Trump

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Trump goes to the United Nations to argue against everything it stands for — again | Vox

Editor’s Note: This article is a bit sarcastic, as we now expect from many jaded journalists these days, but it does convey the importance of national sovereignty. All nations should put themselves first, look after their own best interests and the welfare of their people instead of imagining that one day a global socialist state will provide for them. This is an important tide shift towards a United Nations of sovereign countries, independent and free. May it become so!

UNITED NATIONS, New York — In his third annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump delivered a clear message in favor of nationalism and national sovereignty and against globalism.

But three years into Trump’s presidency, that kind of rhetoric is no longer as shocking as it once was. Most of the world has heard it from him before.

Trump, in an oddly subdued speech in New York on Tuesday, reprised his case that all nations should exert their sovereignty, protect their borders, and reject any mutual and international cooperation that doesn’t put their country’s own interests first. For Trump, it’s “America First;” for everyone else it’s “[Insert Country Here] First.”

“If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty,” Trump said. “And if you want peace, love your nation.”

Trump touted the “great” new trade deals he’s working on and lambasted China’s trade practices. He criticized the Iranian regime for its “bloodlust.” He tried to elevate his stalled diplomacy with North Korea. He condemned the socialist regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. He denounced illegal immigration and even made time to complain about perceived censorship of conservative viewpoints by social media companies and to attack social justice advocates.

It was classic Trump — only without the enthusiasm he usually displays when discussing these pet topics. If anything, Trump seemed bored by his own speech.

There were two rare but notable exceptions: Trump’s stern notice to China that the US is closely watching how it handles the unrest in Hong Kong, and his call to end the criminalization of homosexuality around the world.

The rest, though, was standard Trump fare, and few of the world leaders gathered to hear him speak seemed surprised or rattled by his words. He couldn’t even manage to garner any of last year’s surprised laughs.

Trump’s schtick isn’t shocking anymore. But it shows just how much of an outlier the US is.

“The future does not belong to globalists; it belongs to patriots,” Trump said at the start of his speech.

It seemed like a throwaway line but it was actually a clear articulation of what Trump and leaders of his ilk have been arguing for the past few years: Populist nationalism is the future and multinational cooperation and mutual trust is the past — even if that’s the very vision the United Nations is trying to promote and protect.

And that message has permeated. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who spoke shortly before Trump, cited the US president’s defense of the sanctity of national sovereignty to push back against worldwide criticism of Bolsonaro’s handling of the Amazon fires. “They even called into question that which we hold as a most sacred value, our sovereignty,” Bolsonaro said at one point.

Trump was sandwiched between a slew of authoritarians and wanna-be authoritarians (Bolsonaro before and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and then Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan afterward), and while the US president paid lip service to democracy, his defense of it didn’t fit with his nationalistic rhetoric.

Trump and some of these other speeches stood in stark contrast to that of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who addressed the crowd before the world leaders began to take the stage and warned of the “disquiet” currently plaguing the world.

He was mostly referring to the world’s problems — armed conflicts, increasing inequality, the threat of climate change. But Guterres’s argument is that nations need to band together to address these challenges and to promote the rights of all citizens, no matter their homeland. Guterres believes the forum to do so is the United Nations.

Trump’s argument is, as it always has been, that every country needs to look after itself.

Source: Vox

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Edward Snowden On Trump, Privacy, And Threats To Democracy | The 11th Hour | MSNBC & YouTube

Source: YouTube

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Thom Tillis calls for Senate to investigate Fed independence | Politico

Editor’s Note: As a sovereignty educator for over twenty years I taught millions of people about the Federal Reserve, how it was created, the nature of money, banking, etc., and how this forever altered our constitutional Republic. That anybody in the Senate, except Former Congressmen Ron Paul and President Trump, is talking about Federal Reserve independence is good news for the Republic.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is calling for the Senate Banking Committee to probe the Federal Reserve’s independence after a former agency official suggested the upcoming presidential election “falls within the Fed’s purview” as it considers whether to cut interest rates.

Tillis, who is up for reelection next fall in swing state North Carolina, is siding with President Donald Trump in his ongoing feud with Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell. Bill Dudley, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, wrote in a Bloomberg op-ed that the Fed should consider refusing to offer new economic stimuli because doing so could encourage Trump to plunge further into a trade war with China and would “reassert the Fed’s independence by distancing it from the administration’s policies.”

Tillis said he plans to ask the Banking Committee’s chairman, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), about convening a hearing “regarding Fed independence and the danger of this institution taking unprecedented and inappropriate steps to meddle in the presidential election.”

“I am very disappointed that former Fed monetary Vice Chairman Bill Dudley is lobbying the Fed to use its authority as a political weapon against President Trump,” Tillis said in a statement. “The President is standing up for America against China after 30 years of our country and our workers being ripped off and there is now an effort to get the Fed to try to sabotage the President’s efforts.”

Senate Republicans generally stay out of Federal Reserve politics, but Tillis is aligning himself closely with Trump as he faces a primary challenge and a potentially difficult general election. The first-term senator previously supported a bill protecting special counsels, including Robert Mueller, and initially opposed Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the southern border. He later supported it and has generally not deviated from Trump since.

The president has berated Powell, whom he appointed, for declining to further slash interest rates.

“The only problem we have is Jay Powell and the Fed,” Trump tweeted last week. “He’s like a golfer who can’t putt, has no touch. Big U.S. growth if he does the right thing, BIG CUT — but don’t count on him! So far he has called it wrong, and only let us down.”

The repeated attacks motivated Dudley to wade into the dispute and implore Powell to consider standing firm. He argued that the Federal Reserve’s desire to stay out of politics was admirable “but Trump’s ongoing attacks on Powell and on the institution have made that untenable.”

“Central bank officials face a choice: enable the Trump administration to continue down a disastrous path of trade war escalation, or send a clear signal that if the administration does so, the president, not the Fed, will bear the risks — including the risk of losing the next election,” Dudley wrote. “Trump’s reelection arguably presents a threat to the U.S. and global economy, to the Fed’s independence and its ability to achieve its employment and inflation objectives.”

Source: Politico

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Appeals court dismisses emoluments lawsuit involving Trump’s D.C. hotel | The Washington Post

Editor’s Note: The first wing of the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump was related to his alleged violations of the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution. Looks like the 4th Circuit handed Trump a victory with respect to the Democrats allegations.

By Ann E. Marimow and Jonathan O’Connell

A federal appeals court Wednesday sided with President Trump, dismissing a lawsuit claiming the president is illegally profiting from foreign and state government visitors at his luxury hotel in downtown Washington.

The unanimous ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is a victory for the president in a novel case brought by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia involving anti-corruption provisions in the emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

In its ruling, the three-judge panel said the attorneys general lacked legal grounds to bring the lawsuit alleging the president is violating the Constitution when his business accepts payments from state and foreign governments. The decision — from Judges Paul V. Niemeyer, Dennis W. Shedd and A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. — also stops dozens of subpoenas to federal government agencies and Trump’s private business entities demanding financial records related to the D.C. hotel.

“The District and Maryland’s interest in enforcing the Emoluments Clauses is so attenuated and abstract that their prosecution of this case readily provokes the question of whether this action against the President is an appropriate use of the courts, which were created to resolve real cases and controversies between the parties,” Niemeyer wrote in the 36-page opinion.

[Read the full opinion here]

President Trump quickly took to Twitter to celebrate the ruling, referring to the lawsuit as “ridiculous” and “a big part of the Deep State and Democrat induced Witch Hunt.”

“I don’t make money, but lose a fortune for the honor of serving and doing a great job as your President (including accepting Zero salary!),” he wrote.

The president has stepped back from day-to-day management of the Trump International Hoteland his other businesses, but he maintains ownership.

Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh and D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine, both Democrats, said in a joint statement after the ruling that the three-judge panel “got it wrong.”

“Although the court described a litany of ways in which this case is unique, it failed to acknowledge the most extraordinary circumstance of all: President Trump is brazenly profiting from the Office of the President in ways that no other President in history ever imagined and that the founders expressly sought — in the Constitution — to prohibit,” they said.

“We will continue to pursue our legal options to hold him accountable.”

The three judges on the panel that heard oral argument in March were nominated to the bench by Republican presidents — Niemeyer by President George H.W. Bush, Shedd by President George W. Bush and Quattlebaum by Trump. Frosh and Racine have said they would consider appealing for a rehearing by a full panel of the 4th Circuit and would not be surprised to see the case reach the Supreme Court.

The president faces multiple legal challenges related to his private business. A federal appeals court in Washington is considering a separate “emoluments” lawsuit brought by congressional Democrats, who this week began issuing dozens of subpoenas for financial records from the president’s private entities.

The case extends beyond the D.C. hotel and is based on a different theory of standing. The Democratic lawmakers say the president is violating the Constitution because it gives Congress the right to approve — or withhold — consent before the president accepts payments or benefits from foreign governments.

[Congressional Democrats’ emoluments lawsuit targeting President Trump’s private business can proceed, judge says]

Despite the legal challenges his company faces, to this point Trump has been able to prevent the release of any private business information to the courts, leaving Democrats to wonder whether he will be affected by any of the inquiries before he faces reelection next year.

At the 4th Circuit, Trump’s attorneys were appealing a ruling from a District Court judge in Maryland who allowed the case to move forward and adopted a broad definition of the emoluments ban to include “profit, gain, or advantage” received “directly or indirectly” from foreign, federal or state governments.

[Saudi-funded lobbyist paid for 500 rooms at Trump’s hotel after 2016 election]

The Richmond-based 4th Circuit, which reviews cases from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the Carolinas, was specifically reviewing whether Maryland and the District of Columbia had legal grounds, or standing, to sue the president in the first place.

At least a half-dozen countries have booked large blocks of rooms or meeting space at Trump’s D.C. hotel, among them Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Malaysia and the Republic of Georgia. Three years in a row, the Kuwaiti government held its National Day celebration there, and the plaintiffs allege that the 2017 event alone cost between $40,000 and $60,000.

The plaintiffs argued that these payments are violations of the foreign emoluments clause, while the Justice Department calls them market-rate deals that should not be considered emoluments.

The hotel occupies the Old Post Office Pavilion, a federal building leased to Trump’s business, in an arrangement that plaintiffs argue violates the domestic emoluments clause. The lease was signed before Trump entered office and stipulates that “no . . . elected official of the Government of the United States” shall benefit from the deal.

The General Services Administration, under Trump, ruled that the deal was in compliance.

The court’s ruling, however, centered on whether the plaintiffs had standing to bring their case against the president — not the merits of whether Trump is violating the Constitution with his business dealings. The 4th Circuit issued two rulings Wednesday — one dismissing the case against the president in his official capacity and the other in his individual capacity.

U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte had granted Maryland and the District of Columbia standing in part because Trump’s D.C. hotel could be taking foreign government business from convention centers and hotels in their jurisdictions as foreign leaders may be incentivized to spend money at the president’s property.

But the appeals court disagreed, writing that the attorneys general had failed to show that Trump’s conduct had harmed the financial interests of Maryland and the District and that intervening, by forcing the president to forgo his ownership, for instance, would make a difference.

“There is a distinct possibility — which was completely ignored by the District and Maryland, as well as by the district court — that certain government officials might avoid patronizing the Hotel because of the President’s association with it,” the court said.

“Even if government officials were patronizing the Hotel to curry the President’s favor, there is no reason to conclude that they would cease doing so were the President enjoined from receiving income from the Hotel. After all, the Hotel would still be publicly associated with the President, would still bear his name, and would still financially benefit members of his family.”

Source: The Washington Post

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Trump Administration Accomplishments | The White House

  • Almost 4 million jobs created since election.
  • More Americans are now employed than ever recorded before in our history.
  • We have created more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs since my election.
  • Manufacturing jobs growing at the fastest rate in more than THREE DECADES.
  • Economic growth last quarter hit 4.2 percent.
  • New unemployment claims recently hit a 49-year low.
  • Median household income has hit highest level ever recorded.
  • African-American unemployment has recently achieved the lowest rate ever recorded.
  • Hispanic-American unemployment is at the lowest rate ever recorded.
  • Asian-American unemployment recently achieved the lowest rate ever recorded.
  • Women’s unemployment recently reached the lowest rate in 65 years.
  • Youth unemployment has recently hit the lowest rate in nearly half a century.
  • Lowest unemployment rate ever recorded for Americans without a high school diploma.
  • Under my Administration, veterans’ unemployment recently reached its lowest rate in nearly 20 years.
  • Almost 3.9 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps since the election.
  • The Pledge to America’s Workers has resulted in employers committing to train more than 4 million Americans. We are committed to VOCATIONAL education.
  • 95 percent of U.S. manufacturers are optimistic about the future—the highest ever.
  • Retail sales surged last month, up another 6 percent over last year.
  • Signed the biggest package of tax cuts and reforms in history. After tax cuts, over $300 billion poured back in to the U.S. in the first quarter alone.
  • As a result of our tax bill, small businesses will have the lowest top marginal tax rate in more than 80 years.
  • Helped win U.S. bid for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
  • Helped win U.S.-Mexico-Canada’s united bid for 2026 World Cup.
  • Opened ANWR and approved Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.
  • Record number of regulations eliminated.
  • Enacted regulatory relief for community banks and credit unions.
  • Obamacare individual mandate penalty GONE.
  • My Administration is providing more affordable healthcare options for Americans through association health plans and short-term duration plans.
  • Last month, the FDA approved more affordable generic drugs than ever before in history. And thanks to our efforts, many drug companies are freezing or reversing planned price increases.
  • We reformed the Medicare program to stop hospitals from overcharging low-income seniors on their drugs—saving seniors hundreds of millions of dollars this year alone.
  • Signed Right-To-Try legislation.
  • Secured $6 billion in NEW funding to fight the opioid epidemic.
  • We have reduced high-dose opioid prescriptions by 16 percent during my first year in office.
  • Signed VA Choice Act and VA Accountability Act, expanded VA telehealth services, walk-in-clinics, and same-day urgent primary and mental health care.
  • Increased our coal exports by 60 percent; U.S. oil production recently reached all-time high.
  • United States is a net natural gas exporter for the first time since 1957.
  • Withdrew the United States from the job-killing Paris Climate Accord.
  • Cancelled the illegal, anti-coal, so-called Clean Power Plan.
  • Secured record $700 billion in military funding; $716 billion next year.
  • NATO allies are spending $69 billion more on defense since 2016.
  • Process has begun to make the Space Force the 6th branch of the Armed Forces.
  • Confirmed more circuit court judges than any other new administration.
  • Confirmed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
  • Withdrew from the horrible, one-sided Iran Deal.
  • Moved U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
  • Protecting Americans from terrorists with the Travel Ban, upheld by Supreme Court.
  • Issued Executive Order to keep open Guantanamo Bay.
  • Concluded a historic U.S.-Mexico Trade Deal to replace NAFTA. And negotiations with Canada are underway as we speak.
  • Reached a breakthrough agreement with the E.U. to increase U.S. exports.
  • Imposed tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum to protect our national security.
  • Imposed tariffs on China in response to China’s forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and their chronically abusive trade practices.
  • Net exports are on track to increase by $59 billion this year.
  • Improved vetting and screening for refugees, and switched focus to overseas resettlement.
  • We have begun BUILDING THE WALL. Republicans want STRONG BORDERS and NO CRIME. Democrats want OPEN BORDERS which equals MASSIVE CRIME.

Source: The White House

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Emails Show FBI-Media Collusion against Trump, CA Begins 1.5 Million Inactive Voter Cleanup | Judicial Watch

Source: Judicial Watch/YouTube

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Constitution under siege: The Electoral College battle | Metro Voice News

“Every vote should count.” To many that sounds fair. It sounds right. But is it? “The Electoral College is wrong. The person who gets the most votes should be president.” Does that sound right to you?

The answer varies but falls under one fundamental belief: Do you believe America to be a democracy or a republic.

From that divide, you will understand the main difference between what conservatives are trying to preserve and what liberals are trying to fundamentally transform.

During the 2000 Presidential Election, many in the media and the left believed that Al Gore would win the Electoral College and Bush would in the popular vote. This was the last time the media and the Left staunchly defended the Electoral College while lying the groundwork for the very assault on it. It was after this election that I started studying what the Electoral College is and its importance.

So what is the Electoral College? Each state is afforded a certain number of votes, the amount of senators (2) combined with the amount of representatives in the house (which varies according to population). This makes the minimum amount of votes a state gives as three. These votes are determined by the popular vote each state making the winner the President of the United States.

The emphasis on States is important. Each state in America has different needs and desires. Each state under the Electoral College gets to choose which candidate they want as president by majority vote. (That’s the democracy in the republic you hear about.) The candidate that gets the most votes (270 at this time) from these states wins the Presidency. Under this system, each state matters and therefore the people of each individual state are important.

Under a popular vote, the one with the most votes wins. It’s simpler and therefore easier to circumvent most people. That means cheating is easier. Also ignoring large sects of this country also becomes expedient.

Elections are expensive. Under the popular vote, the middle is ignored because all a candidate need win is the big cities of the east and west coast. The Midwest, the Southwest, and parts of the South will no longer matter because their votes won’t win elections. Look at the state of New York. NYC rules the state, and the Democrat Party rules NYC with an iron fist.

Under a popular, every vote counts. That sounds great, but not every vote should count. “Every four years, the dead rise and vote democrat in Chicago,” the old joke says. The truth is sadder; in that, in many big cities, the dead vote. Add to that the millions of illegal aliens that vote. Then add to that those who vote more than once. Then add to that all those miraculous ballots that appear in bags which were handily put to the side in case needed to overturn an election barely won by a Republican which was how Al Franken won his seat in the Senate and many Republicans lost elections in 2018 they won on election night. Every vote counts. In the past election, some counties had more people vote in them than actually lived there by the thousands. Obviously, they all voted Democrats.

Once you put all those numbers together, it’s easy to see popular votes are easily doctored, and elections can easily be stolen. This is especially true because of an outwardly bias media who is out to cover for those on their side of the political aisle and dreg up the basest stories from the most unreliable sources to bury their competition. Many are willing to accept this because they want their candidate to win no matter what the cost. But what happens, when it’s someone they don’t like? At that point it doesn’t matter, because the republic is dead, and the government class rules us all without any checks or balances.

Ignorance is the greatest ally to the enemies of our Constitution. The reason so many are in favor of abolishing the Electoral College is that we have and Education system controlled by the Left who purposely keep their students from learning the importance of America’s greatness and what is needed to keep her free. Our institutes of educations have become indoctrination center of leftist ideology (socialism, humanism, atheism, etc.). Generations of children have become adults with no real understanding of our Constitution, and its greatness.

The Constitution is under siege. The States lost the battle for the Senate. Now the states may lose the battle of the Electoral College. We lose this and we lose the right to choose our leaders. The Republic needs you and me to educate the ignorant and show them why our founders were all against Democracies and why they chose a Republic instead.

Source: Metro Voice News

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Unsealed documents shed new light on efforts to verify Trump-Russia dossier | CNN

Documents unsealed this week lend credence to a theory about Russian election meddling that was first put forward in the Trump-Russia dossier, however they do not corroborate the more explosive claims that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin in the 2016 campaign.

A report from a retired agent who worked for the FBI’s cyber division, submitted as expert testimony in a civil lawsuit, presented new evidence about how Russian intelligence might have exploited a private web hosting company when it fooled top Democratic targets into giving up their passwords. The fruits of those hacks formed the basis of the WikiLeaks email dumps that roiled the race.

The controversial dossier had accused Russian hackers of using those companies, Webzilla and its parent company XBT, as part of their scheme to meddle in the presidential election. The memos, written by a retired British spy, Christopher Steele, also claimed that Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev assisted the cyberattacks “under duress” from Russian intelligence.

Gubarev vehemently denied those allegations and sued BuzzFeed for defamation after it published the dossier. That prompted BuzzFeed to commission the expert witness report from FTI Consulting’s Anthony Ferrante, who is also a CNN contributor. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in December, and ordered that dozens of documents be released to the public this week. The judge ruled on First Amendment grounds and did not assess the hacking-related allegations.

Details of the report

The FTI report concluded that one of the hyperlinks the Russians designed to trick Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta into giving up his email password was created on an internet protocol address owned by Root S.A., an XBT subsidiary.
In his deposition, retired FBI cyber official Ferrante admitted the evidence didn’t conclusively show XBT was aware of the Russian campaign against Democrats.

“I will further state that other than the fact that XBT employees did little to nothing to detect, stop and prevent the significant malicious activity, I have no evidence of them actually sitting behind a keyboard,” he said.

Gubarev’s team argued that an internet hosting company couldn’t be held responsible for the activities of people who use its services.
A rebuttal on Gubarev’s behalf, filed by a former CIA cybersecurity expert, Eric Cole, stressed that he and his staff were frequently unaware of the specific activity conducted on its servers.

“XBT/Webzilla is not responsible for every bit of data that a bad actor passes over its infrastructure any more than a post office is responsible for the actions of the Unabomber,” Cole wrote.

“Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted the 12 Russians responsible for the hacking. Those are the folks responsible, not us,” Evan Fray-Witzer, an attorney for Gubarev, told CNN. The 11-count indictment against those hackers, which was filed in July 2018, did not mention Webzilla or XBT.

BuzzFeed News characterized the report as vindication of its decision to publish the Trump-Russia dossier. “We knew already that publishing the dossier was in the public interest,” spokesperson Matt Mittenthal told CNN. “Now, because BuzzFeed News published the dossier, we’re learning more about the facts of foreign influence in the 2016 presidential election.”

Gubarev sued BuzzFeed in 2017 and sought damages for defamation. As part of the legal process, some of the key players in the dossier saga were deposed, including Steele.

The court unsealed one page of that deposition, which happened last year in London. Steele testified that he tried to verify the allegations against Gubarev by doing, among other things, an “open source search,” which would likely include scouring news clippings and public records.

Steele has years of experience as a British spy in Moscow and has been a trusted source for the FBI. Allies of Democratic nominee Clinton funded Steele’s investigation in 2016. But he was so concerned by his findings that he shared his memo with senior US and UK officials.

In her decision to throw out the case, the judge confirmed that BuzzFeed got the dossier from an associate of Republican Sen. John McCain in December 2016, weeks after the election.

The memos were circulating in Washington, and CNN soon broke the story that senior US intelligence officials had briefed President-elect Trump and President Barack Obama about some of the unverified allegations. Hours later, BuzzFeed published the complete dossier online.
The most salacious allegations in the dossier remain unverified to this day. But the claims that form the bulk of the memos have held up over time, or at least proved to be partially true.

This notably includes Steele’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw an effort to interfere in the 2016 election. It also includes allegations of secret contacts between Trump’s team and the Russians during the campaign. Steele gathered this stunning information months before the Russian meddling campaign was publicly confirmed by US intelligence agencies and in court filings from special counsel Robert Mueller.

Kevin Collier, a cybersecurity reporter for CNN, previously worked for BuzzFeed News.

Source: CNN & BuzzFeed News

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A Complete (Dated) Psychological Analysis of Trump’s Support | Psychology Today

By Bobby Azarian, Ph.D.

Editor’s Note: There are lots of problems with this analysis especially because many assertions are sourced from the liberal media which has an agenda, but it has some interesting talking points for understanding our current political situation. Our nation was divided long before Donald Trump became President, his election just brought this fact to the surface. There are two America’s and they are not even talking with each other anymore. 

Whether we want to or not, we must try to understand the Donald Trump phenomenon, as it has completely swept the nation and also fiercely divided it. What is most baffling about it all is Trump’s apparent political invincibility. As he himself said even before he won the presidential election, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Unfortunately for the American people, this wild-sounding claim appears to be truer than not. It should also motivate us to explore the science underlying such peculiar human behavior, so we can learn from it, and potentially inoculate against it.

In all fairness, we should recognize that lying is sadly not uncommon for politicians on both sides of the political aisle, but the frequency and magnitude of the current president’s lies should have us all wondering why they haven’t destroyed his political career, and instead perhaps strengthened it. Similarly, we should be asking why his inflammatory rhetoric and numerous scandals haven’t sunk him. We are talking about a man who was caught on tape saying, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.” Politically surviving that video is not normal, or anything close to it, and such a revelation would likely have been the end of Barack Obama or George Bush had it surfaced weeks before the election.

While dozens of psychologists have analyzed Trump, to explain the man’s political invincibility, it is more important to understand the minds of his staunch supporters. While various popular articles have illuminated a multitude of reasons for his unwavering support, there appears to be no comprehensive analysis that contains all of them. Since there seems to be a real demand for this information, I have tried to provide that analysis below.

Some of the explanations come from a 2017 review paper published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology by the psychologist and UC Santa Cruz professor Thomas Pettigrew. Others have been put forth as far back as 2016, by me, in various articles and blog posts for publications like Psychology Today. A number of these were inspired by insights from psychologists like Sheldon Solomon, who laid the groundwork for the influential Terror Management Theory, and David Dunning, who did the same for the Dunning-Kruger effect.

This list will begin with the more benign reasons for Trump’s intransigent support. As the list goes on, the explanations become increasingly worrisome, and toward the end, border on the pathological. It should be strongly emphasized that not all Trump supporters are racist, mentally vulnerable, or fundamentally bad people. It can be detrimental to society when those with degrees and platforms try to demonize their political opponents or paint them as mentally ill when they are not. That being said, it is just as harmful to pretend that there are not clear psychological and neural factors that underlie much of Trump supporters’ unbridled allegiance.

The psychological phenomena described below mostly pertain to those supporters who would follow Trump off a cliff. These are the people who will stand by his side no matter what scandals come to light, or what sort of evidence for immoral and illegal behavior surfaces.

1. Practicality Trumps Morality

For some wealthy people, it’s simply a financial matter. Trump offers tax cuts for the rich and wants to do away with government regulation that gets in the way of businessmen making money, even when that regulation exists for the purpose of protecting the environment. Others, like blue-collared workers, like the fact that the president is trying to bring jobs back to America from places like China. Some people who genuinely are not racist (those who are will be discussed later) simply want stronger immigration laws because they know that a country with open borders is not sustainable. These people have put their practical concerns above their moral ones. To them, it does not make a difference if he’s a vagina-grabber, or if his campaign team colluded with Russia to help him defeat his political opponent. It is unknown whether these people are eternally bound to Trump in the way others are, but we may soon find out if the Mueller investigation is allowed to come to completion.

2. The Brain’s Attention System Is More Strongly Engaged by Trump

According to a study that monitored brain activity while participants watched 40 minutes of political ads and debate clips from the presidential candidates, Donald Trump is unique in his ability to keep the brain engaged. While Hillary Clinton could only hold attention for so long, Trump kept both attention and emotional arousal high throughout the viewing session. This pattern of activity was seen even when Trump made remarks that individuals didn’t necessarily agree with. His showmanship and simple language clearly resonate with some at a visceral level.

3. America’s Obsession with Entertainment and Celebrities

Essentially, the loyalty of Trump supporters may in part be explained by America’s addiction to entertainment and reality TV. To some, it doesn’t matter what Trump actually says because he’s so amusing to watch. With the Donald, you are always left wondering what outrageous thing he is going to say or do next. He keeps us on the edge of our seat, and for that reason, some Trump supporters will forgive anything he says. They are happy as long as they are kept entertained.

4. “Some Men Just Want to Watch the World Burn.”

Some people are supporting Trump simply to be rebellious or to introduce chaos into the political system. They may have such distaste for the establishment and democrats like Hillary Clinton that their support for Trump is a symbolic middle finger directed at Washington. These people may have other issues, like an innate desire to troll others or an obsession with schadenfreude.

5. The Fear Factor: Conservatives Are More Sensitive to Threat

Science has  shown that the conservative brain has an exaggerated fear response when faced with stimuli that may be perceived as threatening. A 2008 study in the journal Science found that conservatives have a stronger physiological reaction to startling noises and graphic images compared to liberals. A brain-imaging study published in Current Biology revealed that those who lean right politically tend to have a larger amygdala — a structure that is electrically active during states of fear and anxiety. And a 2014 fMRI study found that it is possible to predict whether someone is a liberal or conservative simply by looking at their brain activity while they view threatening or disgusting images, such as mutilated bodies. Specifically, the brains of self-identified conservatives generated more activity overall in response to the disturbing images.

These brain responses are automatic and not influenced by logic or reason. As long as Trump continues to portray Muslims and Hispanic immigrants as imminent threats, many conservative brains will involuntarily light up like light bulbs being controlled by a switch. Fear keeps his followers energized and focused on safety. And when you think you’ve found your protector, you become less concerned with offensive and divisive remarks.

6. The Power of Mortality Reminders and Perceived Existential Threat

A well-supported theory from social psychology, known as Terror Management Theory, explains why Trump’s fear mongering is doubly effective. The theory is based on the fact that humans have a unique awareness of their own mortality. The inevitably of one’s death creates existential terror and anxiety that is always residing below the surface. In order to manage this terror, humans adopt cultural worldviews — like religions, political ideologies, and national identities — that act as a buffer by instilling life with meaning and value.

Terror Management Theory predicts that when people are reminded of their own mortality, which happens with fear mongering, they will more strongly defend those who share their worldviews and national or ethnic identity, and act out more aggressively towards those who do not. Hundreds of studies have supported this hypothesis, and some have specifically shown that triggering thoughts of death tends to shift people towards the right.

Not only do death reminders increase nationalism, they may influence voting habits in favor of more conservative presidential candidates. And more disturbingly, in a study with American students, scientists found that making mortality salient increased support for extreme military interventions by American forces that could kill thousands of civilians overseas. Interestingly, the effect was present only in conservatives.

By constantly emphasizing existential threat, Trump may be creating a psychological condition that makes the brain respond positively rather than negatively to bigoted statements and divisive rhetoric.

7. The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Humans Often Overestimate Their Political Expertise

Some who support Donald Trump are under-informed or misinformed about the issues at hand. When Trump tells them that crime is skyrocketing in the United States, or that the economy is the worst it’s ever been, they simply take his word for it.

The Dunning-Kruger effect explains that the problem isn’t just that they are misinformed; it’s that they are completely unaware that they are misinformed, which creates a double burden.

Studies have shown that people who lack expertise in some area of knowledge often have a cognitive bias that prevents them from realizing that they lack expertise. As psychologist David Dunning puts it in an op-ed for Politico, “The knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one is not good at that task — and if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at the task. This includes political judgment.” These people cannot be reached because they mistakenly believe they are the ones who should be reaching others.

8. Relative Deprivation — A Misguided Sense of Entitlement

Relative deprivation refers to the experience of being deprived of something to which one believes they are entitled. It is the discontent felt when one compares their position in life to others who they feel are equal or inferior but have unfairly had more success than them.

Common explanations for Trump’s popularity among non-bigoted voters involve economics. There is no doubt that some Trump supporters are simply angry that American jobs are being lost to Mexico and China, which is certainly understandable, although these loyalists often ignore the fact that some of these careers are actually being lost due to the accelerating pace of automation.

These Trump supporters are experiencing relative deprivation, and are common among the swing states like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. This kind of deprivation is specifically referred to as “relative,” as opposed to “absolute,” because the feeling is often based on a skewed perception of what one is entitled to.

9. Lack of Exposure to Dissimilar Others

Intergroup contact refers to contact with members of groups that are outside one’s own, which has been experimentally shown to reduce prejudice. As such, it’s important to note that there is growing evidence that Trump’s white supporters have experienced significantly less contact with minorities than other Americans. For example, a 2016 study found that “…the racial and ethnic isolation of Whites at the zip-code level is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support.” This correlation persisted while controlling for dozens of other variables. In agreement with this finding, the same researchers found that support for Trump increased with the voters’ physical distance from the Mexican border. These racial biases might be more implicit than explicit, the latter which is addressed in #14.

10. Trump’s Conspiracy Theories Target the Mentally Vulnerable

While the conspiracy theory crowd — who predominantly support Donald Trump and crackpot allies like Alex Jones and the shadowy QAnon — may appear to just be an odd quirk of modern society, some of them may suffer from psychological illnesses that involve paranoia and delusions, such as schizophrenia, or are at least vulnerable to them, like those with schizotypy personalities.

The link between schizotypy and belief in conspiracy theories is well-established, and a recent study published in the journal PsychiatryResearch has demonstrated that it is still very prevalent in the population. The researchers found that those who were more likely to believe in outlandish conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the U.S. government created the AIDS epidemic, consistently scored high on measures of “odd beliefs and magical thinking.” One feature of magical thinking is a tendency to make connections between things that are actually unrelated in reality.

Donald Trump and media allies target these people directly. All one has to do is visit alt-right websites and discussion boards to see the evidence for such manipulation.

11. Trump Taps into the Nation’s Collective Narcissism

Collective narcissism is an unrealistic shared belief in the greatness of one’s national group. It often occurs when a group who believes it represents the ‘true identity’ of a nation — the ‘ingroup,’ in this case White Americans — perceives itself as being disadvantaged compared to outgroups who are getting ahead of them ‘unrightfully.’ This psychological phenomenon is related to relative deprivation (#6).

A study published last year in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found a direct link between national collective narcissism and support for Donald Trump. This correlation was discovered by researchers at the University of Warsaw, who surveyed over 400 Americans with a series of questionnaires about political and social beliefs. Where individual narcissism causes aggressiveness toward other individuals, collective narcissism involves negative attitudes and aggressiontoward ‘outsider’ groups (outgroups), who are perceived as threats.

Donald Trump exacerbates collective narcissism with his anti-immigrant, anti-elitist, and strongly nationalistic rhetoric. By referring to his supporters, an overwhelmingly white group, as being “true patriots” or “real Americans,” he promotes a brand of populism that is the epitome of “identity politics,” a term that is usually associated with the political left. Left-wing identity politics, as misguided as they may sometimes be, are generally aimed at achieving equality, while the right-wing brand is based on a belief that one nationality or race is superior or entitled to success and wealth for no other reason than identity.

12. The Desire to Want to Dominate Others

Social dominance orientation (SDO) — which is distinct from but related to authoritarian personality (#13) — refers to people who have a preference for the societal hierarchy of groups, specifically with a structure in which the high-status groups have dominance over the low-status ones. Those with SDO are typically dominant, tough-minded, and driven by self-interest.

In Trump’s speeches, he appeals to those with SDO by repeatedly making a clear distinction between groups that have a generally higher status in society (White), and those groups that are typically thought of as belonging to a lower status (immigrants and minorities). A 2016 survey study of 406 American adults published last year in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found that those who scored high on both SDO and authoritarianism were more likely to vote for Trump in the election.

13. Authoritarian Personality 

Authoritarianism refers to the advocacy or enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, and is commonly associated with a lack of concern for the opinions or needs of others. Authoritarian personality is characterized by belief in total and complete obedience to authority. Those with this personality often display aggression toward outgroup members, submissiveness to authority, resistance to new experiences, and a rigid hierarchical view of society. Authoritarianism is often triggered by fear, making it easy for leaders who exaggerate threat or fear monger to gain their allegiance.

Although authoritarian personality is found among liberals, it is more common among the right-wing around the world. President Trump’s speeches, which are laced with absolutist terms like “losers” and “complete disasters,” are naturally appealing to those with such a personality.

While research showed that Republican voters in the U.S. scored higher than Democrats on measures of authoritarianism before Trump emerged on the political scene, a 2016 Politico survey found that high authoritarians greatly favored then-candidate Trump, which led to a correct prediction that he would win the election, despite the polls saying otherwise.

14. Racism and Bigotry

It would be grossly unfair and inaccurate to say that every one of Trump’s supporters have prejudice against ethnic and religious minorities, but it would be equally inaccurate to say that few do. The Republican party, going at least as far back to Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” has historically used tactics that appealed to bigotry, such as lacing speeches with “dog whistles” — code words that signaled prejudice toward minorities that were designed to be heard by racists but no one else.

While the dog whistles of the past were subtler, Trump’s signaling is sometimes shockingly direct. There’s no denying that he routinely appeals to racist and bigoted supporters when he calls Muslims “dangerous” and Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “murderers,” often in a blanketed fashion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a recent study has shown that support for Trump is correlated with a standard scale of modern racism.

Source: Psychology Today

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FBI releases part of Russia dossier summary used to brief Trump, Obama | Politico

The FBI released for the first time Friday night a two-page summary former FBI Director James Comey used to brief President-elect Donald Trump nearly two years ago on a so-called dossier about Trump’s ties to Russia.

The version made public Friday could reignite previous criticism from Republicans and Trump allies that the FBI was too vague in its description of the fact that the dossier was funded by the campaign of Trump’s nemesis in the 2016 presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as the Democratic National Committee.

Comey, who was fired by Trump in May 2017, acknowledged during a book tour earlier this year that he did not inform Trump who paid for the research.

The brief passage the FBI left unredacted in the newly released memo gives some background on the former British intelligence officer who compiled the dossier, Christopher Steele, although Steele’s name does not actually appear in the newly released version. The released portion of the synopsis is vague about who financed the project, referring to it as sponsored by “private clients.”

“An FBI source … volunteered highly politically sensitive information … on Russian influence efforts aimed at the US presidential election,” the memo labeled as “Annex A” says. “The source is an executive of a private business intelligence firm and a former employee of a friendly intelligence service who has been compensated for previous reporting over the past three years. The source maintains and collects information from a layered network of identified and unidentified subsources, some of which has been corroborated in the past. The source collected this information on behalf of private clients and was not compensated for it by the FBI.”

“The source’s reporting appears to have been acquired by multiple Western press organizations starting in October,” the document from January 2017 declares.

Comey has said he did not show or give Trump the memo, but used it as a reference when briefing him on the dossier, which U.S. intelligence officials feared Russia might try to use as blackmail against Trump. The synopsis was also used to brief President Barack Obama, officials have said.

Republicans had previously complained that the FBI failed to inform a federal court about the dossier’s provenance — that Steele’s work was commissioned by Fusion GPS, a research firm that had been hired by the Clinton campaign’s law firm, Perkins Coie, to dig up information about Trump’s business relationships overseas. Based in part on the dossier’s information, the court granted an FBI application to surveil a former Trump campaign associate in October 2016.

Aspects of the FBI’s surveillance application have since been released and revealed that the FBI did inform the court that Steele had political animus toward Trump and that it was funded by a politically motivated backer.

The document was released Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by a POLITICO reporter and the James Madison Project, a pro-transparency group.

In January, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that that the FBI was legally justified in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of any records related to the dossier, despite several tweets from President Donald Trump that described the document as “fake” or “discredited.”

However, shortly after that ruling, Trump declassified a House Intelligence Committee memo that included various claims about the FBI’s handling of the dossier. In August, Mehta said the official release of that material vitiated the FBI’s ability to claim that it had offered no public confirmation of its role in vetting or verifying the dossier, a collection of accurate, inaccurate, unverified and sometimes salacious claims about ties between Russia and various figures in Trump’s circle.

“It remains no longer logical nor plausible for the FBI to maintain that it cannot confirm nor deny the existence of documents” related to attempts to verify information in the dossier, Mehta wrote.

The FBI withheld the remainder of the two-page synopsis on a variety of grounds, including that the material remains classified either Secret or Top Secret. The law enforcement agency also indicated the information is exempt from release because it pertains to ongoing investigations or court proceedings, originated with a confidential source or describes confidential investigative techniques or procedures.

The FBI said Friday it lacked any records indicating final conclusions about any information in the dossier, said Brad Moss, one of the attorneys pressing for release of the records.

“After two years of legal games, the FBI today finally confirmed two pieces of speculation about the scandalous allegations regarding which Director Comey briefed President Trump in January 2017: all of those allegations remain part of the ongoing Russian ‘collusion’ investigation, and the FBI has not rendered final determinations about the accuracy of any of them,” Moss said. “Far from being debunked, the issues that raised concerns for the Intelligence Community in 2017 remain unresolved to this day.”

Moss said he plans to challenge the FBI’s withholdings in the case and to ask Mehta to order more of the information released.

Source: Politico