‘I Need Loyalty’
To hear him talk, it’s Trump’s favorite quality in other humans. But it’s unclear what that word means to him.

A week exactly after his inauguration, seated for dinner at a small, oval table in the Green Room of the White House, Donald Trump said to the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation what might end up being the six most consequential words of his presidency.
“I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.”

All leaders want loyalty. All politicians. All presidents. But in the 241-year history of the United States of America, there’s never been a commander in chief who has thought about loyalty and attempted to use it and enforce it quite like Trump. “I value loyalty above everything else—more than brains, more than drive and more than energy,” Trump once said. It is possible to see Trump’s fixation on loyalty, the pledging of it, the proof of it, the failure to receive it or provide it, as the animating force behind so many of the defining events of his first year in office. Consider James Comey’s extraordinary dismissal; the “Dear Leader” Cabinet meetings convened for aides to bestow slavish praise; public humiliations of his attorney general and secretary of state; the banishment and subsequent contrition of top adviser Steve Bannon; speculation that Robert Mueller won’t last long as special counsel and the parade of lockstep minions whose forced exits from the campaign or the administration have not squelched their public displays of devotion.

By presidential standards, these episodes are bizarre. But in Trumpworld, they fit a distinct pattern. They all trace back to a notion of loyalty that Trump absorbed when he was young—and has never abandoned.

According to people who know him well, Trump’s definition of loyalty is blunt. “Support Donald Trump in anything he says and does,” Roger Stone, the president’s longest-running political adviser, told me. “No matter what,” former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res said. “Or else,” added Louise Sunshine, a friend of Trump for nearly 50 years. “I think he defines it as allegiance,” biographer Tim O’Brien told me. “And it’s not allegiance to the flag or allegiance to the country—it’s allegiance to Trump.” ...
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...ty-staff-217227

Trump's ominous loyalty demands
https://www.axios.com/donald-trump-loyal...347fff5f94.html

Fear and Loyalty: How Donald Trump Took Over the Republican Party
The president demands complete fealty, and as the impeachment hearings showed, he has largely attained it. To cross him is to risk losing a future in the Republican Party.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/us/po...epublicans.html

Report: Trump Demands Loyalty Oath From Job Seekers Who Criticized Him During Election
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-dema...during-election

Donald Trump's former loyal supporters are starting to speak out. Here's why
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-19/d...sident/11426462

The problem with Trump's idea of loyalty, explained by psychologists
Trump demanded personal loyalty from former FBI Director James Comey. That was a mistake.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/...y-psychologists

Some Utah GOP leaders demand Mitt Romney’s loyalty to Trump and his agenda
Some conservative leaders of the Utah GOP have readied a resolution censuring Sen. Mitt Romney for voting to remove President Donald Trump from office and urging him to “vigorously support” Trump’s agenda or vacate his seat.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/202...ah-gop-leaders/

Loyalty to Donald Trump is new normal for the Republican Party
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/392...epublican-party

Trump has a loyalty problem
... Trump's biggest problem — as impeachment creeps up slowly upon him — might be his habit of expecting loyalty and almost never giving it in return. Consider what happened to Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions: He was the first establishment Republican to give support to Trump, and his loyalty landed him the role of attorney general, but he spent most of his term as the object of public derision and ridicule by the president himself before finally resigning. ...
https://theweek.com/articles/873400/trump-loyalty-problem

For Trump, Loyalty Is Everything — and a One-Way Street
We have it on considerable authority that Donald Trump demands unconditional loyalty from subordinates. It is partially why he’s been so slow in filling positions in his administration: The Boss can’t have any of the many Republicans who said less than positive things about him before he rose to the presidential nomination. ...
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/06/...stration&email=

Eine kleine illustrative Auswahl. Enjoy the reading -if you care.
I know, as a trumski cultist you won't read any of it anyway. And I don't care.

Narzissten ist es zu eigen, von anderen Loyalitaet und bedingungslose Unterordnung einzufordern. Das muessen sie quasi sogar. Der eigenen staendig schmerzhaft empfundenen inadequacy -und den daraus entstehenden Aengsten und Phobien- wegen.
Gleichzeitig denken sie selbst aber im Traum nicht daran, Loyalitaet von sich selbst aus zugeben. Mehr noch: Sie sind ueberhaupt nicht in der Lage dazu.

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t...9c3&oe=5EF5CD7A

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t...fc9&oe=5EFF5C80

CNN’s Jim Acosta Calls Out Donald Trump’s ‘Record On Delivering The Truth’ To His Face
The White House correspondent and the president sparred during a news conference in New Delhi.

The fiery exchange saw Acosta tell Trump that CNN’s “record on delivering the truth is a lot better than yours sometimes, if you don’t mind me saying.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jim-acost...ROee7GXmSadYMEQ

Tell him to his lying face, Jim!
Jim Acosta is a good guy. And a good journalist.

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t...bd2&oe=5EF318F8

Gestern war so ein Tag. :-)

The Cult of Trump

... America is in a cultic crisis, and Trumpism is the cult. There is no other way to approach these days.

When you believe one man above Science, above our Intelligence agencies, above former CIA directors and retired generals and revered journalists—when you believe that one man above even your own eyes and ears—you are fully indoctrinated. ...

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/02/04/whe...j0eRQ1YQZs80oow

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t...2bf&oe=5EF1197A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIQIjlocdH4

Wow, verglichen mit Pocahontas wirkt ja sogar Saskia Esken fast sympathisch.

Pentagon policy chief's firing was part of White House purge
John Rood will officially step down at the end of this week.

The White House demanded the ouster of Pentagon policy chief John Rood last week after the former industry executive opposed the administration on plans to pull U.S. troops from Syria and its policy toward Chinese tech giant Huawei, six current and former Trump administration officials tell POLITICO.

Rood, who has served as undersecretary of Defense for policy since January 2018, resigned on Feb. 19 at the behest of President Donald Trump and will officially step down at the end of this week. Rood oversees implementation of national security policy throughout the Defense Department and is one of the defense secretary's top advisers. ...

Trump’s campaign to root out “anti-Trump” members of his administration following his impeachment acquittal provided the NSC the perfect opportunity to finally oust Rood, current and former officials said. ...

Since Mattis left in December 2018, several high-ranking civilians have resigned. Of 58 Senate-confirmed positions at DoD, 18 are vacant, and that will rise to 19 once Rood departs at the end of this week. ...

Rood’s ouster has prompted fears within the Pentagon that Trump’s purge could extend to other officials seen as not sufficiently loyal to the president, said the first former administration official. People who are awaiting nomination or confirmation — including Elaine McCusker, whose nomination to be Pentagon comptroller may be in jeopardy due to her opposition to the Ukraine aid freeze — are seen as particularly vulnerable. ...

“There is a long list of names of people they are going to boot out and they are going to replace them with purely politicals,” the former official said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/27...se-purge-117785

Donald Trump Takes Coronavirus So Seriously He Just Put Mike Pence in Charge
With a representative of the CDC beside him, Trump pushed back on the agency’s warning that the virus will spread. “I don’t think it is inevitable,” he said. “Probable? Maybe.”

The president’s decision to put Pence in charge was seen by some as further evidence that he is not taking the threat of coronavirus seriously.

Over the decades, Pence has amassed a public record that his critics have often bashed as anti-science. On matters of public health, for instance, he has made wild claims in the past.

“Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill. In fact, two out of every three smokers does not die from a smoking-related illness and nine out of 10 smokers do not contract lung cancer,” Pence said in 2000. Additionally, Pence has advocated teaching creationism in American public schools and, as governor of Indiana, had an HIV outbreak explode on his watch because he moved too slowly on approving needle exchanges. ...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-tru...y-under-control

After Trump appoints Pence to oversee coronavirus response, initial reports don’t include how he enabled Indiana HIV outbreak
President Donald Trump has announced that Vice President Mike Pence would oversee the coronavirus response.

While there are many troubling aspects of the administration's response to coronavirus thus far, some outlets neglected to mention that Pence’s policies led to an HIV outbreak in Indiana.

It started with Pence pushing to defund Planned Parenthood. Erin Schumaker reported for Huffpost in 2016:
"Pence first laid the groundwork for Indiana’s HIV outbreak as a congressman back in 2011, when the House passed his amendment to defund Planned Parenthood. Then in 2013, Pence’s first year as governor of Indiana, Scott County’s one Planned Parenthood closed in the wake of public health spending cuts. Since that particular Planned Parenthood was also the county’s only HIV testing center, there was no longer a place for the county’s 24,000 residents to get tested.

Nearly 20 percent of Scott County residents live below the poverty line. Injection drug use there is a major problem, increasing the risk of HIV outbreak.

Fast-forward to 2015. Local health officials began to report HIV cases linked to intravenous prescription opioid use in Scott County. Scott County residents were sharing needles to inject their opioids, and nobody was getting tested.
The situation quickly spiraled out of control. At the height of the outbreak, 20 new cases of HIV were being diagnosed each week, reaching a total of nearly 200 cases by the time the outbreak was finally under control."

Pence made the problem worse, Schumaker reports, by refusing for months to authorize a needle exchange program. After being urged by federal, state and local officials, Pence reportedly told a sheriff that he would pray on the matter, before allowing clean syringes to be distributed. Further research from the Yale School of Public Health showed that the number could have been substantially lower if Pence had acted sooner. ...

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus...al-reports-dont

Coronavirus May Explode in U.S. Overnight Just Like in Italy
Get ready for a serious test of broken American health infrastructure.
Sooner or later, it’s virtually bound to happen.

Though novel 2019 coronavirus cases in the United States have so far ticked up in fits and starts, experts on deadly diseases say Americans should be prepared to see an overnight boom in cases that mirror the skyrocketing outbreaks in Italy and South Korea.

At last count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 60 confirmed novel 2019 coronavirus cases in the U.S. One of those cases—in northern California—marked the first case of unknown origin, as The Washington Post first reported Wednesday.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/coronaviru...it-did-in-italy

Pro-Trump media claim CDC is overhyping coronavirus threat because a top official is related to Rod Rosenstein
Dr. Nancy Messonnier is more than qualified, but Trump is reportedly furious at her
https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus...ancy-messonnier

Analysis: Trump's war on truth takes a dangerous turn as he attacks the media's coronavirus coverage
Since the dawn of the Trump presidency, countless experts have warned that the president's lack of credibility would imperil the country in the event of an emergency.

With the worsening coronavirus outbreak, those fears may be coming true.
President Trump's political allies have made overly optimistic statements only to be contradicted by the government's top scientists and doctors. For example, Trump claimed on Monday that the coronavirus was "very much under control in the USA." A day later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the virus' spread to the US was inevitable. He said the stock market is "starting to look very good" even as the Dow was nosediving amid coronavirus anxiety.
And the president has been blaming the media for this predicament, reverting to the same tactics that he has employed ever since taking office. ...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/26/media/tru...ia-coronavirus/

There were warnings about the American health care system for years before coronavirus. Right-wing media didn't want to hear it.
Right-wing media have lied for years about the American health care system, downplaying the fact that millions of people are either uninsured or lack access to affordable health care.

With a possible pandemic on the horizon, that’s a real problem.
https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus...ronavirus-right

Zitat von Willie im Beitrag #9302

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[b]
Narzissten ist es zu eigen, von anderen Loyalitaet und bedingungslose Unterordnung einzufordern. Das muessen sie quasi sogar. Der eigenen staendig schmerzhaft empfundenen inadequacy -und den daraus entstehenden Aengsten und Phobien- wegen.
Gleichzeitig denken sie selbst aber im Traum nicht daran, Loyalitaet von sich selbst aus zugeben. Mehr noch: Sie sind ueberhaupt nicht in der Lage dazu.

---

Trump And Pence Launch Propaganda War To Muzzle Health Officials On Coronavirus
Trump requires all health officials to get approval from Mike Pence on any statements about the coronavirus.

Trump and Pence are showing that they are more concerned with managing the political message than providing the public with vital information about a potential health epidemic.

The White House is muzzling doctors and setting up a propaganda system, to get the stock market back on track because that is the only thing that they really care about. Trump wants to manage the optics and minimize political fallout.

The White House lies to the American people on a daily basis, but with the public health at stake, the administration is more interested in spreading propaganda than keeping people healthy.
https://www.politicususa.com/2020/02/27/...6C99xnQ0UVxBNiE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByAcUQAC...-lFkSoDWRkAQjiE

Enjoy.

How Can the US Confront Coronavirus With 28 Million People Uninsured?
As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, we don’t yet know either the full scale of the unfolding global health disaster or the cumulative impact economically. But over the past week, as virus hotspots have emerged in South Korea, in Iran, in Italy and elsewhere, and as more and more countries find cases of the disease, we’re beginning to get a sense of the magnitude of what is unfolding. ...

... Roughly 28 million Americans lack health insurance. That number has gone up every year of the Trump presidency and will continue to go up so long as current policies are in place that drive immigrants ever further outside the safety net, that encourage states to limit Medicaid access, and that make it harder for individuals to access health care exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act. It’s pretty much impossible to rein in a pandemic, especially of a disease that is communicable before a sufferer becomes sick enough to visit the ER, with so many people entirely excluded from primary care coverage. Millions more, who do have insurance, are so under-insured and have such high deductibles that, in practice, they too do not visit primary care doctors nearly as often as they should. ...

... But that alone is only one part of a much larger puzzle. Forty percent of Americans are only one missed paycheck away from poverty — they have no, or only minimal, savings to fall back on, and no cushion for paying monthly bills such as rent or mortgage, utilities, and car payments in the event of an unexpected economic jolt. ...

... Unlike most of our peer nations, in the U.S. there is no legal right to paid sick leave, although the Family and Medical Leave Act does allow for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. In practice, the country’s sick leave rules are so ludicrously weak that they provide a strong disincentive for people, even in food processing and restaurants and other industries where germs spread particularly fast, to stay off work when sick. That’s as backward an approach as possible during a pandemic when health officials are urging the precautionary principle be adopted, and asking people to self-quarantine if they think they may have been in contact with a sick person. ...

We are on the edge of the unknown, facing the possibility of a pandemic — and accompanying economic dislocation — on a scale not seen for generations. In the face of this, big and bold policy responses will likely be required, and required fast. Unfortunately, the Trump administration doesn’t inspire any confidence that it’s up to this enormous task.
https://truthout.org/articles/how-can-th...ople-uninsured/

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t...b00&oe=5EF83D0B

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_XrXA966Bw

Willie, für dich.

https://nypost.com/2020/02/25/biden-says...2uQyERh4CpgbNYk

Biden says he worked on 2016 climate accord with leader who died in 1997.

It's true. He even won the battle of Waterloo, invented the steam engine and settled the conflict between Russia and Japan in 1905.

Coronavirus: How Fox News and other right-wing media endanger our health
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Tuesday that Americans should prepare for a “significant disruption” to everyday life as the spread of COVID-19 (known colloquially as the coronavirus) into the United States becomes “not so much a question of if,” according to one official, “but rather more a question of exactly when.”

Despite steady warnings from health organizations worldwide, right-wing media are clogging the airwaves with conspiracy theories and inaccurate reporting. Outlets like Fox News are broadcasting sensationalistic, poorly sourced talking points, obfuscating the realities of the outbreak and the United States' own readiness to deal with it, leaving Americans more vulnerable and less informed. ...

https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-fox-n...-202100444.html

Millions of uninsured Americans like me are a coronavirus timebomb
I haven’t gone to the doctor since 2013. When you multiply my situation by 27.5 million, that’s a scary prospect

Like 27.5 million other Americans, I don’t have health insurance. It’s not for a lack of trying – I make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to buy a private health insurance plan on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Since I can’t afford to see a doctor, my healthcare strategy as a 32-year-old uninsured American has been simply to sleep eight hours, eat vegetables, and get daily exercise. But now that there are confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, the deadly virus could spread rapidly, thanks to others like me who have no feasible way to get the care we need if we start exhibiting symptoms. ...

This system is exactly why a 2018 West Health Institute/NORC at the University of Chicago national poll found that 44% of Americans declined to see a doctor due to cost, and why nearly a third of Americans polled said they didn’t get their prescriptions filled due to the high cost of their medicine. This is the same system that killed 38-year-old Texas public school teacher Heather Holland, who couldn’t afford the $116 co-pay for her flu medication and later died from flu complications. It’s the same system that Guardian contributor Luke O’Neil refers to as “Go viral or die trying”, in which Americans who can’t afford life-saving healthcare procedures are forced to become their own advocate and PR agency by launching a viral GoFundMe campaign to ask strangers on the internet to save their lives.

When you multiply my situation by 27.5 million, you end up with a country full of people who won’t see a doctor unless they’re extremely sick. And when you combine a for-profit healthcare system – in which only those wealthy enough to get care actually receive it – with a global pandemic, the only outcome will be unmitigated disaster. This could be somewhat remedied if the US had a single-payer, universal healthcare system, like every other industrialized nation. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...NnCQAYEq2sxatqY