I left a whole lot out and I’m still too tired to type an intro beyond warning you that this man is a total maniac well on his way to wrecking American democracy. Doubt me? Here’s my case. Well, seven days of it.
1. UPDATE: Mr. Trump still hasn’t taken the DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON PREVENTING MUSLIM IMMIGRATION off his campaign website.
2. Mr. Trump launched a series of tweets accusing his predecessor, Barack Obama, of issuing illegal wiretaps on Mr. Trump’s “phones” in Trump Tower in the weeks before the election.
3. Mr. Trump, who has access to the most powerful and comprehensive intelligence services on the planet, apparently based his accusations on something he read in Breitbart, a publication his chief strategist ran for five years.
Let’s also be clear this involved a misreading on someone’s part: the wiretap reports cited in that Breitbart article weren’t on Mr. Trump’s phones at all, but on two Russian banks with which Mr. Trump’s bank server might have interacted. If that interaction was intercepted, it could appear, if you didn’t know what you were talking about, that Trump’s server was tapped. For instance, if the FBI has tapped my phone and you call me, that call gets tapped. But you’re not tapped. The only way, it seems, that Mr. Trump’s wires would have been tapped is if his servers were talking to a Russian bank.
Anyway. Mr. Obama flatly denied the accusations and Mr. Trump still hasn’t provided any evidence to support the claim, but the President called for an investigation anyway. (Tidbit: If Mr. Trump’s allegations were indeed proved right, it would mean the federal government had enough evidence to open up an investigation on Mr. Trump as an agent of a foreign power.)
4. Mr. Trump’s claim about wiretapping was challenged by FBI director James Comey, who requested that the Department of Justice refute Mr. Trump’s accusations as false, because it insinuated the FBI broke the law. The Department of Justice hasn’t done that yet. The Department of Justice is run by Mr. Trump’s embattled attorney general, Jeff Sessions. See how this works?
5. Mr. Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer said he’s “almost 100 percent certain” Trump hasn’t spoken with Comey since the tweets. Almost!
6. Mr. Trump’s White House refused to acknowledge Comey’s claim that the false allegations of wiretapping could, if not checked soon, undermine American democracy. They just said the claims were false.
7. Mr. Trump’s spokespeople supported his criminally false allegations that could undermine American democracy.
8. Mr. Trump’s criminally baseless accusations against Barack Obama led Sen. Schumer to urge the inspector general to probe political interference in Trump investigation. Meaning: make sure Sessions isn’t secretly colluding with Mr. Trump.
9. Mr. Trump vowed he will be proved right about his unfounded wiretapping claim. Even if he is, it would mean the federal government thought he was acting as a foreign agent, which would not be good at all.
10. Mr. Trump’s wiretapping claim has no evidence to support it, according to House Oversight chairman Jason Chaffetz®.
11. Mr. Trump’s baseless claims drew Sen. Lindsey Graham to say he’s “very worried that our president is suggesting the former president has done something illegal.” Graham also rightly pointed out that if Mr. Trump were right in that the government had tapped him, it would be bad news indeed for Mr. Trump.
12. Mr. Trump took a twenty-minute cooling-off break after slinging baseless allegations that President Obama committed an impeachable crime against him, then took a potshot at Arnold Schwarzenegger.
13. Mr. Trump’s press secretary, when asked whether the Russia scandal would merit an independent investigation by a special prosecutor, replied, “Special prosecutor for what?” Next.
14. Mr. Trump’s constituents even want a special prosecutor.
15. Mr. Trump’s supporters in Russia have been hacking liberal groups after the election, holding data hostage and demanding hush money.
16. Mr. Trump’s new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, is eliminating positions on the NSC created by his predecessor, Gen. Michael Flynn. It’s unclear whether the position noted blogger Steve Bannon created for himself will survive.
17. Mr. Trump signed a bill allowing companies to pollute waterways.
18. Mr. Trump said “nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated” during his meeting with state governors to discuss details of the new healthcare plan. He also promised the new plan would be “something special.” Mr. Trump also joked with insurance CEOs that “if things don’t work out, I’m blaming you anyway.”
19. Mr. Trump, during that same meeting, said our military “doesn’t win anymore. We don’t fight to win.” Perhaps Mr. Trump meant something along the lines of we don’t blindly annihilate the other side like we did when we nuked Japan and launched D-Day, two desperate last-ditch efforts to win global wars. Mr. Trump cited his high school as his source for when we entered the losing era. According to Mr. Trump, the losing era apparently began with Vietnam, a war that cost 59,000 American lives, and a loss for which Mr. Trump wasn’t to blame because he had bone spurs on his heels and got out of the draft four times. Mr. Trump didn’t mention the Korean War, however, which cost about 8,000 American lives and which we also didn’t win: That war is technically still going on. This is something Mr. Trump should know, because:
20. Mr. Trump inherited a cyberwar against North Korea’s nuclear program, according to this incredible report from The Failing New York Times, which was over a year in the making.
21. Mr. Trump’s new attorney general, Mr. Jeff Sessions, was revealed to have lied under oath during his Senate confirmation hearing regarding whether he knew of any communication with Russian officials and the Trump campaign. As attorney general, Mr. Sessions is in charge of overseeing the Department of Justice and the FBI and enforces the laws of the United States.
22. Mr. Trump’s embattled attorney general, Mr. Jeff Sessions, said he would not only offer a statement correcting his oral testimony, but would amend his written testimony as well. In that testimony, Mr. Sessions answered a question from Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who asked, “Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Mr. Sessions replied “no.”
23. Mr. Trump’s embattled attorney general, Mr. Jeff Sessions, did not amend that statement after all.
24. Mr. Trump’s embattled attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was revealed not only to have met (at least) twice with the Russian Ambassador last year, but also to have taken a phone call with the Ambassador on September 13. That same day, the hacker Guccifer 2.0 (almost certainly Russian, according to US intel) dumped a new batch of hacked DNC emails through WikiLeaks.
25. Mr. Trump decried the allegations against his embattled attorney general Mr. Sessions as “a witch-hunt!” and defended Mr. Sessions as “an honest man!”
26. Mr. Trump’s embattled attorney general, Mr. Jeff Sessions, who, again, is in charge of enforcing the laws of the nation, illegally used campaign funds to travel to the conference in July where he met Ambassador Kislyak, a meeting Mr. Sessions would go on to lie about to his colleagues under oath six months later. Jeff Sessions, everybody!
27. Mr. Trump’s tax returns survived yet another subpoena when House Republicans blocked a request to unseal them, even though 74% of Americans (and 53% of Republicans) now want Mr. Trump to release his taxes. The Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Kevin Brady (R, Texas), must think I’m dumb because his excuse was, “My belief is that if Congress begins to use its powers to rummage around in the tax returns of the president, what prevents Congress from doing the same to average Americans?” Gee, Mr. Brady, you sure are swell for looking out for the little guy! Sometimes you have to let the rich and powerful get away with breaking the law if it means the rest of us might one day be held accountable for our decisions, too.
28. Mr. Trump’s campaign associate, Roger Stone, spewed forth a gout of abusive tweets that, along with slandering a woman, admitted Mr. Stone had “legal backchannels” to WikiLeaks during the campaign. Mr. Stone expressed foreknowledge of the leaks, including a coming hack of the Clinton Foundation, which materialized in October, and was carried out by, wait for it, Guccifer 2.0.
29. Mr. Trump’s White House transition team canceled its ethics training just before the inauguration.
30. Mr. Trump’s campaign rhetoric, private demeanor, personality, governing style, rampant dishonesty, abusive behavior, egoism, and policies have, among other things, sparked a large and animated, sometimes unruly, protest movement. In response, many states are rewriting laws to make it easier to arrest public demonstrators.
31. Mr. Trump’s dear old friend, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, was confirmed as our new Secretary of Commerce.
32. Mr. Trump’s ICE operations in California are the subject of a FOIA request by the state.
33. Mr. Trump waited a week to implement the new travel ban, time in which, according to Mr. Trump’s brain a month ago, the “‘bad’ would rush into our country! A lot of ‘bad dudes’ out there!”
34. Mr. Trump’s “global gag order” withholding funds for international organizations providing abortions or information on abortions has caused confusion among liberals and conservatives alike. A bipartisan group of senators asked Mr. Trump for clarification on the order, which withholds half a billion dollars or more in funds, affecting programs like PEPFAR, the largest provider of AIDS-fighting medicine in the world, which enjoys bipartisan popularity.
35. Mr. Trump either has to make visitor lists from Mar-a-Lago and the The White House publicly available, or change that rule, which was implemented by Obama. The Secret Service hasn’t disclosed how it plans to conduct background checks on people who will be present during the President’s trips to Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower, his golf courses, or other properties he might visit in a professional capacity.
36. Mr. Trump said Planned Parenthood can keep its funding if it aborts abortions.
37. Mr. Trump received a reply from Planned Parenthood clarifying that its abortion funds are donations, and its fed funds are reimbursements, not direct payments.
38. Mr. Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer didn’t hold an on-camera press briefing for a week.
39. Mr. Trump’s White House plagiarized Exxon’s press release in its press release.
40. Mr. Trump tweeted praise for ExxonMobile, the company formerly run by his Secretary of State.
41. Mr. Trump and his administration have delayed, suspended or reversed more than 90 regulations since Inauguration Day, a month and a half ago. These include repealing a regulation making it harder for the mentally ill to get guns and a regulation requiring investment firms to cover high-risk losses.
42. Mr. Trump’s new head of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, said in the middle of a rambling speech discussing his department that slaves were “other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream.” In the Republican primaries, Mr. Trump called Dr. Carson “pathological” and likened him to a child molester.
43. Mr. Trump has spent about a quarter of his time in office at his Mar-a-Lago resort, from which he still hasn’t divested.
44. Mr. Trump has deployed more troops in Syria, over the 500-soldier cap, and expanded their mission, which, when you break it down, is mostly making sure people from different places don’t kill each other too frequently.
45. Mr. Trump’s arch-nemesis Khizr Khan said that on the day the new travel ban was issued his travel rights were revoked.
46. Mr. Trump’s shiny new health plan won’t likely pass if it removes the Medicaid expansion—four GOP senators won’t go along with it.
47. Mr. Trump’s shiny new health care plan includes a perversion of the individual mandate. If you go without insurance for more than two months your next provider automatically ups your premiums by 30%. Yep: That money goes straight to the insurance company. Yep: That’s incentive for insurance companies to drop you and for them to delay picking you up.
48. Mr. Trump’s inability to put the Russia scandal to rest led Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to cancel his appearance at the D.C. insiders’ Gridiron Dinner.
49. Mr. Trump took a fourth-straight vacation to the Florida resort he still owns. Each of these trips costs taxpayers an estimated $3 million. At this rate Mr. Trump is on pace to rack up $104 million in taxpayer-funded vacation time by the end of 2017. Mr. Trump refuses to release his tax returns.
50. Mr. Trump visited a Catholic school while on his fourth-straight Florida getaway where, when a young girl told him she wanted to start her own business, Mr. Trump told her “Don’t run for politics after.”
51. Mr. Trump met his new embattled attorney general Jeff Sessions at this Mar-a-Lago getaway. Mr. Sessions greeted guests.
52. Mr. Trump also stumped for cash over the weekend at an RNC event, where he told attendees how easy it had been to look “presidential” at his first joint address to Congress.
53. Mr. Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress was, in keeping with Trump tradition, riddled with falsehoods, inaccuracies and errors. Here is a fact check.
54. Mr. Trump, during his first address to a joint session of Congress, exploited the victims of crimes committed by immigrants to provoke anger and fear in his constituents.
55. Mr. Trump didn’t swear or start a war in that speech, so it was well-received by pundits.
56. Mr. Trump’s speech earned rave reviews from CNN’s Van Jones, who previously had been critical of Mr. Trump but went all gooey and patriotic when Mr. Trump exploited the widow of a Navy SEAL killed in a raid the President ordered.
57. Mr. Trump’s raid in Yemen hasn’t yet yielded any “actionable intelligence,” according to ten—ten!—senior officials.
58. Mr. Trump was asked about that raid in a Fox and Friends interview just a couple hours before the speech. He didn’t take responsibility, but praised his role in the raid as a success and put the blame for Owens’ death squarely onto the military: “This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do. They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do—the generals—who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.” (“They” referring to the generals; “Ryan” referring to Capt. Owens, by his first name.)
59. Mr. Trump asked the Pentagon ahead of his speech for details about the Yemen raid that he could include. It’s unclear what information, if any, the Pentagon provided. Mr. Trump only worked this in: “I just spoke to our great General Mattis, just now, who reconfirmed that, and I quote, ‘Ryan was a part of a highly successful raid that generated large amounts of vital intelligence that will lead to many more victories in the future against our enemies.’” (“Ryan” again here a reference to Capt. Owens’ first name.)
60. Mr. Trump followed up that remark by telling the crowd that, as the official White House transcript records it “‘Ryan is looking down, right now, you know that, and he is very happy because I think he just broke a record.’ (Laughter and applause.)” Mr. Trump meant that Capt. Owens was looking down from heaven at his grief-stricken wife, who was crying in front of the cameras as part of a political stunt to trick the nation that he died serving—in an operation for which his commander-in-chief shirked all responsibility two hours ago—and feeling “very happy” because the applause he was getting “broke a record.”
61. Mr. Trump invited Capt. Owens’ wife to the speech during his condolence call to her, which he made on January 31, four weeks ahead of time.
62. Mr. Trump didn’t clarify which applause record Capt. Owens broke.
63. Mr. Trump wants to give up responsibility for making decisions as commander-in-chief after being held responsible for what went wrong Yemen. Really. He does. Mr. Trump wants to pass all the decisions about any raids from here out to his generals and wants nothing to do with it. Mr. Obama, by contrast, wanted to sign off personally on every drone strike (immoral though they may have been, he accepted his responsibility for that immorality).
64. Mr. Trump’s speech pleased three out of four Americans.
65. Mr. Trump postponed the release of the travel ban rewrite so as “not to step on” the bonhomie earned from the speech.
66. Mr. Trump, a day before that speech which Van Jones rated “two-term-presidential,” said that “some” anti-Semitic attacks are false flags—in other words, Jews carry out some of these anti-Semitic attacks to get attention.
67. Mr. Trump was caught on camera after the speech accepting an envelope from Rep. Darrell Issa. Issa told Mr. Trump the envelope was from “your friend, Noach Dear.” Noach Dear is a judge on the New York State Supreme Court and has been plagued by corruption for nearly his entire professional career.
68. Mr. Trump, apparently not fully grasping why his embattled new attorney general is embattled, tweeted a picture of Sen. Chuck Schumer eating doughnuts with Putin. In the tweet he called Schumer a “total hypocrite” and demanded an investigation into Schumer’s connections to Russia. Mr. Schumer replied that he’d be happy to oblige.
69. Mr. Trump then pivoted from Mr. Schumer to attack Rep. Nancy Pelosi for also meeting with the Russian Ambassador. Also, Mr. Trump misspelled “hereby” twice. Third time’s the charm. Less TV time, more study time, Donny! He also unilaterally issued a decree for investigation of Pelosi.
70. Mr. Trump also blamed Obama for meeting with the Russian Ambassador 22 times. Four times last year alone!
Let’s be clear: It’s totally fine for anyone to meet with the Russian Ambassador. That’s why there are Ambassadors in the first place: so people can meet with them. Had Mr. Sessions said, in the Senate confirmation, that yes, he’d met Mr. Kislyak in private in his Senate office during the campaign (and at the height of the hacking scandal), we’d be having a much different conversation. Instead, he lied about it, while under oath, in the context of being vetted as being fit to head a pending investigation about the very thing he lied about. That’s a unique scenario.
71. Mr. Trump’s new Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, skipped the State Department human rights presentation. He sent a note. No senior DOS officials spoke at the event. This has only happened under extreme circumstances before.
72. Mr. Trump, who said his administration would live by two rules, “Buy American, Hire American,” reversed a requirement that the Keystone XL pipeline be built only with American steel. Two weeks ago, though, Mr. Trump said the Keystone XL pipeline must use American steel “or we’re not building one.” A White House spokesperson said the reason for the reversal had something to do with the time required to build it, but, honestly, that’s immaterial to Mr. Trump’s pledge. If time-to-completion is a legitimate reason to not use American products in this project, that could apply to just about any project.
73. Mr. Trump’s reversal on the Keystone pipeline “Buy American!” requirement makes a little more sense when you see that it came two days after Wilbur Ross was confirmed as Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Ross, a billionaire banker and investor, sat on the board for the world’s largest steel manufacturer (a company based in Luxembourg called ArcelorMittal) until last Wednesday. He was an initial investor in ArcelorMittal and helped run the company for about a decade, disclosing in January an equity statement of between $750,000 and $1.5 million. ArcelorMittal has provided a lot of the construction material for Keystone. The initial steel is made in Germany and then spun into production-grade material in Arkansas, so it’s not technically an American product as Trump has defined it. The exemption would benefit Mr. Ross’s company directly.
74. Mr. Trump has a strong incentive to help his old friend Wilbur Ross, who has spent 25 years getting Mr. Trump out of debt.
75. Mr. Trump’s embattled attorney general Jeff Sessions was the only member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to meet with Mr. Kislyak last year.
76. Mr. Trump, it was revealed, personally reversed language in the RNC platform that initially pledged assistance to Ukraine troops and condemned Russia’s invasion. Mr. Trump lied about having a hand in it to ABC News last year. In Christopher Steele’s slowly-being-corroborated intelligence dossier, Mr. Trump reportedly agreed to pivot the rhetoric about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
77. Mr. Trump, who got out of the Vietnam draft four times because of bone spurs in his heels, wore military getup to deliver a big defense spending speech.
78. Mr. Trump’s White House called for deep budget cuts to the State Department and USAID, but Mr. Tillerson pushed back.
79. Mr. Trump’s new immigration orders propose to separate women and children at border, in part “to deter mothers from migrating to the United States with their children.”
80. Mr. Trump has discovered there’s only about $20 million in funds available for building the wall.
81. Mr. Trump’s solution to that problem might lie within: ICE agents reportedly forced thousands of immigrant detainees into labor, in violation of anti-slavery laws, according to The Washington Post.
82. Mr. Trump’s White House concluded that Kellyanne Conway “inadvertently” promoted Ivanka’s products on Fox a few weeks ago. “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff,” Conway accidentally said. In the next breath, she said, “I’m going to give a free commercial here,” without knowing she was saying that. “Go buy it today, everybody,” she added, purely by instinct, like a lizard smacking a fruit fly out of the air with its mindless, primordial tongue.
83. Mr. Trump’s tax returns were again assaulted when two GOP members of congress signed on to a bipartisan letter demanding the President make his returns public.
84. Mr. Trump’s former foreign policy adviser Carter Page, when he was revealed to have met the Russian Ambassador during an RNC event in Cleveland, sort of admitted to it: “I may have met him, possibly in Cleveland.”
85. Mr. Trump said his new embattled attorney general Jeff Sessions didn’t need to recuse himself from heading an independent investigation into Trump’s connections to Russia, but Mr. Sessions recused himself in spite of it. This reportedly made Mr. Trump very angry.
86. Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Mr. Trump’s former National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, were also revealed to have met in secret with Mr. Kislyak before Mr. Trump took office. They apparently sneaked Mr. Kislyak into Trump Tower for the meeting.
87. Mr. Trump’s State Department has apparently been standing up the UN Climate Chief, who still hasn’t been able to get a meeting.
88. Mr. Trump said he was “not aware at all” that Mr. Sessions had spoken with Mr. Kislyak. I bring this up not because it’s an insane thing for him to say right now. Just remember it though. It might come up.
89. Mr. Trump’s rhetoric has inspired more than half of Republicans in America to the belief that a free press isn’t essential to democracy.
90. Mr. Trump’s Vice President, Mike Pence, was revealed to have used a private email server while governor of Indiana. Plus, he got hacked.
91. Mr. Trump offered terrorist attacks carried out by US citizens as evidentiary support for his “travel” ban.
92. Mr. Trump’s unauthorized campaign biographer, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who compiled the illicit and slowly-being-corroborated dossier, is open to meeting with U.S. Senators to testify as part of an investigation. Mr. Trump’s fellow GOP member Sen. John McCain has been reaching out to Steele over the last few weeks.
93. Mr. Trump’s unauthorized campaign biographer, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who compiled the illicit and slowly-being-corroborated dossier, was offered money to continue his work on the dossier for the FBI. This implies the FBI held Steele’s work and credibility in high regard.
94. Mr. Trump, who wants to be the President for all Americans, called Nancy Pelosi “incompetent” on television.
95. Mr. Trump’s embattled attorney general Jeff Sessions warned us of a hellish futurescape where marijuana is sold at every corner store.
96. Mr. Trump’s Bannon/Miller brain trust was blamed by The Wall Street Journal for the “biggest mistakes” of these first five weeks.
97. Mr. Trump’s swaggering military spending hike could trigger an arms race. Morning Joe quoted Mr. Trump saying in December that, when it came to a nuclear arms build-up, we would “outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
98. Mr. Trump cut FBI director James Comey out of the updated travel ban.
99. Mr. Trump’s new “travel” ban doesn’t narrow its scope, but broadens it. The justification isn’t for preventing terrorist “attacks,” it’s for preventing terrorist “activity.”
100. Mr. Trump postponed his visit to the U.K. because the threat of protests was too much for him to bear.
101. Mr. Trump blamed politics for the Oscar’s “Best Picture” mix-up.
102. Mr. Trump’s chaotic administration is being exploited handily by Russia and probably everyone else in the world.
103. Mr. Trump now “won’t rule out” cuts to social security and Medicare, which during the campaign he promised unflaggingly he would preserve.
104. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen has told many competing stories about his secret New York meeting with a Ukrainian politician who gave him a sanctions/cease-fire deal to hand-deliver to General Flynn, which Cohen did.
105. Mr. Trump’s embattled attorney general, Jeff Sessions, didn’t read the DOJ report on crime in Chicago but said it’s all anecdotal anyway.
106. Mr. Trump’s new Secretary of Education, Betsy De Vos, cited historically black colleges and universities as being pioneers in school choice. She really did.
107. Mr. Trump blamed Barack Obama for anti-Trump protests and press leaks.
108. Mr. Trump took heat from former President George W. Bush for his stances on immigration, racism, and the free press.
109. Mr. Trump will require immigrants to give up their social media passwords when they enter the United States.
110. Mr. Trump is appealing President Obama’s Clean Water Rule, which requires companies to get permits for activity on federally protected waterways.
111. Mr. Trump can rest easy now that BuzzFeed published the official National Park Service photos of the crowds from Mr. Trump’s inauguration and Barack Obama’s.