Out of the Woods

Make America great? What a joke!

Paul Manafort, the one time campaign manager of President Trump, is facing seven years in federal prison. If prosecutors in New York state get what they want, Manafort will spend additional time in state prison.

That is a well-known fact. So is the three or more years in prison that Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer, is facing. Among his other services to the president, Cohen paid out money to hush up extra-marital affairs the president, then merely a political candidate, had with a porn actress and other women.

Today's New York Times reports that the current secretary of Commerce, Steve Mnuchin, is negotiating more favorable terms for showing US films in China. Mnuchin has property rights to a blockbuster film, about to be shown in China. The top officials in this administration are using their government positions to line their own pockets.

Another friend and confidant of the president, Robert Kraft, has been indicted for allegedly soliciting a prostitute for sexual favors. He insists that he did nothing illegal. But he did peripherally support sexual trafficking by availing himself of the services of sexually trafficked women.

Much less well known is the information about Li Yang, also know as Cindy Yang who is the former owner of the Asian Orchid Day Spa where Robert Kraft was arrested.

Cindy Yang and her husband own a firm that offers public relations services, especially to Chinese business owners. They also offer to have Chinese business men invited to presidential social events on the strength of a selfie of Cindy Yang watching the Super Bowl game with the president at Mar-a-Lago. Yang is known to the president and has been invited to fairly intimate functions at the Florida resort. She is obviously in a position to introduce powerful Chinese business owners to the president.

A number of well heeled Chinese business owners bought their way into Mar-a-Lago last December hoping for a selfie with the President of the United States. But since the president had managed to shut down the government, he remained in Washington and the Chinese tycoons had to be content with a portrait with the president's son.

This story was published in the Miami Herald, Mother Jones, and the New York Times. These publications also confirmed that the Florida day spa where Robert Kraft was arrested already offered sexual services when it was still owned by Cindy Yang. This friend of the president not only ran several houses of ill repute but the women who worked there were trafficked from China. They were – and are – sex slaves forced to perform sexual services and being kept as actual prisoners according to newspaper accounts of the whole sorry story.

The president of the United States is willing to allow himself to be greeted and photographed with a woman who is or was allegedly involved in sex trafficking. To be sure, she and her family donated more than $50,000 to the president. No doubt there are much more generous donors to the president's war chest. Dare we ask what favors they received?

The present administration wallows in corruption. The man who promised to "drain the swamp” in Washington is as or more corrupt than any of his predecessors.

We do not need the kind of “greatness” that he brings to America.