richard lightner

Dec 20, 20233 min read

New Sheriff in Town- CASSIDY HUTCHINSON

Cassidy Hutchinson. Enough.

Praises Liz Cheney as a true leader. (xii)

Declares Donald Trump “uniquely unsuited” to handle the coronavirus epidemic. “He lacked empathy and was stubborn and impatient.” He appeared “erratic.” (72)

Hutchinson was concerned that Trump would appear to be pressuring local election officials. (191)

Hutchinson’s boss, chief of staff Mark Meadows nevertheless instructed Hutchinson to “put together gift packages for Cobb County election officials and workers, each stuffed full of expensive White House memorabilia. . . . but I managed to talk Mark out of sending them.” (191)

Trump wanted secret service protection for his adult children after he left the White House. Unheard of. (192)

Trump was angry at Meadows for not pursing election challenges. So, Meadows asked Hutchinson to type up a “one-year security memorandum for POTUS to sign . . . that’ll make him happy.” (192)

Before the New Year Hutchinson believed that Meadows “seemed more prepared to embrace a plan for the vice-president to reject states’ electoral votes.” (192)

Nevertheless, as time went on Meadows stated that it appeared that Trump knew he had lost the election but still wanted to try and change the results. (195)

Rudy Giuliani told Cassidy Hutchinson that the march on the capitol on January 6 would be “great. The president is going to be there. He’s going to look powerful.” (196)

Mark Meadows told Hutchinson that “things might get real, real bad on January 6.” (196)

Trump would immediately flip from knowing he lost the election to say “he’s going to stay in office.” (196-197)

Hutchinson did not like the idea of being associated with QAnon Marjorie Taylor Greene. (198)

On January 6 Hutchinson was amazed at the numerous Trump supporters on Capitol Hill. (203)

“For days, our colleagues were blaming Antifa for violence that could break out today. A few days ago, Mark [Meadows] told me the president agreed.” (204)

Because Kayleigh McEnany “gawks at the crowd” someone said “there is no way Biden won.” (208)

Later, another person told Hutchinson, “no way these are our people. This is definitely antifa.” (217) So many of Trump’s aides believed this.

Hutchinson was physically drained and traumatized by the events. (218)

Nevertheless, Hutchinson feels loyalty to Trump. She decides toward with him in Florida. (219)

Secretary of Treasury Mnuchin planned to meet with Mark Meadows about invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitutions which would “remove him [Trump] from power.” (223)

Trump’s antics on January 6 angered Alyssa Farah Griffin. (223)

Hutchinson supported impeachment proceedings against Trump after January 6. (226)

On January 15 the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell said “we can still win.” Hutchinson writes, that Trump didn’t “want this nut around anymore.” People wanted Hutchinson to get Lindell out of the White House. (228)

Lindell planned for Trump to declare martial law. He stated, “No one cares about the president. No one here is loyal to him.” He used profanity and was ordered out by Pat Cipollone. (229)

Hutchinson was told by Mark Meadows that many Trump people considered her a “leaker” and so may not be welcome to Trump’s Florida office. Her fury exploded. (230) She felt lucky to be leaving. (232)

She believed the knives were out for her.

She needed a break even if Trump had been reelected. (240)

“Matt Schlapp formed a “legal defense fund” to “pay attorney fees for people subpoenaed by the January 6th Committee.” (263)

She was concerned that strings would be attached to accepting such aid. (263)

Spoke to a lawyer named Stefan who advised her that it would be all right to say “I don’t recall.” Hutchinson quickly distrusted Stefan. (273)

She studied the Russia investigation testimony to get an idea of how to behave. (275)

She wanted to be “honest and helpful” but that seemed to go against the advice of Stefan. (277)

“I knew my loyalties should have been to the country, to the truth, and not to the former president, who had made himself a threat to both.” (278)

Alyssa Farah Griffin continued expressing her distrust of Trump. (284)

She read All the President’s Men several times and identified with Alexander Butterfield. The two communicated with each other and this gave Hutchinson strength. (285)

Hutchinson was used to Trump’s temper outbursts which shed light on “how his volcanic temper and egotism had lit the match that set his followers’ torches ablaze.” (307)

She writes in capital letters that she “HAD ADORED THE PRESIDENT.” This changed as she saw him and his followers “threatening the country’s constitutional order.” (308)

She felt like she was in prison with all the subpoenas and “turmoil.” (315)

“Trump doesn’t care if you dispute him or call him a liar. Only silence bothers him. Being ignored drives him mad.” (331)

Alyssa Farah Griffin defends Hutchinson in the media. So does Mick Mulvaney.

Commentaires

Different Points of View over the future of Atomic weapons.

During the Afghan War, President Donald Trump (GAG!) authorized a General to use the Mother of all Bombs, a bomb just shy of the power of an atomic bomb, on his own. Notice that this had no positive affect for the US in the outcome of the war. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/asia/moab-mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan.html)

There is a plethora of information about the development and use of the atomic bomb during World War II. Much of the world was astounded that the US used such a bomb on civilians. Others said, drop more.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 9, 1945, “served as the symbolic coronation of American global power.” Nevertheless, the use of the atomic bomb in World War II brought international condemnation. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946-1948, Justice Pal of India cited the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. U.S. President Harry S. Truman responded by publicly saying that the atomic bombs were dropped “in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands of young Americans.” However, President Truman in correspondence with John Foster Dulles that his reasons for dropping the atomic bombs were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the murder of our prisoners of war. “The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

“In the summer and fall of 1945, US atomic policy left us troubled and perplexed. Roosevelt, we thought, had been committed to a policy of international understanding and conciliation. . . . Truman’s policy, however, appeared to have the opposite aim: to keep a monopoly of the atomic bomb in U.S. and British hands, and to use it as a strong trump card in tough political bargaining with the Soviet Union.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xi)

And, well before the bombings FDR and Churchill “rejected steps that might have led to the international control of atomic energy.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

According to nuclear physicist Hans Bethe who worked on the Manhattan Project, “Many of us had been influenced directly or indirectly by Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist. He argued that only international control of nuclear weapons could save the world from a nuclear arms race, and that such a race would imperil, not enhance the security of the United States and Great Britain. Many other scientists, especially at the University of Chicago Metallurgic Laboratory, at the initiative of Leo Szilard, had come independently to the same conclusion.

Martin Sherwin, George Mason University History professor who specialized in the history of nuclear weapons, wrote that, this interpretation by physicists and historian is wrong. Roosevelt decided, with Churchill, “that the bomb should remain and Anglo-American monopoly.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xii)

However, this is not mentioned in Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial, by Robert Jay Lifton and Gregg Mitchell.

KOREA

There are numerous arguments about whether or not the atomic bomb should have been used in Korea, Vietnam, or other existential circumstances.

In late 1950, following their invasion of Korea, Chinese forces surrounded U.S. Marines. “Distraught himself, the chief executive (Truman), told a press conference on November 30 that nuclear bombsight be used against the enemy and seemed to indicate that the decision would be MacArthur’s.” (William Manchester. American Caesar. 608, 610; Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 30)

The U.S. developed the ability fire an “atomic shot from a cannon.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

“In mid-May Ike (President Dwight Eisenhower) told the [American] National Security Council that using nukes in Korea would be cheaper than conventional weaponry, and a few days later the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended launching nuclear attacks against China.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

This is interesting since Eisenhower’s reaction to Hiroshima was, we didn’t have to use that awful thing on them. (Lifton, Robert Jay and Mitchell, Greg. Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial. 1995. 213)

Operation Hudson Harbor - flying lone B-29 bombers over North Korea to simulate a dropping of an atomic bomb. North Korean leaders must have had “steel nerves” as this simulation was eerily similar to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Operation Hudson Harbor concluded that the use of atomic weapons would not be “useful” as it was difficult to identify “large masses of enemy troops.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 157-159)

The United Nations/United States forces faced defeat in Korea but Truman looked strong because he “threatened to use the atom bomb against China.” However, this “made peace talks virtually impossible.” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 213)

Major General Emmett (“Rosy”) O’Donnell, commander of the Far East Air Force’s Bomber Command . . . [stated that] “We have never been permitted to bomb what are the real strategic targets, the enemy’s real sources of supply.” He said that the strategic bombing commanded been “designed to deliver the atomic offensive to the heart of the enemy” and indicated very clearly that he thought the bomb should have been used against the Chinese.”” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 245)

RICHARD NIXON

Richard Barnet, former State Department aide, activist and scholar, who founded the Institute for Policy Studies (Wikipedia) warned “of the danger that the United States government might resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Barnet then cites Vice President Richard Nixon speaking to the Executive Club of Chicago on March 17, 1955 as saying,

“The weapons which were used during the Korean War and World War II are obsolete. Our artillery and our tactical Air Force in the Pacific are now equipped with atomic explosives which can and will be used on military targets with precision and effectiveness.

“It is foolish to talk about the possibility that the weapons which might be used in the event war breaks out in the Pacific would be limited to the conventional Korean and World War II types of explosives. Our forces could not fight an effective war in the Pacific with those types of explosives if they wanted to. Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional and will be used against the military targets of any aggressive force.”

Of course, we are not aggressors by threatening China or invading Vietnam.

VIET NAM

1964 American Republican Presidential candidate Senator Goldwater of Arizona was a reserve Air Force General and “suggested that the United States could isolate the Vietcong in South Vietnam any bombing the supply routes connecting China and North Vietnam.” He also proposed using nuclear weapons “to clear the jungles where the Vietcong were presumably hiding. The public reaction to those notions was one of horrified alarm.” (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 2) It turns out that the United States bombed Southeast Asia the equivalent of many atomic bombs through out the war.

“Although Goldwater was finally persuaded to stop talking about nuclear weapons.”

Although Goldwater’s advocacy of atomic weapons scared people his idea to win the war did not. Johnson portrayed himself as “responsible” as opposed to Goldwater who he implied would get us all killed. (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 9)

Noted military writer Hanson Baldwin believed that the US should use its overwhelming technological power to counter communism even if that meant nuclear weapons. Of course, only for “defensive purposes.” “If we cannot do this, he says, we had better “call it quits.” (Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia. 52)

General Curtis LeMay advocated the use of nuclear weapons to end the conflict with communism once and for all. “We ought to nuke the chinks. . . . We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile.” (Thomas Powers. The War at Home. 40; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Lyndon B. Johnson: the Exercise of Power. 538)

So, there is pretty much agreement that the use of the atom bomb was on the table. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely ignored.

In 1954 the United States “assuming the Chinese Communists intervene would engage in a “highly selective atomic offensive.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 46) However, if the “Chinese Communists do not intervene” then the use of atomic weapons would occur if it would aid the US in the war. (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 47)

McNaughton drafted a “Proposed Course of Action” to McNamara. In his long list of actions McNaughton noted risks. One was the “escalation to the use of nuclear weapons.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 442-445, passim)

Presidential assistant for national security, Walt. W. Rostow, wrote a memorandum on May 6, 1967, analyzing U.S. bombing strategy in Viet Nam. One of his conclusions was “we do not want a nuclear confrontation over Viet Nam.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 585, 588)

New Sheriff in Town- CASSIDY HUTCHINSON

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