Summations Only

Yeah, you're right, he probably has to.

Or maybe is already in the gutter.Shall we try to keep things more serious?Adminnemooseus

Trump speaking about Comey, from the New York Times (bolding is mine): Edited by Chiroptera, : Typo.

So we now have 3 firings of people who were directly responsible for investigating Trump: Sally Yate, Preet Bahara James Comey.
The firing of the national security advisor(appointed by Trump), who was lying about ties to Russia. We also have the attorney general (appointed by Trump),who because of lying about conversations with Russia had to recuse himself from investigating Trump's campaign ties to Russia. There is also the matter of a ex-campaign manager who took money "off the books" from a pro Russian Ukrainian political party who is currently being investigated.Something in the District of Columbia is rotten.I get the feeling that there is a string being unraveled by the FBI and it is leading all the way to the Oval Office.If there was no collusion with the Russians from the Trump campaign then the best thing Trump can do is cooperate fully with the investigation and get his name cleared as quickly as possible. Anything other than that smacks of obfuscation and obstructionism.Edited by 1.61803, : No reason given.

"And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got."--Richard NixonNixon said this about a year before Congress impeached him, with the first charge being obstruction of justice. Hearing Nixon's words coming out of Donald Trump's mouth is beyond spooky.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

The early word put out by Trump's surrogates was that the Comey firing was based on Comey's handling of the Clinton email scandal. Based on the timing, and Trump's praise for Comey, and on Trump's own statements about a lack of interest in pursuing Clinton, the 'email' excuse made little sense.Now Trump has admitted that the primary reason behind Comey's firing was the Russia investigation, something that was actually strongly hinted at in Trump's firing letter.Still, it appears based on Trump's poll numbers, that Trump still has the support of well north of eighty percent of his base. I would estimate that such support would have to drop down into Nixon-Watergate territory (around 50-60 percent) before Republicans would have the sack to take Trump on. In my mind, absent catching a close campaign adviser 'riding dirty', that won't happen.

I saw web headlines today that "Trump Threatens Comey" to "Warns Comey" to "Suggests". It appears Trump does not want Comey talking to the press. Trump suggests there may be ‘tapes’ of his private conversations with former FBI director

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President Trump suggested Friday that there may be tapes of his private conversations with FBI Director James B. Comey, whom he fired earlier this week, in what appeared to be an attempt to threaten Comey about leaking to the press.

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James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
5:26 AM - 12 May 2017

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Trump's tweet about Comey was likely a reaction to a New York Times report, published Thursday night detailing a one-on-one dinner Trump had with Comey shortly after the inauguration. The report said that Comey has told associates that Trump twice asked Comey during their conversation to pledge his loyalty to him, something the FBI director declined to do.

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I also saw that Comey stated he hopes there are tapes.One thing we know for sure......this show is just getting started.

I read that whole interview. Trump explains the benefits that his economic strategy has for helping business. I am concerned what this will all mean for organized labor. Are they going to force us to renegotiate for lower wages in order to keep our unions?Point being that Trumps policies are actually attempting to turn big business into one huge mega union.

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Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and control of industry and commerce, that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before it spread to other European countries. Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left—right spectrum.

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Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leadersuch as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist partyto forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.

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source

After reading what you sourced, I poked around and found This Article On the history of the tea party movement. The Authoritarians which we have discussed a few years ago here at EvC. The author of my sources is Bob Altemeyer.Some key points :

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Like the student radicals and hippies who joined forces to demonstrate against the war in Vietnam, the Tea Party is composed of disparate groups united more by what they are against (President Obama and Democrats) then what they are for. The public sees them as ordinary people, and Tea Party organizations insist their members are a cross-section of American adults, a nonpartisan mix of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. But the Quinnipiac poll found that 74 percent of the Tea Partiers were Republicans or Republican-leaning Independents.

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The Authoritarians was written many years ago in the Bush era, but it seems more appropriate for the times that we are now in. The phenomenon of fake news comes to mind.

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The Winston survey dug into what matters to Tea Party members. The most common theme was a conservative economic philosophy. Their top priority, like the rest of the sample, was job creation. But they thought the way to create jobs was mainly to cut taxes on small businesses and increase development of energy resources.

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Now that I am putting two and two together, I see that Donald Trump is essentially a tea party president.

Yesterday I was thinking about the symbolism of "the wall" and I thought of how America was isolationist in the years before WW II. The lightbulb went on, and I realized that this whole idea of a wall is a symbolic form of modern day isolationism.The issue is tied in with nationalism and is not about illegals so much as about protecting our national fantasy over what will protect America from the reality of a growingly competitive world.

I like that thought, Phat. Very insightful!

Paul Krugman recently wrote a column in the New York Times saying basically the same thing about "coal jobs." Krugman points out that not very many West Virginians have jobs in the coal industry any more and the vast majority of jobs that have disappeared over the years aren't coming back.An industry that does employ a lot of West Virginians is health care and related services.Yet West Virginia went for Trump in a big way.

WV coal jobs have been disappearing due to factors other than regulation.Machination is the biggest. Once upon a time, coal was dug by hand with picks and pry bars. Loaded into carts by hand to be hauled to the surface by trains. Hundreds employed per mineNow long wall mining rips tons of coal per hour by giant router, dumps the coal on a high speed conveyor belt. Tens employed per mine.Exhaustion of the economically accessed coal is another big factor. Thick, shallow seams are gone. What's left is deeper (more expensive) and thinner seams.Loss of market also factors in with China pushing to reduce pollution and source more locally.I wonder how much the debt loads on the corporations are a factor. If the CEOs bought mines at inflated prices assuming China would buy everything and US demand would only go up, any drop in price would force mines to close because they couldn't cover the debt load. Debt may be the true killer of coal jobs.Meanwhile workers with skills that don't transfer well to other jobs are trapped in very rural areas. In a culture that emphasizes family & local tradition, leaving is difficult. If they have financial struggles, how can they afford to move to find new work?

I was just reading todays New York Times , Book Review section, which had Joe Klein reviewing a Pat Buchanan book on "Nixon's White House Wars".Trump was described as a reincarnation of Buchanan.

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P. 32
Indeed, he's a reactionary who was also an avatar: the first Trumpist.

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...issues that Buchanan has been thumping for the past 50 years, and that Donald Trump exploited in 2016. ...We are, for the moment, living in Pat Buchanan''s world.

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Irony really comes in when tape recordings are mentioned.

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Buchanan was boggled by Watergate, which he considered stupid. Why bug the Democrats when Nixon''s new majority is about to win bigly? Somehow he managed to skate through the scandal, compartmentalized, kept out of the loop, but asked for cleanup advice - and famously told Nixon to "burn the tapes ."

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Trump seems to have tapes too?Are there other parallels?We know that Nixon thought that the plumbers were conducting a CIA operation ( to get "Bay of Pigs " files ) for CIA director Helms. Nixon thought his coverup was on behalf of a CIA operation.Helms shouted to Nixon "This has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Bay of Pigs! "Helms denial had to do with Nixon talking to him as if Watergate was a CIA operation over JFK files (thought to be deposited in Hank Greenspun's safe in Las Vegas and in the DNC headquarters ), and Helms (aware of the Plumbers and the coverup, but not aware of the Nixon tapes? ) was telling Nixon that this wasn't a CIA operation.H. R. Haldeman wrote long ago that Nixon always used "Bay of Pigs" as code for the Kennedy assassination.Nixon was obsessed with getting files on JFK assassination from Helms. After Helms refusing his requests, Helms gave him a thin little file, claiming it was all the CIA possessed on the "Bay of Pigs ".Nixon knew it was HELMS offering a double book type of decoy file, and that the much thicker actual classified material was kept from him.Nixon said (if I remember correctly ):"Now we know that they [CIA] keep secrets from even the President of the United States "Parallels?Do you think Trump was asking Comey a bunch of questions about odd classified stuff?Would Trump leaking recordings of the conversations be embarrassing to the FBI and CIA?Is Trump about to go to war with the intelligence apparatus?General Alexander Haige said, during the Watergate investigation (when the tapes became known ), " better the President alone goes down, instead of taking the entire intelligence apparatus along with him ". (my paraphrase but it is close to his words )Trump won't roll over and he would surely rather bring down the alphabet intel agencies AND do it while preferably remaining on his own two feet .I wonder if there are parallels.Trump would not roll over so easily.