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rick perry
The Perry and the Tweet
"It all made sense thanks to a simple trumpian tweet..."
Dec 13, 2019
I am a great & sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, & all His works must be contemplated with respect.
-- Mark Twain, Letter to William Dean Howells
It all made sense thanks to a simple trumpian tweet. At first glance it had seemed to be just another in the never-ending tweet storm inflicted on the country by the boy in the Oval Office. Placed in the proper context, however, it makes perfect sense.
It started on August 24, 2019, with a proclamation that caused surprise in some, astonishment in others, and cries of jubilation from yet others. It began when the trump was answering questions from reporters about the trade war with China. Without warning, he suddenly turned his gaze heavenward and proclaimed: "I am the chosen one." Although his innate modesty caused him a few days later to tweet that he was "kidding, being sarcastic, and just having fun," his modesty was soon for naught when Rick Perry, the outgoing Energy Secretary, confirmed the trump's proclamation. Mr. Perry was not being sarcastic and "just having fun." He was being dead serious.
In an interview on Fox News, the Secretary said he believed the trump was chosen by God to lead the country. Acknowledging something virtually all democrats, and perhaps a handful of Republicans such as Mr. Perry are aware, Mr. Perry said that the trump is not perfect. He said: "God's used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn't perfect. Saul wasn't perfect. Solomon wasn't perfect."
Not content to make that proclamation on Fox News, Mr. Perry said that he had personally said the exact same thing to the president. He told him: "Mr. President . . . you are here in this time because God ordained you."
Mr. Perry is obviously a biblical scholar and a deeply religious man. He is one of the regular attendees at Bible study gatherings of cabinet members in the White House. And being a religious man, he got it right when he used King David as the reason God got it right when he picked the trump. That is because King David and the trump have a great deal in common.
For my insights into the comparison between King David and the trump, I am indebted to Msgr. Charles Pope who has written regularly for the Catholic Registry, publishes on the internet and has travelled widely lecturing on matters liturgical. He was, of course, not drawing parallels between the trump and King David, since his writing, on which I am relying, was published in 2012, long before the trump was on the scene.
In a piece published in 2012 entitled "David, A Great King, Yet with a Critical flaw. What is the Lesson for us Today?" he describes David in a way that immediately causes the reader to think of the trump. David, like the trump, liked women. Instead of bragging about how he could grab women by their private parts whenever he wanted, as the trump did, David simply married them. He had at least eight wives and, according to Msgr Pope, probably more. In addition, notwithstanding his many wives, David had Uriah the Hittite killed so that he could marry Uriah's wife, Bathsheba. According to Msgr. Pope, David eventually felt bad about what he had done and to do penance as it were, wrote Psalm 51 known as the Miserere.
Mr. Perry gave further solace by observing that David was not the only king, who like the trump, had serious flaws. David's son, Solomon was another. King Solomon, like his dad and like the trump, also liked women. In the Bible, 1 Kings chapter 11, the author says that Solomon had 700 wives, princesses and 300 concubines. Those sorts of statistics would, if known by the trump, infuse him with a sense of envy that might well cause him to collapse in a jealous rage because of the injustice of the Lord dealing him such a lousy hand that all he had were several wives (not even in the dozens), and many, but probably not hundreds of occasional sexual encounters.
The pronouncements from Mr. Perry explaining that trump is the "chosen one," helped me understand the recent tweet by the trump. It was designed by the trump to show that he was more than a mere mortal like those over whom he proudly rules. Since it is now uniformly recognized, not only by the trump but by his thousands of evangelical followers, that he is God's chosen one, the trump realized that he is deserving of more than the hundreds of thousands of pictures that have been taken of him since his ascendancy. He needs a portrait that properly glorifies him. And thus, his tweet.
At 8:45 AM on November 27th, the trump tweeted a picture of his head superimposed on the magnificent body of a shirtless Sylvester Stallone. Many who saw that magnificent portrait of our president, came away with a new appreciation of the trump and a sense of gratitude to the trump and God for sharing with us with this portrait of God's chosen one. A few of us came away thinking that the trump and God have presented us with the portrait of a fool.
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Trump's Climate Crimes Are His Most Impeachable Offenses
The climate crisis imperils the planet. To deny it is impeachable, the highest of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Nov 06, 2019
You can run from the climate crisis, but you can't hide. On the front lines of this global environmental calamity, entire communities are being consumed by fire, submerged by typhoons and hurricanes, or baked under the sun amid historic droughts. President Donald Trump, the climate change denier in chief, has formally begun the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Originally signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, the accord established a cooperative, global path to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees F) above preindustrial levels. The United States is now the only nation on the planet that has pulled out of the agreement. A new statement signed by over 11,000 scientists from over 150 countries warns of "untold suffering" unless global society undergoes a "major transformation." Trump's denial of the climate crisis is unconscionable and should be added to the articles of impeachment against him.
One Trump official with a role in both the climate crisis and in the impeachment proceedings is Wells Griffith, currently a special assistant to the president and senior director for international energy and environment for the National Security Council, serving under departing Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Griffith is a longtime Republican operative who served as deputy chief of staff to Reince Priebus when Priebus was chair of the Republican National Committee.
Wells Griffith's appointment to the Department of Energy makes sense; his family has run a gas station in Mobile, Alabama, for over 50 years. Griffith moved from pumping gas to pushing coal, successfully negotiating the sale of 700,000 metric tons of coal from Pennsylvania to Ukraine in 2017.
He then showed up as the top representative of the Trump administration at the U.N.'s "COP 24" climate conference in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018. The U.S. held just one public event during the two-week summit, which Griffith chaired, promoting fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Amid mocking laughter and a walkout by protesters, he stated, "We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability."
Afterward, we approached Griffith in a large central hall of the convention center (which was designed to look like the coal mine that it was built on top of) to ask questions for the "Democracy Now!" news hour. To our shock, rather than answering, he bolted, first walking quickly, then running away. Cameras rolling, we ran after him, asking questions as we weaved in and out of the crowd of climate negotiators, scientists and activists.
"Do you agree with President Trump calling climate change a hoax? Can you talk about why the U.S. is here, since President Trump is saying he's pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord? Can you talk about why you're pushing coal?" He dodged our questions, but did accuse us of harassing him. "A reporter asking you a question, sir, is not harassment," we replied.
Just this Tuesday, Wells Griffith continued his refusal to answer questions when he failed to appear before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's closed-door session of the Trump impeachment inquiry.
While public testimony is expected to begin next week, an unrelated court case is wrapping up in a New York state courtroom. New York is suing ExxonMobil, alleging the fossil fuel giant defrauded its investors for years by understating the risk that climate change posed to shareholder value. Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil and Trump's first secretary of state, testified at length under oath. He repeatedly claimed he could not recall details when grilled by the New York state attorneys.
Outside the courtroom, 30 children participating in the Fridays for Future weekly climate strike engaged in a die-in. Thirteen-year-old Maria Riker told us, "We held the die-in for 42 minutes, one minute for each of the 42 years that Exxon was aware of the dangers of climate change but lied about it."
Tillerson's successor, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, announced Monday, via tweet, "Today we begin the formal process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement." Trump declared that the U.S. would withdraw in June 2017, but legal procedures in place when the agreement was signed have prevented the formal exit until now.
In response, 350.org founder and author Bill McKibben said on "Democracy Now!," "The fossil fuel industry had its most profitable years in the last three decades. On the other hand, we're now missing half the sea ice in the summer Arctic. The Great Barrier Reef is half-dead. The oceans are 30% more acidic. California is on fire more weeks than not. We're in deep, deep trouble."
The climate crisis imperils the planet. To deny it is impeachable, the highest of high crimes and misdemeanors.
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'Most Implausible Alibi I've Ever Heard': Trump Ridiculed for Blaming Rick Perry for Ukraine Call
"So the call was perfect. But the call was also Rick Perry's idea and Trump didn't want to do it. And Rick Perry is leaving the administration soon. Weird."
Oct 05, 2019
During a conference call with House Republicans on Friday, President Donald Trump reportedly blamed Energy Secretary Rick Perry for the July 25 call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky that is at the center of Democrats' impeachment inquiry.
Citing three anonymous sources who were on the conference call, Axiosreported Saturday that "Trump rattled off the same things he has been saying publicly--that his call with Zelensky was 'perfect' and he did nothing wrong."
"But he then threw Perry into the mix and said something to the effect of: 'Not a lot of people know this but, I didn't even want to make the call. The only reason I made the call was because Rick asked me to. Something about an LNG [liquified natural gas] plant,'" Axiosreported, citing one source's recollection of the president's remarks.
"Another source on the call," according to Axios, "said Trump added that 'more of this will be coming out in the next few days'--referring to Perry," who is reportedly planning to leave the White House by the end of November.
There is no mention of an LNG plant in the memo of Trump's call with Zelensky that the White House released last month.
As the Daily Beastreported, Trump's claim that Perry is responsible for the Ukraine conversation is "contradicted by text messages released earlier this week between top U.S. diplomats and Andrey Yermak, an aide to Zelensky, which suggest Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was a primary advocate for arranging the call."
Critics were not impressed by Trump's attempt to deflect blame for the call, during which the U.S. president pressed Zelensky to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.
"'I was talked into my crime by Rick Perry' is the most implausible alibi I've ever heard," tweetedEsquire's Charles Pierce.
Others similarly lambasted the president's reported comments:
This is not the first time Trump has thrown a member of his administration under the bus during the Ukraine scandal.
"I think you should ask for Vice President [Mike] Pence's conversation, because he had a couple of conversations also," Trump told reporters last week.
In response to Axios's reporting, writer Thor Benson tweeted, "Giuliani, Pompeo, and others should pay attention to what Trump is doing to Rick Perry. They're next."
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