Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

By now, it should be abundantly clear that the White House has a leaking problem. Last week, Chief of Staff, Reince Prebus, was ousted from his role in the Trump administration, presumably under suspicion that he had been leaking information about the dysfunctional West Wing, or didn't have the clout to stop other staffers that may be leaking information to the press.

So, every administration has faced similar issues with confidential or unfavorable leaks getting to the press. This isn't something new. What separates the Trump administration with previous administrations are the quantity of the leaks and the level of dysfunction these leaks reveal to the world at large.

As a result, the Justice Department is using more law enforcement resources than ever before in pursuit of the sources that are leaking information to the media.

The question that needs to be asked is - what does it say about the Trump administration, when so many people who are currently working in the West Wing are willing to essentially put their careers on the line to share information to the press about the internal workings of our Executive branch? It is supposed to be the honor of a lifetime to serve in the White House, so what does it say about Trump's leadership when the people who serve at the pleasure of the President decide they cannot remain silent when it comes to their working environment? Or, have these folks simply adapted the attitude of Trump - the "me first, no matter what," self-serving approach to the job? To me, this easily indicates a total lack of leadership, not just from the President, but from all senior level advisors and directors. It's clear that this administration lacks the ability to inspire, on top of what appears to be a total lack of trust in anyone outside of Trump's immediate family...and to be honest, I'm not sure that Trump even trusts his own family at this point, and they certainly shouldn't trust him. This is a guy who would throw anyone under the bus to save his own ass.



What I find interesting is that what made Trump so appealing to a number of voters was his acumen as a business tycoon. He promised to stop bureaucracy and introduce an era of governing with a business attitude. Many people were willing to overlook his failures and reputation as a businessman (multiple bankruptcies, not paying contractors, lawsuits, etc.), paying more attention to how Trump marketed himself. For sure, he is a master of marketing, branding, and talking a good game. Where he continually fails is in the grit of business - making tough decisions, being accountable and taking responsibility, and compromise. For the first time, Donald Trump is working for someone else, the American people. The reason he has been able to get away with a less than stellar business record is because he has only had to answer to himself and a nepotistic board of directors. I can guarantee you that if this administration were a business, with Trump being the CEO, he'd be out of a job already and this business would be in emergency mode. No business would put up with their CEO bashing other directors on social media, or appointing inexperienced people to integral roles, just because they are friends or gave him some money, or create new roles out of thin air and appoint family members to lead on issues they have no experience with. Why are we putting up with this? And will we decide to put up with this again, or will we say enough is enough in 2020 (if he makes it that far...I have my doubts)?

Leaks are neither good or bad...it totally depends on what information is leaked and how it effects domestic and global policy. In fact, the government has even taken steps to protect leakers and make it harder for Justice Department officials to meddle with a reporter's sources. Even when leakers did damage to Barack Obama's administration, his own Attorney General, Eric Holder, knew the importance of protecting the First Amendment. Where we run into danger is when classified information is leaked to unfriendly sources...something that Donald Trump managed to do all by himself back in May, when he revealed sensitive intelligence to Russian diplomats in the Oval Office. And if there's one thing we know about Trump, it's that he has his own hypocritical definitions of fairness and holding people to the same standards, evidenced by the one case of criminal leaking the administration has pursued - the prosecution of contractor Reality Leigh Winner, for leaking a classified intelligence report on Russia's attempt to hack the 2016 election. We know Trump even encouraged WikiLeaks to find damaging information on Hillary Clinton during the campaign. To sum up, Trump wants leaks when it benefits him, but when it reveals his incompetence and inability to be an effective leader, he wants those people prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

And the most recent leak sheds more light on a truth that most of us were already savvy to. As the transcripts of Trump's phone calls with other leaders of the world were made available, it cannot be disputed that our diplomacy across the globe has taken a major hit, due to the gross incompetence of our President. Jorge Guajardo, a long-time foreign diplomat from Mexico, has said of the transcript of Trump's phone call with Mexico's president, "He's the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt. He speaks loudly and carries a small stick. Everyone I've spoken to around the world is laughing." To make matters worse, Trump's phone call with Australian Prime Minister, Malcom Turnbill, was just as bad, providing us with solid proof that Trump is the kind of guy who tends to ignore facts, and is willing to weasel out of previous diplomatic agreements if he thinks it makes him look bad.

The old saying goes "The fish rots from the head." And it's never been more true than now. If Trump wants to find the problem in the White House, he needs to only look in the mirror.

In the meantime, with an administration who invented the term "Alternative Facts," and a President who lies about the littlest things, these insider leaks are more than welcome, as truth has become a rare find.

A Not-So Fine Tuned Machine.

So...did I miss anything in the past couple of weeks while I took a short break?

A lot of stuff is going on, so let's get to it.

As of this morning, President Trump made a major policy announcement - again - via Twitter. He announced that the military can't be burdened with having transgender people serving, essentially reversing action taken by President Obama that allowed openly transgender folk to serve in our military.

The Pentagon isn't even going to try to defend this reverse in policy, and has deferred all questions to the White House. This makes me wonder if there really was a consensus among the top military officials on this decision, or if Trump has been so emboldened by his recent rallies that he felt he needed to appeal to his base, because this definitely has the stench of a purely political move.



Normally, a policy shift such as this one, results in hours of debate and hearings among committees in our Congress, based on years of studies and observations from people serving out in the field. This is how the Obama administration moved forward to reach the decision to allow transgender people to serve, because we once upon a time had a president who actually cared about doing the right thing for the military and for the transgender community. But of course, normal doesn't exist anymore. So, what we're left with is a political decision made by a man who didn't even serve in the military because he received deferments for bone spurs. This so-called Commander in Chief who once said that he would be the best ally for the LGBT community, doesn't actually care about the 11,000 plus service members who have no idea what is going to happen to their lives and careers right now.

One of the first defenses of this horrible policy is that it just costs the military too much. Well...that's bullshit. The Rand Corporation estimated in 2016 that the cost of medical services for transgender service members would be $8.4 million dollars. In 2014, the military spent $84 million on erectile dysfunction medication. Medical services for transgender soldiers makes up less than 1% of the military's budget. So again...BULLSHIT!

And all of this is because Trump's feet are being held to the fire and he's scared. This political move is a result of Trump being afraid that he's not going to get his promised border wall. On the one hand, he doesn't care about his campaign promise to be the best ally to the LGBT community that ever existed, if it means he won't get to build the wall he so desperately wants. He will literally do anything to rally that base of his beloved Deplorables whenever he feels threatened...saving his own skin is actually the most important policy to him, no matter the cost. He spends so much time obsessing about President Obama and Hillary Clinton that he doesn't care at all about how this will effect the lives of the people who have the courage to volunteer to serve in our military...something he never had the guts to do.





In other news, last night the Senate tried to jam through a major health care bill and failed horrendously, just hours after voting to move forward with procedure and debate. The vote on the Better Care Reconciliation Act was 43-57, with nine Republicans breaking from their party to vote no on the bill. Even though Mitch McConnell enjoyed a small moment of victory - if you can even call it that, since VP Mike Pence had to be brought in to break the tie - it is unlikely that McConnell will get the big win he is looking for before the next recess.

So, we have the Republicans who have spent the past several years symbolically voting to repeal the ACA, who have campaigned heavily on this action ever since the ACA became law, and now, even though they have majority rule, are unable to actually get anything done. The Republicans are showing that they are unable to govern, even when they are given every single advantage possible. And what this means is what we have known for a long time - that the Republicans do not actually represent the views of their constituents and serve the people. They serve their donors and lobbyists.


And finally, to introduce a new segment I'm going to tentatively call "Oh, that's soooo rich," -



Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is going to take some time off, because he's just absolutely exhausted from doing his job. This month, he's spent time in Germany, Ukraine, Kuwait, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia . He's apparently been incredibly surprised at how hard this job can be and frustrated that he doesn't get to be the ultimate decision maker on foreign policy that effects the whole world. Rumors are also circulating that Tillerson didn't have the warm and fuzzy feelings towards Trump after the President's make-shift political rally at the Boy Scout Jamboree, as Tillerson was an Eagle Scout and was once the national president of the organization.
So, what was all that talk about Hillary Clinton having no stamina? I'd love to hear how Tillerson really feels towards Trump, his boss, who contradicts Tillerson all the time, and then sends him in to clean up the diplomatic messes Trump makes on a daily basis. The common theme here is that Trump is the absolute worst boss, ever.

Independent.

I'm going to take the opportunity on this 4th of July to talk about women, and I'm going to do just that, but first, I wanted to take a step back and do a little PSA on how I will cover Donald Trump from this point forward:



It has become increasingly clear that our President is a vulgar human being, who uses social media not as a platform to talk about issues or to try and make a positive impact on the world, but instead, uses it like a cowardly internet troll. And while I think there is a time and a place to call out his insanity and instability, his wrong doing and inappropriateness, I do not want to be distracted by his circus act while important things are going on. And whether or not the GOP intended for this to be their strategy - to work on unpopular legislation while everyone is looking the other way - I am going to keep my eye on the ball. It's easy to get caught up in the words of a madman, but it's the actions of his handlers and enablers that I am going to do my best to stay focused on. I encourage us all to buckle down and get more involved in understanding the actions and legislation coming from this administration & the legislative branch.

Back to the issues at hand...

A woman named Bethany Kozma has been appointed to the office of Gender Equality & Women's Empowerment. Some fun little facts about Ms. Kozma - she held a position in the George W. Bush administration, but has spent the last several years raising a family and opposing equal rights for the LGBT community, especially the T (transgender) folks. Just last year, Kozma wrote a piece for a publication arm of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative political organization focused on those poor, mistreated American Christians (I hope you can hear the sarcasm), in which she called for them to rise up against the Obama administration's guidance to public schools in allowing transgender students to use the restroom of the gender the students identify with. Rousing that unfounded fear tactic that children will be sexually assaulted by a transgender person, Kozma asserted that her own children were at risk and encouraged the Christian Right to go to battle over where people go the bathroom. That's right...this lady will now be at the table for the US Agency for International Development. Because if there's one important issue the US can teach the world, it's to care too much about where people go to the restroom.



In a somewhat opposite, but equally interesting move by the administration, the White House is trying to determine whether or not to keep the Council for Women & Girls. Of course, this probably shouldn't be incredibly surprising. The George W. Bush administration disbanded a similar council started under the Bill Clinton administration, so it only makes sense that the new Republican president would hit the undo button on literally anything the previous Democratic president did. We obviously know that our current president has an acute issue when it comes to women, plus we have a vice president who refuses to even meet alone with women, so that he can retain his religious sanctimony.



Despite the fact that we apparently have a administration full of powerful women, who seem to care about women's issues such as equality, the pay-gap, family leave, and STEM education when it is politically convenient (I can admit they are powerful and ambitious, even though they are either brainwashed or self-loathing), and a First Lady who has yet to do anything impactful, the administration can't seem to realize that keeping this council would be an easy slam dunk. Instead, they are so repulsed by any Obama legacy positions that they just let them die, instead of seeing how it could actually help their cause or help them gain points. I miss Michelle Obama more than ever, and miss the positive influence she had in the lives of all of our children, especially our young women. I don't think the 3rd Mrs. Trump can hold a candle to her, and she's certainly not a figure I would even want a child to look up to.

So, while the current voices in power seem to want to hush up the women, quite literally, I want to share the stories of some women who should be celebrated on this Day of Independence:

• Deborah Samson - a young woman in her 20's, who had been freed from indentured servitude, joined the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment disguised as a man named Robert Shurtlieff. Samson was wounded numerous times and refused medical treatment, fearing her identity would be discovered. When she fell ill from a sickness she contracted at camp, a doctor discovered her identity. She was not allowed to remain in the Army, but was given an Honorable Discharge, and later fought to get back pay and pension from the Army. She is now officially the Massachusetts State Heroine.
• Sybil Ludington - the 16 year old daughter of Colonel Henry Ludington, who rode a 40 mile circuit to awaken a militia to warn them of the British army.
• Lydia Darragh - a Quaker woman who played double agent. She allowed her home to become a gathering location for British soldiers, then she passed along British information to the spy network of George Washington. Darragh sewed messages into button covers and other locations. When she passed along British plans for attack, she likely saved hundreds of soldiers. 
• Margaret Corbin - wife of a soldier who handled cannon ammunition, Corbin often assisted her husband. During battle, when the soldier firing the cannon had been hit, her husband took over firing the cannon. Her husband was killed, and Margaret stepped up and manned the cannon herself, until she was horribly wounded from opposition fire. 

If you want to read more stories of heroic women who played incredible roles in the Revolutionary War, check out this article from Mental Floss. 

We Should Have Known.

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." - Maya Angelou

One of the truly remarkable things that the Trump administration will likely be remembered for is President Trump's ability to step on his own toes & shift the focus from getting substantial work done to his inability to not be a petty, 71 year old narcissist with a Twitter account.



I suppose it could be said that what was supposed to be a week focused on technology was not an entire failure. After all, Trump used his favorite piece of technology to help him achieve the role of schoolyard bully as he took aim at talk show co-host, Mika Brzezinski, this week for simply doing her job.

So, here we are again, unable to talk about policy, health care, the fact that the White House literally just asked all the states to hand over their voter rolls to a guy who is infamous for wanting to enact huge vote-suppression tactics, or major world events, because our president is behaving like a child...again.

I'm honestly not sure why anyone is surprised at Trump's behavior. We know this is who he is. This is the way he has always been. He's done this so many times before. I don't understand why people thought the office of President would change him for the better, since he's given us every indication that he's only interested in the position for the fame and to further promote the Trump brand. I can't believe that people are more outraged at this behavior than from the Access Hollywood tape where Trump brags about how he can't control himself around women and just grabs them.


The thing that should have disqualified Trump from being president still exists and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It's his temperament. Who he is as a person turns out to be exactly who he is, and it's a rich, privileged, ridiculous old white guy, with a penchant for all things tacky, who thinks he can do whatever he wants because of his money and name, can dish out insults, but can't take them (especially if they come from women).

You guys, if a shitty person runs for president and wins, it should be no surprise when we're stuck with a shitty president.



It's no surprise when our collective intelligence and standing in the world drops like a rotten floor under the weight of a man with such a fragile sense of self.

It's not that we should be shocked that is Donald Trump. We should be shocked that there is a portion of our population that believed that he would make a good president.

For people of faith who voted for Trump, or for Trump supporters who are women, or have daughters or any women at all in their lives...how in the world do you excuse yourself for picking this man? How is this the leader that you look up to, or expect to lead us in the world? How are you ok with this? How did you not see that this is the man you picked, when he has shown you who he truly is the whole time?

People were outraged at Kathy Griffin for her photo stunt of posing with a decapitated head that resembled Trump. People thought it crossed a line, were concerned about Trump's children, particularly his young son, that could have seen the photo, and Griffin was fired from a New Year's Eve hosting gig with CNN and has had performances cancelled across the country. When she did something that crossed the line, there were immediate consequences. And she's just a comedian. She's not the mayor of a town, she doesn't hold public office, or is someone who is seen as a leader of our country. Trump even used his young son as a sort of human shield when this happened, expressing concern for what his 11 year old son might have seen, though, instead of spending time with his son after this horrible thing happened, Trump spent the following weekend golfing.

I wonder what Trump's son thinks about the way his dad cyber-bullies people who criticize him? What does this young man believe is the best way to respond to people who disagree with his dad? I wonder what he thinks is okay to say or do to a woman? I mean, if we're worried about what he is exposed to, the kid is exposed to his dad, and that is worrisome enough, given that his dad admitted he has no control of himself around beautiful women.

What about Mika's daughters? What about the children of every person Trump has called names, insulted, or just flat out lied about? When Trump spent the first few years of the Obama presidency proclaiming that our then-president wasn't even an American, did he spare any thought at all for Sasha & Malia, who were actually younger at the time than Barron Trump is now? When Trump cracked assassination jokes about Hilary Clinton, did he think at all about her grandchildren?

I almost can't even with women like Sarah Huckabee Sanders and KellyAnne Conway going on television to defend what the president did. Conway now works for a guy she knows lacks the mental capacity to be president...she said as much in an interview on CNN when she worked for Ted Cruz, whose wife was another victim of Trump's childish insults during the campaign.

And Sarah Huckabee Sanders?!? The daughter of Mike Huckabee, the Christian minister-turned politician, defended Trump's insults by saying that America chose a man who will fight back when he is attacked.
So, we should just forget all about that time that Jesus said that we should turn the other cheek?
We should forget that every single president had to endure being attacked every day, because it comes with the territory.




We hold female comedians to a higher standard than we hold the current President of the United States to.
That is so messed up.

We are heading towards a 4th of July week where I am so ashamed of our country and this president, that I don't feel much like celebrating us.

I think we all need to think about the wisdom of Maya Angelou and realize that we know who our president is...and we need to rethink why we are here and how we can get out of this hole we've dug ourselves into.

Why Resources Matter.

I'm still trying to make sense of my experience in Bible college. There are days when I'm overwhelmed and angry with myself for paying so much money and spending so much of my time to get an education that will literally get me no where...unless you hear of a progressive church willing to hire a gay lady for a pastor, then please send me the deets.

But there are days when I feel really proud of the knowledge I gained during that time, and I feel grateful to the few professors who took academia very seriously, even to the point that the passing of their knowledge could have been misconstrued by the university as heresy or subversive.



If I had to pick one lesson, one idea that has been the most valuable during my collegiate studies and now, in the post-college world, it would be the simple, two-word lesson I learned during a class called Bible Study Methods:

Resources matter.

I know that from our earliest experiences in school, we're taught to go to the school library, look for all of the books that pertain to whatever subject we're writing a paper for, create a bibliography, and gather all of the information possible in our tiny little world. This was before the internet. And just to highlight how far technology has come over just in the past ten years, I'll tell you that when I was finishing up my undergrad degree in 2007, most of my professors still felt hesitant in letting students use Internet sources...I almost guarantee they cannot do that now.



When I was young and did a science project on the genetic disease neurofibromatosis, all I had to do was find any resource with any amount of information on the subject. Gathering information was the easy part of doing the report. I never had to worry that someone who knew very little about the disease or that someone who had some strange idea that the disease was fake, would have published a book about the disease in an attempt to mislead the public or push their own crazy ideas about the disease. I didn't have to consider the source.

Years later, in those 100 level classes that were designed to teach me about how to effectively study the Bible and do the hard work of exegesis and theological study, my professor made it clear that not every source was valid, and that some sources, though they might still be considered academic in nature, would potentially have a slanted view not suited for objective, fact-based study. This has always been an issue when it comes to Biblical study and the interpretation of religious sources. Now, throw in the Internet and people who could self-publish their works, who managed to later sell their work to publishing companies who were owned by people with a particular worldview and may or may not be high level donors in the political world, and it became necessary to look at every source critically.

We have a President who has actively called the press the enemy and calls every news outlet, save for one that resembles a propaganda machine, "Fake News." We've seen the fallout in recent days as three CNN reporters resigned after the news corporation had to pull a story about a Trump associate, after it was discovered that the published story did not meet CNN's usual standards of reporting. Within days of Trump taking office, we saw Sean Spicer perform his first of what has now been become hundreds of lies, as he peddled the whopper of a lie that the crowd at the inauguration of President Trump was the largest crowd for any presidential inauguration, ever. When that lie was obviously questioned and proven to be untrue, KellyAnne Conway coined the now-famous term for lie: Alternative Facts.



In fact, just yesterday, Sara Huckabee Sanders went on a tangent about how unfair the media is to Mr. Trump and went on a Sean Spicer-inspired tirade about fake news and false reporting...then encouraged everyone to watch a video in which she could not verify the footage to be real. Spoiler: the video she asked everyone to watch was a video made by James O'Keefe, the guy who appears to record secret "gotcha" videos, then heavily edits them to fit a particular political narrative. He's been arrested for trespassing, has had to issue multiple public apologies for purposefully misleading the public through doctoring "undercover" videos, and has had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements where he secretly recorded people, edited the footage to promote a false narrative, then publicly release such videos. I mean, he is the personification of Fake News, and the White House press office just peddled his newest video while calling other news outlets fake. Probably doesn't hurt that the Trump Foundation donated $10,000 towards the project that Sanders promoted from the podium, yesterday.



These are just a few instances where the lesson we need to walk away with is that resources matter. There are literally hundreds of other lies being told from the White House daily, from the President, from his surrogates, and from media outlets with a vested interest in representing the administration in a certain light.

This can be no more apparent than the interview that Trump gave to Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt, when she asked about President Trump revealing that he had no tapes of his conversation with Jim Comey. On camera, Trump goes into his usual word salad response that Earhardt interprets as that by implying that he might have had tapes of his conversation with Comey, that forced the ousted FBI Director to suddenly change his story and tell the truth. When Trump finishes rambling, she says, "That was a smart way to make sure he stayed honest in those hearings."

Wow. No wonder Fox News recently dropped their slogan "Fair & Balanced."



This is not journalism. This is not even someone pretending to be a journalist. This is propaganda from an outlet that is barely covering the news of the day, because the news of the day is that our President and his team lie, get caught about lying, and may have broken some laws and committed treason. If you can stomach watching Fox News for any amount of time, you'll find that you'll get very little news or information. Perhaps this is why Fox is losing viewers and has lost their place of dominance in the ratings. 

I'm not being totally naive here, either. I know that all of the news channels are slanted a bit in one way or another, politically speaking. I get that. But other news channels pale in comparison to Fox's blatant attempt to worship Trump, just so they might get mentioned in one of his tweets or get an exclusive interview so Trump can talk about himself and get softballs lobbed at him.

There is one journalist doing truly incredible work right now, and she has been for some time...and it's good to see her finally getting the viewership and accolades she deserves. Yes, my friends, I know some of you have been trained to hate anyone or anything that comes from the MSNBC machine, or have been exposed to too much Rush, Glenn Beck, InfoWars, and Fox News to know what real journalism looks like, but you need to just be a grown up now and accept that there is only one journalist right now that makes everyone else look like hacks. Rachel Maddow, who graduated from Stanford University with a degree in public policy and received a doctorate degree in political science from Oxford University, where she attended as a Rhodes Scholar. Her education background alone gives her far more credibility than other journalists. The fact that she's never lost a job due to sexual harassment helps, or has never been arrested for prescription drug fraud, and actually made it through college (Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity both dropped out, as well as Rush Limbaugh) should make you wonder why she is just now getting the accolades she deserves, and why these other guys have gotten away with pretending to know what in the world they are talking about for so long. 

Some time ago, the very conservative mother of one of my dearest friends, asked me why education was so important in journalism. She said that sometimes the most educated are the least open minded people. And maybe she has personal experiences to back up that claim. But here's what I can tell you (and it's how I felt when Trump promoted himself as a political outsider): I don't want someone who dropped out of medical school to perform appendectomies, I don't want a pilot who didn't complete hours of flight training to fly planes, and I don't trust that someone who couldn't even make it through college to be able to accurately report the news and give the public the nuanced details of policy and government operation. I certainly don't trust a guy who has used bankruptcy and shady financial dealings for his own benefit to run our economy. I want leadership and integrity in journalism...and in my president, for that matter. 



Resources matter. And that's why I will shamelessly promote Rachel Maddow. She is killing it right now and you would do yourself a great favor to tune in to her every night to see what she is reporting on. You have to pay attention and care about the details, just as my professors in Bible college instructed me to do. And you don't have to agree with every single thing and viewpoint she might have, but you will get details, resources, and history you will not get any where else. 

Tune in, for the love of all that matters!



Please visit my Resources page to see what books, blogs, podcasts, & other media I regularly reference and recommend. And please feel free to share your recommendations that you've discovered, as well!

And one more thing...big shout out and all caps THANK YOU to Brian Karem, who courageously stood up to the White House Press Office, yesterday. We need more like, you, Mr. Karem. 

Bluffer In Chief

Well, we've received the answer that so many of us have been looking for over the past several weeks. On May 12, President Trump (is it weird that I still get a little sick typing that?) tweeted that "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Since then, we've all been on pins and needles, wondering when those "tapes" might be released. We assumed that tapes must exist, because who on Earth would say something like that if there weren't tapes? Who would bluff about such a thing, or lie about something that could be so easily discovered to be untrue?

That's right, folks. Only one man could do such a thing, and he is our President.

Mr. Trump revealed today, on Twitter, that he, in fact, did not make or possess any such recordings of his conversations with the ousted FBI director.

He lied. Reporters and the White House press office can call it bluffing or whatever they'd like, but the bottom line is that the President of the United States lied to the public when he threatened Comey via a social media platform (how's that anti cyber bullying campaign coming along, Melania? Oh, right...she hasn't even tried to create one, yet)

Right now, Americans are worried about what is going to happen to their health care. An American family is dealing with the death of their son, who was imprisoned in North Korea. Several Navy families are mourning the deaths of their loved ones who were killed in a collision with a merchant vessel off the coast of Japan. Tropical Storm Cindy has made landfall and we don't even have a FEMA director, because Trump has filled less than 5% of the positions needed to ensure that our government agencies are functioning on the most basic level. We're not talking about how easily the mentally disturbed can get guns (thanks, Republicans!), when a shooting nearly took the life of Congressman Steve Scalise at the Congressional Baseball game last week.

Instead, Mr. Trump spends his days keeping up on his TiVo, tweeting nonsense about himself, and likes to ask his cabinet members to go around the room and say nice things about him.

He cares nothing about the American people. He is only drawn to issues when it gives him a political advantage or makes him look good. He's so obsessed with himself that he can't do anything other than tweet about the "witch hunt" of the Russia investigation. He spends one minute talking about how we need to get to the bottom of what took place when Russia hacked our 2016 election, then spends the next minute talking about how the whole thing is a hoax. He is the highest representation of what is wrong with America - the cartoon version incarnate of why we are no longer the Leaders of the Free World.

We are dealing with a man so insecure and so bad at his job that Paul Ryan has to make excuses for him by saying "He's new at this," as if Mr. Trump had no idea what job he was applying for when he decided to run for office. Isn't every president new to the job? Isn't this why the final two presidential candidates receive intelligence briefings, or why presidential transition teams are put in place - to ensure the peaceful and smooth transition of power from one administration to the next? When the public voiced concerns that Trump neither had the knowledge or temperament suitable to the role of Chief Executive, why didn't Paul Ryan speak up? I mean, Trump himself boasted of having more knowledge than our generals - that didn't raise any red flags to the Republican establishment?

I wasn't sure that Trump could top the offensiveness of essentially not apologizing for comments about how and where he likes to grab women, but I have to say that I am now more repulsed that this is our new normal - a "dotty old racist in decline" (thank you, Jon Lovett & Pod Save America) that can't be bothered to run the country because his handlers allow him too much screen time when he's not busy golfing. I'm repulsed & you should be, too, that the White House press office regularly lies or provides no answers to the public, and is now restricting audio and video recordings of press briefings. We are now on the slippery slope we've been warned of for years.

This is not okay, my friends. We cannot let our most cherished institution be bankrupted by a man who loves bankruptcy. We cannot sit idly by while Republicans in the House and Senate seek to undermine our oldest social safety nets so that they can please their big name donors.

We cannot let the worst bluffer in history sabotage our most basic rights.

Stand up. For the first time in your life, make that phone call to your representatives, whether they are Republican or Democrat. Pay attention to the news. Go to a town hall. Use your right to peaceably assemble and protest when you need your voice to be heard. Participation is the heart and soul of democracy.

Let's call his bluff.

This is the Real You, Church.

Since the election of Donald Trump as our 45th President, I've noticed an interesting shift among some of my friends and acquaintances from my "Church Days."

After Donald Trump spent his first week in office, signing Executive Orders/Memos/Actions, failing in what should have been some of the easier tests of his ability to be a diplomatic leader, embedding his Neo-Nazi strategist into the NSC, set up one of the most racist pieces of policy in our modern history, and basically just pissing everyone off (even those who voted for him), I was a bit shocked to hear some of my Evangelical friends say things that basically said "This is not who we are."

I have to admit that I was impressed that they so quickly realized that Trump, who secured the Evangelical vote in one of the most impressive cons in the history of our elections, was not the representative of their faith or values in the way that many of them enthusiastically insisted throughout the election. My friends from Bible college were very quick to dismiss Trump after he named Somalia in his immigration ban, as our college is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in one of the largest Somalian neighborhoods in the city. We all interacted with our Somali neighbors every day, participated in community projects with them, were customers in their stores, cafes, and restaurants, mentored their children, helped them learn to speak English, played soccer with their kids in Elliot Park. They were and continue to be our neighbors, our friends, and are an important part in the community. We know them, and they know us.

My friends seemed to be shocked that Trump was capable of placing Somalia on the list of countries that were a part of his immigration ban. After all, we know some of these people personally. They don't match the Trump/Bannon ideology of what makes a terrorist. And because of this personal connection, my friends suddenly found themselves capable of speaking up to say "This isn't right. This isn't who we are."
For a moment, I felt proud of them. For a moment. Then, I felt the all-too-common, gut-wrenching feeling I've had about the intersection of Evangelicalism and politics that seems to haunt so much of my experience in the church. The feeling that makes me respond "No, this is exactly who you are."

I was reminded of the time when I was working at the church I grew up in, during the 2008 election, when the youth pastor walked into the office and exclaimed "Anyone on this staff who votes for Obama should be fired!" Or the numerous times I heard another pastor refer to one of our young Hispanic volunteers as a "Wet Back."
Or the time I opened up my email from the office manager of the church to find a racist political cartoon, depicting Barack Obama as a slave.
Or when I walked in to the breakroom in the church office to find a picture of Sarah Palin taped to the refrigerator with a note that said "This is what a woman of God looks like."
Or at the first staff meeting after the 2008 election, when a staff member was genuinely concerned that Barack Obama was the Antichrist, and how she hoped for his failure, only to be outdone by the maintenance workers who volunteered to go to the inauguration with their hunting rifles and take him out.
And then, you know, there was that time when I was asked to resign from the church because the same youth pastor mentioned above had suspicion that I was gay, and their defense for asking me to leave was that I posed a threat to the children (because all gay people are pedophiles in their eyes).

This is who you are, Church.

So, in walks Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for President. A man who previously identified as pro-choice, has been seen as a philanderer, a failure as a businessman for his multiple bankruptcy filings, a Hollywood elitist, a reality television show host, and personal friend of the Clintons. But in history's greatest con, he managed to still be exactly that guy, and yet convince Evangelicals and other people of faith that he is a new man, a devout Christian with strong morals. He was now pro-life, wanted to punish women who had abortions, and suddenly stood for everything the Conservative Right has stood for. He even managed to get quite a few well-known pastors and faith leaders to vouch for him. Of course, these were the typical types you would expect to endorse a guy like Trump...the kind of pastors that believe in Prosperity Gospel, have multi-million dollar homes and book deals, are more media mogul than shepherd of a flock.
And they fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. And no matter how many times Trump showed his true self...by making fun of a disabled reporter, getting caught bragging about how and where he likes to grab women, the amount of women who came forward to talk about how he assaulted them, showed his lack of humility by saying he knew more than the generals, encouraged violence at his rallies, the list literally goes on and on...and yet, Evangelicals insisted this was the "Man of God" they needed in the White House. The litmus test was no longer "Does this man exemplify the Fruits of the Spirit," but became "Can this guy give us what we want, no matter the cost?"

This is who you are, Church. You either fell for the biggest con of all time, or sold your soul for a few silver pieces of legislative promises that violate the Constitution.

And none of that mattered, until it impacted you on a personal level. Until you knew someone being detained at an airport, or being sent back to the horrors of war and genocide.

It's a new form of selfishness, Church. And it's who you have been, since trading the command to follow Christ for the promise of notoriety and prosperity, for the promise of a creating a culture of false righteousness instead of a culture of love.

This is who you are, Church. You are no longer a reflection of Christ, but a reflection of Donald Trump.