I’ve written several times before that President Trump lacks even a basic understanding of how our nation works. This week he has proven me right beyond anything I could have imagined.

In the last few weeks we’ve learned that men, women, and children from Central America have begun a migrant caravan through Mexico in the hopes of reaching the United States. They are fleeing poverty and gang violence and chose a dangerous and exhausting journey out of desperation.

But our President refuses to see this. He repeatedly refers to this pilgrimage as an invasion.

His two responses shows us again how little he knows about his job:

• He has misused his power as Commander in Chief to move troops to the border. When he learned about the caravan he ordered state National Guard troops and active duty soldiers to the border to “protect us.” So here’s the problem: they can’t do any law enforcement. They can’t detain or arrest anyone who crosses the border illegally. In 1878 Congress passed a law called Posse Comitatus. It stated that our military protects us from those who endanger us from outside our nation and they cannot perform law enforcement duties. So if these troops are called to the Mexican border, what can they do? Good question. They can support law enforcement. In other words they can make repairs and transport law enforcement. Yes, they will can be uber for border patrol. As for me, I think that’s a terrific reason to pull our military from their jobs and families.
• His lack of understanding of our Constitution continues to stun me. In the last few days President Trump has challenged our belief that anyone born here is, by right, a citizen. Actually, it’s not a belief: it’s embedded in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment was passed after the Civil War to ensure that newly freed slaves were guaranteed citizenship. Mr. Trump believes that he can end or change a Constitutional Amendment by executive order. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan recognizes this isn’t true. So does the Supreme Court. In 1898 the Supreme Court in United States vs. Wong Kim Ark ruled that anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen. Mr. Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese parents. In 1895 he visited China, but on his return to the United States he was refused entry because of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that denied entry of nearly anyone who was Chinese. Mr. Ark claimed that he was a citizen by virtue of being born in the US. In 1898 the Court ruled that if someone is born in the United States, that person is a citizen and nothing else matters. You can read more about this in a previous post.

Only true history nerds will recognize that on this day in 1973 President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) set in place the events we now call the Saturday Night Massacre.

In 1972, during President Nixon’s reelection campaign, five men were arrested for breaking into Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington DC. They were attempting to bug the phones and gain intelligence on the campaign of the President’s opponent, Senator George McGovern (1922-2010).

And while President Nixon was reelected in 1972, the investigation of the break in grew in the minds of many Americans. By May of 1973 Congress began holding hearings and President Nixon (under pressure) appointed Archibald Cox (1912-2004) to investigate what we all began to call “Watergate.”

But Mr. Cox soon began to investigate whether or not President Nixon drove a coverup by bribing the original defendants to quietly plead guilty in return for cash and not implicating anyone else. President Nixon spent the summer of 1973 growing angrier and angrier over the investigation. On Saturday, October 20, 1973 he directed his Attorney General Elliot Richardson (1920-1999) to fire Mr. Cox. General Richardson refused to do so and resigned. President Nixon then ordered General Richardson’s deputy, William Ruckelshaus (b.1932) to fire Mr. Cox. Mr. Ruckelshaus also resigned. Finally Solicitor General Robert Bork (1927-2012) fired Mr. Cox.

Instead of ending the scandal it intensified it. Pressure grew on President Nixon, and on August 8, 1974 he resigned.

I write this not out of nostalgia for events 45 years ago, but because we’re seeing frightening parallels today. President Nixon ordered a coverup of events intended to ensure his reelection. Many of us believe that in 2016 then candidate Donald Trump conspired with Russia to provide false information to convince American voters to vote for him.

President Nixon spent the rest of his life convinced that he did nothing wrong and his enemies were out to get him.

As I said, the parallels are frightening.

Since the formation of our nation we’ve depended on good men and women who worked to make certain our government functioned and provided the service we depend on.  From the earliest days of the Post Office to the modern protection offered by the Department of Homeland Security we the people have been served well.  They’ve protected us from danger here at home and abroad.  They’ve insured that we have what we need in retirement. They’ve provided health care for the poor and food for hungry students.

But alongside this it’s been fashionable to see government employees as stupid and lazy. Full disclosure: my father worked for the government from 1950 to 1988 and my sister has worked for the government since 1984. These irresponsible charges have always annoyed me, but the administration of President Trump has dramatically increased this nonsense. I’ve spoken about his promise to drain the swamp and his belief that career government employees make up a deep state intent on frustrating his agenda. He doesn’t recognize the damage he is causing.

I was thinking about his I was listening to an interview of Michael Lewis. He is publicizing his new book The Fifth Risk. He argues that the Trump administration has no idea how to govern.

In the course of the interview he was asked this question: “So has your understanding of our bureaucracy changed through writing these stories? You can read the transcript of the entire interview here.

The transcript is verbatim and I’ve cleaned it up for this, but here is what he says:

Oh, my God. I didn’t know what I was going to find when I started knocking on the door of the Energy Department or the Agriculture Department or the Commerce Department. And I turned out having exactly the same experience that political people have when they’re appointed to these jobs running these places and have these – some preconception but vague preconception of what the bureaucrats are like.

This happens over and over again. A new administration comes in. They have kind of a vague contempt for the people who are there. And four years later, they walk out and say those are the most amazing people I’ve ever worked with. I expected to be briefed and informed by these people. I did not expect to be inspired by them. The kind of person who is still working in our government despite all the abuse the government takes is a mission-driven person. They’re not paid well. They’re there because they’re interested in the task. The people in the National Weather Service are people who have had a passion for the weather since they were little kids.

The people in the Department of Energy are scientists who’ve had a passion for their particular science since they were little kids. Essentially they are firefighters in spirit. And there’s something really moving about groups of people who are doing what they’re doing not for money but for mission. They have a purpose in life. And it just jumps off the page. I mean it jumped into my mind dealing with them. And so I came away from it thinking, wow, I can’t believe we as a society have treated this slice of our society – these kinds of people, who are really the best among us, as badly as we have.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The resignation of US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy paved the way for President Trump to nominate someone who would advance his agenda. He did.

At first blush the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh appears to fit the bill. He’s young (53) and conservative and many on the right held out hope that he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that banned state laws that prohibited abortion.

Since the Senate needs to confirm any Supreme Court nomination by a simple majority and the Republicans have a majority over the Democrats, it appeared that Judge Kavanaugh should walk through the nomination and take his place on the bench.

But wait: It’s never that simple. Judge Kavanaugh attended high school and college in the 1980s, long before the #metoo movement. A few women accused him of sexual impropriety and he has denied these charges.

Unfortunately we’ve been this way before. In 1991, during the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas, we heard from Anita Hill who accused Mr. Thomas of sexual harassment when they worked together at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Many of us looked on the treatment of Ms. Hill with horror. At the time she was described as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” and her courage was in vain. Mr. Thomas won confirmation and has served on the Court for the last 27 years.

Shortly after Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination we heard from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a psychologist who now lives in California. When she was 15 years old and in high school she claims she was at a party with 17 year old Brett Kavanaugh where he sexually attacked her. She testified that he drew her into an upstairs bedroom where he assaulted her. When she attempted to cry for help he covered her mouth to prevent her from screaming and she feared he would accidentally suffocate her. At the time she did not tell anyone for a well reasoned fear that her behavior would be called into question (“What where you wearing?” “Did you do anything that gave him the impression that you wanted it?” “Did you find him attractive?”).

Defenders of Mr. Kavanaugh claim that she remained silent until now as a conspiracy to prevent his nomination. This isn’t true. Dr. Ford’s testimony describes her speaking with her husband in 2012. When she and her husband renovated their home she demanded a second front door. This didn’t make any sense to her husband until she confessed to him and a marriage counselor that she wouldn’t feel safe without an alternative opportunity to flee the house and this traced back to her assault by Brett Kavanaugh. Yes, she identified him by name.

Dr. Ford hoped this incident would remain private but this summer she learned, to her horror, that Mr. Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court. She could have easily hid and pretended nothing happened, but she chose courage over comfort, patriotism over safety.

She had information about Mr. Kavanaugh that we didn’t and she felt she needed to share her story because it matters who sits on the highest court in the land. Like Anita Hill she had nothing to gain and everything to lose and yet she chose to describe her encounter with Mr. Kavanaugh.

And so she stepped forward. Along with many Americans, I found her credible.

Justice Kavanaugh responded as nearly everyone expected. He denied the assault and also denied he he has ever drank to the point where he doesn’t remember his behavior.

Others have testified that his consumption of alcohol during this time made his testimony false.

If Judge Kavanaugh had testified that his alcohol consumption in high school and college caused him to make poor decisions and sometimes not remember what happened that he now regrets, I could have supported him. If he had said that he doesn’t remember the incident but that he sometimes drank to the point of blacking out and he deeply regrets any pain he may have caused, I could have supported him. Had he said that he doesn’t remember assaulting someone but can’t claim it didn’t happen, I could have supported him.

But he didn’t. Instead chose the path of claiming to be a victim. He accused the Clintons of conspiring block his nomination.

Nominees for government office sometimes need to defend themselves and we all can remember times when we’ve all needed to fight for our reputation. But Judge Kavanaugh chose a low, low road. He didn’t just claim the charges were false, he claimed that those who believed Dr. Ford wished him evil. Clearly he was pandering to President Trump.

This should scare all of us. He may well serve on the Supreme Court for 30 or 40 years and he has shown us that his ambition outstretches his desire to serve the American people.

Ever since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation of possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, President Trump has hammered him.

If you google the phrase “trump criticism of sessions” you will get 34,800,000 hits. Basically Mr. Trump’s anger comes from the belief that the Attorney General works for him and should show more loyalty to him.

But here’s the problem: while Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Sessions, and while he serves at the pleasure of the President, he works for the American people. When he recused himself from the investigation he did the right thing. Mr. Sessions was involved in the Trump campaign and this would present a potential conflict of interest.

Mr. Trump’s lack of understanding of this difference is problematic. I’ve spoken about this before but Mr. Trump sees all government employees as working for him, not for the United States. Yesterday the New York Times ran an article that was written anonymously by a senior official that was critical of the President. Mr. Trump responded by calling this action treason.

And however we may feel about writing an anonymous opinion piece, this writer clearly writes from a place of serving the nation. I just hope he or she is not found out.

Almost since the beginning of President Trump’s administration I’ve argued that he has shown a lack of respect for the office of president. Beginning with George Washington, our 1st President, all occupants of the Oval Office have recognized the power of the the office and their responsibility to act in the best interest of our nation. Simply put, the first 44 Presidents have known that they work for the American people, the American people do not work for him.

Until now. I’ve spoken before about how President Trump is a fascist who believes that we are his servants and (to quote French King Louis XIV (1638-1715), I am the state (or in French, “L’etat, c’est moi”).

His lack of respect for his office, or for that matter, the American people isn’t simply an inconvenience: he is causing real and lasting damage to our nation that will take a long time to fix.

In fairness, he’s done some things that won’t need to be fixed or will be easy to fix. The president has broad powers to pardon those convicted of federal crimes. As of today you can see a list of those he has already pardoned. I don’t agree with all of them, but these pardons don’t do any real damage to our nation.

Many of us worry about Mr. Trump’s eagerness to impose tariffs to protect American jobs and his false belief that we can win a trade war. In reality nobody wins a trade war and as I write this we are looking down the barrel of a nasty recession that will be caused by his protectionism. But the next President will have broad authority to repeal these tariffs and get us back on track.

But other of his moves will be harder to fix:

• He Moved Our Embassy From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem: When the state of Israel was founded on May 14, 1948 they declared their capital as Jerusalem. At the time it was a partitioned city. Israel occupied the western half of the city and Jordon occupied the eastern half. When Israel occupied the whole city after the Six Day War in 1967 Israel began to pressure us to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And while American politicians have made promises to move our embassy, common sense has prevailed. Until now. Make no mistake: we are strong allies with Israel. But their occupation of East Jerusalem (and the whole of Israel) displaced Palestinians and enraged several Arabian countries. In the last several decades the United States (and much of the world) has encouraged Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians to develop a two state solution that would go a long way toward ending the conflict. Many of us imagined that when this happened we could move our embassies to both East Jerusalem (serving Israel) and West Jerusalem (serving Palestine). Because Mr. Trump has moved our embassy to Jerusalem he has removed a major incentive for Israel to work for this two state solution. Simply put, he has made peace in the Middle East dramatically harder. The next president will not easily be able to move our embassy back to Tel Aviv and it weakens our ability to broker long term peace.
• His Opposition to Diplomacy is Crippling Our State Department: Mr. Trump does not like diplomacy and has shown his contempt for the State Department. He famously quotes Roy Cohn (1927-1986): “When the hit you, hit them back harder.” His first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson was chosen because of his close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Tillerson didn’t last long because, much to Mr. Trump’s horror, Mr. Tillerson actually tried to do his job. Mr. Tillerson’s fate was sealed when it became clear that he called his boss a moron. But during his time at State, Mr. Tillerson made it clear that anyone hoping to make a career in the State Department needed to look elsewhere. This led to resignations of long term employees and the refusal of good candidates to even apply for jobs. It’s often said in the military that we hire 2nd Lieutenants now because in 25 years we’ll need Generals. In other words we need to hire today for tomorrow’s leaders. But Mr. Trump’s war on diplomacy today will create a vacuum in the State Department long after he is out of office and likely dead. Second Lieutenants need 25 years experience to learn how to be Generals and entry level State Department employees need 25 years to learn to be ambassadors. The damage done to the state department will be felt for a generation.
• Likewise He is Damaging Our Intelligence Service: We are protected by several agencies, among them are the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Intelligence Council and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (my apologies to anyone I missed). We have a tradition in this country that law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies investigate wrongdoing whatever, whoever, and wherever and are free from partisanship. Again, they work for the American people and not the president. And again, this president doesn’t understand this. Because of the committed men and women in the agencies, we’ve known even before the 2016 election that Russia attempted to interfere with our democratic process. And they succeeded: they wanted to discredit Hillary Clinton because they wanted Mr. Trump to win the election. Every agency who has looked into this has concluded that they at least attempted to interfere. But Mr. Trump, seeing that this interference, continues to deny that it even happened. That’s right: last month he chose to believe Vladimir Putin’s denial over the evidence of the intelligence community. I guess there’s honor among liars.
• He Has Made Xenophobia, Racism, and Mysogyny Great Again: This section could last for volumes. I first called him out on his racism at the beginning of his campaign where he called Mexicans rapists and drug dealers. His call to build a wall between Mexico and the United States (and not between Canada and the United States) shows this isn’t about immigration but skin color. During the campaign Candidate Trump was called out by Megyn Kelly for calling women fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.; he responded by attacking Ms. Kelly. All this has given a green light for others to do the same. The respected journal Scientific American (hardly a journal with an agenda) showed a correlation between Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and anti Muslim behavior. Prejudice once stirred is not easy to tamp down, and we can expect this behavior for a lone time to come.
• Finally, He Wants Us To Ignore Truths That Place Him In a Bad Light: Much like the man who is caught cheating by his wife and says: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” Mr. Trump wants us to believe him over what we know to be true. This past weekend his lawyer Rudolph Giuliani famously claimed that truth isn’t truth when asked why, if the President has nothing to hide, doesn’t he appear before Robert Mueller’s commission. But there’s more: Last month Mr. Trump spoke to the VFW and said this: “But remember, they have the biggest, best, strongest lobbyists, and they’re doing a number. Just stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people — the fake news.” By the way, I got this quotation from the White House web page. But here’s the thing: he’s trying to tell us that only he and his people are trustworthy and everyone else is “fake news.” And when he does this he is attempting to discredit our justice system. Trust in our government took hits 35 years ago after we learned that we had been lied to about Vietnam and Watergate and in some ways we’re still dealing with this. But Mr. Trump’s attempts to leverage this mistrust to save his own skin not only discredits hardworking, honest members of our government, it creates suspicion going forward. It makes their job more difficult the next time they need to investigate wrongdoing.

Our role here is clear: We the People need to gather, not in support of one man or one party, but to the truth. The men and women who devote their lives to ensuring justice, from the local sheriff to the Attorney General, need and deserve our respect. Starting now.

In a previous post I wrote about the outrage many of us feel over the Trump administration’s draconian decision to tear families apart in his attempt to preserve the myth of racial purity in the United States. As an American it’s been hard to watch this happen.

I love America and I love our history, but learning about American history hasn’t always been easy. I’ve celebrated events like President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that freed Southern slaves and mourned President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 that interred Japanese Americans during World War II.

I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in Northern Virginia. It was an odd place as Virginia joined the Confederacy in 1861 but I lived in an area where most of the adults I knew worked for the federal government and were from somewhere else. I mistakenly believed that this insulated me from the sin of racism.

I was aware that Virginia had a long history of racial discrimination but I assumed it happened before I was born. But when I was in high school I learned that racial discrimination happened around me and I didn’t even notice. I saw the 2000 movie Remember the Titans with horror: it described the difficult nature of integrating a high school football team. It’s a true story that happened 20 miles from me when I was in middle school. The movie has a happy ending but there’s no way around the fact that some students like me and teachers like my teachers fought long and hard to keep racism in place. It was reprehensible and showed their cowardice.

Earlier this month I rejoiced to meet my 21 month old great nephew for the first time. As I look to his future I am filled with hope. But I’m also aware that some day he’s going to learn in history class that during his lifetime we were a nation that so vilified (admittedly undocumented) immigrants that tearing children from the arms of their parents was justified. He will learn that many of our leaders weaponized xenophobia for their own political gain and others went along for fear of losing their jobs.

I hope he asks us what we did when we saw these events happen and I hope we have a good answer. I hope we can tell him that we expressed our outrage, that we were willing to lose friendships, influence, and social standing to stand up for those who weren’t able to stand up for themselves. I hope we can tell him that we recognized that our ancestors came to this country for the same reasons and with the same hopes as these immigrants: to work hard, to make a better life for our children, and to find pride in calling us (and them) Americans.

President Trump famously ran on a belief that he would drain the swamp. And while I’ve written that draining swamps is a bad idea, it’s become a popular anthem.

There’s no standard definition of what “draining the swamp” means, I think we can all agree that the administration is going after those they believe aren’t serving us well. They come to Washington under the guise of serving us, but instead enrich themselves at our expense. They serve themselves instead of serving us.

Enter Scott Pruitt. President Trump nominated him to run the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency founded by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970. He came to Washington with the intent of undoing many of the regulations put in place by President Obama but that’s not what I choose to write about.

Instead, he clearly used his position to enrich himself. The EPA director makes $210,654 per year and there are a few perks. Previous EPA directors have had little or no protection, but Mr. Pruitt demanded a large detail. There’s an excellent article here. It describes how he pulled EPA employees away from their jobs to protect him even though they had no training in this.

But it goes further:

• He attempted to leverage his position to give his wife a Chick Fil A franchise
• He ordered the construction of a soundproof phone booth in his office and charged taxpayers $43,000 for it.
• He insisted on flying first class in clear violation of government policy. He argued that this was done for security reasons and claimed it wasn’t his idea. It appears that some of his seatmates were mean to him.
• While we expect our representatives in Congress to spend time in their districts, members of the executive branch are expected to live here. Instead of finding an apartment in Washington, he paid $50 per night for a room at the home of the wife of an energy lobbyist. By the way, he fell behind on those payments
• Mr. Pruitt’s primary residence is in Oklahoma and everyone understands that he might want to go home from time to time. But instead of paying his own way back he found way to make taxpayers pay for it. He told his aide Kevin Chmielewski to “find me something to do” that would make these trips official business. When Mr. Chmeilewski objected, Mr. Pruitt fired him.
• His travel at taxpayer expense took him to places other than Oklahoma. Last year he traveled to Morocco. The article shows that the trip was set up by a lobbyist for Morocco, and this lobbyist was later offered a job at EPA. He also went to Italy where he spent most of his time as a tourist

Mr. Pruitt, Mr. Trump, and much of the Republican Party argue that he was hounded from his job because he was too good at what he did. He lost his job because he used his position to enrich himself. This is one part of the swamp I don’t mind draining.