RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Lyndon Johnson had a repulsive habit of referring openly to his sexual organ as “Jumbo”—and occasionally displaying it to startled staffers—a felony in our present culture. Worse still, he often gave dictation while defecating on the toilet.”

Michael Wolff’s sensational exposé of the supposed chaos of the Trump White House is no doubt largely a mix of fantasy, exaggeration, and some accidental truth. The postmodernist author even admits that his own methodologies defy verification, and so leave it up to the reader to distinguish his facts from fiction.

Wolff’s theme is that Trump is hopelessly petty, childlike, and uninformed. The few adults in the room around him—primarily, we are asked to believe, Wolff’s chief source, Steve Bannon—must cajole, pamper, and flatter him to get anything done, when they are not backstabbing one another.

Fair enough—Trump certainly may be naïve and uninitiated. No one doubts that he is thin-skinned and far too often goes down Twitter cul de sacs. But Trump’s naiveté is not quite what Wolff thinks.

Rather, no sane president should ever have let a writer with Wolff’s dubious and often discredited background into the White House. That such a rogue was even allowed through the door raises the question of administration sobriety.

Wolff at the Door
Not since the late Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone charmed his way into General Stanley McCrystal’s inner circle—only to trash his benefactors—has an executive team apparently proved so naïve with reporters. Certainly, in letting Wolff talk “off the record” to high officials, the Trump Administration showed poor judgment. That Wolff claims he easily got such haphazard access, if half true, could be a testament to Trump’s ego or the ego of those around him, such as Bannon. Did they really believe that they could charm and flip almost anyone—even among a media whose stories and reports are 90 percent negative to Trump?

Of course, any president lax enough to let a Wolff through the door inevitably would be embarrassed by the results, given that all administrations can be petty, even gross.

Lyndon Johnson had a repulsive habit of referring openly to his sexual organ as “Jumbo”—and occasionally displaying it to startled staffers—a felony in our present culture. Worse still, he often gave dictation while defecating on the toilet.

In the second season of the TV show “24,” President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) is removed from office for failing to launch a war against three Middle East countries purportedly behind a nuclear attack on U.S. soil.

Palmer has reason to doubt his intelligence agencies’ assurances of who was behind it, and it turns out the attack was orchestrated by a cabal of business and military leaders who want to launch a war for personal gain. The means by which Palmer is removed from office during the 4:00-5:00a hour on Day 2 is the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a portion of which reads:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide… to the Senate and the…House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Palmer’s chief of staff explains, “it seems there are people, cabinet members, who question whether you’re fit to continue as chief executive.” The conniving vice president says in the cabinet meeting putting the president on trial, “What I intend to show is a pattern of erratic behavior since this crisis started.” Using half-true innuendos and rumors as well as deliberately false information, he convinces enough of the cabinet to depose Palmer. In other words, Palmer is the victim of a bloodless coup.

Now, “24” was so over the top that its dramatic twists became something of a punch line. How preposterous to imagine that a president’s handpicked cabinet would vote to oust him in a palace overthrow! But that fantasy land is precisely what some of the mostly unelected opposition hopes to see happen with President Trump as part of the more-than-a-year-long temper tantrum against the results of the 2016 election.

In the last debate of 2016, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Trump if he would accept the election results, and he said “I will tell you at the time.” Hillary Clinton responded to Trump by calling his remark “horrifying.” The general media environment was to react with unabashed horror for at least 72 hours.

Trump’s comments were wrong — undermining confidence in the electoral process is unbecoming of a political leader of this great nation. But it’s doubtful that even Trump would have done a tiny fraction what his unelected opposition has done to undermine and overturn the results of the election had he lost. Even if he had thrown a year-long temper tantrum, he would not have been aided and abetted in it by a majority of the media or other members of the establishment.

Two influential Judiciary Committee senators have referred Christopher Steele to federal law-enforcement officials for criminal investigation. Steele authored the salacious and unverified anti-Trump dossier commissioned by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. The referral was made by Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who chairs Judiciary’s Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee. It is set forth in a brief letter written to the leadership of the epartment and the FBI. Appended to the letter is a non-public classified memorandum.

As our David French outlined on Friday, there has been misguided speculation about what the referral means. This includes rabid claims that it is a stunt intended to delegitimize congressional and special-counsel investigations of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and supposed Trump-campaign collusion therein. At the Washington Examiner, Byron York also had an excellent column over the weekend that did much to clear up the confusion.

Here, in the first of two columns, I address what may be going on regarding representations Steele made to American intelligence officials. In the follow-up, I take up representations those officials made regarding Steele’s dossier.

Let’s start with what a referral is. It’s a request by a peer branch of government that the executive branch conduct a criminal investigation. Lawmakers in their oversight capacity, and judges presiding over legal proceedings, often come across conduct that may violate federal criminal law — particularly, obstructive behavior. Congress and the courts have no power to conduct criminal investigations and prosecutions; in our system, that is solely an executive function. So, members of Congress and judges will refer suspected criminal conduct to the Justice Department and FBI. These referrals are given respectful attention, but they impose no obligation on the executive agencies to investigate.

In October, 125 psychologists and assorted mental health professionals marched to New York’s City Hall while wearing red tags warning, “DANGER.” Leading the march was Peter Fraenkel, author of Sync Your Relationship, Save Your Marriage, mournfully beating a drum in a solemn march. Fraenkel, a psychologist and “professional drummer” was able to combine his love of drums and hatred of Trump.

The ‘Duty to Warn’ march had begun at New York Law School where the experts demanded that Trump be removed from office based on their inability to understand the 25th Amendment. And then the mental health experts marched to the beat of Fraenkel’s drum in what they insisted was a “funereal and dignified” procession.

“Please wear professional attire or dark clothing,” the mental health experts were instructed. “There will be a slow drum beat, ‘DANGER’ tape, and flashing warning lights.”

The paperwork urged, “Bring a drum if you have one” and, “come as your solemn, concerned self.”

If only the organizers had put a fraction of their obsessive delusions into actually trying to justify the claim on their shiny blue banner that, “Trump is psychologically unfit to lead this country.”

There were no drums when Bandy X. Lee, the organizer of Yale’s ‘Duty to Warn’ conference showed up on Capitol Hill to “brief” Dem politicians about Trump’s mental illness that she diagnosed over Twitter. Lee, a self-proclaimed expert on the prison system, apparently isn’t even currently licensed to practice.

But on Twitter, Bandy X. Lee explained that she had been “licensed on two continents,” has “excellent credentials,” a “flawless ethics history” and speaks “four languages.” On Vox, Lee claimed that Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem was a “pathological” example of him “resorting to violence”. Then she blamed him for “an increase in schoolyard bullying.” Appearing on MSNBC, she warned that Trump “could be the end of humankind.”

Hum, ho, the Trump haters have found a new authority figure to swear the man is crazy. Rocketing to fame thanks to the objective media today is a woman with the extraordinary name of Bandy X. Lee.

Dr. Lee, MD, is now in danger of having her license pulled by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for engaging in ethically prohibited long-distance diagnosis without even interviewing the supposed patient in person. In real psychiatry, not the imaginary kind peddled by the NYT-WaPo Axis of Lies, psychiatric diagnosis is serious business, which normally involves a private interview with the clear, legal consent of the patient, an explicit set of criteria covered in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the APA, and an absolute guarantee of privacy in the patient-doctor relationship. Dr. Lee violated all those rules, and in the real world (not in the media narrative) that means her career is at an end. I’ve seen licenses pulled for much less than that.

That is presumably why Dr. Lee’s claimed team of fellow psychiatrists has never been named — if they exist. Lee uses the term “we” in claiming that her extremely dubious “diagnosis” (which does not exist in the DSM) is backed by an unspecified group of fellow “experts.” A real licensing board would suspend her for abusing her license to practice for obvious political payoffs, thereby bringing her profession to public ridicule and contempt.

So what are Trump’s psychiatric symptoms?

Lee’s Exhibit A is Trump’s response to Kim III (a paranoid who is never criticized by Democrats). Kim III boasted about the “big button” on his desk, to launch ICBMs tipped with nukes at the United States of America, Japan, South Korea, and quite possibly China, all within range of North Korea’s ICBMs. In response to Kim’s threat, Mr. Trump tweeted:

The Trump Administration is on a mission to rescue health-care markets and consumers from ObamaCare’s shrinking choices and higher prices. Witness the Labor Department’s proposal to allow small businesses to band together to provide insurance on equal footing with corporations and unions.

The share of workers at small businesses with employer-sponsored health benefits has dropped by a quarter since 2010 as insurance costs have ballooned in part due to government mandates. About 11 million workers employed by small businesses are uninsured. Some businesses have dropped their workers onto state insurance exchanges where premiums are subsidized by taxpayers.

Enter President Trump, who last fall directed Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to consider “expanding the conditions that satisfy the commonality-of-interest requirements” for association health plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or Erisa.

Large-group plans that are self-insured—i.e., funded by unions or employers—are covered by Erisa. These plans are exempt from ObamaCare’s essential benefits requirements, though they must comply with rules on annual and lifetime limits and pre-existing conditions as well as state solvency regulations.

Mom-and-pop businesses and sole proprietors aren’t so lucky. Most purchase coverage from insurers in the small group or individual marketplaces, which are subject to ObamaCare’s coverage mandates and controls on premium prices. The Obama Administration precluded small employers from forming association plans that are exempt from Erisa by narrowly interpreting the “commonality of interest” membership requirements.

The Justice Department is reviving investigations involving Hillary Clinton’s emails and the degree to which the State Department during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary was put in the service of the Clinton Foundation. Good. Indeed, it is long overdue. It underscores a point we’ve tried to make repeatedly here: You don’t need a special counsel for this kind of thing; such investigations are what we have a Justice Department full of career prosecutors for. The perverse institution of the independent prosecutor should be shunned whenever possible — and its jurisdiction tightly confined in the rare necessary case.

All that said, investigations involving the mishandling of classified information by officials with privileged access to it will go nowhere unless the Justice Department restores the rule of law: investigators and prosecutors applying congressional statutes, not rewriting them as dictated by their political masters.

As we have recounted (see, e.g., here), in April 2016, when the Clinton-emails investigation was in full swing but before it was anywhere close to completion, President Obama gave a nationally televised interview in which he made clear that he did not want criminal charges brought against his former secretary of state — and the already certain Democratic candidate to succeed him. Obama made two duplicitous points: Mrs. Clinton 1) had exhibited “carelessness,” but nothing worse, by using a private, non-secure email system to conduct State Department business, and 2) had not intended to endanger American national security when she stored and transmitted classified information on this system.

The FBI has taken the heat because it ultimately applied these disingenuous guidelines publicly and without apology. But it was the political leadership of the executive branch that called the tune — which seems like news only because the media’s revulsion over presidential attempts to influence criminal investigations would await Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Obama’s first point led to one of the great head-fakes in modern law-enforcement history — one that reverberates to this day. Using his bully pulpit, the president framed the Clinton case as one of negligence. The portrayal stuck: Incessantly, the Justice Department, the media, and eventually James Comey, then-director of the FBI, addressed the case in terms of Mrs. Clinton’s purported carelessness — a hardworking public official’s regrettable but forgivable inattention to detail.

The new mantra against Donald Trump is that “he’s mentally unstable!” “Unfit!” “Like a child” and “losing his mind.” That’s rich coming from the community that brought us giant vagina costumes as a form of protest.These are the people who are so sane they want us to believe they can declare other people insane without medical degrees or any kind of expertise. Not only do they think dressing up as genitalia is a delightful and totally normal thing to do on a Saturday, they also think beating up statues is a worthwhile endeavor.

But if you were concerned about their mental capacity after that, wait until you see this! There’s an entire movement dedicated to shunning feminine hygiene and bio-hazard protocols. This is the “party of science,” remember.
Ian Miles Cheong ✔ @stillgray
Once a 4chan prank, Freebleeding is now a real part of the feminist movement.
Are we really supposed to take these people’s concerns about sanity seriously? When they aren’t bleeding on commuter trains, they’re committing crimes against themselves and blaming you for a hate crime to score political points. That’s not psychotic at all. These are the people passing judgment on the president. CONTINUE AT SITE