By Bob Gaydos

Trump and Putin in Helsinki.

   Forgive me if I sound a bit testy, but I get frustrated, after 10 years of dealing with Donald Trump, when people, especially people who are supposed to be educated in such matters, express surprise when the dotard says or does something that benefits Vladimir Putin.

   Like announcing a deal to buy 300,000 metric tons of diesel fuel from Russia. Let’s set aside the legality, duplicity and utter stupidity of the deal for a moment. To those not familiar with the details of diesel fuel usage in America — most of us, I suspect — that may sound like a lot of diesel. It is. But it is roughly half the amount of diesel that America uses every day.

    Half a day’s worth of diesel. To help out a financially struggling Russian economy on which the U.S. has placed economic sanctions, including on diesel, and a Russian leader engaged in a costly and unpopular war (half a million dead soldiers, a million wounded) he started with Ukraine, whom the U.S. is supposed to be supporting.

    Which is only half the war story. In the war that Trump started, Russia is on the side of Iran, sharing intelligence. So Trump wants to send money to Russia to help it fight against our ally, Ukraine, even though Russia is helping Iran to kill Americans. Do you get that MAGA? Republicans?

    But, American truckers and farmers are angry that they can’t afford diesel fuel for their trucks because Trump’s war against Iran has resulted in Iran and its allies shutting down the main route for shipment of oil from the Middle East, resulting in a steep increase in the price of diesel available in the U.S. And diesel fuels the trucks that move all those now also more expensive groceries, etc. that Americans are complaining about.

   And the polls show Republicans likely losing control of the House of Representatives in next month’s election, meaning Trump won’t be able to ignore the law, as he is with the diesel deal, and is likely to spend two years, at least, of intense investigation. 

     So (and we’re not through with all the dots here) Trump looked for a quick fix to save his butt with voters and turned to his “friend,” Putin.

      This looks like a good spot to go back to why I’m so cranky about this Trump/Putin thing. It goes back to July 16, 2018. Trump and Putin had a summit meeting in Helsinki. Their third meeting. It began with a private, two-hour meeting between Trump and Putin and their interpreters. That’s it. No one to this day knows what was said behind closed doors for two hours. But the world saw a smiling Putin emerge along with a slumped over Trump looking like he had just been taken to the woodshed. That aura of smiling confidence Trump likes to put on was gone. He was thoroughly whipped. Very unpresidential.

       When asked by reporters what Putin had to say about  charges by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help him, Trump meekly said that Putin had denied it and that he believed him. Case closed.

       It was there for the world to see. Putin had Trump. Or more accurately, something on him. Has had it ever since. It has been reported often and too often forgotten when Trump does something that seems stupid because it helps Putin, who has never been this nation’s friend. Sex tapes, videos, photos of Trump in embarrassing and illegal situations. Believing they don’t exist is to ignore the life histories of the two men. A narcissistic, legally adjudicated sexual predator whose attorney general and FBI are hiding the Epstein files from the public and the former head of the Russian KGB, which is known to have used women to lure men with influence into “compromising” situations.

       Connect the dots. Trump is Putin’s puppet. In spy lingo, he’s a Russian asset. It makes him our liability. 

       Trump doesn’t care who is hurt if he can protect himself. Say that Ukraine should get a new president because Zelinsky refuses to surrender to Putin? Sure. Suggest at a political rally that Iran (with a large, international network of terrorist allies and intelligence help from Russia, remember?) might want to take out San Diego and Los Angeles? Why not? “Small price to pay,” said Trump. People laughed.

      He is solely driven by self-protection. 

      The “deal” with Russia is illegal, ignoring economic sanctions that were in place. In total, it amounts to about two weeks’ worth of diesel in the U.S. and can be gotten cheaper from Canada, our ally until Trump. It will do little to help either Russia or the U.S. economically. It’s political window dressing for two struggling authoritarians. The fact that Russia is helping Iran to fight us, killing Americans, makes the deal incredibly stupid and … maybe treasonous?

      You get the idea. We know all this. Republicans know and refuse to stop it. The media mostly treat it as business as usual. But there’s nothing “usual” about this. That’s why I’m testy.

Trevor Noah has been banned.

By Bob Gaydos

     This is just a brief piece to fulfill my promise in my recent column on Banned Books Week to share any contributions readers had to add to the list. Also, to thank those loyal readers who responded with a new piece, since we all know that sometimes we just don’t get around to reading the comments at the bottom.

     So, Terry Schommer offers recent reads, “Born a Crime,” by TV host/comedian Trevor Noah, which some agency apparently had an issue with “anti-Catholic views” and “Autobiography of Malcolm X,” by Alex Haley and Malcolm X for controversial views on racism, violence and politics.

      Kristin Jensen offers “The Hate U Give,” by Angie Thomas, a 2017 novel inspired by police shooting of a young black man at a subway station in Oakland. It’s banned in several states. Florida’s reasoning: “There’s talk of an affair between two adults. Teens engage in heavy petting, talk about having sex and condoms. A teen girl is described as being on birth control, and there’s discussion of teen pregnancy and the assumption that a married couple is having sex when they go to their bedroom and turn the television up loud. A woman is revealed to be a sex worker.” Others cited “anti-police” messages.

      AnneMarie Schuetz offers “Nineteen Minutes,” by Jodi Picoult (banned because of an Iowa state law on sex acts) and the “Ender Wiggin” series by Orson Scott Card. (Depends on whom you talk to.)

     Tom Nalesnik notes “”Song of Solomon” has been banned, as does Linda Mangelsdorf, both also noting that means someone banned The Bible.

      Linda also offered a brief list of challenged books from the American Librarians Association: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou), Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck), Beloved (Toni Morrison), My Sister’s Keeper (Jodi Picoult), The Kite Runner (Khalad Hosseini), Glass Castle (Jeanette Walls), Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood), Color Purple (Alice Walker) and Tango Makes 3 (Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell.)

    There you have it. Something old, something new to provide stimulating company in the coming chilly nights.

     Thank you all for your company.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Stormy’s tawdry Trump story.

   Perfect. Poetic. The dotard was hoist on his own, uh, petard.

   With all the many sins and crimes alleged about Donald Trump, ranging from attempting to steal an election, stealing classified documents, actually stealing an election, obstruction of justice, attempted extortion of a foreign leader, inciting a riot and attempting a coup, the one that finally gets him fingerprinted involves paying a porn star hush money so she wouldn’t spill the beans about his having sex with her just four months after his third wife, Melania, had given birth to their son, Barron, and seeing the porn star several more times.

    That one. The tawdry one. The basic, dumb Donald Trump one.

   Perfect.

   Don’t get me wrong, the other stuff is serious. But Trump appears to be constitutionally oblivious to the magnitude of those other crimes. He has displayed no concept of loyalty, patriotism, honor, duty or responsibility, except as others apply those moral concepts towards him. Honesty is a foreign concept.

    But getting arrested because a porn star tried to shake him down and he had his lawyer pay her off to keep her mouth shut so he could steal an election and get to live in the White House? That’s a made-for-TV movie. That, Trump gets. It’s his entire life in a mini-series. Sex. Betrayal. Borrowed money. Lies. It suits him like a tabloid headline.

   Even the, umm, adult film star, Stormy Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford), recognizes the difference between her case and the handful of other investigations involving Trump.

    “It’s vindication,” she said in a recent interview. “But it’s bittersweet. He’s done so much worse that he should have been taken down [for] before.”

     The vindication she claims may refer to her allegation that Trump promised to get her a spot on his hit TV show, “The Apprentice,” because she was “amazing,” and, in true Trump fashion, never delivered. 

      Also to the fact that Trump’s buddy, David Pecker, publisher of The National Enquirer, paid her for her story on Trump and then killed it as a favor to Trump. And that Trump also denies the affair.

     The squashed story and the payoff to Daniels by then Trump lawyer Michael Cohen were intended to keep the story from hurting Trump’s campaign for president in 2016, and are the basis for the case against Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. A campaign finance violation.

   Cohen served a term in the Federal Correctional Facility in Otisville after pleading guilty for his part in the payoff. He’s a key witness against Trump in this case.

    The other grand jury investigations into more serious allegations against Trump, ironically, seem to have more direct lines to proving his guilt than Bragg’s, which is considered to be a difficult case to prove in court.

    But Bragg’s is the first and that makes it important as well as historic. It may well motivate other prosecutors who now don’t need to worry about being the first to bring charges against a former president.

    And it may help Americans pitted against each other get used to seeing the man who promoted and profited from the rift for what he has always been: A cheating, lying, self-serving, hypocrite who always looks for someone else to pay for his crimes.

      Daniels, who could be considered an expert witness, says that at their first sexual encounter in his hotel room in Nevada, she felt compelled to say to Trump, “Please, don’t offer to pay me.”

      She knew tawdry when she saw it.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

 Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.