"Little" Holman Jenkins Jr. (he whose bellowing twaddle dwarfs his actual size), again can't help himself as he bellows in his latest screed (Now Lawfare Engulfs the Fed) that Trump has "justifiable" excuses for being the way he is. "The lawfare can of worms - its opening both repels and entices."
He opens the 'can' thusly:
"The ironies of Donald Trump are never- ending, because Mr. Trump is by nature a reacher and overreacher. Certainly no next president is likely to emulate the norm defilements Mr. Trump is guilty of. Certainly not as likely as Trump himself was to seize on and emulate the norm-breaking of his Democratic enemies."
But, of course, this is arrant twaddle because what Jenkins Jr. terms Dem norm- breaking was in fact holding a deranged demagogue and 'mob boss' president to account. A guy who believed he could flout not just norms but every high crime, from shaking down leaders (like Zelinskyy in Ukraine), to inciting an insurrection (a real one!) on January 6, 2021, after spewing endless lies on how Joe Biden "stole" the 2020 election. All of which were since proven to be poppycock.
But Jenkins Jr's axe to grind goes back even farther to the Mueller investigation of the Russian influence on his 2016 election, rising to the level of conspiracy. There were literally troves of substantiated material in Mueller's (2019) Report:.
www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
Including his indictments of 12 Russian (GRU) agents.
[Read the indictment here.]
Therein Mueller documented over 272 direct contacts - including 40 in person meetings- between Trump campaign team members and Russian-linked individuals including GRU agents. Further, at least 33 high -ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers were fully aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition. This included Trump himself. None of those contacts were reported to the proper authorities.
Then AG William Barr shrunk Mueller's findings to a 4-page memo basically saying "nothing to see here" which was the cue for the pro-Trumpists to squawk ""Hoax!".
But if they had half a brain to use they ought to have asked how, IF this was so, former Air Force officer Reality Winner was incarcerated for 5-plus years under The 1917 Espionage Act for using the internet to leak documents pertaining to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. And this was done in Trump's first term meaning Barr's DOJ already had recognized a factual basis to prosecute Ms.Winner.
That Trump's ties to the Russians extends back decades was already well known even before the release of the Mueller Report. As per an extensive piece in The New Republic (Aug./Sept. 2017, . p. 29):
Flash forward and it's evident past is prologue to the future of Trump's (and Putin's) plans. He even thinks he has a basis for grabbing Greenland by force a la Putin with Ukraine. Hell, as per a Newsweek account yesterday evening, the Kremlin has even said "Trump will go down in history" if he snatches that territory owned by Denmark. See:
Greenland live: Russia says Trump will go down in history
One needn't be a member of Mensa to grasp that Trump wants Greenland not out of any need for "national security" but because Putin knows that a military invasion of Greenland by the United States would mark the end of NATO. This has been Putin's wet dream since day one, getting Trump elected back in 2016. Knowing that Trump would be the most useful pawn or agent to finally demolish NATO. What better pretext that going after another NATO nation's territory?
The United States already has an agreement with Greenland that gives us full access to the island nation for military bases, so why does Trump need to possess it? Because of Putin. It all goes back to Putin and Trump's "hours long" phone calls. The 'master' roars his orders and his doggie jumps to obey. We've seen it time and time again and only the most obtuse or ignorant refuse to see through the jabber.
Even bonehead Holman's own WSJ editors see the prologue, as per their weekend editorial (The Greenland War of 2026 - Trump’s lesson in how to turn U.S. allies into China’s friends). Hence are more aware than Jenkins Jr. of the degree to which Trump is a real Russian apparatchik, noting:
"For more than 75 years, the fondest dream of Russian strategy has been to divide Western Europe from the U.S. and break the NATO alliance. That is now a possibility as President Trump presses his campaign to capture Greenland no matter what the locals or its Denmark owner thinks.
"Mr. Trump on Saturday threatened to impose a 10% tariff starting Feb. 1 on a handful of European countries that have opposed his attempt to obtain U.S. sovereignty over Greenland. The tariff would jump to 25% on June 1. Presumably this tariff would come on top of the rates Mr. Trump already negotiated in trade deals last year (10% for Britain, 15% for the European Union)."
The question is why Jenkins Jr. doesn't get it? Why is he so far up Trump's orange rump that he can't see the light available to everyone else with an IQ over 100?
As a weekend NYTimes piece (Trump’s Greenland threats send a visceral shock through Europe)noted:
"For the past year, Europeans have watched with alarm as Trump has appeared to try to actively tip the scales of the Ukraine war in favor of Russia. They accepted a humiliatingly one-sided trade deal last summer in the hope that doing so might buy leverage with Trump in Ukraine peace talks. They read with alarm a new National Security Strategy that was far more critical of European countries than of Russia and China, and which contained an explicit threat to intervene in domestic politics on behalf of parties that many Europeans consider extremist....Trump’s attempts to annex Greenland threaten to be the greatest geopolitical shock that Europe has faced since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. That was a moment for joyous celebration. The only people celebrating this time will be Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping."
The only rational and logical explanation that explains Trump's actions is that he's a Russian pawn or agent, doing Putin's bidding. Likely because the Russian has a 'pee tape' on him, as first exposed in the Steele Dossier. See e.g.
James Carville: There Is A Pee Tape
Steele Dossier a fake? Think again! As reported in the comprehensive 'Moscow Project": Dossier - The Moscow Project
"Donald Trump’s allies in Congress and in the media have long attempted to use the Steele Dossier to discredit the Russia investigation. It has also been the subject of lawsuits filed by parties named in the document.
However, Steele’s main allegation has proven not just true but prophetic: Months before the FBI even acknowledged the existence of an investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia—even before WikiLeaks began publishing emails stolen from Trump’s opponents by Russian hackers—Steele had numerous sources both within and outside the Russian government confirming the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia.."
The Financial Times in its Feb. 16, 2018 issue, validated Christopher Steele's bona fides as an MI6 agent, noting he was "the UK intelligence expert on Russia". In addition, citing James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, confirming that key sections of the dossier read exactly as reports from the secret services". . The dossier itself was actually several memos, based on conversations with Russian sources, that were written between June and December of 2016.
Never mind. Jenkins, ignorant as ever, babbles near the end of his horse manure:
"Mr. Putin knew before Americans did that the dossier was a fraud."
In fact, Putin knew it was totally accurate especially the section on the origins of the 'pee tape', because "Mr. Putin" organized it as a future kompromat instrument to bend Trump to his wishes. And for evidence just look at the extent to which he has succeeded! Even setting up a special paramilitary 'police' force like Putin has in Russia, while jettisoning all normal relations with Europe making it more vulnerable to Russian incursions.
The recent WSJ piece ('Is The West Over?', Dec. 27-28, p. C1) cleared up the issue of the betrayal of the U.S toward Europe when it was evident from months ago. This after Trump fairly gushed over Putin in his red carpet treatment in their Anchorage meet. From then, serious European statesmen who had built an alliance based on thwarting Russian expansion now realized the jig was up. Traitor Trump was in Putin's pocket and there'd be no turning back. After all Trump had broadcast months earlier how enamored he was of snatching nations like Putin, threatening to grab Greenland and its resources from Denmark.
Why do the perpetual WSJ political hacks like Holman Jenkins Jr. continue to savagely attack or instantly dismiss Uber MI6 spy Christopher Steele and the Steele Dossier - when all are as real as a heart attack?
The reason is obvious: to try to rehabilitate Trump's image (as a damned traitor) before the mid-terms while distracting from the fact this fucker - actually a convicted felon - has violated the Constitution more times than any other president in history. In addition, openly pandering to and serving the Russian dictator Putin, even emulating him. UK Guardian writer Julian Borger has correctly pegged the U.S. invasion and overthrow of Maduro as the "Putinization" of U.S. Foreign Policy, e.g.
The ‘Putinization’ of US foreign policy has arrived in Venezuela | Venezuela | The Guardian
The same 'Putinization' is what has Greenland and Europe on edge, believing Trump might act like Hitler did in 1939 with Poland and try to seize it- repeating his use of force in Venezuela.
The real irony's intention - like Trump always invoking "the weave"- is to misdirect and confuse the media. Who are largely unable to see that Trump is not a normal U.S. president but a foreign implant. He has succeeded by effectively weaponizing language in the service of Putin to divide the nation. Also, his threats remain the primary ongoing engine for "the mob to quickly spiral into a desire for and celebration of conflict - as a means of collective invigoration and purification."
All of this accounts for the right’s descent into this abyss and GOP complicity with it.
It can't possibly just end in 2026, or in 2028, or any other year because Trump voters' "rage quotient" - and stupidity will never subside. Not when one reads, as in the weekend Wall Street Journal, that "59% of blue collar workers remain committed to Trump." So that will these buttbrains think when their medical costs go through the roof thanks to their pal, Dotard? Blame it on the Dems?
Ditto for Trump's invasion of U.S. cities using his paramilitary masked goons. This will has the same exact effect, i.e. of energizing his MAGA mob into renewed celebration of conflict and acts of terror. As Peggy Noonan pointed out in her relatively anodyne weekend WSJ column ('What's New In Trump Two?'):
"Something many Trump supporters won't say: They enjoy the suffering they've caused and not only because they're in charge of the ship now. But because many of Trump's opponents - who dealt out mortification- were comparatively affluent and accomplished. What Trump supporters felt toward them was social and professional envy. Trumpism gave this flaw a new carapace of meaning: a political rationale that lifted it out of pure and eternal human spite."
Wow, Pegs, thanks for making it so clear. So these losers and dolts had a 'refined' reason to enable a Russkie plant debase and defile our own nation as he destroyed democracy while helping his Russian masters take control. With him as their useful idiot and underling, of course.
This is the way weaponization of language via lies works, but Holman doesn't grasp it - perhaps because he himself engages in it. Look no further than his final paragraph:
"You only have to look at who's in the White House now to conclude the biggest beneficiary of these lawfare abuses (like the Russia investigation), turned out to be Mr. Trump himself. Restored to office by the foolishness and corruption of his enemies."
Actually, no. Restored to office by the endless lies, corruption and foolishness of his Reich wing defenders in the reactionary media - like FOX and the Op-ed pages of the WSJ. Columnists like Holman Jenkins Jr. who used their column space to prey on the gullible brains and insecurities of their readers.
The only way it ends is if the lies end, and the only way that happens - so far as any rational person can see - is if Trump is no longer around to spew them so twits and trolls like Jenkins can circulate them. Hence, the renewed calls for his impeachment, or removal under the 25th amendment.
See Also:
by Heather Digby Parton | January 19, 2026 - 6:39am | permalink
A few months after the 2020 election, New York Times reporter Peter Baker and his wife, the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, traveled down to Mar-a-Lago to interview Donald Trump for their book “The Divider.” As Glasser wrote in the New Yorker on Jan. 8, they asked him in passing about his odd desire to take over Greenland, revelations of which had briefly appeared in the press and which they’d also heard about from some of his former staff. Trump told them he’d looked at the map and wondered, “Why don’t we have that?… Look at the size of this, it’s massive, and that should be part of the United States. It’s not different from a real-estate deal. It’s just a little bit larger, to put it mildly.”
It’s been speculated, notably by MSNOW’s Chris Hayes> that Trump was looking at the Mercator Projection map that we probably all remember from our grade school geography textbooks. For a variety of technical reasons, this navigation map distorts the size of the land masses near the poles. But it’s possible that Trump doesn’t know that and instead thinks that Greenland is about the size of the African continent. Greenland is about 25% bigger than Alaska, but it isn’t that big.
And:
And:
And:
And:
by Thom Hartmann | August 14, 2025 - 5:24am | permalink
He says he’s deploying the military to Washington DC because of a “crime emergency,” but armies don’t do policing: Their job, and their training, is to blow things up and kill people.
They have no training in evidence-chain-of-custody, arrest procedures, civil rights protections, criminal investigation, or any other aspect of policing. Sending a militia to do policing is like inviting the neighborhood butcher to perform your brain surgery.
In America, it’s also illegal. Under Posse Comitatus, the American military is explicitly forbidden from engaging in any police activities against civilian populations. Even though the Trump administration is bragging that the National Guard arrested almost 50 people yesterday in DC, the Posse Comitatus Act consists of just one sentence:
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