a traitor in the (white) House

      Remove the guardrails (a compliant, spineless Congress), take the training wheels off the bike (feeling a sense of entitlement, even omnipotence, after being re-elected) and, oh yes, being subject to yet more senile dementia, and the shitstorm that is enveloping our 80-year-old president was bound to happen.

      Previous chief executives have been hobbled at the midterms, etc., often by one overriding issue—for LBJ, for instance, it was Vietnam. But Trump's deliverance unto us of our trial by carnage has been so multi-faceted, so cruel—so goddam stupid—as to amaze: an economy in free fall, the respect we once enjoyed among our allies now sundered as he panders to our enemies, ICE/Nazi thugs killing people in the streets—and of course a new “forever” war in Iran that never should have happened.

      Trump is shitting his diapers because even he knows he now owns all this and no amount of ignorant chest-pounding is likely to save him from losing (at least) the House in November to usher in two years of personal hell during the end of his term, if he lives that long.

      Nowhere was this chest-pounding more obvious than in Trump’s pathetic national TV address last week in which he purported to reveal new information on how the 2020 presidential election—conducted while he was president, you may recall—was stolen from him, and more important, how our electoral system in upcoming elections is under serious threat from foreign actors like China and Russia.

      By the way: remember when he kept going on about the “Russia hoax?” Which is it, Donnie?

      I always have hated listening to Trump speak, but last Thursday’s delivery was the worst. Trump’s “everybody-knows-this” smugness was on full display as he casually sought to undermine confidence in how we vote, even though the 2020 presidential election, won by Joe Biden, was widely viewed as possibly the most honest we ever have had. But Trump’s smugness also was markedly low-energy (low-T, as the Times’ Maureen Dowd observed) as if he knew he was peddling bullshit.

      David Ignatius, The Washington Post’s excellent foreign affairs columnist, noted that “rather than supporting Trump’s inflammatory claims about Chinese election meddling and other threats [n.b: from Russia], the documents [he made public] undermine many of his arguments…”

      “What’s frightening about Trump’s wild accusations of fraud,” Ignatius said, “is that they could ‘undermine confidence in U.S. democratic processes,’ which the National Intelligence Council warned in a January 2020 memorandum was a basic goal of foreign meddlers. ‘Adversaries could make wholly fabricated claims, such as announcing that they have compromised all U.S. voting machines, a claim that would be difficult … for the U.S. Government to disprove,’ the memo explained.”

      And yet this is precisely what Trump did last week. I long have said that, whether from ignorance or malign intent, Trump is a Russian asset. Noted Ignatius: “Though he claimed otherwise, his speech seemed a deliberate attempt to undermine public confidence. Intentionally or not, he was doing our adversaries’ work for them.”

      There is another word for this and it is “treason.”

      It is a charge that the Founding Fathers made very difficult to prove, lest it impinge on individual rights to voice an opinion. But it is based on an individual giving “aid and comfort” to America’s enemies and that is what Trump has been doing, not just last week, but for years. (c.f. Trump’s maddening obeisance to Vladmir Putin over Ukraine.)

      Why? Rumors of Putin having something on Trump have lingered for years. What matters is the result. And Trump, by his actions up to and including his speech last week, no longer is worthy of any benefit of the doubt.

      Postscript: Did you see the World Cup award ceremony where Trump—enduring deafening boos from the spectators—inserted himself into the festivities to present the cup? A vainglorious fool too stupid to get off the stage.

      And, by the way, World Cup winner Spain edited Trump out of the celebration photo. Maybe we all can do the same soon.

      Frank Van Riper is a Washington-based photographer, author and journalist. He is the former White House correspondent, national political correspondent and Washington bureau news editor of the New York Daily News.