A mysterious coverup that would make Richard Nixon blush

            Donald Trump Jr. is a big boy, purportedly, and is hardly shy around a microphone. So why not slide that chronically protruded chest toward a mike before the Senate Intelligence Committee?

            Republicans are throwing a toddler tantrum, all tears and slobber, at the thought. Why? Let the man talk.

            So many "whys" about what our president, his kin and his enablers have been doing:

            If the Mueller Report "totally and completely exonerates" Donald Sr., why would Trump not want to cooperate with Congress in every way to ease everyone's minds?

            If Robert Mueller found "no collusion, no obstruction," why would Trump seek to prevent him from testifying before Congress?

            So, too, with former White House counsel Don McGahn. What more does McGahn know that Donald Trump doesn't want you and me to know?

            The report says Trump leaned on McGahn to dismiss Mueller. McGahn refused. Then, McGahn says, Trump asked him to lie about that request.

            Maybe that's because with Mueller on his case, as the latter reports, Trump said, "This is the end of my presidency."

            How so, Mr. President? No collusion, no obstruction, you say. What then had you worried?

            Why concoct a lie about the reason for the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian contingent?

            Why ask FBI director James Comey to pull back from probing National Security Adviser Mike Flynn for his dealings with Russia?

            Why concoct another lie about the pretext for firing Comey (later admitting it was about stopping the Russia investigation and nothing more)?

            What don't you want Mueller, and Comey, and now Congress and well, everyone, to know?

            Prosecutors use a term called "consciousness of guilt." Look it up. Basically it describes just about everything Donald Trump has said and done regarding Russia.

            It means lying repeatedly even when the lies are self-evident. ("No communication" with Russia while Jared Kushner was discussing setting up a back channel for such a thing.)

            It means constructing false alibis (um, adoption as a pretext for Russians at Trump headquarters pre-election).

            It means intimidating witnesses, something Trump did in tweet after tweet as former enablers turned state's evidence.

            These things should tell us that Trump and his campaign broke the law in their dealings with the Russians and have engaged in a coverup that would make Richard Nixon blush.

            What continues in his resisting congressional scrutiny -- obvious and ongoing obstruction – should make every citizen demand the truth.

            A letter signed by more than 800 federal prosecutors asserts that Trump has done indictable things to thwart investigations of all stripes.

            Some assert that a bunch of Democrats and liberals signed that letter. That doesn't stand up to scrutiny. But you decide. Among them, Jeffrey Harris, a former assistant to former New York prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, says, "I have absolutely no doubt that the prosecutor Rudy Giuliani would have indicted someone who committed the acts that are put out on the Mueller report in a heartbeat."

            The same goes for Paul Rosenzweig, who was on the team of Special Counsel Ken Starr in making the case against Bill Clinton. Rosenzweig said that Trump's attempt to bully McGahn unto itself is indictable and impeachable.

            I can't imagine any American believing that if Trump were not president he would not be facing criminal indictment. Mueller's report lists 10 possible acts of obstruction.

            Add to that now an 11^th: contempt of Congress. Trump appears dedicated to forcing the hand of House investigators by using their only remedy to get the truth – an impeachment trial.

            The fact is that this should have happened even before the Mueller report was released. It should have happened the moment former Trump fixer Michael Cohen was convicted of crimes done at Trump's bidding.

            If not then, it should have begun after Cohen testified in Congress on matters which legal observers said implicated Trump in at least 14 crimes, ranging from insurance fraud and tax fraud to threats and intimidation.

            There is no "if" as to whether Trump obstructed justice. The only question is "why" he lied so consistently about all things Russia. We should not be left to guess.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Brown-skinned laborers, white-skinned hypocrites

            I'm stunned at this late moment that we haven't seen a presidential tweet – exhausting all 280 characters and all 11 syllables of Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos' last name.

            Dot. Dot. Dot.

            If Donald Trump considers himself a Fox News hound, what's with his failure to exploit that name and all the angst and anger – angster -- he can further foment among his fearful followers?

            Surely the leader of the paleface world heard the name pronounced on TV. All those trilled Rs and alien phonics. Why, that "G" isn't even pronounced the way God intended it.

            Aguilera-Mederos was behind the wheel of a runaway semi that caused one of the most horrific traffic accidents in Colorado history – 28 vehicles, four fatalities, scores of injuries.

            That's bad enough, but consider: Using "Fox & Friends"-speak, the driver was from what would qualify as one of those "Mexican countries" (actual headline) down around the equator. Aguilera-Mederos is here from Cuba with a green card.

            The semi was headed down a steep incline on I-70 when the driver lost control. Charging down from the foothills, the truck slammed into cars halted by another traffic accident.

            Runaway trucks are nothing new in the Rockies. That's why emergency ramps are availed and signs advise the utmost caution. Aguilera-Mederos was negligent. A court will decide if he's criminally so.

            It's just the state of discourse, however, that the driver's ethnicity became a focal point of much of it.

            Someone whipped up an online petition to deport Aguilera-Mederos, and to remark on the harm wrought by "brown devils." It continued, "The wetbacks need to get out of R country and build the f---ing wall."

            Once again, Mr. President. Why no tweet? Your public awaits.

            Ah, but let's think about this a little further. What if the truck was defective? And if this man was unqualified, who hired him?

            It turns out a small Houston trucking company owns the vehicle. Not surprisingly, the company has been cited for vehicles with, ahem, brake problems.

            Yes, isn't that the way it works? We talk about invading hordes of brown-skinned people (actually people who demonstrate the highest qualities of resourcefulness, hard work and attention to family), but rarely do we talk about the people who exploit their labor.

            Like Donald Trump, for instance.

            Remember the tempest stirred during the Clinton administration – Nannygate it was called – when two candidacies for attorney general (Zoe Baird and Judge Kimba Wood) were withdrawn after acknowledging they hired undocumented individuals to perform household functions?

            President Trump didn't withdraw Andrew Pudzer's name from nomination as his secretary of labor though Pudzer acknowledged the very same thing. (Pudzer was rejected by the Senate.)

            And why should Trump have made a thing about it? His properties are well-known to have employed undocumented individuals. A recent Washington Post expose revealed a veritable Costa Rican pipeline of undocumented workers to Trump properties.

            If members of the MAGA set know this, it appears not to bother them one bit.

            Reportedly, federal investigators from the Southern District of New York, are not so sanguine. They are investigating the Trump Organization's use of illegal labor as one piece of a possible organized crime case under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.

            Rest assured, those who will made a big deal out of Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos' name have no complaint if people with all those dreaded syllables clean their motel toilets, harvest their produce or replace their storm-battered roofs.

            And of course they're completely satisfied if brown-skinned "devils" help prop up the business of a folk hero with a forked tongue.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

 

Words to a child: One nation under the gun

            In Colorado the other day, it was time for many parents to have the talk.

            The talk about a dangerous world. The talk about safety at school.

            Many parents had time and motivation to do this because a woman with a gun made threats that shut down schools from Colorado Springs to Denver to Fort Collins.

            We're all busy, distracted, headed in every direction. In Colorado, nothing stops everything but blizzards and the Broncos.

            Add this: a Florida woman flying into Denver with apparent intent to kill.

            Sol Pace, 18, was said to be "infatuated with Columbine" and emotionally fragile. The horrors of that 1999 tragedy were about to be relived on its 20^th anniversary. When she deplaned, she got herself a weapon at a gun shop not far from the school. Alarms sounded up and down the Front Range.

            Half a million students were told to stay home. Thousands who didn't have to stay home did so anyway. Education essentially stopped, all because of a gun that she ultimately turned on herself.

            As a search ensued, media outlets cued up advice on what to tell children about situations like this, with mass shootings increasingly commonplace. I don't have children at home, but if I did, here's what I'd say.

            My child: The first thing to understand is that the world isn't as dangerous as the news implies. The same for school. It is still the safest place to be outside of home with me. It has always been so.

            What's true, sadly, is that your world is not nearly as safe as it could be.

            Your world, your community, your nation, is less safe because politicians have put the interests of commerce ahead of keeping people safe.

            The commerce of gun sales. The songs of cash registers, of bar codes chirping.

            In Colorado, schools closed because a teenager not old enough to buy a gun in her home state of Florida (recently having barred gun sales to people under 21) did so only moments after arriving at Denver's airport.

            Federal officials said it was a legal purchase. Gun safety groups said no -- that the law prevents someone who can't buy a gun in her home state to buy it in another.

            A gun shop owner said it would be a bad idea to prevent fly-in transactions like this. It would crimp the "tourist industry."

            If that's the case, why did the traveler even have to go to a gun shop? Why not guns in vending machines at the airport? Why not guns for sale mid-air along with mini booze bottles? Would that serve the tourist economy?

            Any legislation that would slightly alter the equation in favor of gun safety is assailed as the end of the world by gun lobbyists and hobbyists.

            To them all guns are created equal – no distinction between the one that could kill one and the one that will kill scores.

            They say it's about fundamental freedoms. Listen closer and know that it's all about convenience, and of course profit.

            These are not good times for the gun lobby, with more and more Americans outraged over the dangers they face in deference to sanctified appliances of death.

            But the gun industry knows that its greatest ally is fear, so it hardly blinks in the wake of another mass murder with its products, while those who could do something about it choose to litter the battlefield with leaflets of "thoughts and prayers."

            Once, again, child, the world isn't as dangerous as the news will tell you. What's dangerous is priorities dictated solely by commerce – whether it be about the global climate crisis you are inheriting, about the basic human needs of your neighbors, or about your safety.

            Don't concede to these powers. Join other people, like the students of Parkland, Fla., in fighting back.

            An unsafe world? It's your world, and you can make it safer.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.