After taking scores of selfies with supporters on the campaign trail, Vice President-elect Mike Pence appears to be having a hard time shaking the habit.
He used a meeting with the House GOP conference on Thursday as an opportunity for a photo shoot.
What do you get when you elect an authoritarian, racist, misogynist, vulgarian bullshit artist as President of the United States? A steady stream of authoritarian, racist, misogynist, vulgarian bullshit from the future President of the United States. Starting with this:
Lesley Stahl: You said that lobbyists owned politicians because they give them money.
Donald Trump: Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: You admitted you used to do it yourself. You have a transition team—
Donald Trump: And when you say lobbyists, lobbyists and special interests.
Lesley Stahl: And you want to get rid of all of that?
Donald Trump: I don’t like it, no.
Lesley Stahl: You don’t like it, but your own transition team, it’s filled with lobbyists.
Donald Trump: That’s the only people you have down there.
Lesley Stahl: You have lobbyists from Verizon, you have lobbyists from the oil gas industry, you have food lobby.
Donald Trump: Sure. Everybody’s a lobbyist down there--
Lesley Stahl: Well, wait
Donald Trump: That’s what they are. They’re lobbyists or special interests—
Lesley Stahl: On your own transition team.
Donald Trump:–we are trying to clean up Washington. Look--
Lesley Stahl: How can you claim--
Donald Trump: Everything, everything down there-- there are no people-- there are all people that work -- that’s the problem with the system, the system. Right now, we’re going to clean it up. We’re having restrictions on foreign money coming in, we’re going to put on term limits, which a lot of people aren’t happy about, but we’re putting on term limits. We’re doing a lot of things to clean up the system. But everybody that works for government, they then leave government and they become a lobbyist, essentially. I mean, the whole place is one big lobbyist.
Lesley Stahl: But you’re, but you’re basically saying you have to rely on them, even though you want to get rid of them?
Donald Trump: I’m saying that they know the system right now, but we’re going to phase that out. You have to phase it out.
AND CONTINUING with this:
Lesley Stahl: Are you in any way intimidated, scared about this enormous burden, the gravity of what you’re taking on? Donald Trump: No. Lesley Stahl: Not at all? Donald Trump: I respect it. But I’m not scared by it. Lesley Stahl: Now you’re not scared, but there are people, Americans, who are scared and some of them are demonstrating right now, demonstrating against you, against your rhetoric-- Donald Trump: That’s only because they don’t know me. I really believe that’s only because-- Lesley Stahl: Well, they listened to you in the campaign and that’s-- Donald Trump: I just don’t think they know me. Lesley Stahl: Well, what do you think they’re demonstrating against? Donald Trump: Well, I think in some cases, you have professional protesters. And we had it-- if you look at WikiLeaks, we had-- Lesley Stahl: You think those people down there are— Donald Trump: Well Lesley— Lesley Stahl: are professional? Donald Trump: Oh, I think some of them will be professional, yeah-- Lesley Stahl: OK, but what about – they’re in every city. Lesley Stahl: When they demonstrate against you and there are signs out there, I mean, don’t you say to yourself, I guess you don’t, you know, do I have to worry about this? Do I have to go out and assuage them? Do I have to tell them not to be afraid? They’re afraid. Donald Trump: I would tell them don’t be afraid, absolutely. Lesley Stahl: But that’s not what you’re saying, I said it- Donald Trump: Oh, I think, no, no, I think-- I am saying it, I’ve been saying it. Lesley Stahl: OK. Donald Trump: Don’t be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, don’t be afraid. You know, we just had an election and sort of like you have to be given a little time. I mean, people are protesting. If Hillary had won and if my people went out and protested, everybody would say, “Oh, that’s a terrible thing.” And it would have been a much different attitude. There is a different attitude. You know, there is a double standard here. It has been five full days since the election and anti-Trump demonstrations, driven in part by Hillary Clinton’s edge in the popular vote, have been significant. When we interviewed him on Friday afternoon Mr. Trump said he had not heard about some of the acts of violence that are popping up in his name… or against his supporters. Nor he said had he heard about reports of racial slurs and personal threats against African Americans, Latinos and gays by some of his supporters. Donald Trump: I am very surprised to hear that-- I hate to hear that, I mean I hate to hear that-- Lesley Stahl: But you do hear it? Donald Trump: I don’t hear it—I saw, I saw one or two instances… Lesley Stahl: On social media? Donald Trump: But I think it’s a very small amount. Again, I think it’s-- Lesley Stahl: Do you want to say anything to those people? Donald Trump: I would say don’t do it, that’s terrible, ‘cause I’m gonna bring this country together. Lesley Stahl: They’re harassing Latinos, Muslims-- Donald Trump: I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, “Stop it.” If it-- if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.
IT'S GOING to be a long four years. Assuming Trump, or the United States, makes it that long.
Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ets. Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem. Exaudi orationem meam, ad te omnis caro veniet. Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ets.
If this isn't the bottom for Election 2016, I don't want to see what the bottom is. I mean that with every fiber of my body and soul.
Worse, The Bottom comes to us courtesy, I am sorry to say, of a Catholic priest -- an unethical, seemingly insane and wicked Catholic priest, but an alleged man of God nonetheless -- and his deeply ironically named, off-the-rails fanatical organization, Priests for Life. Of course, Priests for Life is completely in the tank for Donald Trump.
I know I am burying the lede. I have to work up to the lede, though I imagine you can guess what it is from the obscured Facebook screenshot. Trust me, you don't want this lede upfront.
NO, you don't. Steel yourself as I dawdle.
What we have, courtesy of Fr. Frank Pavone, isn't just sacrilege -- it's diabolical. Diabolism in the name of Trump.
God help us, that orange abomination is diabolical, literally, in his ability to inspire all those he touches to engage in naked, unapologetic wickedness. Like this.
Just today, I thought I had seen the bottom of this horrible election being dredged with the news story that Trump had a 12-year-old with cerebral palsy and his mother thrown out of a Florida rally -- with the rabble assaulting them all the while.
But no.
The bottom now has been dredged in the name of Jesus Christ and of being "pro-life." Upon the altar. By a Catholic priest.
Ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election, the Rev. Frank Pavone took an aborted fetus, laid it upon an altar Sunday and posted a live video on Facebook. Pavone, a Catholic priest who heads New York-based Priests for Life, said the fetus was entrusted to him by a pathologist for burial.
During an already heated and divisive campaign season, Pavone’s video has raised questions for some about what is appropriate antiabortion and political activism in the church. As of Monday afternoon, the video, which is 44 minutes long, had 236,000 views. In it, he holds up a poster of graphics of abortion procedures.
In Pavone’s Facebook appeal, he wrote, “we have to decide if we will allow this child killing to continue in America or not. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform says yes, let the child-killing continue (and you pay for it); Donald Trump and the Republican platform says no, the child should be protected.”
A call placed to the spokesman for the Diocese of Amarillo in Texas, which is Pavone’s diocese, was not immediately returned Monday. The receptionist, however, said her phone has been ringing off the hook.
In a blog post for Patheos, Scott Eric Alt argued that what Pavone did was sacrilege, a violation of Catholic Church canon law, which states that the altar is “reserved for divine worship alone, to the exclusion of any secular usage.”
“Being pro-life is about respecting the dignity of the human person,” Alt wrote. “It is the antithesis of respect for the dignity of the human person to use a dead child as a political prop to lobby for your presidential candidate the day before an election.”
THERE. There's your lede. In supposed defense of the right to life and the dignity of all humans, born and unborn, a Catholic priest who heads a "pro-life" organization desecrates the body of an aborted child upon the altar of God in cheap, vulgar political theater. This sacrilege -- this defiling of both a dead body and the sacred altar -- came in support of Trump, a presidential candidate who unconvincingly proclaims himself "pro-life" while advocating violence, racism, torture and state-sponsored murder of innocents abroad.
And let us not forget that Pavone's favored "pro-life" candidate is on tape bragging about numerous instances of sexual assault.
C.S. Lewis would have been hard-pressed to imagine such perfidy in service of Our Father Below for a sequel to The Screwtape Letters.
This . . . this is the smoke of Satan in the sanctuary, fetid incense burned in worship of Deep Cheeto. A dead, apparently saline-burned aborted child, splayed upon the altar as if at an Aztec temple. An offering to Quetzalcoatl?
No, Donald Trump.
Mein Gott im Himmel! Somehow, it seems appropriate to express horror in the original German when speaking of Trump and his "souled-out" sycophants.
I HAVEN'T felt this soul-sick -- physically ill, even -- since the worst days of the Catholic child-abuse scandals in 2002 and 2003. Then, I damned near left the church. Such has been the devilish vengeance this campaign from hell has unleashed upon the church -- upon what's left of the "pro-life" movement.
This has the feeling of the devil demanding his due from a movement that sold its soul to Republican politics long ago.
Feeling? One cannot tangibly prove such things, but it seems to be more like a lead-pipe cinch to me.
Inthis church where we have been asked to cross too many bridges too damned far, a line has to be drawn. A spiritual line has to be drawn, and rotten limbs have to be cut away for the sake of the Body of Christ. Frank Pavone doesn't need to merely have his faculties suspended; he needs to have them removed completely. He needs not to be able to present himself publicly as a Catholic priest.
Now. And then let the state's criminal investigation begin.
It's almost Election Day, and we're here in the 3 Chords & the Truth Country Bunker waiting for the end of the world.
If it doesn't actually happen Tuesday -- Wednesday at the latest -- one way or the other, it's gonna be close. So this week on the Big Show, our time will be well spent listening to some favorites, getting close to Jesus and standing in the light. Well . . . as much light as there is here in the bunker. If you find all this to be a great mystery, listen to the program and all will be revealed to thee. Here, In the bunker. Don't mind the chicken wire in front of the stage. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
A young Donald Trump supporter in Sanford, Fla., (motto: "Arbeit Macht Frei") figures it's the Zionists keeping America down. And only Trump can Make America Jew-free Great Again.
Oh, there's also this. "Follow Alex Jones at infowars.com. The Young Turks is not the best network to follow -- the truth is with David Duke and Alex Jones."
David Duke, of neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan infamy, is back in politics, by the way. He's running for U.S. Senate in Louisiana. Yeah, I think we've seen this act before. Started badly, ended worse -- 60 million dead, all told.
And der Führer, Benito Mussolini and Hideki Tojo didn't even have a nuclear arsenal at their disposal.
Really, no matter how much a candidate disavows the support of Nazis and Kluxers -- and Trump grudgingly has . . . eventually . . . more or less -- is it really that difficult to grasp that there's something horribly wrong with any candidate the spiritual heirs to Hitler canheil?
This Budweiser video following the Chicago Cubs' first World Series championship since 1908 is enough to make a Royals fan -- hell, even a Cardinals fan -- cry. Would that Bud's beer was as damn good as its advertising agency.
The sounds coming off the campaign trail certainly aren't getting any sweeter -- and propriety prevents me from telling you what the presidential election sounds like to me -- so I guess we need to counteract that on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth.
Oh, crap. Reality has Trumped that possibility. (Sorry, couldn't resist the cheap joke.) I guess, then, we will have to just do our best on the Big Show to replace the voice of discord with our own Voice of Music. We probably can't drown out all the noise from the rubber room, but I'm betting the Voice of Music will take care of most of it, making for a dramatically more pleasant run up to Armageddon Nov. 8.
I THINK this will work.
Please, God, this has to work.
OK, let's remain positive. Yes, this will work. The Voice of Music will remedy all.
We should all be feeling much better 30 minutes into this edition of3 Chords & the Truth. You know, power to soothe the savage breast and all of that.
What do we got to lose?
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Read this letter, dated Jan. 20, 1993, from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton. You Donald Trump supporters, especially. Read it, goddamn you! Read this wonderful letter and behold what we have lost as Americans. Read it as the hourglass empties on that too-brief era when there was such a people as "Americans." Read it. Read it and think on what we seek to throw away -- are throwing away -- for the sake of a horndog Cheeto with terrible hair and worse character. Remember it and our squandered patrimony when the bullets start to fly.
Just look at all the WikiLeaks emails! Why do you think she was hiding the Goldman Sachs speeches?
Listen, you slobs! If you vote for Killary Clinton, you're going to have black helicopters and federal gestapo troops coming to take away your guns and your rights! You think this woman respects the Constitution? You think she wouldn't lower the federal boom on God-fearing Americans and throw 'em all in politically correct prison camps? JUST LOOK AT THE EMAILS!!!!
If you don't want Hillary's storm troopers marching down Main Street -- if you don't want the U.S. Army turned against American citizens, you must vote for Donald Trump and the Christian, freedom-loving, limited-government, Mexican-rapisthatin', states-rights respecting Republicans. Just look at this exchange with a freedom-loving, right-thinking Republican during one of those Goldman Sachs speeches: MR. (Lloyd) BLANKFEIN (CEO, President, Goldman Sachs): I have to say we Republicans -- we obviously reach out to both sets. To a person -- a person regarded as someone who may be expected to be more partisan and has spent so much time is is very, very well liked by the Republicans. PARTICIPANT: First off I would like to thank you for all the years. Of course, I'm on the other side. MS. CLINTON: The dark side? PARTICIPANT: It's the dark side right now, but otherwise the sun does come through. You have to be an optimist. But you have to put a great, great effort, and I commend you for it. But I would like two things. No. 1, you just talked about Sandy. And since you were First Lady and a senator -- forget the Secretary. But what is wrong with our politicians -- I served in the Corps of Engineers. Whether it's in Iraq, Iran -- anyplace outside the US you can build bridges overnight. You could have gone into Sandy. You could have gone into New Orleans. The actual problem is the law from the 1800s. No military, which is the only force, not the National Guard. They don't have crap. It's the military. Like down in New Orleans. If we would just change the dumb law -- because it hasn't been changed because politicians have no say once the president declares it martial law. Put the military up. They would have cleaned up that coast. You wouldn't have the frigging mess you have today. But we can do it for everybody else in the world, but we don't do it because the state judges don't have no authority. The mayor don't have no authority, because you're going to put a military officer in charge. That's one question why you haven't looked at --
MR. BLANKFEIN: They did that in New Orleans. PARTICIPANT: Forget the -- the second thing you mentioned about Afghanistan. Most people don't realize the Russians were there before us for ten years and whatever, and we supported Tannenbaum to beat the hell out of them. A lot of our problems is because we have a competition with the Russians. If we would -- the Russians by nature hate the Chinese, but forget that. If we were more or less kind of like forget that superpower, superpower, and work with them -- two superpowers equal a hell of a lot more in the world. You wouldn't have an Iranian problem, we wouldn't have the Syrian problem, and why don't we just cut Israel loose? Give them the frigging bomb and just blow the thing up. That's my question to you. MS. CLINTON: Those are interesting questions for sure. First, I think you're referring to the posse comitatus, which has been actually in existence -- if not from the end of the 18th century, the very beginning, as you said, of the 19th century. And it is a law that really limits what the military, the US military, can do on our soil, and it has been supported all these years in part because there is a great suspicion by many of US government power -- and there is no more obvious evidence of that than the US military. However, we do call out the National Guard, which is under the control, as you know, of the governor and the adjutant general. But it is clearly in the line of command as well from the Pentagon. So although it took some difficulties with Katrina we did get the National Guard out. With Sandy we got the National Guard out. But you're right, that if you were to want to have the military, the actual US military involved in disaster recovery, you would have to change the law. And it's something that would be a big fight in Congress because a lot of people would not vote to change a law that would give any additional authority to any president, Republican or democratic, to order the US military to go anywhere in the United States. We kid about it, but I used to see it all the time when I was a senator. There is this great fear that the US military is going to show up and take away your guns and confiscate your property. I think it's --
MR. BLANKFEIN: Was the last time that happened with Eisenhower? MS. CLINTON: Yes. That was to enforce a court order. MR. BLANKFEIN: It was shocking, jarring. MS. CLINTON: It was. Wasn't it the 82nd? I mean, they flew through to desegregate the central high school, and it was viewed as a very provocative action. PARTICIPANT: The fact is it proved what was right. Not what the politicians think. It's a case of sometimes the politicians, which includes -- MS. CLINTON: The politicians for more than 200 years have been united on this issue. There was a posse comitatus law before that. But the sensitivity about it was heightened and new regulations were put in after the Civil War, but -- PARTICIPANT: No disrespect, but if you were right you could not have had Illinois, Oklahoma, California join you. You had governors that were appointed there. Military law. MS. CLINTON: Well, you can declare martial law. You can declare martial law. PARTICIPANT: Military was always -- MS. CLINTON: Well, I personally could not favor turning control over to the United States military as much as I respect the United States military. I guess I'm on the other side of this with you. I think that the civilian rule has served us well, and I don't want to do anything that upsets it even though I have a very personal experience. You remember when Castro opened the prisons and sent all the criminals to the United States? MR. BLANKFEIN: The -- MS. CLINTON: A lot of those prisoners were ordered to go to a fort in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, Ft. Chaffee, and my husband was governor of Arkansas at the time. It was a military fort, so the United States military ran it. So if you were on the fort you were under US military authority, but if you stepped off the fort you were not. And the result was there was a riot where prisoners were breaking through the gates, and the US military would not stop them. So my husband as governor had to call out the state police. So you had the military inside basically saying under the law we can't do anything even to stop prisoners from Cuba. So it is complicated, but it's complicated in part for a reason, because we do not ever want to turn over to our military the kind of civilian authority that should be exercised by elected officials. So I think that's the explanation.
I . . . well . . . um . . . you see . . . here's the thing. . . .
Er . . . I can't explain this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. You're just going to have to dive into the thing and figure it out for yourself.
It's the only thing to be done when you face the prospect of . . . I'm not sure. You see, it's like . . . no, that's not it.
Something about Nobel hamburgers or Krystal Whataburgers or something. Just listen, OK. I'm sure the Big Show will make some sort of sense eventually. I think. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha. Hey! That has something to do with the program, too! Sort of.
I HAVEN'T felt this soul-sick -- physically ill, even -- since the worst days of the Catholic child-abuse scandals in 2002 and 2003. Then, I damned near left the church. Such has been the devilish vengeance this campaign from hell has unleashed upon the church -- upon what's left of the "pro-life" movement.
