Trump atrocities – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Tell Truth to Lies.

David Posnett — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:40:35 +0000

By James Ewing

On Wednesday Jan 6, 121 members of the US House of representatives rejected the election results from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada.

138 House members rejected the results from Pennsylvania.

Authorities have called this election the most secure in our history. No results, none, were challenged within states themselves. No meaningful fraud was detected anywhere, by any judiciary, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

And yet these elected GOP officials, “leaders” as they are called, chose to oppose the results anyway.

Our representative Lee Zeldin, was among those opposing the results of all contested states.

I have no doubt that the majority, if not all of these representatives, knew the election results were accurate. I assume their objections were based upon narrow ambitious calculations tying their fortunes to the deranged, personality cult of one very damaged man, Donald Trump.

We generally presume that our elected leaders have reliable information and act reasonably on what they know. We depend on our leaders to keep us informed, help us understand what is going on in their respective realms of authority. Leadership is defined as “an act or instance of leading; guidance; direction, the position or function of a leader, a person who guides or directs a group”.

Ideally, If we are to be governed wisely and well our leaders must tell us the truth, speak truth to lies, without posturing with what they think we want to hear. In 1868, a New York Democrat declared “if a man is ignorant, he needs the ballot for his protection all the more”. For our protection we need our leaders to be truthful. Rather than leading with truth, Lee Zeldin, along with his nefarious GOP congressional cohorts, have spoken lies to truth. By endorsing the lies of election fraud and thereby telling supporters that they actually had a chance to overturn this past election, Zeldin has utterly failed his leadership responsibilities. He has inflamed inane conspiracy theories and false accusations. And finally, last week, by thoughtless, senseless opposition to these many valid state election results, he almost certainly encouraged an actual insurrection with deadly violence done to our precious, fragile, and now stunned constitutional representative democracy.

Lee Zeldin can no longer claim to legitimately represent our constitutional democracy nor serve the good people of our CD1 district. He has lost the credibility, respect, and basic trust a real leader deserves. He should resign immediately from his position.

He and his various colleagues in opposition are now probably even liable for the federal crime of sedition—“conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of a state; incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government”.

What side of history is Rep. Zeldin on?

David Posnett — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:48:13 +0000

Reprinted in it’s entirety!

05.23.2021 Editorials Editorial: What side of history is Rep. Zeldin on?
By The Suffolk Times

Protesters outside Lee Zeldin’s Patchogue office in January. (Credit: Joe Werkmeister)

As we have watched events unfold in the nation’s Capitol, and followed our congressman’s role in these events, we’ve been reminded of something Ronald Reagan said when he was governor of California in 1967: “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”
Powerful words. What he meant is that a generation can come along, even two and a half centuries after the ratification of the Constitution, and throw it all away. Not all at once, but through small steps and then much bigger steps, until the most fundamental of constitutional principles — the rule of law — is thrown aside in favor of rule by authoritarian means.
On Jan. 6, a ferocious mob, urged on by outgoing President Donald Trump, attacked the Capitol — destroying property, beating up police officers, hunting down representatives they hated, setting up a hangman’s noose outside and doing its best to disrupt the constitutional process of counting the electoral votes that gave the election to President Joe Biden.
The House of Representatives impeached Trump for the incitement — his second impeachment in four years. One Republican who supported impeachment was Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming). She said Trump lit the fuse that started the riot; she also said he lied every time he told his followers he really won the election and that his victory had been stolen.
Since then some of Trump’s more unhinged followers have downplayed the riot, saying it wasn’t all that bad. Some Republicans continued to insist that Trump really won the election. One particularly off-the-wall Republican described Jan. 6 as a typical tourist day. It’s hard to fathom that magnitude of lying by an elected official.
Now the House is moving toward a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate the events of that day. Ms. Cheney, who was voted out of her leadership position by her GOP colleagues, said she supports the commission, in particular its ability to subpoena witnesses. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Trump loyalist, is against it.
On these two critical issues — the ousting of Ms. Cheney for her lack of support for Trump and the forming of the commission — Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) has come down on the wrong side.
As for Ms. Cheney’s demotion, Mr. Zeldin said in an email through his spokesman that he favored her replacement, upstate Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik. “Unlike the false narrative being pushed about what this is all about, the biggest reason why a change needs to be made is that when you are the conference chair it’s especially never all about you. That is not the situation faced presently with Cheney in that role,” he wrote.
On the formation of a commission to investigate events of Jan. 6, he said: “An overwhelming majority of Republicans have condemned the violence at the Capitol on January 6, bipartisan investigations are already underway in several committees, the Department of Justice has made more than 400 arrests connected to January 6, with more to come, and the Architect of the Capitol is reviewing ways to improve security and eliminate vulnerabilities within the Capitol complex.
“The duties of the proposed commission are already being carried out, but Speaker Pelosi wants to politicize this issue and distract from her party’s disastrous policies that are depressing the workforce and slowing economic growth.”
America needs to know exactly what happened that day, who supported it and which elected officials may have encouraged and supported this horrific attack on our democracy. A commission — if the House and Senate approve it — can provide the answers. It is also disturbing that Ms. Cheney, a conservative Republican, was tossed from her leadership post for calling out those who deny the Biden victory and for warning that a democracy cannot last long if its leaders lie.
In Gov. Reagan’s 1967 speech, he went on to say this about freedom: “It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”
Those who respect the Constitution and the rule of law must win this struggle.

Trump: the worst president in the history of the United States

David Posnett — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 23:42:13 +0000

Author Karl Grossman

Reprinted from The Times of Israel

By Karl Grossman

About the Author Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury who has specialized in investigative reporting for 45 years. He is the host of the TV program “Enviro Close-Up,” the writer and presenter of numerous TV documentaries and the author of six books.

The impeachment of Donald Trump — the first president of the United States to be impeached twice — is fitting for the worst president in the history of the U.S.

The attack by his supporters on the Capitol in Washington, D.C. — lawless, an attack on democracy, a U.S. counterpart of the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s.

It was a horror representative of his tenure.

As stated in the resolution titled “Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” he “incited violence” against the government of the United States.” It noted that at a rally of Trump supporters before the insurrection, “he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it in a landslide,’” and “encouraged …lawless action at the Capitol.” And this “followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call…during which…Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffenberger, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffenberger if he failed to do so.”

“In all this,” the resolution continued, Trump “threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power…”

Trump, “by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.”

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, among the most respected publications in the U.S., wrote immediately after the election of 2016 in a piece entitled “An American Tragedy” — “The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism.”

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times wrote a front-page piece last month about how the “final days of the Trump presidency has taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common in history or literature than a modern White House. ….At times, Mr. Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury.” And he quoted a Shakespearian scholar at Harvard University, Jeffrey R. Wilson, author of the book Shakespeare and Trump, saying: “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”

It came on January 6 in the assault on the Capitol.

“If inciting an insurrection is not enough to get a president impeached, what is?” asked Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas before the House vote for impeachment.

Trump had tweeted is followers on December 20^th— “Big protest in DC on January 6^th. Be there, will be wild!”

It was wild, and deadly.

In a speech in front of the White House on January 6^th, addressing his backers who had arrived, he declared: “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…and we’re going to the Capitol.” He added: “You have to be strong.”

Trump’s call was preceded by his lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani proclaiming “let’s have trial by combat.”

Giuliani took an oath to be an attorney to adhere to rule of law and represented Trump in many court challenges to Trump’s election defeat with claims that judges found totally untrue. But Giuliani opted instead, in violation of that oath, for “trial by combat.” The New York State Bar Association this week announced it was launching an inquiry into whether to remove Giuliani from its ranks for his comments at the Trump rally.

Trump tapped into a vein of racism and other poisons in the United States.

As a Jew with all members of the families of both my paternal and maternal grandparents who did not get out of Hungary and Poland in time murdered in the Holocaust, my heart stopped seeing one of the Trump supporters rioting at the Capitol sporting a shirt saying “Camp Auschwitz” and below that arbeit macht frei.

I’ve been amazed that some Jews in the United States and Israel have been big supporters of Trump. His throwing the Kurds under the proverbial bus — his conferring with Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Israel-hating president, which was followed promptly by the attack on the Kurds by the Turkish military —demonstrated for Israel that Trump cannot be trusted.

Trump will turn on a dime.

I grew up in Queens in New York City, not far from Jamaica where Trump was raised. There are lots of Jews in Queens, of course. And Trump learned to “play” with them.

But should any Jew — indeed could anybody — trust him? Ask that of his former longtime personal attorney whom he abandoned, Michael Cohen, the son of a Holocaust survivor, who has been full of disclosures since. Trump, he has emphasized, is a bigot. And says Cohen of the “Trump I know in a nutshell…he projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well.”

Good for the Jews, good for anybody for any length of time? No.

Carl Bernstein, the U.S. journalist of Watergate fame, says Trump “will be in our history books as a dark, dark stain unlike any president of the United States.” And Bernstein investigated U.S. President Richard Nixon, forced to resign because of the Watergate scandal.

My rabbi, Dan Geffen, wrote to congregants after the Trump-incited attack on the Capitol about the Rabbinic sage Aytalyon saying: “Sages, be careful with your words! So as not to warrant the punishment of exile and be exiled to a land of ‘evil waters’ and the disciples who follow you drink and die, and thus the name of heaven becomes profaned.”

Said Rabbi Geffen: “There are numerous times in our tradition when the rabbis instruct us to guard our words carefully. Just as Creation begins with words, so too can destruction. Just as words of Torah are like mayim chayim (life-giving waters); words of hatred, selfishness and division are like a poisoned well. What we witnessed yesterday in Washington was a sad and painful reminder of the prescience of Avtalyon’s warning and the danger that is posed to all when words are perverted and weaponized. So let us not waste our breath on equivocations and calming platitudes. What happened yesterday was a disgrace — a stain on this country and its most fundamental principles, values and ethics. Every single one of us must feel the pain and shame of this moment, because it is now a part of our shared history.”

“The future of our country and our community will be defined by how we choose to respond to the stoked barbarism on display in the Capitol yesterday. And in this simple fact, I am filled not with despair, but with hope….These are indeed fraught times. Times filled with anger, pain, grief and a loss of hope. And it would be irresponsible to suggest that the problems and challenges we face as a country are easily addressed. Nevertheless, just as words of division can be used to poison the proverbial well; words of unity, hope and purpose can help clear and purify the miasma. There is much to be done to repair the fabric of our society, and we all have an important role to play in its repair. So let each of us do everything in our power to use the ignoble events of January 6, 2021 as motivation to inspire us to work together to return our beloved country to a land truly flowing with the life-giving waters of liberty, justice and equity for all!”

Trump has been a nightmare for the United States of America.

Thank heaven and a lot of hard political work that he will soon be gone, his final days concluding with a despicable, awful, violent attack on democracy.

Lee Zeldin Must Be Held Accountable

David Posnett — Sun, 24 Jan 2021 22:45:25 +0000

In this weeks Long Island Advance, by Shoshana Hershkowitz

Saw it Coming

David Posnett — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 22:26:05 +0000

By David Friedman, in Smithtown News Jan 14, 2021

Zeldin is Trying to Invalidate Millions of Votes

David Posnett — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 22:20:47 +0000

By David Friedman in Smithtown News 1/7/21

Zeldin, your name is Shame

David Posnett — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 15:27:56 +0000

Mr. Zeldin, your name is shame.

You are either with our constitutional system of government, or you are not. And then you are for mob rule. Which is it?

Are you a leader? – def. “a leader is someone who rallies people to move toward a better vision.”

Are you continuing to promote sedition? – def. “conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of the state.”

Are you a Conspiracy Theorist? – def. “promoting a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators.”

Our American Constitution is a better vision. Why are you inciting rebellion against it? Why are you continuing to lie to us about the circumstances of the 2020 election? Why are you confusing people about the election and spreading lies? Did you not take an oath to uphold the Constitution?

We Americans want our American Democracy to work. Impeach Trump Now and get to work for a better vision for us all, or Resign.

Signed,

A daughter of America, daughter of a family who has served to form and preserve our country from the Revolution through the Civil War, WWI, WWII and Viet Nam.

Assault on America

David Posnett — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 19:33:38 +0000

Democracy has taken a beating during the past four years. From the day Trump was sworn in, the moral yardstick we use to measure presidents by morphed into a moral slide rule, constantly adjusted by obsequious Republicans anxious to cover for the lies Trump spewed nearly every time he opened his mouth. We’ve been inching our way toward this crisis ever since.

And now, when Americans handed Donald Trump a resounding seven-million-vote defeat, Trump is doing what he has done his entire life — threatening friends and enemies alike to do his bidding and flooding the courts with frivolous cases. The lawsuit filed by Texas, a mixed salad of lies, debunked claims, and crackpot conspiracy theories that had already been rejected by state and local courts, was a frightening attempt to have the Supreme Court throw out the legal votes of 20 million people in four states.

Lee Zeldin joined in on the assault on America, signing a brief backing the lawsuit, along with 125 of his fellow House Republicans. That so many in the Republican Party have revealed themselves to be willing to steal a presidential election is a warning to us all: American democracy may still be standing, but it is on very shaky ground.

Sincerely,

CAROL DEISTLER

Printed as Letter to the Editor, The East Hampton Star, December 17

The Days After Election Day

David Posnett — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 15:30:32 +0000

As our democracy hangs by a rapidly fraying thread, it is critical that each of us do everything we can to ensure that Donald Trump is voted out of office, and once voted out of office, that he actually LEAVES office.

“The Day After Election Day,” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/opinion/trump-election-officials.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage an article in The New York Times, is an account of officials and aides who are worried the president will use the power of the government to keep himself in office. Following are highlights (lowlights is probably a more accurate term) from the article for those who can’t access it:

“Even though they can’t predict exactly what will happen, their concerns range from the president welcoming, then leveraging, foreign interference in the election, to encouraging havoc that grows into conflagrations that would merit his calling upon U.S. forces.

“I think the biggest shock he had — ’cause his assumption was the generals, ‘my generals,’ as he used to say and it used to make us cringe — was he …just assumed that generals would be completely loyal to the kaiser….And when we weren’t, that was a huge shock to him….

“This shock, and his first two-plus years of struggle with seasoned, expert advisers, led to an insight for Mr. Trump. It all came back to loyalty. He needed to get rid of any advisers or senior officials who vowed loyalty to the Constitution over personal loyalty to him. Which is pretty much what he proceeded to do.

“….Having loyalists at both the Department of Justice and D.N.I….allows him, potentially, to coordinate two key agencies of the government — secret intelligence and prosecution — toward his own political ends.

“Key officials in several parts of the government told me how they thought the progression from the 3rd to the 4th might go down.

“…Disruption would most likely begin on Election Day morning somewhere on the East Coast, where polls open first….A group could just directly attack a polling place, injuring poll workers of both parties, and creating a powerful visual — an American polling place in flames, like the ballot box in Massachusetts that was burned earlier this week — that would immediately circle the globe.

“Violence and conflict throughout that day at the polls would surely affect turnout, allowing Mr. Trump to claim that the in-person vote had been corrupted….There are many scenarios that might unfold from here, nearly all of them entailing weeks or even months of conflict, and giving an advantage to the person who already runs the U.S. government. There will likely be some reckoning of the in-person vote drawn from vote tallies and exit polls. If Joe Biden is way ahead in these projections…Mr. Trump may find himself having to claim fraud or suppression that amounts to too large a share of votes to seem reasonable. Inside the Biden campaign they are calling this “too big to rig.

“No matter how the votes split, there’s an expectation among officials that Mr. Trump will claim some kind of victory on Nov. 4, even if it’s a victory he claims was hijacked by fraud….If the streets then fill with outraged people, he can easily summon, or prompt, or encourage troublemakers among his loyalists to turn a peaceful crowd into a sea of mayhem.

“…But across the government, another official argues that citizens may yet manage to rise to the challenge of this difficult election, in a time of division.

“The last line of defense in elections is the American voter,” he told me. “This is the most vulnerable phase,” now and the days immediately after Election Day, “where we’re so eager to have an outcome, that actors both foreign and domestic are going to exploit that interest, that thirst, that need for resolution to the drama.”

And there you have it. The days and weeks after the election are likely to be a referendum – not on Donald Trump, but on each and every one of us. When everything is on the line, it’s time to do everything you can. Stay tuned.

Are we Ready?

David Posnett — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 14:52:55 +0000

The Love – Black Eyed Peas and Jennifer Hudson

“the choice could not be more clear”