If you didn’t see Last Week Tonight with Jon Oliver last night, the Main Story was on stings by local police.  It's a very interesting report, at times galling, as well as very funny -- though I have mixed feelings about it.  As interesting as it is, and though they do address their point throughout, it isn't until the last 2-3 minutes that they really, fully make their in-depth point.  And when they do, all their outrage becomes properly focused.  Until then, though, there's a lot of anger about a situation they rightly do keep pointing out is wrong and unfair, but skirt over that crimes (some very tiny, but some huge) were actually being committed.

Happily, they do impactfully put the proper perspective on it all at the very end.  I can't do it justice in two sentences what the show finally takes several minutes to explain in full, but to move that ending up front here in a very brief summary, the complete point they eventually make is -- There are very real, extremely serious crimes for which stings absolutely should be that put into operation and investigated, including stings against people with known criminal records or against plans they've learned from informants are being prepared. But police should not "create" crimes to investigate that didn't exist before the police themselves put together a sting, most especially against people with no criminal records.

Knowing that that's their point (in brief...) -- rather than only pointing out how unnecessary, wrong or often just mean many individual stings are in order to make it look like they're doing something to fight crime -- makes the story more focused.

​Robert Mueller passed away on Saturday at the age of 81 from Parkinson’s Disease.  He dedicated his life to serving America. Mueller fought in Viet Nam, where he earned a Bronze Star with Valor, a Purple Heart and other awards for bravery in war.  He also served as FBI Director.
 
It is important to mention that upfront, so as to put Trump’s response to the passing of this American hero in perspective.  It’s one of those rare tweets from Trump where it’s necessary to show, rather than just quote, since otherwise it might not be believed.
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​Obviously, there’s an encyclopedia of things I could write about my personal reaction in response, but not only is that absolutely unnecessary, I’m certain, since readers of these pages tend to be mature, thoughtful adults (and the few who aren’t -- you know who you are.  But you’re, at least, still thoughtful adults…), but far better to let attorney Ty Cobb respond, since he was White House Special Counsel for Trump, managing the administration’s response to the Department of Justice’s investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election, that was led by Robert Mueller.

In an interview on MS NOW, Cobb said that Robert Mueller’s “character should never be questioned.”  He went on -- “What the president said today, of course, is petty, shameful, despicable, and undignified. Sadly, that is the president we have. But fortunately, in American history, we’ve had people like Bob Mueller, and hopefully our better angels like Bob can get us beyond the fascism that we’re experiencing at this moment.”

After getting a question from the anchor, Cobb went on: 

“So, that’s the type of person that President Trump is.  He’s a demented narcissist. You know, seriously hates anybody who stands in opposition to him, has reworked the justice department into a revenge machine, and rules the country in a very authoritarian manner with the assistance of a cowardly cabinet and even more cowardly Republicans in Congress.”

“And that’s tragedy,” Cobb said. “That’s something we’re all having to deal with. But I think, you know, rather than focusing on the despicable response of a demented president, that we should really focus on the hero that we lost today and ideally, gain some inspiration and some strength that we can bring out on No Kings Day when we stand up again for our country.”
 
Who am I to contradict Mr. Cobb.  He was Trump’s lawyer as president, after all, and worked closely with Robert Mueller and his team.

It's worth noting that the whole reason Robert Mueller investigated Trump was not because he went on a personal, independent vendetta attack, but rather because he was hired by Trump’s own Department of Justice to do a report on Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign.  In fact, even more to the point, Robert Mueller was hired by Trump’s own Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein!  (Rosenstein was in the position because Attorney General Jeff Session had recused himself – which infuriated Trump so much he later fired him.)
 
Furthermore, although Trump viciously attacked Mueller in the immediacy of his death, the reality is that in the Mueller Report, Mueller didn’t accuse Trump of conspiracy or any other crime, and only referred his findings to Congress to act, if they chose to. (He did find that Trump “colluded” with Russia, though that is not a crime.)  If there were lives that were “hurt,” they were the lives of people who were indicted by Trump’s own DOJ and literally found guilty by juries, or literally pled guilty.  That's the opposite of "innocent."
 
Similarly, contrary to what Trump suggests, he himself isn’t someone who is “innocent” but has been convicted of 34 felonies, rape and fraud.  None were related to Mueller’s investigation, though he is, nonetheless, a convicted felon, rapist and fraud.  Also worth adding is that in his report, Robert Mueller explains that he couldn’t charge anyone with collusion -- not because he found that none existed – but because some evidence was encrypted, deleted, or not saved, and there was testimony given that was false, incomplete, or refused.  In fact, the report did say that there was "collusion" with 140 contacts between the Russians and 18 members of Trump's team -- though the authors explained that "collusion" is not "a term of art in federal criminal law").  Even more to the point, as Trump tries to pain himself "innocent" before the report didn't charge him with a crime, Mueller said that "Under longstanding department policy, a present president can not be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option."  Even Trump's own Attorney General after the release of the report, William Barr, said, "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

My hope is that reporters should track down every MAGOP in Congress and ask for a reaction about Trump’s response. And for those who say they hadn’t read Trump's tweet and have no comment, reporters should have the tweet printed out so they can give them a copy.
 
I’m sure that while most will either say something soft like they have a different view, or find a way to scurry off so fast they leave their soul and self-respect behind without responding, there will be a few who support what Trump said, because that’s what those around him do.  In fact, already there are several in the administration who – taking Trump’s lead, as always – have chosen to virulently slam the American hero.

One other thought came to mind when I read Trump’s response.  ​For someone just a year younger than Robert Mueller -- and in poor health suffering from dementia which is degenerative -- Trump should have been aware before posting this that at some point people will be quoting him about himself.

The thing to keep in mind is that, as much as so many will likely be thinking it, most won't say it out loud in public.  Because as deep and justified as their hatred of Trump is for trying to overthrow democracy and the country, and bringing fascism to his party, they have a sense of decency and humanity.  And for all the others who do say it out loud and in public...none of them are president of the United States, where the responsibility is so much higher that it doesn't even register on the charts.

A friend wrote me on Saturday to he say didn't think anything Trump said anymore could shock him.  That he was immunized by exposure to his sickness.  Adding, "Clearly, I was wrong."

I fully understand the point.  We think Trump can't go any lower.  But when I read that Robert Mueller had died, my immediate thought was to start looking over the landscape to see if there were any new holes.

After all, Trump does have dementia, which is degenerative.  And he is a malignant narcissist.  So, ultimately, in whatever he does, there's nowhere for him to go but down.

If you didn't see Last Week Tonight with John Oliver last night, his Main Story was about police body cameras.  It was an extremely interesting report, on the use of them, the misuse, how video can be deceiving, how even audio can be deceiving and much more.  And it's also very funny.
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But if Trump does decide to send refund checks, that too will cause a big problem for him because he's said that the tariffs brought in about $850 billion -- when, in fact, all experts say that, at most, it's closer to $200 billion.  So, he'll be $650 billion short of what he's said he would have in order to return.

But if Trump tries some other way to get his beloved tariffs (which he already has, saying that he was going to raise tariffs 10% -- and then upped it even more to 15%!), it will just remind the public a) that his previous tariffs which he had made his core issue was unconstitutional and taxed them illegally, and b) that he’s trying something new that is essentially the same thing.
 
But if Trump backs down and doesn’t try some other way to get tariffs, it will make all his shouting about “Independence Day!!!” and how "tariffs" are his favorite word look ludicrous and weak.
 
But if Trump does go ahead and try some other way with these new tariffs, it will get challenged in court again, and keep this unconstitutional issues as an illegal tax in the news, and create instability and uncertainty in the business community.
 
And he can’t go to Congress to get the tariffs legally, because as enabling as MAGOPs are in Congress, he will never get a majority to vote for raising taxes during an election year.  Especially an election year when MAGOPs likely see themselves being swamped.
 
And whatever Trump does…or even if he does nothing…prices are likely to remain high, not just because of inflation (which reports last week showed it rose), but also because many of these prices raised by tariffs are locked in for the time being -- and furthermore because as Trump keeps trying to raise the tariffs, causing uncertainty, businesses won’t lower their prices until they know what’s going on.  And so, meanwhile, the public will wonder why prices are still high even without the illegal tariffs.
 
The short version is:  I think it’s a huge mess for Trump -- and it's a mess he created and has made even worse. 
 
And the thing is, as I mentioned at the start...Trump was given a graceful, easy exit ramp by the Supreme Court.  And being Trump, he didn't take it.  He could have had his obligatory, crazy meltdown and slammed the Supreme Court like he did, but said, he's being blocked by the court, he can't impose tariffs, and it's all their fault.  And backed away, with the SCOTUS gift lifeline.  But, no, he's Trump, so he doubled-down and said he's going to try all these other options and cause chaos.  Because he's Trump.  Because he's incapable of saying he lost and because he actually, really, really, really loves tariffs. And because he is a malignant narcissist and has dementia (which is degenerative).

And the MAGOPs in Congress who enable him are caught in this Trump tariff vortex.  Because they support him in everything, and so going into the Mid-Terms there will be tariffs, high prices, business uncertainty, and no refunds.

But here's the core trouble for Trump:

The Supreme Court ruled that the tariffs were illegal, which means the tax money collected from Americans was illegal.  Which means it must be returned.  You don't get to keep money you got by illegal means.  No one does.  You have to return it.

If Trump wants to try to find another way to impose tariff taxes that it turns out he can do legally, that's another matter entirely.  But even if so (and it's a very big "if"), money collected illegally has to be returned, no matter how difficult that may be.  Has to.  And it seems unlikely that it will be refunded, especially since the Treasury Secretary has said it won't be.  Which is the core trouble for Trump.

All the other troubles above for Trump are just piling on that.

I had another article planned for today.  However, I was watching testimony yesterday of a public forum held by Congressional Democrats to examine DHS use of what witnesses say is excessive force.

And there was one young woman, Aliya Rahman, who blew me away.  I hoped the video of her testimony would be online, because if it was, I wanted to let be my “article” for tomorrow and speak for itself.  It’s that spectacular.  Happily, I tracked it down.

Many here likely have seen the video of her being stopped by ICE that prompted her appearance yesterday.  It was not only shown on the news, but repeatedly.  She's the person yelling at ICE that she was on her way to her doctor, but got dragged out of her car.  That was visceral enough -- but it's only the starting point. Her full story of that day is deeply more impactful.  And she tells it eloquently, objectively and incredibly powerfully. Her story is not what you think from that news video. That was bad enough.  This is worse.
 
Her testimony is about 6-1/2 minutes.  And every moment is charged and moving.

The shame is that the only Congressional participants at this hearing were Democrats.  All the speakers I heard were extremely moving and infuriating.  That MAGOPs missed out on this and didn't hear the witnesses -- even if only that from Aliya Rahman.  But I can understand why they weren't there:  if they heard the witness, and even if only Ms. Rahman, that would have had no plausible deniability and could only be critical of ICE and demand, not just changes, but investigations into its abuse.

I guess I sort of have to write about Jack Smith’s testimony before the House, and I watched a lot of it – but I don’t have much to say, other than the obvious,
 
He was low-key, to the point, the MAGOPs on the committee kept interrupting Smith and were doing their best to get “moments” that they could use when running for re-election, and the Democrats largely gave lead-in questions to Smith to let him talk.
 
I don’t think it convinced anyone of anything they didn’t already know or think at this point, but it was good to let the public see Jack Smith and see how low-key and straightforward he is.  And – and this is not small thing, no matter how ludicrous – see that he was not, as Trump has long cried out in his own deranged, self-projected moan, deranged.
 
One notable thing is that for all the MAGOPs ranting and raving, they never made even an effort to discredit what was in the first report that Smith and his team released.  So, that only left space for spewing out their efforts to catch Jack Smith in a lie, which was very hard to do when you keep cutting off his answers, and when he was so taciturn and direct in his repeated answers on why Trump is guilty and how he would have proved it in court had he not had been blocked by a Trump-appointed judge, and had to shut down his case (without prejudice) when Trump got re-elected. 
 
Another notable thing is how much Trump was rage-tweeting about Jack Smith during his testimony, not only about how “deranged” the deranged Trump thought him to be, but also how he “should be prosecuted for his actions.”  Gee, one wonders how prominent Smith’s attorneys will make that public rant when Trump gets his Justice Department to file charges against him, for whatever ludicrous reason they come up with.  Perhaps they can try to bring back the just-dismissed Lindsey Halligan to handle the case.
 
One overriding question permeated the hearing – why in the world would the MAGOPs agree to have this public hearing, giving Jack Smith the opportunity to explain for four hours why Trump was guilty of crimes??  The most reasonable suggestion that I heard was that it is becoming likely that the second part of Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s indictment in Florida about stealing classified documents – considered the most-damning part of his findings, which was blocked by Trump-lackey Judge Aileen Cannon for unsupportable reasons – will soon be released when the district court overturns her ruling.  And since Jack Smith is under court order not to discuss anything about this part of his report, MAGOPs wanted to get him to testify now, when he wouldn’t be able to talk about it.  If so, that wish may turn out to be a false hopes, since at the very end of yesterday’s hearing, the Democratic ranking member on the committee, Jamie Raskin, invoked a House rule that would allow the minority party to call a witness – in this case, Jack Smith himself – and hold another hearing.
 
Yesterday’s hearing didn’t provoke any significant fireworks.  It probably didn’t change too many minds.  (Though if it changed any, it is more likely that it would be Independents who finally got a see Jack Smith as a quiet, direct, reasonable person – who wasn’t the “deranged” manic that the lunatic Trump has tried to paint him – repeatedly explaining why Trump was guilty of crimes.  And a few MAGOPs got the video footage they wanted, telling off Jack Smith in defense of keeping the highly-unpopular Trump with dementia from being convicted of his crimes, as they kept stopping Smith from answering their questions.

All of which not only reinforced the point, but drilled it into the national consciousness in full public display that this isn't really about Trump, since everyone has long ago figured out who he is -- a racist, malignant narcissist, anti-Semitic, pathological liar with dementia, who threatened war against Greenland, Canada and Minnesota, while raising prices from tariffs -- but is about the elected MAGOPs in Congress who have enabled, supported and protected him, and have been the ones who literally passed the laws that were Trump's policies.

And in the end, if they're in a safe Red district, it doesn't matter, because they'll win anyway.  And if it happens that they're not in a safe Red district, it doesn't matter either, because they helped make it more likely than even previously that they'll lose.