Breaking Update:
Acting out on his not-so-veiled threats to seek retribution and exact payback against those who dared to speak the truth during his impeachment, Trump has just ousted decorated Iraq War veteran Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, a patriot whose frank testimony infuriated Trump.
Shortly after Trump denounced the ‘evil’ and ‘corrupt’ people who investigated him (read below), his spokeswoman went on television “to declare that anyone who hurt the president ‘should pay for’ it.”
Earlier today, when Vindman’s ouster was clearly expected, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said “We welcome back all of our service members, wherever they serve, to any assignment they are given.”
Much more will be said and written about this spiteful, vengeful action, but Vindman’s attorney’s words say it all, for now:
There is no question in the mind of any American why this man’s job is over, why this country now has one less soldier serving it at the White House. LTC Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth. The truth has cost LTC Alexander Vindman his job, his career, and his privacy. He did what any member of our military is charged with doing every day: he followed orders, he obeyed his oath, and he served his country, even when doing so was fraught with danger and personal peril. And for that, the most powerful man in the world – buoyed by the silent, the pliable, and the complicit – has decided to exact revenge
Original Post:
On Wednesday, the Three Monkeys of the GOP reaffirmed their sacred, partisan oath to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no truthfulness when it comes to their cult leader.
On Thursday, in a White House East Room packed with adoring cult followers and strident defenders, a non-apologetic, non-repentant, non-chastised dear leader celebrated his sham “total acquittal” with a never-ending stream (more than 9,700 words) of angry, vindictive, false and (“it’s all bullshit”) vulgarities-laced attacks on his accusers, rivals and critics (“ticking through a greatest hits of grievances”) along with unending, lavish praise of his three monkeys.
Something that the Chosen One, the “Two Corinthians” man, revered by Evangelicals, is not a stranger at.
For just a few hours earlier, at the 68th National Prayer Breakfast, of all places, a “religious” Trump upended a tradition and squandered the opportunity “for new friends and old associates…to break bread and forge fellowship in Jesus name.”
The Chosen One did so by using the Prayer Breakfast to display his “remarkable ability to corrupt, distort and discredit every institution he touches,” to disparage those who had pursued his impeachment (“very dishonest and corrupt people”) and, most shamefully of all, to mock and vilify those who rely on their faith to guide them in difficult decisions and those who pray for others.
“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” Bible Man said about Republican Senator Mitt Romney who relied on his faith and his “oath before God” to help him make the right decision on Trump’s impeachment: “the most difficult decision [he] ever faced.”
“Nor do I like people who say, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ when I know that is not so,” believer Trump said about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in reference to her statements that she prays for Trump “all the time.”
Michael Gerson writes at the Washington Post that Trump’s “unholy outburst” is an indication that we are reaching a very dangerous moment in our national life, when a sociopath “feels unchecked and uncheckable…gets away with something.”
Gerson not only blames Republican Senators for Trump’s “abuses of power to come,” but also his devotees:
Many evangelical Christians seem attracted to the least Christian elements of his appeal — his anger and his cruelty. They are encouraging the president to fight an enemy they have ceased to love.
On the tradition of the National Prayer Breakfast, Gerson notes, “If this is what the National Prayer Breakfast has become, it has ceased to be religious, ceased to be useful and ceased to be necessary.”
Perhaps the much maligned (by Evangelicals) Christianity Today editorial on “Trump Should Be Removed from Office,” was right after all. In Mark Galli’s warning to Evangelicals:
Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come?
