue-collar, largely small-town customers want.

And we may have Dmitriy Andreychenko to thank for this. You might remember that Andreychenko is the nitwit gun rights activist who walked into a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri, wearing full body armor and carrying a semiautomatic rifle, triggering a stampede out of the store. A few days later a couple of men entered a Walmart in Kansas City with handguns stuck in their waistbands, causing another customer stampede. In that case, the police decided the men were not breaking any laws and let them go. Missouri firearm laws are extremely lenient. Andreychenko, on the other hand, was engaged in theater and attempting to be provocative, and he was charged with a felony.

But the larger point is that Walmart, apparently, noticed that most shoppers are not at all comfortable around armed men they don’t know and has decided that the Second Amendment open carry wackjobs activists need to take the performance elsewhere.

The open carry of firearms is primarily performance. Whether the performer’s goal is to dramatize extreme gun rights, intimidate others, trigger the libs or cast oneself as the avenging hero in a miniseries of the mind, the practice is not just an assault on public safety. It’s a theater of the absurd.

There is no evidence that open carry makes any corner of society safer. There is, on the contrary, impressive evidence that carrying firearms increases aggression and gun violence. Open carry forces people in public thoroughfares to evaluate the mental state, physical demeanor and emotional intent of every armed person they see. How exactly does one differentiate open carry from homicidal carry?

This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of politicians who still are puppets of the NRA. Here in Missouri there is much anguish over the homicide rate in St. Louis, which until recently was the highest in the nation. This year the honor shifted across the river to East St. Louis, Illinois. The Post-Dispatch maintains a handy-dandy homicide map so you can see where the carnage is going on; the red dots, showing firearm deaths, dominate. There have been more than a dozen murders of children in drive-by shootings since April.

Per state law that went into effect in January 2017, Missouri residents can carry any damnfool firearm they want, concealed or openly, without a permit. Since that time firearm violence in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas has gotten worse. This is from a couple of weeks ago:

From huge rewards to calls for allowing Missouri cities to enact their own gun laws, leaders in St. Louis and Kansas City are grappling with a troubling rise in shooting deaths, especially those involving children.

This past weekend was especially violent. In Kansas City, four men were killed Sunday, including two in a drive-by shooting in a popular entertainment district. In St. Louis, six people were killed in shootings, including 8-year-old and 10-year-old girls and a 15-year-old boy.

Many of the victims of violence in the state’s two largest cities are black, and black Missouri lawmakers are asking Republican Gov. Mike Parson to allow the House and Senate to consider during a special session next month legislation that would let cities adopt their own gun control measures. In a letter dated Saturday, state Rep. Steven Roberts Jr. a St. Louis Democrat who chairs the 19-member Missouri Black Caucus, told Parson that local leaders need the autonomy to act as they see fit on “this pressing crisis.”

However, the state’s Republican troglodyte governor, Mike Parsons, refuses to consider allowing the cities to write their own gun control laws or to work with the legislature to change the state’s absurdly lenient laws.

There’s no single cause of all this mayhem, but one issue is hard to ignore as a likely contributor: the Republican-controlled Legislature has, for years, been on a gun deregulation binge that has given the state one of the loosest sets of firearms laws in the country. Today, the state doesn’t require a background check when someone buys a gun from a private seller, doesn’t require a permit to carry that gun and doesn’t allow local jurisdictions like St. Louis to impose their own stronger rules.

But most of the teevee news watched in the small towns come out of St. Louis or Kansas City, or probably Springfield in the middle of the state, so everybody is getting inundated with the almost daily stories of gun deaths. This includes the children, some of them killed as they played outside their own homes. People who were fine with guns a few years ago may be getting sick of them now.

In an era of mass shootings, not knowing whether the armed individual next to you is a “law-abiding citizen” or an internet-addled murderer is its own kind of trauma. (And indeed, as the Trace has noted, at least two public shootings in open-carry states have been committed by individuals who’d been brought to the attention of police before they started firing but hadn’t been arrested because, until they started shooting, they hadn’t been doing anything illegal.) The Resurgent, a conservative site that revolves around the work of gun-happy right-wing pundit Erick Erickson, wrote this week that “If the pro-gun community doesn’t take some action to rein in people like Dmitriy Andreychenko, the right to carry a gun could be easily lost.”

In other words, even a few of the gun nuts are starting to realize that “open carry everywhere” could backfire on them.

Please also read “On Giving Up” by Alexandra Petri.