Can we be joyful? Or should we be Afraid?

I hope I am being paranoid today. I hope that the President – Elect’s calm demeanor, counsel to have patience and conciliatory message will win the day. But prominent commentators are worried and see danger. I have a bad feeling about this. I hope I am just being paranoid. We shall see.

After a day of full out joy and jubilation at Joe Biden’s election, it appears the current president may be digging in to use the weapons of government as a tool in such a manner as to run perilously close to the borders of authoritarianism. I hesitate to use the word fascism, because the overwhelmingly negative connotations of the word make it difficult to use with objectivity. However Trump’s behavior smacks of it.  Fascism is the establishment of unified political control, usually by a right wing “strong man”, heralded by the use of governmental instruments of force to suppress dissent. Cancelling the results of an election and using military force to eliminate or intimidate opposition would be key factors in such a transition. Historians see troubling parallels, and the very rapid escalation in the last twenty – four hours should give cause for deep concern, if not genuine fear, to all who respect the norms of freedom. To all who treasure the sacred expectations, standards and processes in what could turn out to be our frighteningly fragile democracy. 

Refusal to accept the results of an election would be typical of a fascist regime. Every other election been called by the AP since 1848. For well over one hundred and fifty years. And one of the reasons it is respected is its consistency. The AP, unlike the networks, held back in calling the 2000 election. The same crop of politicians who now decry the “media calling the election” were only too happy with media calls in 2016, and in fact in every other election since before the Civil War. 

But we could tolerate taking a few days to grouse, complain and blame. What we cannot tolerate, and will not survive as a democracy is what appears to be a systematic attempt to use the instruments of state power, which belong to the American people, as instruments to impose the political will of one party and suppress the dissent of the other. We do not use the powers of police and military to enforce one party rule. That is totalitarianism. 

Yet that is what it appears this president is willing to do.  

Trump’s instruction to William Barr to aggressively seek out evidence of election fraud, even as increasingly public officials, even Republicans of stature deny it is so egregious a misuse of power that it has lead career prosecutors to resign in protest. 

CNN reports that Richard Pilger, director of the elections crimes branch in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, told colleagues in an email that the attorney general was issuing “an important new policy abrogating the forty-year-old Non-Interference Policy for ballot fraud investigations in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested.” Pilger also forwarded the memo to colleagues in his resignation letter.” The nation’s most senior person responsible for the integrity of our election process, in other words, cannot stomach the obvious authoritarian interference by this administration.

The use of state power against his political opponents has long been a Trump Trick, but so far it has been rhetorical (“Lock her up”), partially because he has been busy using state power to protect his own cronies from the law, and partially because he has received some push back from a legal system which still clings to independence. However many career prosecutors have called Trump a danger to the rule of law, and many have warned that a second Trump administration would lead to much greater dangers of the totalitarian abuse of state police power.

As dangerous and abhorrent as this authoritarian transformation of the norms of our justice system is, it’s threat to our democracy is palpably worsened by Trump’s second and even more alarming move yesterday, which was to fire the Secretary of Defense Mike Esper.

Now why would he do that? Could it be that Esper is on record as refusing to allow the military to be used as a tool to crush political dissent? He said as much when federal forces using tear gas, stun grenades and helicopter air waves to disperse peaceful protestors. One might conclude, with fear and revulsion, that Trump is preparing the ground to employ active duty military to violently suppress the overwhelming protest he must know he will receive if/when he does whatever he can to suppress the people’s voice. I shudder to wonder whether he is preparing the ground to have someone in place, should, God forbid, it come to that. Someone who would not balk at the raw use of the military to hold on to power. Else why fire a secretary of defense in what is already a vulnerable period, the transition time in what the world regards as the last weeks of your administration?

He has replaced Esper with Chris Miller, who has a strong resume in counter terrorism, more than in classical military. Some who know Miller say of him that “he will not be that person who is going to help achieve political objectives using the department’s tremendous resources and authorities”.  One can hope. LOL But it is also said about him that in his counterintelligence career he was known to focus “on fusing intelligence with local …dynamics to navigate complex urban battlefields”. 

Let us just pray that the complex urban battlefields which Trump has chosen him to navigate are not our own.

Of course, it is too early to worry. Things will proceed according to reason, fairness and law, Republicans will stand for decency, and the republic will endure. 

Won’t it?

One thought on “Can we be joyful? Or should we be Afraid?”

  1. Do you know Heather Cox Richardson’s commentaries?

    November 9, 2020
    Inbox
    Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American Unsubscribe

    November 9, 2020
    Heather Cox Richardson
    Nov 10

    I had hoped that the days when the news came like a firehose were over, but so far, no luck.

    This morning, the stock market jumped 1200 points in its first day of trading after the announcement of Biden’s election. Over the course of the day it was up as much as 1600 points, then ended for the day with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 834.57 points, or 2.95%.

    The strong market is at least in part because pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German drug company BioNTech announced today they have a coronavirus vaccine which appears to be about 90% effective. The Trump administration immediately tried to take credit for the vaccine, only to have Pfizer note that it has not taken federal money under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed for rushing a coronavirus vaccine. Don Jr. promptly suggested that the delay in announcing the potential vaccine until this week was designed to hurt Trump’s reelection, but it seems Pfizer is likely distancing itself from Trump to avoid any suggestion that the vaccine is about politics, rather than science. In the past, the administration has touted a number of treatments for Covid-19 that have turned out to be ineffective, and the pressure for a vaccine before the election threatened to weaken public faith in one.

    The pandemic continues to worsen across the country. Today we learned that Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has tested positive for the virus; so has David Bossie, the Trump adviser in charge of the campaign’s legal challenges to the election loss. Both men were at the election night watch party at the White House, along with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was infected at the time and did not wear a mask. Aides told PBS NewsHour reporter Yamiche Alcindor that they were worried the event would be a superspreader, but felt pressured to attend.

    President-Elect Joe Biden started his presidential transition today, beginning by announcing the makeup of his coronavirus task force. It’s an impressive group of doctors and scientists, including Dr. Rick Bright, a whistleblower fired by Trump officials. “Please, I implore you, wear a mask,” Biden told Americans. “A mask is not a political statement…. The goal is to get back to normal as fast as possible.”

    New leadership and the rising infection rates are shifting the conversation. Last night, Utah’s Republican Governor Gary Herbert announced a state of emergency. He has imposed a statewide mask mandate indefinitely and a ban on social gatherings outside of households for the next two weeks. He has limited extracurricular activities at schools. Businesses that don’t follow the mask mandate can be fined; organizers who ignore the social gathering rule can be prosecuted and fined up to $10,000.

    Not everyone likes the idea of new leadership, though. In an unprecedented move, Trump is refusing to acknowledge that he has lost the election. He has launched lawsuits challenging the ballot counting in a number of states, and his surrogates—including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany—are accusing the Democrats of cheating. Tonight, Attorney General William Barr legitimized the idea of voter fraud by permitting federal prosecutors to investigate such allegations. Barr’s move prompted the head of the Election Crimes Branch of the Department of Justice, Richard Pilger, to resign.

    But what’s so weird about this is that they are losing all these lawsuits. Indeed, some of them they’re not even trying to win: they’re not bothering to fill out the correct paperwork. It seems clear that they are simply stoking the narrative of an unfair election, but it is not at all clear to me to what end.

    It is certainly possible that Trump and his people are launching a coup, as observers warn. And yet, this would not be an easy task. Biden’s win is not a few votes here or there; it is commanding, and Trump’s aides are telling reporters they think the game is played out. The military has already said it wants no part of getting involved in the election, and the courts so far are siding against the administration entirely. Even key Republican leaders, such as Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor, are denying there has been any problem with the vote.

    Maybe what’s at stake is that last Tuesday’s election left control of the Senate hanging on two runoff elections in Georgia. Today the Republican candidates in those races tagged on to the cries of voter fraud to call for Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign. Raffensberger is the top elections official in the state. He is a Republican. There is no evidence of any irregularity in the 2020 Georgia election, and the two senators did not offer any. But if they can get Democratic votes thrown out, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler might avoid the runoffs that look like they might well result in Democratic victories.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is determined to keep control of the Senate, and ginning up a conviction that the election was rigged could do that. McConnell defended Trump’s challenging of the election today, although he did not explicitly say he believed the election had been fraudulent. Trump’s attacks are working: new polling shows that 7 out of 10 Republican voters now think that the 2020 election was illegitimate. Barr met with McConnell before he signed onto the idea of voter fraud by announcing that federal prosecutors could go after it.

    Still, while control of the Senate is likely driving McConnell, it seems highly unlikely that Trump cares about it. Perhaps the president is simply deep in a narcissistic rage, unable to face the idea of losing.

    But there is something else niggling at me.

    Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Biden’s win means that the current administration is denying him the right to see the President’s Daily Briefing (the PDB) which explains the biggest security threats facing the country and the latest intelligence information. Trump can keep Biden from seeing other classified information, too.

    Today, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper (by announcing the firing on Twitter), and replaced him with a loyalist, Christopher C. Miller, who will be “acting” only. Trump also selected a loyalist and Republican political operative, Michael Ellis, to become the general counsel at the National Security Agency, our top spy agency, over the wishes of intelligence officials. Ellis was the chief counsel to Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), a staunch Trump loyalist. Trump is also reportedly considering firing FBI director Christopher Wray and CIA director Gina Haspel. Last week, he quietly fired the leaders of the agencies that oversee our nuclear weapons, international aid, and electricity and natural gas regulation, although the last of those officials was moved to a different spot in the administration.

    In other words, Trump is cleaning out the few national security leaders who were not complete lackeys and replacing them with people who are. It’s funny timing for such a shake-up, especially one that will destabilize the country, making us more vulnerable.

    Today Washington Post diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson noted that a source told him that the “Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more….” This deal comes two months after the administration’s Abraham Accord normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE opened the way for arms sales.

    The UAE has wanted the F-35 for years; it is the world’s most advanced fighter jet. They cost about $100 million apiece. The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has secretly been pushing for the sale of the arms to the UAE in the face of fierce opposition by government agencies and lawmakers.

    The administration had announced a much smaller version of this deal at the end of October, in a sale that would amount to about $10 billion, but Congress worried about the weaponry falling into the hands of China or Russia and seemed unlikely to let the sale happen. In 2019, it stopped such a deal. Trump declared a national emergency in order to go around Congress and sell more than $8 billion of weapons to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He later fired Steven Linick, the State Department’s inspector general looking into those sales, but when the IG’s report came out nonetheless, it was scathing, suggesting that they put the U.S. at risk of being prosecuted for war crimes.

    When you remember that Trump’s strong suit has always been distraction, and that he has always used the presidency as a money-making venture, I wonder if we need to factor those characteristics in when we think about his unprecedented and dangerous refusal to admit he has lost this election.

    —-

    Notes:

    Utah:
    Emily Means @Em_Means13
    Businesses that fail to follow the mask policy could be fined. Organizers of public gatherings that don’t follow the required precautions could be prosecuted and fined up to $10,000.

    November 9th 2020
    1 Retweet6 Likes

    Alcindor:
    Yamiche Alcindor @Yamiche
    Ben Carson, who has tested positive for COVID, attended the WH election night watch party along with a number of Trump cabinet and WH officials.

    I talked to several aides last Tuesday who were worried the event would become a super spreader and felt pressured to go to save face.

    November 9th 2020
    7,726 Retweets36,842 Likes

    Bossie:
    Jennifer Jacobs @JenniferJJacobs
    BREAKING: Trump outside adviser David Bossie tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday, sources tell me.

    November 9th 2020
    4,234 Retweets21,894 Likes

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/08/election-stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/09/politics/david-bossie-coronavirus/index.html

    https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-election-night-party-virus-d229a9d6d26e11dd30ce43294035850f

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/politics/barr-elections.html
    Nick Laughlin @nick_d_laughlin
    New polling shows a massive drop in trust in elections among Republicans. 7 in 10 GOP voters say the 2020 election was not free and fair.
    morningconsult.com/form/tracking-…

    November 9th 2020
    562 Retweets1,609 Likes

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/politics/esper-defense-secretary.html

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/09/us/joe-biden-trump
    Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney
    LOEFFLER and PERDUE jointly attack the Republican secretary of state in Georgia.

    November 9th 2020
    2,013 Retweets4,869 Likes

    /photo/1

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/politics/biden-security-transition.html

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/former-gop-political-operative-michael-ellis-named-as-nsa-general-counsel/2020/11/09/8c7c025a-22cc-11eb-8672-c281c7a2c96e_story.html

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-aides-fret-about-damage-refusal-accept-loss-n1247173
    John Hudson @John_Hudson
    Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more, per source

    November 10th 2020
    4,913 Retweets5,071 Likes

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/10/30/trump-plans-to-sell-f-35-fighter-jets-to-uae-but-hurdles-remain.html

    https://www.justsecurity.org/72188/state-dept-inspector-general-linick-saudi-arms-sales/

    https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-2020-election-results/2020/11/06/932376507/trump-dumps-3-agency-leaders-in-wake-of-election

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/kushner-uae-israel-f-35-fighter-jet/index.html

    Share

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    November 9, 2020
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    Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American Unsubscribe

    3:57 AM (3 hours ago)

    to me

    November 9, 2020
    Heather Cox Richardson
    Nov 10

    I had hoped that the days when the news came like a firehose were over, but so far, no luck.

    This morning, the stock market jumped 1200 points in its first day of trading after the announcement of Biden’s election. Over the course of the day it was up as much as 1600 points, then ended for the day with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 834.57 points, or 2.95%.

    The strong market is at least in part because pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German drug company BioNTech announced today they have a coronavirus vaccine which appears to be about 90% effective. The Trump administration immediately tried to take credit for the vaccine, only to have Pfizer note that it has not taken federal money under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed for rushing a coronavirus vaccine. Don Jr. promptly suggested that the delay in announcing the potential vaccine until this week was designed to hurt Trump’s reelection, but it seems Pfizer is likely distancing itself from Trump to avoid any suggestion that the vaccine is about politics, rather than science. In the past, the administration has touted a number of treatments for Covid-19 that have turned out to be ineffective, and the pressure for a vaccine before the election threatened to weaken public faith in one.

    The pandemic continues to worsen across the country. Today we learned that Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has tested positive for the virus; so has David Bossie, the Trump adviser in charge of the campaign’s legal challenges to the election loss. Both men were at the election night watch party at the White House, along with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was infected at the time and did not wear a mask. Aides told PBS NewsHour reporter Yamiche Alcindor that they were worried the event would be a superspreader, but felt pressured to attend.

    President-Elect Joe Biden started his presidential transition today, beginning by announcing the makeup of his coronavirus task force. It’s an impressive group of doctors and scientists, including Dr. Rick Bright, a whistleblower fired by Trump officials. “Please, I implore you, wear a mask,” Biden told Americans. “A mask is not a political statement…. The goal is to get back to normal as fast as possible.”

    New leadership and the rising infection rates are shifting the conversation. Last night, Utah’s Republican Governor Gary Herbert announced a state of emergency. He has imposed a statewide mask mandate indefinitely and a ban on social gatherings outside of households for the next two weeks. He has limited extracurricular activities at schools. Businesses that don’t follow the mask mandate can be fined; organizers who ignore the social gathering rule can be prosecuted and fined up to $10,000.

    Not everyone likes the idea of new leadership, though. In an unprecedented move, Trump is refusing to acknowledge that he has lost the election. He has launched lawsuits challenging the ballot counting in a number of states, and his surrogates—including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany—are accusing the Democrats of cheating. Tonight, Attorney General William Barr legitimized the idea of voter fraud by permitting federal prosecutors to investigate such allegations. Barr’s move prompted the head of the Election Crimes Branch of the Department of Justice, Richard Pilger, to resign.

    But what’s so weird about this is that they are losing all these lawsuits. Indeed, some of them they’re not even trying to win: they’re not bothering to fill out the correct paperwork. It seems clear that they are simply stoking the narrative of an unfair election, but it is not at all clear to me to what end.

    It is certainly possible that Trump and his people are launching a coup, as observers warn. And yet, this would not be an easy task. Biden’s win is not a few votes here or there; it is commanding, and Trump’s aides are telling reporters they think the game is played out. The military has already said it wants no part of getting involved in the election, and the courts so far are siding against the administration entirely. Even key Republican leaders, such as Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor, are denying there has been any problem with the vote.

    Maybe what’s at stake is that last Tuesday’s election left control of the Senate hanging on two runoff elections in Georgia. Today the Republican candidates in those races tagged on to the cries of voter fraud to call for Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign. Raffensberger is the top elections official in the state. He is a Republican. There is no evidence of any irregularity in the 2020 Georgia election, and the two senators did not offer any. But if they can get Democratic votes thrown out, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler might avoid the runoffs that look like they might well result in Democratic victories.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is determined to keep control of the Senate, and ginning up a conviction that the election was rigged could do that. McConnell defended Trump’s challenging of the election today, although he did not explicitly say he believed the election had been fraudulent. Trump’s attacks are working: new polling shows that 7 out of 10 Republican voters now think that the 2020 election was illegitimate. Barr met with McConnell before he signed onto the idea of voter fraud by announcing that federal prosecutors could go after it.

    Still, while control of the Senate is likely driving McConnell, it seems highly unlikely that Trump cares about it. Perhaps the president is simply deep in a narcissistic rage, unable to face the idea of losing.

    But there is something else niggling at me.

    Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Biden’s win means that the current administration is denying him the right to see the President’s Daily Briefing (the PDB) which explains the biggest security threats facing the country and the latest intelligence information. Trump can keep Biden from seeing other classified information, too.

    Today, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper (by announcing the firing on Twitter), and replaced him with a loyalist, Christopher C. Miller, who will be “acting” only. Trump also selected a loyalist and Republican political operative, Michael Ellis, to become the general counsel at the National Security Agency, our top spy agency, over the wishes of intelligence officials. Ellis was the chief counsel to Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), a staunch Trump loyalist. Trump is also reportedly considering firing FBI director Christopher Wray and CIA director Gina Haspel. Last week, he quietly fired the leaders of the agencies that oversee our nuclear weapons, international aid, and electricity and natural gas regulation, although the last of those officials was moved to a different spot in the administration.

    In other words, Trump is cleaning out the few national security leaders who were not complete lackeys and replacing them with people who are. It’s funny timing for such a shake-up, especially one that will destabilize the country, making us more vulnerable.

    Today Washington Post diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson noted that a source told him that the “Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more….” This deal comes two months after the administration’s Abraham Accord normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE opened the way for arms sales.

    The UAE has wanted the F-35 for years; it is the world’s most advanced fighter jet. They cost about $100 million apiece. The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has secretly been pushing for the sale of the arms to the UAE in the face of fierce opposition by government agencies and lawmakers.

    The administration had announced a much smaller version of this deal at the end of October, in a sale that would amount to about $10 billion, but Congress worried about the weaponry falling into the hands of China or Russia and seemed unlikely to let the sale happen. In 2019, it stopped such a deal. Trump declared a national emergency in order to go around Congress and sell more than $8 billion of weapons to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He later fired Steven Linick, the State Department’s inspector general looking into those sales, but when the IG’s report came out nonetheless, it was scathing, suggesting that they put the U.S. at risk of being prosecuted for war crimes.

    When you remember that Trump’s strong suit has always been distraction, and that he has always used the presidency as a money-making venture, I wonder if we need to factor those characteristics in when we think about his unprecedented and dangerous refusal to admit he has lost this election.

    —-

    Notes:

    Utah:
    Emily Means @Em_Means13
    Businesses that fail to follow the mask policy could be fined. Organizers of public gatherings that don’t follow the required precautions could be prosecuted and fined up to $10,000.

    November 9th 2020
    1 Retweet6 Likes

    Alcindor:
    Yamiche Alcindor @Yamiche
    Ben Carson, who has tested positive for COVID, attended the WH election night watch party along with a number of Trump cabinet and WH officials.

    I talked to several aides last Tuesday who were worried the event would become a super spreader and felt pressured to go to save face.

    November 9th 2020
    7,726 Retweets36,842 Likes

    Bossie:
    Jennifer Jacobs @JenniferJJacobs
    BREAKING: Trump outside adviser David Bossie tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday, sources tell me.

    November 9th 2020
    4,234 Retweets21,894 Likes

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/08/election-stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/09/politics/david-bossie-coronavirus/index.html

    https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-election-night-party-virus-d229a9d6d26e11dd30ce43294035850f

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/politics/barr-elections.html
    Nick Laughlin @nick_d_laughlin
    New polling shows a massive drop in trust in elections among Republicans. 7 in 10 GOP voters say the 2020 election was not free and fair.
    morningconsult.com/form/tracking-…

    November 9th 2020
    562 Retweets1,609 Likes

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/politics/esper-defense-secretary.html

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/09/us/joe-biden-trump
    Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney
    LOEFFLER and PERDUE jointly attack the Republican secretary of state in Georgia.

    November 9th 2020
    2,013 Retweets4,869 Likes

    /photo/1

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/politics/biden-security-transition.html

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/former-gop-political-operative-michael-ellis-named-as-nsa-general-counsel/2020/11/09/8c7c025a-22cc-11eb-8672-c281c7a2c96e_story.html

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-aides-fret-about-damage-refusal-accept-loss-n1247173
    John Hudson @John_Hudson
    Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more, per source

    November 10th 2020
    4,913 Retweets5,071 Likes

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/10/30/trump-plans-to-sell-f-35-fighter-jets-to-uae-but-hurdles-remain.html

    https://www.justsecurity.org/72188/state-dept-inspector-general-linick-saudi-arms-sales/

    https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-2020-election-results/2020/11/06/932376507/trump-dumps-3-agency-leaders-in-wake-of-election

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/kushner-uae-israel-f-35-fighter-jet/index.html

    Share

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