Donald Trump and his family have always been grifters, as should have been obvious to sentient being, and yet he managed to persuade large numbers of conservative voters that he should be president. So it should be no surprise that his presidency is just filled with grifters, from his family members to his cabinet members to other people in the administration. But his conservative base seems to be remaining devoted to him and because of that devotion, seem to be willing to overlook grifting or not even be aware that grifting is going on.
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I had never heard about Dominic Cummings and the pivotal role he had played as the chief strategist in the Leave campaign on Brexit until I saw the film Brexit that starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Cummins that I reviewed here. Cummings was instrumental in using micro-targeting of voters and promoting the nationalistic idea that the UK had thrown away its sovereignty by joining the EU and that it was time to take back control. He also promoted the lie that the UK was sending 350 millions pounds to the EU every week and by leaving they could us all that money for the much-beloved National Health Service.
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The Democratic party leadership has a lot more in common with Republicans and the Trump administration than it has with its own base and hence it should not come as a surprise that it finds ways to maneuver against policies that its supporters want but goes against the interests of the ruling classes. This struggle has come into the open as progressives are launching primary challenges against veteran Democratic lawmakers and the latter scramble to find ways to defend their penchant to ally with Republicans tio undermine the progressive agenda.
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Tomorrow special counsel Robert Mueller will be testifying before congress and there is intense speculation about what he might say. You can bet that the Democrats will be trying to get him to imply that Russian meddling in 2016 helped elect Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.

I think that we can all agree that it is wrong for one nation to meddle in the elections of another nation in order to sway it in favor of someone they feel will be of benefit to them. But what is problematic is the way that Americans sanctimoniously condemn such actions when other nations do it to them but think it is perfectly fine when the US does the same thing, and worse, to other nations.

Mehdi Hasan provides a brief history of the utterly egregious meddling that the US has done in other countries (including Russia) that go well beyond email hacks and Facebook fake news that the Russians are accused of doing. And of course that does not even include things like sponsoring coups, assassinating other countries’ leaders, and actual invasions.