As Russia attempts to pry Qatar out of America’s sphere of influence, there are new questions about Moscow’s role in global terrorism.

The world shuddered on Monday, as a major rift tore apart the seemingly stable US alliance in the Middle East, known as the Gulf Cooperation Council. Qatar, the small and extremely oil-rich Middle East, was cut off by the council’s ruling members. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and two other countries suspended diplomatic relations with the tiny Emirate, cut off air land and sea travel. All but Egypt ordered their citizens to leave within 14 days.

The stunning move was precipitated by what Qatari and US intelligence officials said was a fake news story planted by Russian hackers in Qatar’s official news agency. The fake article attributed quotes to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Aal Thani as supporting fundamental terrorist organizations and Iran and called relations with the Trump administration “strained”. The article may have been fake but it highlights very real, seemingly opposite goals of the tiny Emirate.

Qatari foreign policy is, to put it simply, a study in contradictions. While the Emirate supports revolutionary movements, it also plays host to the largest US military base in the region at al-Udeid, south-west of Doha. Doha is the home of Al-Jazeera, which for years has been outwardly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and often rebroadcasts audio messages from al-Qaida leaders but until Monday was still allied to Saudi Arabia. Doha also still maintains diplomatic ties with Tehran, much to Riyadh’s chagrin. In the Middle East, you’re either with the mostly-Sunni Saudis or with mostly Shiite Iranians. Qatar has tried to do both.

Russia, in its pursuit of warm water access to the Mediterranean and dominance in the region, has been trying to ply the Emirate away from US influence for years. So far,  Qatar has been quite amenable to Moscow’s advances. In January this year, Qatar’s Emir visited Russia and exalted Vladimir Putin for “playing a leading role in stability in the world”.

Moscow has been heavily investing in Qatari interests over the last few years and Qatar has been heavily investing in Russia. The relationship cemented itself last year when Moscow sold 19.5% of Rosneft, the giant Russian state-run oil company, to a Qatari-led partnership with Swiss oil firm, Glencore. Little else is known about the deal because it is shrouded by Bahamian registered shell corporations but it’s suspected of being the same deal mulled in the Steele Dossier, in which Russia offered a 19.5% in Rosneft to Trump campaign official Carter Page, in exchange for a lessening of Russian sanctions.

Was Russia’s hack of Qatar’s news agency a not-so-subtle attempt to provoke the Saudis to isolate Qatar and in so doing, move the Emirate even closer to Tehran and Moscow’s orbit? A trick played on the Saudis to drive a wedge between them and Qatar? Quite possibly. This scenario seems even more likely when viewed in the context of President Donald J. Trump’s tweet which applauded the Saudi move. “They said they would take a hard-line on fundamental extremism and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end of the horror of terrorism!” Even as the US Military and Diplomatic corps were trying to rebuild the Middle East coalition, President Trump was nudging the break-up along. Moscow’s sleight of hand would be at once evil and brilliant, if it weren’t so apparent.

The most troubling aspect of all this is that Moscow itself, has long been suspected of being backers of fundamental terrorist groups like ISIS. Russia “provided material support to ISIS to manipulate the war in Syria and Russian media has long alleged that Russian security forces helped recruit for ISIS, which now has thousands of Russian-speaking jihadis in its ranks,” said Molly McKew in Politico in 2015.

“The arrival of the first group of several hundred Russian-speaking fighters was a key turning point in the Syrian war — turning the war away from Assad and toward Iraq. The largest current source of ISIS revenue, according to US and European officials, is from selling oil to Assad — and Assad cannot act without Russian approval. ISIS requires Russian ammunition to fight, readily acquires it from stocks sent to Assad, and seems to find fortuitous resupply when necessary.”

Yes, the same ISIS which has claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Ariana Grande Concert in Manchester and ran over and stabbed citizens and tourists on London Bridge was, and likely still is, an arm’s-length instrument of Moscow’s foreign policy.  In December 6, 2015, Ukrainian TV aired an interview with a former FSB counter-terrorism specialist who alleged Russia was “directly and indirectly complicit” in global terror attacks.

When asked if Russian agents could be involved in the [November 2015] terrorist attacks in Paris, Yevgeniy said there was “complicity in acts of terrorism.” He continued, “And the complicity could be direct or indirect. By analyzing their connections, one, of course, will be able to see the ties leading to Russia. Primarily Russia could benefit from this, and the Russian security services had all the possibilities to organize this.”

The 2015 Paris attack claimed 130 lives and, as with the recent tragedies in Manchester and London, ISIS claimed responsibility for it. While ISIS gets some upside from these attacks, it’s really Russia which gains the global leverage. It forces democratic electorates to choose more conservative governments, fosters fear and intolerance, creates chasms in the existing alliances but also forces the world to view Moscow as part of a solution to a mess it covertly created. Viewed in this light, the Trump administration’s assertion that it will fight ISIS with Russian help just seems like another covert ploy by Moscow to play an international game of cat and mouse when in reality, it is both.

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Jared Kushner and his father-in-law, President Donald J. Trump, have more connecting them than Ivanka Trump. 

On April 19 last year, Donald J. Trump was taking a victory lap after winning the Republican Party nomination. In his speech, he mentioned by name a number of bold-named businessmen who were there to hear him crow. Carl Icahn, Howard Lorber and Steven Roth, the CEO of Vornado Trust.

“The great Steven Roth,” Trump extolled. “Steve’s building a big building on Central Park South, it’s a tremendous success.”

“I said, ‘Steve, congratulations on the building,'” The newly-minted Republican presidential nominee said.

“He said, ‘Donald, it’s nothing compared to what’s happening with you.’ Is that right? My man!”

Trump and Roth have been friends (and sometimes business foes) for over 30 years.  They jointly own the 1290 Sixth Avenue office tower. Trump and Roth became business partners after Trump threatened to sue his former partners for trying to sell it to another party without his permission. 1290 Sixth Avenue became the second largest in Vornado’s portfolio but by no means the only marquee property in Roth’s sprawling Manhattan empire.

One other is 666 Fifth Avenue, which Roth’s Vornado Trust co-owns with Jared Kushner’s family. Jared made news in Manhattan’s real estate circles when he purchased the trophy building for $1.8 billion, using mostly borrowed money. By all accounts, Kushner overpaid for the building by paying twice as much per-square-foot than any other Manhattan building sale before it, according to the New York Post. Tellingly, the deal closed on Jared’s 26th birthday, Jan. 10, 2007.

It was an expensive birthday gift by any measure but for the young real estate scion it represented a giant statement to Manhattan. Two years earlier, his father, Charles Kushner, was imprisoned for 14 months after pleading guilty for tax evasion charges and for making illegal campaign contributions. Before exiting prison, Charles turned over his holdings to his eldest son to manage a business free of an ex-convict CEO. Jared was just 25. If his father’s prison sentence wasn’t enough for the young heir to handle, the circumstances that led to it, tore the Kushner clan apart.

Before being charged in 2005, Charles Kushner heard his brother-in-law was talking to investigators about his misdeeds. To gain leverage over him, Kushner paid a “very attractive, high-end call girl $10,000 to lure his brother-in-law to a Bridgewater, NJ, motel after she pretended to need a ride when her car broke down,” according to the Post. Jared’s father had the whole motel encounter taped and sent it to his sister, Esther. She turned the tape into the feds. Classic kompromat.

Now it seems, Kushner family history could be repeating itself. Investigators want to know if Jared has kompromat all of his own. Only this time, the disparaging evidence is financial in nature and it’s the Russians who could be holding it over him.

666 Fifth Avenue, The trophy building Jared bought for $1.8 Bn in 2007 has proved to be a financial noose around him and the family. By 2008, the building was generating just 70 cents on every dollar it owed.  Under pressure, Jared was forced to sell the pricey store space for $525 million to a partnership in 2008 and a 49 percent stake in the office portion to Stephen Ross’ Vornado in 2011. Yes, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump share more than wife and daughter, they share a business partner. A $1.2 Bn mortgage on Jared’s trophy building is due in just two years which unpaid, could destroy the family fortune.

Congressional investigators and the FBI are now probing a secret meeting Jared had with Vladimir Putin’s banker at Trump Tower in New York in December last year. The White House and the Russian bank have offered conflicting explanations for the meeting between Kushner and Sergei Gorkov.

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The Republican Party is imploding. Young Republicans are fleeing and President Donald J. Trump’s support is eroding as quickly as you can spell ‘Russia’. 

On the eve of Montana’s special election to elect a new congressman, Republican front-runner Greg Gianforte body-slammed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs. Gianforte’s attack was in response to Jacobs’ question about a health care bill which threatens to rob many in the party’s base of affordable health coverage. The brutality of the assault, and subsequent lie about what happened, is a canary in the coal mine for a Republican Party falling apart, devoid of values and wholly owned by Russian autocrats.

“I’m sick and tired of you guys,” Gianforte yelled as he body-slammed Jacobs. “The last guy who came here did the same thing. Get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of here. The last guy did the same thing. Are you with the Guardian?”

All that for asking a question. Almost unnoticed in the scuffle, is evidence the Guardian Newspaper dug up about Gianforte’s investments in two Russian Index Funds which invest heavily in sanctioned Russian companies.

Both are indexed to the Russian equities market and have significant holdings in companies such as Gazprom and Rosneft that came under US sanctions in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of the Crimea.

Gianforte is an independently wealthy tech entrepreneur (he’s estimated worth is $315M) but his investment in the Index funds is a clear bet on Russia’s economy. Why would he do that unless he believed Russian sanctions would be lifted?

Gianforte may be a canary, but he is not alone. The rot inside the Republican rank and file runs deep, is well-funded and operates with unparalleled sophistication in coordination with its Russian overlords. Together, ‘Russia-GOP’ prey on people’s fears and keep opponent supporters at home, by peddling fake news micro-targeted to people’s Facebook and other social media accounts.

Take Cambridge Analytica, the murky “psychographic” marketing company which figures out your personality profile and targets your fears by amplifying them with conflated or blatantly false content. The company is thought to be responsible for the unexpected ‘Brexit’ vote in the UK, the inexplicable campaign of Ben Carson, the bizarre rise of Ted Cruz and of course, the election of Donald Trump.

According to Newsweek,  The company is principally owned by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire who supported Trump and was a leading investor in Breitbart.  Stephen Bannon, Trump’s campaign chairman (after Manafort) and now chief strategist at the White House, was the vice president of Cambridge Analytica’s board as well as the executive chairman of Breitbart before joining Trump’s team in August.

Investigators want to know how Cambridge Analytica is linked to Russia’s unprecedented cyber operation to manipulate the election, according to Time.

It’s common knowledge, Robert Mercer backed Cruz in the Republican primaries but when that campaign couldn’t seal the deal, Mercer swung towards Trump, deploying Cambridge Analytica on behalf of number 45. It’s also believed Mercer’s daughter, Bekah, was instrumental in installing National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the Trump cabinet. According to the Washington Post, Flynn returned the favor by granting Cambridge Analytica’s parent company a lucrative contract, during his 18 day tenure as National Security Advisor.

I’ve already reported that Flynn, Sessions, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Carter Page were all involved in a secret meetings with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last Summer, in an effort to soften the party’s plank on Ukraine and who-knows-what-else. The photo below reportedly snapped minutes after one Trump-Russia meeting shows Kislyak, Manafort and Sessions returning from one of their sideline meetings.

Intelligence Community leaks now suggest there are intercepted recordings of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis) accepting Russian money from Kislyak during the Republican convention. And now it’s emerged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) super-PAC accepted $2.5 Million from a pro-Putin Ukrainian businessman during the last election cycle (images below). The Republican Party has, in essence, become a money-laundering operation for Russia’s murderous regime and its oligarchs.

It’s almost hard to believe the Republican Party, which was founded by anti-slavery activists built on the principles of the revolution and which gave the country Abraham Lincoln has been so thoroughly defiled by this extent of corruption. The future of the Republic – and democracy – requires a strong GOP founded on the values it holds dear. Voters – especially poor white ones – across the country have been betrayed by their leadership.

At the same time, Citizens United needs to be overturned. The Supreme Court decision to label corporations as citizens has corrupted our politics top to bottom, left and right. If Republicans are true patriots, and have any chance of survival, they will fight to return power to its citizenry.  And if any unccorupted Republicans still exist, when will they stand up to their leaders and root out the disease which is eating its way through their party? What America needs now, more than ever, is a rebirth of the Grand Old Party – the party of Lincoln – flushed of its corruption and ready to serve the people. If the politicians can’t do it, the people will.

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President Donald J. Trump has become a clear and present danger to the republic and US lives. Trump shared classified information about an ISIS plot to blow up commercial planes using laptop bomb with our enemies, endangering US lives. But that’s only the beginning of the constitutional crisis we’re heading into.

The Washington Post and the New York Times just reported President Donald J. Trump shared secret code-word information with the Russians that could isolate the US from the free world and endanger the lives of Americans. Trump handed over the classified information to the Russians when he held a closed-door meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, on Wed May 10.  The code word intel (which is classified above top secret) was acquired by a foreign intelligence agency and provided to the US under strict intelligence rules.

The information Trump revealed would help the Russians identify a secret agent within ISIS who had revealed a plot to use “laptop bombs” aboard commercial planes. The Kremlin would be keen to eliminate or disrupt the asset because of their reprehensible support for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The result could mean US lives are at risk whenever Americans fly.

Although the foreign country is not named in the reports, the United States is part of the “Five Eyes” global international community which means intelligence agencies from New Zealand, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and the US share information on their common good. Other alliances exist with allies who may be less forgiving of such a lapse of judgment by the US President. Even though President Trump can declassify information “at will”,  that doesn’t extend to information gathered by non-US agencies.  In short, Trump threatens the US relationship with our key allies if he reveals information the US didn’t obtain directly.

Trump’s breach of allies’ trust comes just days after Trump potentially committed another serious crime – obstruction of justice – when he colluded with Vice President Michael Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire FBI Director James Comey.

The White House’s public pretext for the firing was related to Comey’s handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation, as outlined in a memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein but that memo was easy bait for a President looking for a reason to fire the FBI Director.

In a deft move, Rosenstein threatened to resign over the use of his memo as cause for Comey’s ouster. The next day, absent a pretext, Trump sat down for an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt and was forced to reveal the truth. The emperor, it seems, had no clothes.

“When I decided to just do it [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russian thing with Trump and Russia … is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election.”

Trump also copped to Holt he asked Comey on three separate occasions if he was under investigation personally.  That’s not a question you would ask once, never mind three times, if you really believed the whole thing was “a made up story”, “a ruse” or “a hoax”, as the President has said in his many tweets.  It’s also now clear that Trump summoned Comey to the White House and asked him to “pledge his loyalty” just days after acting attorney General Sally Yates alerted the White House that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was “compromised by the Russians”. Yates was later fired. A second count of obstruction of justice.

A just released memo written by Comey after Flynn was fired reveals President Trump asked the FBI Director to drop the entire investigation.  “I hope you can let this go,” Comey quotes Trump in the memo he wrote as part of a paper trail documenting the President’s efforts to obstruct justice. As an F.B.I. agent, Comey’s notes will be used in court as credible evidence.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

It’s also been reported by the New York Times, the President and Vice-President secretly conspired to remove Comey. Vice President Mike Pence, who parroted the White House lie, could have been the next President of the US but he’s now been infected by the corruption virus by Trump. Pence should face an indictment on obstruction of justice charges and needs to be impeached. By conspiring with Trump, Pence has placed the US into a succession crisis.

However, even if the Justice Department indicts Trump and Pence along with the exhaustive list of co-conspirators, nothing can force the House, controlled by the Republicans, to begin impeachment proceedings. Up until now Republicans seem hesitant to even appoint an independent prosecutor so impeachment hearings seem unlikely, unless something else happens. And that something else is beginning to emerge.

Russia’s efforts to destabilize US Democracy ran very deep and now threaten to embroil the entire leadership of the GOP – including House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senator Ted Cruz and others. Ryan has been full-throatedly supporting Trump recently framing the President as “a driven, hands-on leader, with the potential to become a truly transformational American figure.” Now it’s emerging, there’s good reason Ryan is Trump’s pocket. According to “Kremlingate” watchers, Ryan also accepted money from Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to fill the GOP coffers. If Ryan and other Republican leaders are removed from office too, the balance of power and sheer political survival in 2018 should compel remaining Republicans in the House to act.

I asked Associate Professor Gary Darden, who teaches US Civil War at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey to explain how impeachment would work if such an indictment was coming:

“An impeachment is constitutionally speaking an indictment issued by the House for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” while the trial itself would take place in the Senate with senators as jury and chief justice as presiding judge. If the president were to be indicted in a court of law, then that would be, I think, the basis for articles of impeachment in the House. If 2/3 of the House votes in favor of any article (or charge) if impeachment, then it mandates a trial in Senate, where a conviction requires 2/3 of that body.”

The House could be reluctant to act but Darden believes:

“If criminal charges come out of the Justice Dept against the President, then it would be the basis for the House to act. If it didn’t it would be political negligence of the highest order.” 

Still, Darden points out Republicans who supported Trump hold a disproportionate number of seats in the house so the impeachment seems unlikely, but just the threat of it, and a potential lengthy prison sentence for the entire Trump family, could render the President impotent and force a resignation, as it did with Nixon.

If you’re keeping track, that now leaves Trump, Pence and Ryan all out of the running to take over as  President. The next in line for the White House is Senator Orrin Hatch (UT-R), the President pro tempore of the United States Senate. After Hatch, It’s the Secretary of State, Putin-buddy Rex Tillerson (likely to be indicted too) and then Jeff Sessions (clearly already compromised) and the rest of the cabinet.  This is why there are two potential outcomes to an impeachment crisis: President Orrin Hatch or the next Speaker of the House, if Ryan is implicated.

Whomever it is, would be President until 2020 as there simply is no mechanism for a snap election in the US. Even under these extraordinary times.

“Hate is a far better motivator than love,” a boastful Roger Stone told NPR this week. “It’s one of Stone’s golden rules.”  Stone is the political operative who helped put Donald Trump in the White House.  He says of the President, “I was like a jockey looking for his horse. You can’t win a race without a horse.” Stone is about to see his golden rule work against his winning horse.  Trump has now threatened American lives, betrayed the country, our allies, the rule of law and made his bed – with Vladimir Putin – the end result will enrage the American population which should have brutal consequences for both the President and the Russian autocrat.

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Amidst all the squabbling about numbers, are we missing what’s really going on in our country?

The idyllic 90’s alt rock-band, “Counting Crows” is best known for its catchy hit “Mr Jones.” You know the one? “Sha, la, la, la, la, la, la”? The Crows took flight in an era of ironically worn lumberjack shirts and work boots set against a soundtrack of “Nirvana” and a backdrop of the Gulf War and AIDS. The band took its name from an old English nursery rhyme which dates back to the early 1800’s about predicting the future by counting the number of magpies, or crows, which crossed your path.

“One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret, never to be told, eight for a wish, nine for a kiss, ten for a time of joyous bliss,” the rhyme goes. Of course, there’s no actual basis for this type of prophecy, but in an unsure time, when science and logic weren’t plentiful, counting crows was a good a method, as any, of predicting the future.

As the 45th president of the United States was being sworn in on Friday, we were all aflutter over a different count. This time we were counting attendance as if it foretold a President’s success. How many people showed up? Counting crowds, not crows, is the fashion of the day.

One concludes that democracy is alive and well in the Republic, but all is not well. Crows are symbolic harbingers of change in many of the world’s mythologies, and it struck me, amid all the squabbling over numbers, we may be missing ours. So just for a minute, let’s put aside the partisan squabbling, and look at what President Trump is doing that many would agree on –  even Bernie Sanders.

To be sure, Trump’s inauguration address, was dark. After 8 years of remarkable hope and progress under President Barack Obama, the idea of America as a dystopian wasteland littered with empty “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones” is hard to fathom, but it’s as true as the remarkable legacy of the outgoing president.

While America has prospered and our standard of living has improved, free trade has filled our homes and stores with cheap Chinese goods but it has also come at a cost – ripping out our nation’s heart. It has robbed us of a vibrant industrial sector, left hundreds of thousands in poverty and created an epidemic killing Americans at an alarming rate. Mostly in states in the middle of the country. States Trump won. States you need to win to be president.

How did we get here?  Ask any two economists whether global trade costs US jobs, and you’re likely to get an argument. Economists, like crows, are not always accurate foretellers of things to come.

The US runs large trade deficits with almost every one of our trading partners – 90%, to be sure. The largest deficits are with China, Mexico, Japan and Germany.  The U.S.-Mexico trade balance, for example,  swung from a $1.7 billion U.S. surplus in 1993 to a $54 billion deficit by 2014. Economists will argue endlessly about the cause and effect of NAFTA, but while modernization has made up for some of those lost jobs, the economy in parts of the country have been obliterated.

Mexico’s deficit pales in comparison to China’s $318 billion, “The deficit is five times bigger, says Wharton’s Mauro Guillen. For every job we have lost in the U.S. to Mexico, five [jobs] were lost to China.”

Respected economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson published a study last year called “The China Shock” analyzing the cost to Americans of China’s trade explosion.  They found, “wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed and unemployment rates remaining elevated” a decade after China’s global trade boom.

You’re not at fault for not knowing this. No-one reports it. It’s easier to count crowds than actually travel to Idaho to show a rusted factory. Anyone who has worked in a network newsroom, as I have, will tell you if it can’t be reported in the Tri-State region, it rarely gets coverage. Consequently, the networks have missed what’s been going on in the rust belt. The people who elected President Trump are not all racists, misogynist or narrow-minded people the media would like you to think.  They are our fellow Americans crying out for work.

Yes, the unemployment rate is at an all time low but it doesn’t tell the whole story Basically, if you’re not getting unemployment help, you don’t get counted. In most cases, government insurance lasts 26 weeks. If you’ve run out of insurance, you’re considered out of the labor force. Consequently, almost a quarter of 25-54 year olds (the prime working years) are not working and the labor participation rate is down 4%, from 66% in 2006 to 62% now.

Along with this jobs flight, a despondent and disheartened population has turned to drugs. The Opioid crisis in the heartland is out of control. 55,403 people died from drug overdoses in 2015, more than guns or car crashes. The second biggest killer, suicides, are also up. (For white men aged 35-64 suicides are up 40% between 1999-2010.) Families have been broken apart, children left homeless, dreams shattered.

When President Donald J. Trump talks of “neighborhoods blighted by crime, drugs and gangs,” he is not wrong.  Whether it’s drugs, suicides or malaise, America’s white uneducated men are dying at increasing rate. Since 1999, the number of deaths of middle-aged, uneducated white American men has increased 22%, while dropping for other demographics.

This is not a moral issue, it’s economics. Restarting a pointless war on drugs with draconian measures and incarceration will reinforce a cycle of suffering. If President Trump brings purpose and jobs back to the heartland, he’ll stem the crisis, as Portugal did when it decriminalized drugs and invested in jobs (The number of overdose deaths plummeted to among the lowest in the EU).

We are witnessing the rise of the Precariat, as British economist Guy Standing calls it. “A multitude of insecure people, living bits-and-pieces lives, in and out of short-term jobs, without a narrative of occupational development, including millions of frustrated educated youth who do not like what they see before them.”

This week, President Trump will meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May.  She leads a country which, like ours, is moving away from large economic unions. Brexit is Trump for the same reasons. A disconnect between the elite and the middle class in the middle of the country. Trump and May will likely forge a new type of economic union which encourages what she describes as an “active industrial strategy” or bringing manufacturing back home.

Yesterday, Trump withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership and is promising to renegotiate NAFTA. He’s threatening to increased tariffs, reduce corporate taxation and slash regulation (worryingly at the EPA if it hurts the environment). It may not work, but it’s the best plan America’s heartland has heard for a long time.

The Counting Crows imagine a better world in “Mr. Jones” as they sing about a different time with equally despairing prospects.

“Believe in me because I don’t believe in anything
and I want to be someone to believe.”

Trump is not perfect, and untested in public life, but he has responded to a yearning cry from our fellow Americans who are suffering. If this was happening in other parts of the world, our compassion would stir us to action. Yes, we have to be watchful of allowing the new administration to roll back rights, enter thoughtless wars for enrichment or cozy up to corrupt dictators but we’d be hurting our brothers and sisters if we didn’t seek to help them now as they try to bring their lives back. What could be more American than that?

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