Category: President Trump

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conflict resolution Congressional House Oversight Committee Disgraceful conduct of Republicans Lying Michael Cohen President Trump

Disgrace of Republicans During Cohen’s Hearing

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today, we take a hard look at what I view as the disgraceful actions of most of the Republican congresspersons who participated in the 2/27/19 Michael Cohen hearing, and, going forward, what they might do to regain my respect.

The Disgraceful Actions

Michael Cohen served as the president’s personal lawyer and was brought in to the hearing to answer questions by the Congressional House Oversight Committee about possible criminal conduct and unethical behavior on the part of his former client and others connected with him. Rather than to devote their time to the task at hand, Republican after Republican spent the vast amount of time insisting that the whole hearing was a waste of time and a scam by Democrats to do nothing more than to try to gain political points.

Notice that there are two parts of their position. The first indicates that the Democrats wanted to gain political points at the hearing. I take this to mean that they wanted to bring out information that would increase the chances that Democrats will be elected in future elections. This is true enough, though it would have been more true if they also mentioned that the Republicans were also there to try to win political points. Party politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, are always trying to win political points. The second part of the statement tried to indicate that the Democrats were there to do nothing more than gain political points. I think that party politicians, including Democrats and Republicans, seek to do some other things besides win political points. The Republicans’ claim that the Democrats were seeking nothing more at the meeting was a superficial effort to hide the very real concerns that many of us citizens have with the current administration given the number of people connected with the administration that have been convicted of crimes.

Characteristic of the tone of the hearing by Republicans was Paul Gosar, a Republican representative from Arizona, who set up a sign behind his chair. The sign showed a picture of Mr. Cohen superimposed on flames, emblazoned with the words “LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!”

This was an attempt to discredit anything that Mr Cohen had to say at the hearing because he had lied in the past. Republicans repeated this attempt over and over again throughout the hearing, but it consistently appeared blatantly disingenuous given their continued support of the President who has a well documented history of lying on numerous occasions.

Rep. Jordan on Left and Rep. Cummings on Right
Rep. Jim Jordan on left, and Rep. Cummings on the right

Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, began the hearing by saying derisively to the Democratic Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings,

“Here we go, your first announced witness, is Michael Cohen. I want everyone in this room to think about this, the first announced witness of the 116th Congress is a guy who is going to prison in two months for lying to Congress. Mr. Chairman, your chairmanship will be always identified with this hearing.”

To this claim, Rep. Cummings soon corrected the record by indicating the clearly documented fact that under his leadership during the 116th Congress the committee had already had three other hearings. At each, there were several announced witnesses. For example, at one such hearing, the high prices of pharmaceuticals, which is in the process of being investigated by the committee, had executives of the pharmaceutical industry called to answer questions.

Rep. Jordan went on from his untruthful statement, to claim that the present hearing was nothing more than to serve the Clintons, their loyalists, and operatives, as well as to harm the President. To defend his position, Rep. Jordan mentioned that the committee was limited to answer only certain questions. In making this statement, he failed to mention that the reason for these limits was to cooperate with the special counsel and the Southern District of New York that had asked for these limits because certain questions could interfere with their ongoing investigations. This is a standard requirement under this set of circumstances. No doubt Mr. Jordan is well aware of this, and nevertheless, he attempted to slip this by the public’s eye.

Throughout the hearing, when it came time for each of the other Republicans to have their five minutes to question Mr. Cohen, with little exception, they parroted, over and over again, what Rep. Jordan had done. Several of the Republicans asked no questions at all, and most of the others, after consuming the vast majority of their allotted time with insulting Chairman Cummings and the other Democrats for setting up this hearing, hastily asked a single question. This dramatically reduced the time to examine what Mr. Cohen replied.

Why the Republicans at the Hearing Had Clearly Acted Disgracefully

Consider the following facts that are all well known to all of the Republicans who participated in the Michael Cohen hearing:

  1. The United States Intelligence community has concluded that Russia, a US adversary, took illegal action during the last presidential election seeking to help President Trump win.
  2. President Trump, a Republican, nominated Rod Rosenstein to serve as Deputy Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice and was confirmed by the Republican majority U.S. Senate.
  3. Following the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his misleading remarks he made to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary during his confirmation process and FBI Director Comey’s dismissal by President Trump, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 elections and related matters.
  4. During the special counsel’s investigation, several close associates to President Trump were convicted of lying about Russian government connections and/or other illegal matters, including his National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (plead guilty to a felony of willfully and knowingly making false, fictitious and fraudulent statements to the FBI), and his campaign chairman Paul Manafort (convicted on eight charges of tax and bank fraud, and repeatedly lying to investigators).
  5. Mr. Cohen had been President Trump’s personal attorney for about ten years, and in that role has probable first hand knowledge regarding possibly illegal actions over that period of time.
  6. Each and every one of the Republican participants know that skillful questioning by investigators of people with first hand knowledge of relevant events often leads to obtaining useful information from people even when the person being questioned had lied in the past.
  7. Information gathered from questioning such witnesses that is deemed as possibly helpful are not automatically assumed to be true, but are instead followed up to seek confirmation by other witnesses and documents.
  8. Mr. Cohen’s testimony before the special counsel had already been deemed helpful by the special counsel at the time of this hearing and the special counsel had recommended to the sentencing judge that Mr. Cohen’s cooperation be a factor in giving him a lighter sentence.
  9. Mr. Cohen, who is currently sentenced to three years in prison, if caught lying to Congress again would face far more years in prison, thus increasing the chances that he might provide further useful information if he is thoroughly and skillfully questioned.
  10. Millions of American citizens wanted to hear and see for themselves how Mr. Cohen would respond to questioning by the Congressional House Oversight Committee.

I contend that each of the ten facts listed above were well known to each of the Republican participants at the Cohen hearing. Together, they provide sound reasons to bring Mr. Cohen in for questioning by the Oversight Committee. Thus, by denying that there were any sound reasons, Republican participants were lying. In my opinion, those lies are even more harmful to Americans than the lies Mr. Cohen has been convicted of telling.

My best guess as to why those Republicans had lied at the hearing, wasted time repeating the lies over and over again, and insulting their Democratic colleagues, is that it was these same people who, when the Republicans were in the majority in the House of Representatives, had blocked a thorough oversight investigation in an effort to protect the President. If it was now admitted that going forward with the investigation is the right thing to do, these Republicans would be seen as guilty for having interfered with their committee’s obligations.

Going Forward

I well recognized the pressure these Republican representatives have for saying something supportive about the President whenever they appear in public. Each of them has in their districts a majority of voters who continue to support President Trump. Swimming against this type of tide is hardly to be expected of politicians. Nevertheless, this did not justify their conduct at the hearing.

Other witnesses are being called to be questioned before the same committee. To regain my respect, when going forward, they could find out from their constituents specific things that they believe the President is doing well. Then, at the hearing they could say in under a minute something like,

“We are here to investigate possible wrong doing that might have occurred, and some of President Trump’s associates have already been convicted of criminal activities. That said, I want all of us to keep firmly in mind that the President has been doing wonderful things. Under his leadership, unemployment has remained low, regulations and paper work for business folks have been dramatically reduced, and excellent people have been nominated for judgeships. I sit here today in full support of our President. Now, let me get down to questioning this witness.”

Although I respectfully disagree with much of this statement, I would understand the need for them to make it. If, after such a statement, they then proceeded to earnestly question the witness, while remaining civil to their colleagues, my level of respect for them would rise.

So, there you have it, today’s From Insults to Respect post. Until next time, may you find that all of our political leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, are beginning to act more and more in an honest, respectful manner.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

 

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Bernie Sanders conflict resolution Donald Trump John Kasich liars President Trump

On Calling President Trump a Liar

On 5/17/17, Senator Bernie Sanders and Governor John Kasich held a CNN nationally televised town hall style discussion. At one point, a questioner asked about President Trump’s frequent lying, at which point Sanders and Kasich had a fascinating exchange. It can be viewed for free on YouTube HERE. 

It begins with Sanders turning to Kasich and asking him, “Is Trump a liar?”

“Well,” Kasich replies, “sometimes he says some things that I don’t agree with, and I think they don’t resemble the facts, but I’m not going to call him…”

At this point, Sanders says, “Okay,” while chuckling along with the audience, apparently because they think Kasich is using a bunch of double-talk to avoid directly answering the question.

Kasich, noticing the audience’s laughter, replies, “Now wait a minute. There’s a difference between saying, sometimes when I see, I can see that there are politicians that say things that don’t resemble the facts, and I can actually call some people very close to me on their facts don’t match the reality.”

Sanders, begins to nod, and says, “Right.”

Then, Kasich says, “But I’m not going to go so far as to call someone a liar! That when you get, when you start using terms like that, Bernie, we saw it in Congress. You know, back in the days when we were in the majority and they were after Jim Wright and all those things and there was a lot of calling people dogs and liars. Just let the facts speak for themselves, and then we can draw a conclusion. And I’m only saying this, not because I’m trying to defend anybody. I’m worried about my country. I’m worried about getting through this.”

At this point, Sanders replies, “But when we talk about the facts, I mean Jake asked a pretty simple question. All that I’m saying is, it’s not a question of, you’re a Conservative and I don’t think you’re a liar. We disagree on everything, but that doesn’t make you a liar, and I don’t think that makes me a liar. But if you were to tell me that three to five million people voted illegally in this election, of which no Republican or Democratic official believes, what can I say? I think that it’s a lie.”

Here Kasich looks troubled, and replies, “I, I, look, I guess I’m gonna do it, I didn’t think I would, does that mean that someone who writes a campaign ad that distorts somebody’s record is a liar? I mean, we have to be careful about our terms. That’s all I’m saying, okay?”

Bernie, here, agrees to end this discussion, saying, “Okay, we’ll let it be here, we’ll bury it here.”

My Opinion  

Regular readers of this blog well know that name calling leads to me and others to lose some respect for the name caller. Calling someone a “liar” is name calling, and we can see the loss of respect that Governor Kasich feels for those who use that term when we watch the video clip.

Now, I well understand that some people who use that term believe that it is a useful rhetorical device for discouraging people from lying. The argument goes something like this: Most people don’t like to be lied to. Most people don’t like to be called a liar. If people who lie end up getting called a liar, perhaps this name calling will discourage lying. So, what’s wrong with that reasoning?

Well, first of all, we pretty much all lie from time to time, either by exaggerating the truth, or lying to get something we might desire, or to protect the feelings of someone we care about. As Bob Dylan once said on his radio show, “According to a survey, 4 out of 5 people admit to telling white lies at least once a day, and I’m telling you that that other guy, he’s lying.”

As soon as you call someone a liar, those who hear it, at some level of their consciousness, recognize that they have also lied in the past. They know that they would not like it if you called them a liar, and this leads to some anger towards you, though it might be at a very subtle level. There are, of course, some people who do not like President Trump, and for those people, hearing someone calling the president a liar might be, for them, just fine. And they love pictures of him illustrating his lying ways. This might have been the reason for the chuckling of Senator Sanders and those in the audience when Governor Kasich began to reply to the question, “Is Trump a liar?” But consider how you would feel if someone called the candidate you support a liar. Recall that there were people calling President Obama a liar during his administration and illustrations of what some believed were his lying tendencies. I think the Golden Rule applies here. Moreover, calling the president a liar stirs up his supporters to be angry, and this can produce less than ideal conditions for people to come together in mutually beneficial ways.

When we are losing respect for someone who is engaging in lying, there are better ways to discuss this without calling that someone a liar. In the case of President Trump, when he expresses a political position that differs from mine, I can simply state respectfully what my position is, and give some reasons why I hold that opinion. When the president says something that I believe contradicts the facts, I can explain the facts as I see them, and provide the evidence that supports them as being regarded as facts.

Now, Senator Sanders has been trying to make the case that there is something different in the type of lying that President Trump engages in compared to what most people engage in. He is seeking to see how he can best make that distinction by bringing up the liar issue. In the clip, he brings up the example of the president declaring repeatedly that between three million and five million people voted illegally, and that if just the legal votes were counted, he not only won the electoral votes, he also won the popular vote. At other times, Sanders noted that the president has repeatedly claimed that his electoral vote victory was by the largest amount in history. When the president is confronted with the facts that the previous president, Mr. Obama, had won more electoral votes then he did, that many other presidents also won by more electoral votes then he did, and that this can easily be verified by anyone really interested in the truth of the matter, he just continued to claim he won the election by the greatest margin in history. At another time, the president claimed he was against the Iraq War despite a videotape clearly showing his support of that war, and no evidence that he spoke out against the war when it was getting under way.

These, along with others that he has made, are indeed whopper-sized lies. By providing the type of specifics that I provided in the previous paragraph it makes the point clearer than calling him a liar.

We all lie to some degree. Using the term just means he has lied from time to time, and therefore the term does not make a clear distinction between what the president has been doing, and what most of us regularly do. Giving the specific examples of the lies he engages in, describing them as seeming to be far bigger lies then most people are willing to engage in, presents a clearer, more precise form of communication. Explaining the value of having a president that we have trust in can also be beneficial. In my view, we will all foster more respect from others if we come to realize that there is alway a better option for your communications than using name calling.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on.  This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence.  To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

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conflict resolution Donald Trump mental disorders Mental Illness President Trump

Is Trump Mentally Ill?

With some regularity, former President Trump has been accused of being mentally ill. Here at From Insults to Respect, we’re going today to take a discerning look at this. We’ll begin with some pieces that appeared in the media when he was president, and then see if we can move ahead to make our own informed personal decision.

The Washington Post Article

Bernie Sanders

In a Washington Post article titled, “Bernie Sanders Calls Trump a ‘Pathological Liar’” Ed O’Keefe wrote, “Al Franken says ‘a few’ Republicans think Trump is mentally ill.”

What are the specifics that led to this determination? According to Senator Sanders,

“When somebody goes before you and says that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally …. there is not a scintilla of evidence to believe that, what would you call that remark? It’s a lie. It’s a delusion.”

In the same article, Franken, who was a senator at the time the article was written explains his statement about what he heard from Republicans:

Al Franken

“In the way that we all have this suspicion that — you know, that he’s not — he lies a lot, he says things that aren’t true, that’s the same thing as lying, I guess.”

Having read this article, I came away thinking that there are people who are very sympathetic with what the two senators were trying to say. At the same time, it is also conceivable that the former president knows full well when he is lying but he is using it as a strategy.

Perhaps he has come to believe that many of his most ardent supporters actually believe him when he lies, and it is the media who are telling the lies. Trump may also believe that others of his supporters don’t care that he lies because they believe business folks always exaggerate as they promote their goals, and that Trump is just promoting causes that match their values. Many Americans may therefore see his behavior not as a sign of mental illness, but simply that he is a shrewd businessman.

Finally, Trump may believe that there are other supporters who don’t like it that he lies, but believe that his opponents lie as well. They therefore cancel out this negative, and rely instead on one or more hot button issues such as abortion, immigration, burdensome regulations, health care, etc., for throwing their support behind him. Trump may believe that this group, when combined with those who believe his lies, and those who accept lying as part of doing business, provides him a worthwhile calculated risk that he will have enough support to achieve his personal goals. After all, it worked well enough to get him elected.

Now, to me, some of the solutions Trump was proposing to deal with these issues seemed completely irrational. For example, when he emphatically claimed that if elected he would send back to Mexico the millions of dreamers who had come to the U.S. illegally when they were children, and he was going to get Mexico to pay for building a “beautiful” wall the entire length of our southern border, I could hardly believe my ears. And yet, I soon met quite a few Americans who said that these ideas made perfectly good sense. Does it make sense, therefore that I consider all of these people who disagree with me as having some type of mental illness? What good would that do?

Let’s move on now to take a look at three psychiatrists that object to calling Trump mentally ill.

A Fox News Article

Dr. Keith Ablow

Recently, Fox News published an article by Dr. Keith Ablow titled, “Relax, Trump is Stone Cold Sane.” This doctor is a psychiatrist and a paid member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.

According to Dr. Ablow, the fact that Trump did become elected president is one indication of his soundness of mind. But that, in itself, is not sufficient to give him a clean bill of health. As the doctor explains,

“I should note that nothing I am saying should besmirch the reputations of men like President Abraham Lincoln or Sir Winston Churchill, both of whom are said to have fought the ravages of major depression or bipolar disorder. One was instrumental in ridding America of slavery. The other was instrumental in saving the world from tyranny. Mahatma Gandhi, by the way, also reportedly suffered from depression. Psychiatric illness does not, a priori, disqualify a person from rendering extraordinary service to mankind.”

So, according to Dr. Ablow, if you can become a country’s leader you can still be mentally ill. If that is the case, why then does Dr. Ablow claim that Trump is not mentally ill? It is because, “neither Lincoln nor Churchill nor Gandhi led a nation after becoming a business sensation and television star.”

Hmmm. Well, let’s keep this thought in mind as we move on to hear what another psychiatrist has to say.

Dr. Allen Frances’s Opinion

In the February 14, 2017 edition of the New York Times, there appears a letter to the editor titled, “An Eminent Psychiatrist Demurs on Trump’s Mental State.” The author of the letter is Dr. Allen Frances. In his opinion, “It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither).”

Dr. Frances goes on to say in part:

“Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness, and the mentally ill behave badly only rarely. Psychiatric name-calling is a misguided way of countering Mr. Trump’s attack on democracy. He can, and should, be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers.”

Wow, pretty strong words. As we reflect on this for a few minutes, let’s move on to take a look at one more psychiatric opinion on this subject before we seek to draw our own conclusions.

Dr. Richard A. Friedman’s Opinion

Dr. Richard Friedman

Dr. Friedman’s opinion piece appears in the February 17, 2017 issue of the New York Times. There he tells us that it is unethical for psychiatrists to diagnose mental illnesses in people they have not examined and whose consent they have not received. However, psychiatrists can pretty much get around this principle by describing the common characteristics of a particular mental illness and then say how they might explain Mr. Trump’s behavior. According to a Huffington Post article, several mental health professionals have used this very approach to strongly suggest Trump is mentally ill.

Dr. Friedman then tells us, that even if a doctor did diagnose Trump as mentally ill after a thorough exam, it doesn’t mean he couldn’t be fit to be president. He then concludes:

“So the nation doesn’t need a shrink to help it to decide whether President Trump is fit to serve, mentally or otherwise. Presidents should be judged on the merits of their actions, statements and, I suppose, their tweets. No experts are needed for that — just common sense.”

I fully agree with Dr. Friedman’s conclusion. But it leaves us still up in the air with regards to whether or not it makes sense to view Trump as mentally ill. Let’s see if it makes sense for us to make this judgment for ourselves.

So, Is He, Or Isn’t He?

Since those articles that I discussed above were published, Trump has now been charged with a series of serious crimes regarding taking top secret documents that he was told did not belong to him. Do such actions legitimize viewing him as having a mental illness?

Most doctors would object to untrained individuals making this type of determination, arguing that this should be left to mental health professionals and only by a thorough examination of a patient, a detailed history and all relevant clinical data. This sounds like a pretty thorough way to make a decision as important as this, but from speaking to patients over the years, I’m under the impression that they have been given a so called diagnosis simply by having a discussion with a mental health professional for less than an hour, and often in less than twenty minutes.

The latest version of the DSM, which is used by mental health professions to make this type of determination, states: 

“Although no definition can capture all aspects of all disorders in the range contained in the DSM-5, the following elements are required:

“A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognitive, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental process underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities. An expected or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder. Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above.”

Notice how broad this definition is. It makes mention of a “disturbance” that reflects a “mental dysfunction in the individual.” The DSM definition doesn’t direct us to any reliable or valid way too assess functioning. The process described in the DSM for assessing the subjective notions of “disturbance” and “dysfunction in the individual” is left to the clinician who decides if these are “clinically significant.” Thus, it provides clinicians an opportunity to include anything that benefits their set of values.

Most clinicians have a financial interest in deciding whether or not their clients have a clinically significant condition. When they judge that their patients’ conditions are significant, they indicate this on the third party intake forms and this allows them to continue to see these clients and to get paid for additional visits. On the other hand, clinicians who work in an underfunded community government clinic that is being swamped by those seeking to access mental health services might apply a more stringent standard for what constitutes a mental disorder. Thus, we can hypothesize that this type of clinical judgment may often be based on financial self-interest or clinic treatment capacity than one based on principles of science.

Let us look a little more at the DSM’s attempt to draw distinctions between what is a mental disorder and what is not. According to the DSM, certain socially deviant behavior and conflicts are not mental disorders, although they may be. If the deviance or conflict results from a “dysfunction in the individual,” then a mental disorder exists in the individual. How does one make this type of distinction? Can it be done in some recognized precise manner? In practice, this too is left to the subjective judgment of the clinician that can be biased by financial interests and the capacity of his or her clinic. Might it also be influenced by political points of view as well?

Upon reading the DSM, we find that there is no documentation that people, whether they are clinicians or not, can reliably and objectively distinguish between those who have mental disorders from those who do not. The whole concept of mentally illness is really used to serve the business interests of the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists.

Yes, there are people who act in ways that make no sense to the average Joe or Jill. There are indeed people suffering and concerned about their emotions and behaviors. Labeling someone as mentally ill really fails to clarify what is going on, though it creates the illusion to many that it does.

In my view, we become much wiser when we drop the mental illness descriptors and stick to more specific descriptors of behaviors, attitudes, levels of functioning, and our personal values.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.