Right-wing politicians like Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro are really good at lying.

Trump, of course, is notorious for distorting facts, twisting them out of all reality, and then yelling his nonsense to reporters as he is about to get into one of his noisy helicopters. The chopper noise from the helicopters prevents reporters from asking him the questions they want to ask him. It’s all part of how Trump controls the narrative.

Along comes Bolsonaro, who is even more right-wing than Trump. The Amazon rain forest is a big part of our planet’s “lungs," and Bolsonaro’s Amazon rain forest is on fire, with severe consequences for the accelerating global warming (https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/americas/brazil-beef-amazon-rainforest-fire-intl/index.html), but Bolsonaro, with no evidence, blames the fires on non-governmental organizations who, he says, are trying to embarrass him.

That’s why our South America correspondent, Sylvania Juguete, confronted Bolsonaro at his office in Brasilia early this morning, demanding that he fess up and tell the truth.

Bolsonaro was typically abrupt. “Sylvania,” he said, “there is no such thing as global warming. Just ask my close personal friend Donnie Trump.”

Elsewhere, giant e-Commerce retailer Overstock's CEO, Patrick Byrne, has resigned after admitting that he had a three-year affair with one of Vladimir Putin’s top spies, Maria Butina (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/22/overstock-ceo-deep-state-1472132).

Byrne was one of the most prominent proponents of the “deep state” narrative; see also https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/22/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-resigns-after-saying-he-aided-deep-state-russia-investigation/.

Butina is incarcerated for infiltrating right-wing organizations as part of Putin’s successful effort to get Trump to where he is now.

When associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones asked Trump about Byrne’s admission that he had willfully spread misinformation about Hillary Clinton, Trump told his personal lawyer, William Barr, to arrest Jones so she can never, ever again tell DNC Chair Tom Perez what’s really going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Donald Trump’s at it again. Our Twitterer-in-Chief never stops. That’s about the only thing he knows how to do. He sure doesn’t know how to be our Commander-in-Chief, ‘cause he has absolutely no command over himself.

Only six days ago, on our site (apocryphalpress.com) we posted “Bibi Does Trump’s Bidding by Barring Reps. Omar and Tlaib from Visiting [Israel]…”

Trump says that any American Jewish voter who votes for a Democratic candidate seeking to dethrone him is a bad person, as previously reported by the network he hates the most, CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/20/politics/donald-trump-jewish-americans-democrat-disloyalty/index.html).

Specifically, Trump said, “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat — it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty” [to him].

Enter the always-savvy Ken Rudin, The Political Junkie. Today, on his site, he posted “Loyalty, As Defined by [Trump].” There, Rudin blasted 45: “Deliberately or not…questioning the ‘loyalty’ of ‘Jewish people’ is a widely-used anti-Semitic trope…"

Trump and RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel (Mitt’s niece) are painting freshwomen Congresspeople Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), both Muslim (the younger one wears the hijab, while the other one doesn’t) as The Face of the Democratic Party, because that’s what Republicans do: they think that they can rescue their failing political party by painting all Dems as lefties like Omar and Tlaib and AOC.

Ain’t gonna work, folks.

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said yesterday, “It’s unclear who [Trump] is claiming Jews would be ‘disloyal’ to, but charges of disloyalty have long been used to attack Jews….it’s possible to engage in the democratic process without these claims. It’s long overdue to stop using Jews as a political football.”

So we asked associate solitary reporter Grant Bornstein, Denver’s best trial lawyer, for his opinion.

Bornstein immediately reached out to his close personal friend, Jeremy Bloom, who, like ASR Bornstein, is Jewish. Jeremy Bloom is the only athlete in history to ski in the Winter Olympics and also to be drafted into the NFL. He was a return specialist for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburg Steelers. Jeremy Bloom was an All-American at the University of Colorado Boulder, and ASR Bornstein watched him play at every home game.

Bloom told ASR Bornstein, “No sensible American Jew will vote for Trump next year. Come to think of it, no sensible American voter will vote for Trump next year, either. Republicans can vote in the Republican presidential primary next year for William Weld or, maybe just maybe, Mark Sanford, who used to be the governor of South Carolina before he got caught not hiking on the Appalachian Trail.”

Bloom continued, “Mark Sanford was successfully primaried in 2018 and lost his seat in Congress because of Trump’s loyalty test. Sanford’s thinking of running against Trump in the primary next year, and ‘Mooch’ Scaramucci — who was tapped by Trump to be his Communications Director, but who has now turned against him, is desperately looking for other Republicans to primary Trump."

Mr. America First has upended just about all our alliances, and he may surprise people next year, just as he surprised everybody except a few pollsters in 2016 (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/18/foreign-diplomats-donald-trump-2020-1459069, by Nahal Toosi).

Bill Clinton defeated incumbent Bush One in 1992 partly with the slogan, “It’s the economy, Stupid!”

Bill Clinton campaigned in Colorado in 1992 numerous times, realizing that the Centennial State was not so much a flyover state any more. On the day he was elected, your solitary reporter watched Bill and Hillary in the early morning hours here in Denver on their last stop before they voted in Little Rock. They had been campaigning nonstop for 24 hours.

Because of America Firstism (which, among other things, means alliances are finished, in favor of bilateral trade deals) the US is heading toward a recession.

Donald Trump has been campaigning for re-election since January 21, 2017 — the same day that the Women’s March Against Trump was held. Your solitary reporter marched in that one, in Denver, with men and women, and the streets of the Mile High City were full of protesters.

Accoridng to Politico’s Nahal Toosi in yesterday’s post, foreign diplomats are preparing their capitals for the possibility that Trump will fool the American voters yet again.

Trump seems to have lost his biggest domestic ally, Fox News, because of his ill-founded conspiracy theories (https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/19/politics/donald-trump-fox-news/index.html). No doubt, he thinks that the baddies at Fox are the ones who are sabotaging his efforts to make deals outside of traditional alliances.

Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu, Donald Trump’s close personal friend, has done it again.

Congress is in recess, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) sits at home figuring out how badly he would anger his close personal friends in the NRA by allowing the Senate to vote on meaningful gun control legislation, as in universal background checks.

Nine million seventy-four thousand people live in Israel, and seventy-four percent of them are Jews. Arabs comprise twenty-one percent of the population (some of them, in and around Bethlehem, in the Occupied Territories, are Orthodox Christians).

America’s first two Muslim Congresswomen, Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) were all set to visit Israel during the recess. Both, especially Rep. Omar, have been justifiably critical of Israel’s policies against Arabs.

Congresswoman Omar is part of the “squad” of progressive, newly elected Democratic Congresswomen, vilified by Trump, who are women of color. Omar was born in Somalia and is a naturalized American citizen. Omar, Rep. Tlaib, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and AOC (Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY) have all been told by our Xenophobe-in-Chief to “go back where they came from” as he continues to whip up his base.

Although Reps. Omar and Tlaib had been approved for travel to Israel, Trump asked Bibi at the last minute to forbid their entry, and of course Bibi accommodated him (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/15/israel-ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib-netanyahu-1463655).

Associate solitary reporter Aziz Mahmood cheered loudly when Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others in the Democratic leadership in the House, as well as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), blasted Bibi’s highly provocative move.

Our chief international correspondent, associate solitary reporter Larry Theis, and our Chief Congressional correspondent, associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, heard numerous Republican Members of Congress grumbling about the nefarious Trump-Bibi decision.

Elsewhere, former Colorado Governor John (“Hick”) Hickenlooper has, sensibly, dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary field. Hick has been widely courted by national Democrats to enter the very crowded primary field to run against Sen. Cory Gardner, one of the most vulnerable GOP senators up for re-election next year.

But Hick had earlier taken himself out of the Senate race. If he does enter, he will lose big-time to Colorado’s former Speaker of the House, Andrew Romanoff.

Donald Trump’s foreign policy, to the extent there is any, supports the autonomy of Hong Kong against continuing Chinese interference.

The situation of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, is extremely tenuous, as pro-democracy protestors have shut down the international airport, one of the world’s busiest. The protestors insist that she resign, but she’s come up with a better idea, which she revealed in an exclusive interview with our East Asia correspondent, associate solitary reporter Ko Il-sun.

“Mr. Ko, the United States stands for freedom and against Communism, which is why I have just gotten off the phone with Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo.”

“I asked them, first, to grant me political asylum (to which they immediately agreed) and then I asked them to occupy my once-autonomous Territory and, after the US military repulses Xi Jingping’s People’s Liberation Army, I want Trump to annex us. Then I’ll be able to preside over the creation of the United States’ 51st State.”

ASR Ko texted ASR Johanna Jones at the White House to inform her of Lam’s Grand Slam Plan. 

Trump was very pleased, as he has been telling his sycophantic supporters at his rallies that he has lost billions by holding the job that he pretends to have now. “I’ll just tap in to all that Hong Kong wealth,” he told Jones.