Re: “FBI searches home, office of former Trump adviser,” Aug. 23 news story

When President Donald Trump was interviewed about the FBI raid on John Bolton’s house on Friday, he was wearing a new cap with the printing “Trump was right about everything!” That is fitting because in Rick Atkinson’s “Liberation Trilogy” book series about the U.S. army in Europe in World War II, he relates how they encountered many posters in Italy saying, “Mussolini is always right.” And in Germany they encountered posters saying, “Hitler is always right.” Seems to be a pattern.

Gary Waldman, Aurora

How would blue-state governors feel about deployment?

Re: “Trump adds cities for possible deployment,” Aug. 25 news story

Among cities with a reported violent crime rate as high or higher than Chicago and New York are Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Cleveland. Why isn’t the president making the Republican governors of those states the same threat of National Guard deployment he is making to the governors of Maryland, Illinois, and New York?

If he did, would the Republican governors in those states have any different reaction than those of the Democratic governors?

Shouldn’t Vice President JD Vance (Ohio) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (Louisiana) openly welcome the president����ap help to reduce crime in the above cities in their state?

Curt Anderson, Broomfield

The spike in health care premiums

Re: “Colorado faces 28% spike in costs,” July 22 news story

The shock of large increases in Colorado health care premiums for the upcoming enrollment period is sad on so many levels. The Big Beautiful Bill that Congress passed and the president signed largely eliminated federal premium subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) that have kept premiums halfway reasonable in order to help finance tax cuts that disproportionally benefit the wealthy and large corporations.

Republicans have been clear for years that they wanted to eliminate or neuter the ACA and make these tax cuts permanent, and now they have.

For those who don’t get involved or at least pay attention to politics, my message is: If you don’t make sure you have a seat at the table, you are on the menu — chomp chomp.

John W Thomas, Fort Collins

What’s bad for the goose …

Re: “Trump’s performances with leaders reminded me why I’m a proud neocon,” Aug. 20 commentary

In his article explaining neoconservative values, referring to the war in Ukraine, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens states that “if disorder goes unchecked, or if aggression is rewarded, in one part of the world, it will encourage disorder and aggression in other parts.”

I have to wonder if the same applies to Israel. Stephens is a vocal supporter of Israel. Israel’s unchecked aggression against the Palestinians is causing death, displacement and starvation. He is right that such behavior in one place will encourage it in other places. Since America supports Israel with money and weapons, it will be hard for us to condemn the next genocide in Africa, or India’s persecution of Muslims, or China’s aggression against Taiwan.

If neocon values are worth applying to the world, they should be applied consistently.

Steve Laudeman, Denver

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Like other election deniers including fellow Coloradan Rebecca Lavrenz who was sentenced this week for participating in the January 6 assault on the Capitol, Peters continues to peddle the stolen election conspiracy theory to anyone who will buy it.

There’s a reason Peters, Lavrenz, pillow-magnate Mike Lindell, former president Donald Trump and other purveyors of misinformation have doubled down on deceit; they’re too invested to quit now.

If Stop the Steal was a garden-variety conspiracy theory, it wouldn’t matter. The delusions of flat earthers, 911 truthers, and chem trail trackers have no impact. This conspiracy theory, however, has undermined faith in U.S. elections, endangered election workers, and all but destroyed the credibility of a once formidable political party. Worse, the incendiary power of the lie smolders under the surface of the 2024 campaign. If Trump loses again in November, January 6 could be a mere prologue.

Peters involvement in Stop the Steal began in May 2021 when she and two of her employees hatched a plan to get Conan Hayes, a California surfer turned cyber sleuth for election denier Mike Lindell, into a Dominion Voting Systems computer upgrade with a stolen security badge. Hayes took copies and videos of the voting system which were later made public.

For her role, Peters was convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, official misconduct, attempting to influence a public servant, and violation of duty. In October, she will receive her sentence which could include significant jail time.

When the trial concluded, Peters went on Real America’s Voice, the DIY “news station” hosted by Steve Bannon (when he’s not in prison) to talk about how she, a “deep-state indicted election whistleblower,” was victimized by the court and the media. She also accused Serbia of being the epicenter of Dominion Voting Systems’ vote-flipping treachery. During the trial, her lawyer suggested China or Canada may have hacked the ballot machines in 2020. Why do Eastern Europeans always land the best bad-guy roles?

On social media, Peters blasted Dominion and the Colorado Secretary of State’s lawyers while lauding her own efforts with a Bible verse. On Lindell’s website, she compared herself to Jesus on the cross.

The need to be a hero of Biblical proportions also animates Rebecca Lavrenz, a Colorado Springs-area woman who calls herself the J6 Praying Grandma. She was sentenced this week to six months of home confinement and a $103,000 fine for her participation in the January 6, 2020 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She, too, is unrepentant. Although the judge ordered Lavrenz off the Internet for six months, her fundraising account, which has raised twice as much money as the fine, continues to grift.

According to the crowdfunding site, God chose Lavernz to carry His presence into the Capitol to “reconfirm the covenant …this country was established ‘…for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.’” The phrase, plucked context-free from the Mayflower Compact, refers to their voyage to “plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia.” As a justification for breaking the law four centuries later the Pilgrim’s contract makes as much sense as saying that the creator of the universe needed a lift indoors. Is that in Two Corinthians? Just asking.

The jury and judge didn’t buy it. Now if Edmond Burke could just send a cease and desist letter from the grave ordering Lavernz and every other election denier to stop abusing the quote attributed to him: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Following a violent mob into the U.S. Capitol hell-bent on subverting a presidential election is not what the British statesman had in mind.

These grand rationalizations, however absurd, may be or may not be sincere but they are self-serving. Peters, Lavernz, and Lindell have had more than 15 minutes of fame. When they leapt at the chance to be a hero of the story and they passed over mountains of evidence that it was all a lie. After four years, numerous court cases, defamation suits, and millions of dollars spent looking for proof of a stolen election and not one shred found, they cling to the delusion. As purveyors of that delusion, witting or not, they must be held accountable.

Did Donald Trump truly believe the 2020 election was stolen or did he cynically brandish the lie in hopes of overturning the election? The latter seems more likely but who knows? Self-interest deludes us all to one degree or another. One thing is certain; he will invoke the false allegation again if he loses. Trump continues to say he won the 2020 election. He has cast dispersion on mail-in voting systems including Colorado’s. This is groundwork.

One-time confidant, John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor recently told CNN, “We know one thing for sure: Trump never loses. And so if he’s not declared the winner of 2024, as in 2020, it must be because he was treated unfairly yet again; it was stolen yet again.”

Heaven help us.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.

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, director of DU’s , made the comments on Aug. 20 during a 30-minute interview with

Hashemi told The Denver Post that he has been receiving hate mail, and threatening phone calls, from “right-wing hawkish supporters of Israel” since appearing on the podcast, and that he felt DU’s response to his remarks runs counter to academic freedom.

In the podcast interview, Hashemi wondered whether the timing of the attack on Rushdie — whose novel “The Satanic Verses” drew death threats from Iran’s leader in the late 1980s — suggests it was meant to derail the over a resumption of the nations’ 2015 nuclear deal.

He speculated that Iranian hard-liners could have been behind the stabbing, choosing Rushdie as a “soft target” after the U.S. announced this month that an Iranian operative had been charged in a in presumed retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in 2020 that killed Iran’s most powerful general.

Or, Hashemi theorized, the stabbing suspect — 24-year-old Hadi Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey — could have been in communication with someone online claiming to be a supporter of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who “lured him into attacking Salman Rushdie.”

That person talking to Matar could have been a Mossad operative, Hashemi added, since “Israel has taken a very strong position against reviving the Iran nuclear agreement.”

“I think that’s one possible interpretation and scenario that could explain the timing of this, at this moment, during these sensitive political discussions related to Iran’s nuclear program,” Hashemi said on the podcast.

On Thursday, members of six Colorado Jewish organizations, including Scott Levin of the , released a statement calling on DU to “condemn Professor Hashemi’s statement, which is damaging rhetoric masquerading as a legitimate opinion, and completely ungrounded in fact.”

The community leaders said they were dismayed and angered over Hashemi’s theory, which they say puts Jewish students at risk.

“Hashemi’s perverse supposition is yet another example in a long history of falsely blaming and scapegoating Jews for intervening in international affairs in manipulative and violent ways for nefarious gains,” said the group, which also included members of Hillel of Colorado, JEWISHcolorado, the Jewish Community Relations Council, Rocky Mountain Rabbis and Cantors, and the Mountain States American Jewish Committee.

The university released a statement prior to Thursday’s news release from the local Jewish community.

“Professor Hashemi spoke as an individual faculty member and does not speak for the university,” DU officials said in their statement. “While we wholeheartedly respect academic freedom and freedom of speech, his comments do not reflect the point of view of the university, nor are we aware of any facts that support this view. The safety of every speaker and every student on our campus, and all campuses, is critical to our society. We condemn the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. And it goes without saying that we remain committed to assuring that the experience of our Jewish students, faculty and staff is safe, supportive, respectful and welcoming.”

In a phone interview, Hashemi said he too condemns the “heinous” attack on Rushdie, author of the 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.” The book was banned in Iran, where the late leader Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.

“My training is in political theory,” Hashemi said of his speculation on the podcast. “I get paid to theorize.”

Hashemi said he is disappointed by the university’s statement, “which suggests my presence on campus is a threat to Jewish students.” He also describes the university’s response as an “attempt to silence public debate,” a stance that is counter to academic freedom.

“This (DU’s statement) has severe consequences for my academic reputation,” Hashemi said. “It is deeply offensive, false and defamatory.”

Rushdie, 75, was stabbed multiple times in the Aug. 12 attack in western New York. He suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and in an eye that he is likely to lose. Matar has been charged with attempted murder.

Iran has denied involvement in the attack on Rushdie.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Some of his closest allies, including Fox News Channel hosts like Laura Ingraham, warned that day that Trump was “destroying” his legacy. “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough,” said his friend and confidant Sen. Lindsey Graham. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who worked closely with Trump to dramatically reshape the judiciary, later denounced him as “morally responsible” for the attack.

But one year later, Trump is hardly a leader in exile. Instead, he is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and a leading contender for the 2024 presidential nomination.

Trump is positioning himself as a powerful force in the primary campaigns that will determine who gets the party’s backing heading into the fall midterms, when control of Congress, governor’s offices and state election posts are at stake. At least for now, there’s little stopping Trump as he makes unbending fealty to his vision of the GOP a litmus test for success in primary races, giving ambitious Republicans little incentive to cross him.

“Let����ap just say I’m horrendously disappointed,” said former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a longtime Republican who now serves on the advisory committee of the Renew America Movement, a group trying to wrest the party away from Trump’s control.

“His ego was never going to let him accept defeat and go quietly into the night,” she added. “But what I am surprised by is how deferential so many of the Republican elected officials” have been.

Rather than expressing any contrition for the events of Jan. 6, Trump often seems emboldened and has continued to lie about his 2020 election loss. He frequently — and falsely — says the “real” insurrection was on Nov. 3, the date of the 2020 election when Democrat Joe Biden won in a 306-232 Electoral College victory and by a 7 million popular vote margin.

Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president����ap allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.

Undaunted, Trump is preparing for another run for the White House in 2024, and polls suggest that, at the moment, he would easily walk away with the GOP nomination.

For Trump, the extraordinary outcome is the product of sheer will and a misinformation campaign that began long before the election, when he insisted the only way he could lose was if the election was “rigged” and wouldn’t commit to accepting defeat. His refusal to accept reality has flourished with the acquiescence of most Republican leaders, who tend to overlook the gravity of the insurrection for fear of fracturing a party whose base remains tightly aligned with Trump and his effort to minimize the severity of what happened on Jan. 6.

While five people died during the rioting or its immediate aftermath, less than half of Republicans recall the attack as violent or extremely violent, according to a poll released this week by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. About 3 in 10 Republicans said the attack was not violent.

The situation has stunned and depressed critics in both political parties who were convinced the insurrection would force Republicans to abandon the Trump era once and for all. He became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. The second impeachment centered on his role in sparking the insurrection, but Trump was acquitted in a Senate trial, a clear indication that he would face few consequences for his actions.

“There was this hope when we were in the safe room that we would go back and the Republicans would see how crazy this was, how fragile our democracy was, what President Trump had done, and that they would renounce that and we would all come together,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., describing the events that day. Instead, she said, “there were people defending the insurrectionists and defending Trump and continuing with the challenge and the Big Lie.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican who, with Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, has emerged as one of the few GOP anti-Trump critics in Congress, had predicted Trump’s hold on the party would “be gone” by the summer. But Kinzinger, who recently announced his decision not to run for reelection, blamed House Republican leader and Trump ally Kevin McCarthy for proving him wrong.

“What I underestimated was the impact that one person would have on that, and that is Kevin McCarthy and his visit to Mar-a-Lago,” Kinzinger said, referring to a trip McCarthy took to Florida in late January 2020 as the party was on the verge of disarray. With their eyes on retaking the House in 2022, Trump and McCarthy agreed to work together and released a photograph showing them smiling side by side.

“Kevin McCarthy is legitimately, singlehandedly the reason that Donald Trump is still a force in the party,” Kinzinger said. “That full-hearted embrace, I saw firsthand in members, made them not just scared to take on Trump but in some cases also full-heartedly embrace him.”

Aides to McCarthy didn’t respond to a request for comment on Kinzinger’s characterization.

Others, however, point to fractures that suggest Trump’s power is waning.

Banned from Twitter and denied his other social media megaphones, Trump no longer controls the news cycle like he did in office. He canceled a news conference that was scheduled for Thursday following pressure from some Republican allies, who warned that such an event was ill-advised.

During last year’s most prominent elections, Republicans like Virginia gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin strategically kept Trump at arm’s length. Youngkin’s victory created a possible model for candidates running in battleground states where suburban voters uncomfortable with the former president are a key bloc.

While Trump’s endorsement remains coveted in many midterm primary races, it has also failed to clear the field in some key races. Trump has similarly struggled to prevent other Republicans from eyeing the 2024 presidential nomination. His former vice president, secretary of state and a handful of Senate allies have made frequent trips to early voting states, preparing for potential campaigns and refusing to rule out running against Trump.

“When somebody walks out of the most powerful office in the world, the Oval Office, to sit by the swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago, his influence declines,” said John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. Bolton has funded extensive national and state-level polling on the subject over the last year that has found Trump’s sway and the power of his endorsement waning considerably since he left office.

“I really think that the evidence is clear that the people are done with Trump,” Bolton said. “He still has support, but it is declining. Honestly, it����ap not declining as fast as I would like to see and it����ap not down to zero. But among real people, it is declining.”

Trump is also facing a flurry of investigations, including in New York, where prosecutors are investigating whether his real estate company misled banks and tax officials about the value of his assets, inflating them to gain favorable loan terms or minimizing them to reap tax savings. New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office confirmed this week that it has subpoenaed Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., as part of an investigation into the family’s business practices. Both children have been prominent political surrogates for Trump.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the Jan. 6 committee continues to investigate the Trump White House’s involvement in the deadly insurrection.

Trump still has his eyes on 2024, even as he continues to obsess over the 2020 election. After spending 2021 raising money and announcing his endorsements of candidates who have parroted his election lies up and down the ballot, Trump’s team is preparing to pivot to helping those candidates win with a stepped-up rally schedule and financial support, including transfers to candidate accounts and targeted advertising.

Trump, according to allies, sees the midterms as a foundation for his next campaign, and intends to use the cycle to position himself for his party’s nomination.

Voting rights advocates, meanwhile, are increasingly worried as states with Republican legislatures push legislation that would allow them to influence or overrule the vote in future elections. They fear what might happen if Trump-endorsed candidates for secretary of state and attorney general who say the election was stolen find themselves in positions that could sway the outcome in 2024.

“It����ap a concerted effort to undermine our public’s confidence in the electoral system, so in 2022 and 2024, if they don’t like the elections — and this is Republicans — they can overturn it,” said Whitman, who also serves as co-chair of States United Action, a nonpartisan nonprofit that aims to protect the integrity of future elections. “We are in a very, very fragile place.”

___

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

The department has convened a grand jury, which issued a subpoena for communications records from Simon & Schuster, publisher of Bolton’s memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.”

The Trump administration had sought to stop its publication, accusing Bolton in a lawsuit of moving forward with publication without receiving final notice that a prepublication review to scrub out classified information was complete. The director of national intelligence referred the matter to the Justice Department last month, two of the people said. John Demers, head of the department����ap national security division, then opened the criminal investigation, according to a person briefed on the case.

Bolton has denied that he published classified information.

Bolton’s account of his time working for Trump and his efforts to get the book published set off a furor. He confirmed elements of the Ukraine scheme that prompted impeachment, wrote that the president was willing to intervene in criminal investigations to curry favor with foreign dictators and said he sought China’s help in winning reelection.

Trump has made clear he wants his former aide prosecuted.

Lawyers for the National Security Council and the Justice Department expressed reservations about opening a criminal case, in part because Trump’s public statements made it seem like an overtly political act, according to two officials briefed on the discussions. Others noted that a federal judge this summer said that Bolton may have broken the law and that the case had merit.

Bolton had agreed to let national security officials review any book he might eventually write before publication to make sure that it contained no classified information. The department accused Bolton of giving Simon & Schuster permission to publish his book before he had official signoff that his prepublication review was complete. It also sued to halt publication.

But the department sued Bolton just a week before his book was set to hit retailers in June, and a federal judge said it was too late to keep the book out of the hands of readers.

The Republican president repeatedly assailed Democratic rival Joe Biden during a rambling, hourlong Rose Garden news conference Tuesday that doubled as a reelection rally. But he offered few clues about what he would do if he remains in the White House. He similarly stammered through an interview last month when pressed by a friendly TV host to talk about what a second term would look like.

With the election less than four months away, Trump’s focus is more on winning than on how he would govern. He’s offered no substantive policy proposal, opting instead for heated rhetoric on race, crime and socialism aimed at his most loyal supporters. Biden, meanwhile, is releasing a growing number of proposals touching on topics including trade and climate change.

Trump is reshaping his campaign, announcing Wednesday that veteran GOP operative Bill Stepien will replace Brad Parscale as campaign manager. But it����ap unlikely the move will change Trump’s preference to focus more on messaging rather than a policy agenda. Some Republicans said that reflects the challenge of asking voters for another term amid overlapping public health and economic crises.

“During a reelection campaign, you basically are making the argument that the status quo is really good and that the challenger is insufficient to do the job. And for more than three years, he could credibly make that argument about the economy,” said Mike DuHaime, senior adviser to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“The problem comes when the status quo isn’t good and there is hard data — both on the economy and with COVID — that shows that,” DuHaime said, referring to the coronavirus. “That makes it much harder to make an argument about the next four years.”

Still, the question of what to do with four years in the White House is one of the most basic elements of a presidential campaign — even for an incumbent. Trump’s challenge became apparent late last month when he struggled to answer the question during an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel.

“You know the story, riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say, ‘This is great,’ but I didn’t know very many people in Washington. It wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan,” Trump said as part of his answer, before eventually calling John Bolton, his former national security adviser, an “idiot.”

Trump didn’t name a single policy objective, and, in the days that followed, the messaging from the White House seemed to rely solely on the idea that because Trump presided over a strong economy once, he would be the right person to build it back. But it has yet to put forth much of a positive agenda, instead focusing on painting a dystopic picture of the nation if Biden came to power.

“There has never been an election where we’ve had this kind of difference” between the candidates, Trump said, before painting a bleak, crime-filled portrait of the Democrats’ governing philosophy. “It����ap radical left, and it’ll destroy our country.”

His Rose Garden address on Tuesday haphazardly bounced from topic to topic, from China to statues to Biden and back again, resembling not an official government event but rather a facsimile of the campaign speech the president had wanted to give three nights earlier at a New Hampshire rally that was called off because of sparse crowds and a somewhat ominous weather forecast.

It was a display of Trump in full, an equal mix of braggadocio, grievance and vicious partisan politics. But what was missing were any specific plans to right the country’s economy or improve the fortunes of its citizens.

“There’s no agenda because he himself is the agenda,” said presidential historian Jon Meacham. “In 2016, Trump was a vehicle; now, amid a cataclysmic pandemic that he has failed to manage, fewer people outside the core base want to hear anything other than how do we get safely back to real life. Because he has no answer to that overarching question, he just talks — about, inevitably, himself.”

There have been presidential candidates in the past tripped up by the question “Why do you want to be president?” including, perhaps most notably, Ted Kennedy ahead of the 1980 election. But it is rare for an incumbent to have so little to detail as to why he should be able to keep his job.

When asked for the president����ap second-term agenda, the White House pointed to Trump’s response to COVID-19 but offered little in the way of specifics.

“As the President continues to lead a whole-of-government response to a global pandemic, restore law and order to our communities, and rebuild the economy,” said spokesperson Judd Deere, “the White House is engaged in an ongoing policy process for a bold second term agenda that continues the ‘Transition to Greatness’ that ensures we are a safer, stronger, more prosperous America.”

White House officials also pointed to promises of better trade deals and maintaining law and order, but the lack of details gave Biden’s team an opening.

“This president����ap inaction to get the virus under control has cost thousands of lives and millions of jobs. Why should voters continue to let him lead during this once-in-a-generation crisis?” said Biden national campaign spokesperson TJ Ducklo. “Don’t ask him, he doesn’t have an answer.”

Re: “Former adviser says president asked China to assist in him getting re-elected,” June 18 news story

In his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump, writes, “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations.”

It is important to ask, once more, why Donald Trump desperately wants not to lose on Nov. 3. He’s already proven he can win the presidency, and if that doesn’t happen again, he can declare victory was stolen from him; he’s already setting the stage for such a claim. Such bluster could comfort his bruised ego, but it would not reverse the defeat and its consequences for him.

Becoming a private citizen again would leave Trump without protection against criminal indictments, convictions, and punishments. Legal proceedings against him could expose how little money he really has, and could result in government seizure of many or all of his financial assets. Furthermore, he may have good reason to fear powerful actors with whom he’s connived who may wish not to see themselves exposed by official inquiry.

The president and his party will do anything to win again. We must be ready.

All government workers who may receive directives to violate campaign and election laws in ways that could assist any particular candidate or candidates must be informed, encouraged, and supported that they have the right and responsibility to refuse any such orders.

Matt Nicodemus, Boulder

Mansions displacing more affordable homes

As I watch yet one more modest, affordable Mayfair bungalow in great shape being torn down by a developer to build a huge million dollar plus home stuffed edge-to-edge into a small lot — completely out of proportion and character with every other home on the block — I have to wonder why the City of Denver allows this, yet claims that we desperately need more “affordable” housing. Their solution is to tear down home after home that people can actually afford, so the affluent can move into the huge new mansions replacing these humble homes, then build cheap housing for those who can no longer afford to live in once modest neighborhoods like Mayfair, Hale and Montclair, as a result?

In the end, this approach actually pushes out the diversity in our neighborhoods. Then, to address the resultant lack of affordable housing, we’re supposed to rally behind building cheap, ugly apartment buildings for the displaced folks who aspire to more, just like everyone else? How is this not redlining?

Instead, why aren’t we helping our friends and neighbors with modest incomes, many who have been held back for generations, move up in the world with good jobs, good training, good opportunities, access to loans, etc. instead of warehousing them on Colfax. Let����ap keep the affordable housing we already have in East Denver and find creative ways to help people live the American dream of owning a sweet little home in a welcoming neighborhood rather than accepting that displacement is the only “affordable” solution.

Cynthia Kemper, Denver

Vouchers rob schools of need funding

Re: “Bye, bye Blaine,” July 5 guest commentary

Ken Buck’s praise of the Supreme Court����ap decision to let states extend public funds to religious schools was billed as “Guest Commentary.” But like most communication by GOP politicians it contained the character assassinations and enemy-identifications required by his party.

Got to mention those frightening atheists, “progressives,” and teacher “unions.”

Meanwhile — condemning public assistance programs that “corrupt” people of low income and character and ignoring massive public problems in society — congressional Republicans regularly transfer billions in taxpayer monies to healthy corporations, their owners, and executives, while extending major tax cuts and loopholes, along with other favors, to the exceptionally wealthy 20% whom they serve exclusively.

Republican politicians’ actions and inactions are even worse than their divisive language.

Daniel W. Brickley, Littleton

Rep. Ken Buck’s support of the Choice Scholarship Program omits years of research on the negative, or at best neutral, impact of the taxpayer-funded subsidy known as school vouchers.

The Congressman states that “Families should have the freedom to make the best educational choice for their children” and he believes the Choice Scholarship Program gives children the best opportunity to succeed. More than two decades of educational assessments indicate that voucher students do no better, and oftentimes worse, on achievement tests when compared to their public school counterparts.

The Choice Scholarship Program means diverting money from the public education system to private schools, permitting a number of public neighborhood schools to deteriorate. American humorist, Garrison Keillor wrote, “When you wage war on the public schools, you attack the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”

Rick Johnson, Castle Rock

Editorial good, but somewhere north of correct

Re: “Take down Pioneer Monument,” July 5 editorial

Thank you for the editorial. I agree that what a statue or monument honors and the history its creation should be taken into account when determining whether it should remain, be removed or reinterpreted. This should be decided with transparency and in the light of public debate to ensure all voices are heard and not by angry mobs in the middle of the night.

So, I am glad to see that Gov. Jared Polis and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock have set up independent committees to oversee this process.

We must educate ourselves and understand our history as a state and as a nation, warts and all, if we are to live up to the ideals of “liberty and justice for all.”

I was born and raised in Rapid City on the eastern edge of the Black Hills just 25 miles from Mt. Rushmore. Imagine my consternation to find out from the Post Editorial Board that the massive sculptures of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln had been moved from my beloved boyhood home of South Dakota to North Dakota! Had it been sold and quietly spirited north in the dead of night? Was I really born and raised in North Dakota, not South Dakota, as I had been told my entire life?

I quickly contacted my parents back home, who gently reassured me that the “Shrine of Democracy” remains in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Curtis Dominicak, Lakewood

Editor’s note: A correction was run in print for this error and was changed before the editorial went online.

Tell history honestly with reverence and reservation

Re: “Problematic pioneer statues,” July 7 commentary

The author, Cynthia Prescott, identifies what she considers yet another concern for reflection for the American citizen wishes to recognize his/her heritage. She suggests these monuments honoring what we consider westward expansion adventurers “are just as problematic as Confederate and conquistador statues.”

How does Prescott help us to better understand what the inevitable historical march of civilization means?

Populations and cultures grow and change for many reasons. Uninhabited lands and unmapped boundaries are altered or expanded. Nations battled, unaffiliated hordes and explorers sent by leaders and monarchs opened up territories during recorded history.

Our entire populated planet experienced upheavals, invasions, usurpations, alterations of borders and the reordering of ethnic majorities and minorities. Such occurred in America.

Are we then as a country to be forever relentlessly mired in accusation and culpability? We tell our story honestly with both reverence and reservation, but the greater good should be honored and preserved.

Neiel Baronberg, Denver

OK, Karen, er, Krista

Re: “Lawlessness unabated can doom even a great city like Denver,” July 5 commentary

Krista Kafer needs to change her name to “Karen” Kafer. Her article is a perfect example of whining about white privilege. She makes no reference to the displacement of the original residents of the Denver neighborhoods or the lack of affordable housing that blocks their return.

As to her ranting about small scale looters, I suggest she read the recent New York Times Article, “The Neoliberal Looting of America” to understand how Wall Street bankers and their private equity scams loot billions from workers, consumers, and the government every year.

Or as a “law and order Karen” maybe Kafer should read a May 28 headline in The Onion, “Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First” and took it seriously.

Jim Blugerman, Georgetown

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But their stories are bad news for him, too.

In their final years in office, both of those presidents, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, experienced a noticeable slide in popularity right around the time — early May through late June — that Trump hit his current ugly patch.

According to Gallup’s ongoing tracking of the percentage of Americans who approve of a president����ap job performance, Carter’s and Bush’s numbers sank below 40% during this period and pretty much stayed there through Election Day. It����ap as if they both met their fates on the cusp of summer.

And the cusp of summer has been a mean season for Trump, who has never flailed more pathetically or lashed out more desperately and who just experienced the Carter-Bush dip. According to Gallup, his approval rating fell to 39% in early June from 49 a month earlier. So if Carter and Bush are harbingers, Trump is toast.

He’s toast by other measures as well. Two much-discussed polls by The New York Times and Siena College that were published last week suggested that in key swing states, as well as nationally, he’s the limping dead, trailing Joe Biden by double digits. That assessment is mostly consistent with other modeling and projections since the economy turned on Trump.

According to some abstruse algorithm that The Economist regularly updates, he has only a 1 in 10 chance of winning the Electoral College and thus the presidency. According to a historical averaging of election-year polls by the website FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s lead over Trump right now is the biggest at this stage of the contest since Bill Clinton’s over Bob Dole in 1996, when Clinton won his second term.

Trump’s response? To set himself on fire.

His gratuitously touted instincts are nowhere to be found, supplanted by self-defeating provocations, kamikaze tantrums and an itchy Twitter finger. There’s a culture war for him to exploit, but instead of simply pillorying monument destroyers, he created his own living monuments: a white supremacist astride a golf cart in a Florida retirement community and a pistol-toting Karen shouting at peaceful Black protesters from the stoop of her St. Louis manse. As a statement of values, it����ap grotesque. As a reelection strategy, it����ap deranged.

“Trump is in a deep hole and his reaction is to keep digging,” David Axelrod told me. “What he’s doing is shrinking his vote to excite his base.” But that base is almost certainly not big enough to carry him to victory.

Of course, November is still plenty distant. “Nobody could have predicted what these last four months would bring,” Axelrod said. “We can’t predict what the next four months will bring.”

And Trump has at times seemed to live beyond the laws of political gravity, untethered by precedents and unanswerable to pundits. For instance, his approval rating since his inauguration has been consistently — and unusually — low, lingering between 35% and 45%, according to Gallup.

But his situation appears to be dire — direr than Democrats allow themselves to admit. They remember how they counted their chickens last time around and got totally plucked.

“Every Democrat rightly has 2016 PTSD,” Lis Smith, a communications strategist who has advised Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Cuomo, told me. “But right now? You can’t imagine normal suburban people voting for Trump anymore. He has really, really alienated everyone but the MAGA true believers.”

Additionally, 2016 is a possibly irrelevant point of reference, for reasons that become clearer all the time. I wouldn’t be entirely shocked if Biden stages a rout in November — or at least as much of a rout as this era of hyperpartisanship permits — and the commentary afterward casts Trump’s reign not as some profound wake-up call but as a freak accident made possible by a perfect storm of circumstances.

In fact that commentary has started. In The Washington Post last week, Matt Bai astutely observed that even as Trump won the presidency, most Americans rejected the core tenets of his campaign and viewed him darkly. His margin of victory “came from reluctant voters who almost certainly thought they were voting for the losing candidate, and who felt confident he’d make a terrible president,” Bai wrote.

“It was mostly about the intense emotions triggered by his opponent,” he added, referring to Hillary Clinton. “In the only national referendum on Trumpism since 2016 — the midterm cycle two years later — the president����ap party was resoundingly rejected.”

There are many ways in which the last presidential election doesn’t apply to this one, when Trump faces a much tougher challenge. In 2016, an unusually high percentage of voters, especially in such pivotal states as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, told pollsters that they’d decided whom to vote for in the final week. And these late deciders favored Trump.

That could mean that many of them didn’t have an entirely fixed opinion of him. But just about every American does now. He has dominated the media like none of his recent predecessors, with flamboyant behavior that repels ambivalence.

His luck with late deciders in 2016 could also speak to Clinton aversion. But there’s no comparable Biden aversion. If many voters can’t bring themselves to adore him, they also can’t bring themselves to abhor him.

And Trump and his minions know it. That����ap why, instead of simply portraying Biden as some lefty nightmare, they’re claiming that he’s so mentally diminished that he’ll be the puppet of progressive extremists.

“Biden is just not scary enough for Trump,” Axelrod said. “He’s culturally inconvenient.”

And because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has less time and fewer ways to change the dynamics of the presidential race than he would have had in some other year.

The party conventions, for example, may have less impact than ever: They’re not rival shows but rival coronavirus narratives, with the Democrats planning a largely virtual event. Also, more Americans than usual are certain to vote early, by mail, possibly casting ballots even before the expected Trump-Biden debates.

“If somebody were asking me for advice on an October surprise, I’d tell them to do it in September,” Doug Sosnik, a longtime Democratic strategist, told me.

Meantime we’ve had other surprises, all cutting against Trump. There was the early June surprise of tear gas being used on peaceful protesters so that he could walk across Lafayette Square for a photo op; the mid-June surprise of John Bolton’s book; the late June surprise of The Times’ scoop that Trump was informed about Russian bounties on American soldiers but didn’t pay attention or care.

The surprises will no doubt keep coming for an administration as steeped in incompetence and corruption as Trump’s. That����ap the other thing about chickens: They come home to roost.

Frank Bruni has been with The New York Times since 1995 and held a variety of jobs — including White House reporter, Rome bureau chief and chief restaurant critic — before becoming a columnist in 2011. He is the author of three best-selling books.

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The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.

The White House did not respond to questions about Trump or other officials’ awareness of Russia’s provocations in 2019. The White House has said Trump was not — and still has not been — briefed on the intelligence assessments because they have not been fully verified. However, it is rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of a doubt before it is presented to top officials.

Bolton declined to comment Monday when asked by the AP if he had briefed Trump about the matter in 2019. On Sunday, he suggested to NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump was claiming ignorance of Russia’s provocations to justify his administration’s lack of a response.

“He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it,” Bolton said.

The revelations cast new doubt on the White House’s efforts to distance Trump from the Russian intelligence assessments. The AP reported Sunday that concerns about Russian bounties were also included in a second written presidential daily briefing earlier this year and that current national security adviser Robert O’Brien had discussed the matter with Trump. O’Brien denies he did so.

On Monday night, O’Brien said that while the intelligence assessments regarding Russian bounties “have not been verified,” the administration has “been preparing should the situation warrant action.”

The administration’s earlier awareness of the Russian efforts raises additional questions about why Trump did not take any punitive action against Moscow for efforts that put the lives of Americans servicemembers at risk. Trump has sought throughout his time in office to improve relations with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, moving earlier this year to try to reinstate Russia as part of a group of world leaders it had been kicked out of.

Officials said they did not consider the intelligence assessments in 2019 to be particularly urgent, given that Russian meddling in Afghanistan is not a new occurrence. The officials with knowledge of Bolton’s apparent briefing for Trump said it contained no “actionable intelligence,” meaning the intelligence community did not have enough information to form a strategic plan or response. However, the classified assessment of Russian bounties was the sole purpose of the meeting.

The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the highly sensitive information.

The intelligence that surfaced in early 2019 indicated Russian operatives had become more aggressive in their desire to contract with the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network, a militant group aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and designated a foreign terrorist organization in 2012 during the Obama administration.

The National Security Council and the undersecretary of defense for intelligence did hold meetings regarding the intelligence. The Pentagon declined to comment and the NSC did not respond to questions about the meetings.

Concerns about Russian bounties flared anew this year after members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team Six, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000 in U.S. currency. The funds bolstered the suspicions of the American intelligence community that the Russians had offered money to Taliban militants and other linked associations.

The White House contends the president was unaware of this development as well.

The officials told the AP that career government officials developed potential options for the White House to respond to the Russian aggression in Afghanistan, which was first reported by The New York Times. However, the Trump administration has yet to authorize any action.

The intelligence in 2019 and 2020 surrounding Russian bounties was derived in part from debriefings of captured Taliban militants. Officials with knowledge of the matter told the AP that Taliban operatives from opposite ends of the country and from separate tribes offered similar accounts.

The officials would not name the specific groups or give specific locations in Afghanistan or time frames for when they were detained.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, denied that Russian intelligence officers had offered payments to the Taliban in exchange for targeting U.S. and coalition forces.

The U.S. is investigating whether any Americans died as a result of the Russian bounties. Officials are focused in particular on an April 2019 attack on an American convoy. Three U.S. Marines were killed after a car rigged with explosives detonated near their armored vehicles as they returned to Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military installation in Afghanistan.

The Marines exchanged gunfire with the vehicle at some point; however, it����ap not known if the gunfire occurred before or after the car exploded.

Abdul Raqib Kohistani, the Bagram district police chief, said at the time that at least five Afghan civilians were wounded after the attack on the convoy, according to previous reporting by the AP. It is not known if the civilians were injured by the car bomb or the gunfire from U.S. Marines.

The Defense Department identified Marine Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, of Newark, Delaware; Sgt. Benjamin Hines, 31, of York, Pennsylvania; and Cpl. Robert Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, New York, as the Marines killed in April 2019. The three Marines were all infantrymen assigned to 2nd Battalion, 25th Marines, a reserve infantry unit headquartered out of Garden City, New York.

Hendriks’ father told the AP that even a rumor of Russian bounties should have been immediately addressed.

“If this was kind of swept under the carpet as to not make it a bigger issue with Russia, and one ounce of blood was spilled when they knew this, I lost all respect for this administration and everything,” Erik Hendriks said.

Marine Maj. Roger Hollenbeck said at the time that the reserve unit was a part of the Georgia Deployment Program-Resolute Support Mission, a recurring six-month rotation between U.S. Marines and Georgian Armed Forces. The unit first deployed to Afghanistan in October 2018.

Three other service members and an Afghan contractor were also wounded in the attack. As of April 2019, the attack was under a separate investigation, unrelated to the Russian bounties, to determine how it unfolded.

The officials who spoke to the AP also said they were looking closely at insider attacks — sometimes called “green-on-blue” incidents — from 2019 to determine if they are also linked to Russian bounties.

Members of Congress in both parties called for additional information and consequences for Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, and eight Democrats were to be briefed on the matter Tuesday morning. Still, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted Trump had not been briefed on the findings because they hadn’t been verified.

The White House seemed to be setting an unusually high bar for bringing the information to Trump, since it is rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of doubt before it is presented to senior government decision-makers. McEnany declined to say why a different standard of confidence in the intelligence applied to briefing lawmakers than bringing the information to the president.

Republicans who were in the briefing expressed alarm about Russia’s activities in Afghanistan.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger were in the briefing Monday led by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien. McCaul and Kinzinger said in a statement that lawmakers were told “there is an ongoing review to determine the accuracy of these reports.”

“If the intelligence review process verifies the reports, we strongly encourage the Administration to take swift and serious action to hold the Putin regime accountable,” they said.

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said, “After today’s briefing with senior White House officials, we remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces.”

Senators were reviewing classified documents related to the allegations Monday evening. The information they received was not previously known, according to one aide who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

On CNN, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed the timing of the Democratic briefing but said “it����ap no substitute for what they owe the Congress of the United States.” She said “this is as serious as it gets.”

She speculated that Trump wasn’t briefed “because they know it makes him very unhappy, and all roads for him, as you know, lead to Putin. And would he tell Putin what they knew?”

McEnany, for her part, repeatedly stressed that the allegations had not been confirmed.

“There is no consensus within the intelligence community on these allegations and in effect there are dissenting opinions from some in the intelligence community with regards to the veracity of what����ap being reported and the veracity of the underlying allegations continue to be evaluated,” she said.

The intelligence assessments came amid Trump’s push to withdraw the U.S. from Afghanistan. They suggested Russia was making overtures to militants as the U.S. and the Taliban held talks to end the long-running war. The assessment was first reported by The New York Times, then confirmed to The Associated Press by American intelligence officials and two others with knowledge of the matter.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn told reporters Monday, “I don’t think it����ap should be a surprise to anybody that the Taliban’s been trying to kill Americans and that the Russians have been encouraging that, if not providing means to make that happen.”

He added, “Intelligence committees have been briefed on that for months. so has Nancy Pelosi, so has (Democratic Senate leader) Chuck Schumer. So, this is, this is a more leaks and partisanship.”

While Russian meddling in Afghanistan isn’t new, officials said Russian operatives became more aggressive in their desire to contract with the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network, a militant group aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and designated a foreign terrorist organization in 2012.

The intelligence community has been investigating an April 2019 attack on an American convoy that killed three U.S. Marines after a car rigged with explosives detonated near their armored vehicles as they traveled back to Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, officials told the AP.

Three other U.S. service members were wounded in the attack, along with an Afghan contractor. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter. The officials the AP spoke to also said they were looking closely at insider attacks — sometimes called “green-on-blue” incidents — from 2019 to determine if they are also linked to Russian bounties.

One official said the administration discussed several potential responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step.

Intelligence officials told the AP that the White House first became aware of alleged Russian bounties in early 2019 — a year earlier than had been previously reported. The assessments were included in one of Trump’s written daily briefings at the time, and then-national security adviser John Bolton told colleagues he had briefed Trump on the matter. Bolton declined to comment, and the White House did not respond to questions on the matter.

The intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the matter insisted on anonymity to discuss the highly sensitive matter.

The White House National Security Council wouldn’t confirm the assessments but said the U.S. receives thousands of intelligence reports daily that are subject to strict scrutiny.

Trump’s Democratic general election rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, used an online fundraiser Monday to hammer the president for a “betrayal” of American troops in favor of “an embarrassing campaign of deferring and debasing himself before Putin.”

“I’m disgusted,” Biden told donors, as he recalled his late son Beau’s military service. Families of service members, Biden said, “should never, ever have to worry they’ll face a threat like this: the commander in chief turning a blind eye.”

Asked about the reports on the alleged bounties, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, “These claims are lies.”

“If in the U.S. the special services are continuing to report to the president, I suggest that one be guided by the relevant statement of President Trump, who has already given his assessment of these publications,” he told reporters during a conference call.

Bolton, who was forced out by Trump last September and has written a tell-all book about his White House tenure, said Sunday it’s “pretty remarkable the president����ap going out of his way to say he hasn’t heard anything about it. One asks, why would he do something like that?”