Of all the crazy stuff Trump has said, this is the one that finally gets Coulter’s attention?
“I’m a little testy with our man right now,” she said.
“You are? Daddy’s annoyed you?” Yiannopoulos asked in response, referring to Trump.
“Our candidate is mental. Do you realize our candidate is mental? It’s like constantly having to bail out your sixteen-year-old son from prison,” Coulter replied. “OK, let’s move past last night’s tweet.”
“This is the worst thing he’s done,” she continued, adding that Trump’s comments about Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) status as a war hero were also hard to defend.
“Everything else I could probably defend. I could, I think, off the top of my head. Most of it — it was them overreacting,” she said, referring to liberals. “But the McCain thing, that was — OK it was a dumb joke, it didn’t work. Oh, well. Didn’t kill him. But that tweet last night…”
Later in the interview, Coulter confirmed that she was referring to Trump’s Heidi Cruz retweet when Yiannopoulos mentioned that Trump retweeted “a picture of Cruz’s wife and a picture of Melania.”
“That’s exactly the tweet I’m talking about,” Coulter said. “No, you can’t defend it. This is when we’re bailing our sixteen-year-old out of jail.”
This is a woman who’s been tweeting out white supremacist screeds for years but a playground insult from Trump is offensive? This is the single most toxic, disgusting public figure in America whose made a lot of money with sophomoric, schoolyard insults that make Trump look like an amateur.
This remains one of my all-time favorites, from a column about the Democratic Convention that got her dropped by USA Today:
“My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie-chick pie wagons they call ‘women’ at the Democratic National Convention.”
There’s no point in trying to catalog her degrading, adolescent insults over the years. It’s endless. Trump isn’t close to being in her league. But it’s interesting that she’s starting to hedge her support. Nobody has been more of a passionate Trump supporter than Coulter.
Donald Trump on Wednesday fired back at Hillary Clinton, remarking that he would likely nominate Supreme Court justices who “would look very seriously at her email disaster.”
The former secretary of state has been under fire over her use of a private email server during her time at the State Department and called out the Republican front-runner in a speech Monday highlighting the impact the Supreme Court should have on this election. Clinton invoked Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and asked Wisconsin voters what kind of justice a President Trump would nominate.
“Well, I’d probably appoint people that would look very seriously at her email disaster because it’s a criminal activity, and I would appoint people that would look very seriously at that to start off with,” Trump said in a phone interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “What she’s getting away with is absolutely murder. You talk about a case — now that’s a real case.”
The New York billionaire added, “If she’s able to get away with that, you can get away with anything.”
Not knowing how the judicial branch of the government works isn’t quite as alarming as not knowing how the world’s nuclear umbrella works but it’s not good. This is the man many Republicans think should nominate the next Supreme Court justice.
Yesterday we were treated to the spectacle of Donald Trump’s campaign manager being arrested for misdemeanor battery of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. The candidate stood by his man. After weeks of denials and assassinations of the victim’s character, he finally blustered and blathered and then did his Trumpian thing: He said she started it by physically attacking him with what might have been “a little bomb” (it was a pen) and threatened to have her charged with assault. Once again, he dominated the new cycle with his misogynist sideshow. It seems to be working for him. NBC announced thathis poll numbers were closing in on 50 percent.
Meanwhile, the Republican establishment continues to rend its collective garments, lashing out in all directions, trying desperately to figure out how it all went wrong. So it was only a matter of time before some GOP elite turned his gaze on the king of the vulgarians, Rush Limbaugh. Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson lit into him yesterday with a blistering criticism, blaming him for Trump’s success.
He’s right that Limbaugh is responsible — but also he completely misses the reason.
Gerson admits that Limbaugh has not formally endorsed Trump but observes that he has been cheering on his campaign’s crusade against “the establishment” and “the elite” even as he admits that Cruz is the true conservative in the race. (I wrote about Limbaugh’s delicate dance between the Cruzies and the Trumpers in his audience a while back.) He believes Rush has inadvertently convinced the Trump voters that ideology doesn’t matter:
For decades, Limbaugh set the tone of popular conservatism by arguing for ideological purity. Now, the great champion of conservatism has enabled the rise of the “least conservative Republican presidential aspirant in living memory” (in the words of Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs). Trump is a candidate who talks more of personal rule than of limited government. A candidate who praises a single-payer health system, proposes higher taxes on the wealthy, opposes entitlement reform and advocates the systematic destruction of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. This is the politician Limbaugh has given the ideological hall pass of a lifetime.
Gerson believes this is very unfair to the decent people he knows in politics who are not driven by greed and corruption. He says, “Criticizing their venality from 30,000 feet in his Gulfstream jet rings particularly hollow.” And he takes great issue with Trump’s shallowness and the fact that he is all “impulses and instincts”, a man who doesn’t reason from first principles.
Most importantly, he adamantly rejects his vulgar personality, writing:
[M]any Republicans, in Washington and elsewhere, do not view civility, inclusion and tolerance as forms of weakness or compromise. In fact, they view casual misogyny, racial stereotyping and religious bigotry as moral failings, in their children and in their leaders. And they oppose — as a matter of faith or philosophy — any form of populism that has exclusion, cruelty or dehumanization at its core.
Gerson has obviously not been listening to Rush Limbaugh over the past 25 years or he would know that the millions of conservatives who listen to his show every day are positively enthusiastic about casual misogyny, racial stereotyping, religious bigotry, cruelty and dehumanization. Those are Rush Limbaugh’s stock in trade.
Decades before Donald Trump sent a crude tweet mocking Heidi Cruz’s looks, Rush Limbaugh went on TV and made a disgusting joke about a 13 year old girl. The late great Molly Ivins reported on it back in 1995:
On his TV show, early in the Clinton administration, Limbaugh put up a picture of Socks, the White House cat, and asked, “Did you know there’s a White House dog?” Then he put up a picture of Chelsea Clinton, who was 13 years old at the time and as far as I know had never done any harm to anyone.
When viewers objected, he claimed, in typical Limbaugh fashion, that the gag was an accident and that without his permission some technician had put up the picture of Chelsea—which I found as disgusting as his original attempt at humor.
Who does that remind you of? Or how about a record of disgusting misogynist rhetoric so ugly it makes Donald Trump sound like Billy Graham. Here is just a random sampling of his greatest hits, via Media Matters:
One of Limbaugh’s (many) running attacks on Hillary Clinton is that she is in possession of a “testicle lockbox” that represents, in Limbaugh’s retelling, “the worst characteristics of women … totally controlling, not soft and cuddly. Not sympathetic. Not patient. Not understanding. Demanding, domineering, Nurse Ratched kind of thing.”
Michelle Obama’s nationwide anti-obesity campaign has rankled Limbaugh and other conservatives, who have responded to the fitness drive with a barrage of nonsensical attacks on Mrs. Obama’s weight — Limbaugh is fond of referring to the First Lady as “Michelle, my butt,” and has said “it doesn’t look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice.” Last September, commenting on the size of the presidential limousine, Rush said: “The beast weighs eight tons without Michelle in it. Eight tons. Sixteen thousand pounds.”
Anyone who has listened to enough Rush Limbaugh knows that he holds feminism in low regard and will often refer to feminists as “feminazis,” a term he proudly takes ownership of. Last June, in trying to explain attacks on Sarah Palin, Limbaugh declared that feminism “was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.” He elaborated, saying the “feminazis” were “trying to reorder human nature because of how unkind it was to them.”
Did Michael Gerson miss this shocking 2012 diatribe about Sandra Fluke, the woman who testified before congress about the need for insurance coverage for contraception?
“What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
“Ms. Fluke, have you ever heard of not having sex? Have you ever heard of not having sex so often? So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
Limbaugh briefly got in trouble for that but it doesn’t seem to have affected his reputation among respectable beltway conservative thought leaders like Michael Gerson who still see him as an avatar of ideological conservatism.
Rush’s angry, frustrated critics discount how hard it is to make an outrageous charge against him stick. But, we listeners have spent years with him, we know him, and trust him. Rush is one of those rare acquaintances who can be defended against an assault challenging his character without ever knowing the “facts.” We trust his good judgment, his unerring decency, and his fierce loyalty to the country he loves and to the courageous young Americans who defend her.
That inane misrepresentation of reality came from the pages of America’s most prestigious conservative magazine.
Rush Limbaugh is a vastly wealthy, crude, arrogant blowhard with a vicious, bigoted worldview. He has no compassion or self-awareness and an ego the size of Krakatoa. He has been the expression of the right wing id for almost three decades. And yet intelligent conservatives like Michael Gerson still cling to the belief Limbaugh’s popularity has had something to do with conservative ideology.
But he is right about one thing. There would be no presidential candidate Trump without Rush Limbaugh paving the way. Donald Trump is the man Limbaugh has always wanted to be.
NC’s HB2: Is it getting hot in here?
by Tom Sullivan
House Bill 2 (HB2), North Carolina’s new anti-LGBT law is drawing lots of fire from inside and outside the state. New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, and West Palm Beach have banned travel to North Carolina for their employees. Apple, Biogen, PayPal, IBM, and the NBA have condemned the law. Plus Dow Chemical, Google, Bayer, the NCAA, and others. The press center for the annual High Point furniture trade show announced Monday that “dozens of customers have contacted the High Point Market Authority to inform us that they have cancelled plans to attend the Market in April due to passage of HB2.”
NC Attorney General Roy Cooper held a press conference yesterday morning to announce his office would not defend the bill in court, calling HB2 “a national embarrassment” at odds with his office’s employment policies. Cooper explained, “In order to protect our non-discrimination policy and employees, along with those of our client, the State Treasurer’s Office, part of our argument will be that HB2 is unconstitutional.” Cooper, a Democrat, is also running for governor this fall against Republican incumbent Pat McCrory who signed HB2 into law last week.
Discrimination? It’s just common sense, by jingo, with a double dip of Real-American, flag-wavin’ freedom and a big dollop of liberty on top. McCrory’s Q&A-style FAQ drew quick parodies, such as this one by Aaron Keck of Durham:
Give him credit! McCrory’s FAQ page gets a couple things wrong – for instance, he says “nothing changes in North Carolina cities,” which isn’t right, and he says the bill doesn’t “take away existing protections for individuals in North Carolina,” though in fact it does – but in general, most of what’s there is technically correct.
Only thing is, he forgot a few questions.
So let’s take care of that.
1. Now that House Bill 2 has passed, is it legal to discriminate against gays and lesbians in North Carolina?
Yes. Sections 3.1 and 3.3 of the bill prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, and biological sex. (Section 3.1 also bans discrimination on the basis of age or disability, but only when it comes to employment practices.) Sexual orientation is not included as a category, so it is, in fact, legal now to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
You can be fired for being gay. You can be demoted for being gay. Employers can refuse to hire you for being gay. They can refuse to promote you for being gay. Businesses can refuse to serve you for being gay.
3. If someone wants to discriminate against gays and lesbians, do they have to claim a “sincere religious objection,” like in the Indiana law last year that caused such a fuss?
No. State law allows people to discriminate against gays and lesbians for any reason they like.
Skipping down to the snark:
9. Rrgh! Okay, how about Republicans? Is it legal to discriminate against Republicans?
All right, smart-aleck.
10. No, seriously. Can I ban Republicans from eating in my restaurant?
Well…actually, yes. But not because of House Bill 2. Party affiliation has never been a protected class, so technically you’ve always been able to do that.
In fact, Keck points out what N.C. NAACP President, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II observed when he appeared on MSNBC. In addition to targeting the LGBT community, HB2 “makes it illegal for a city or county to require contractors to pay more than a minimum wage.” Furthermore, HB2 nullifies the ability of citizens to bring an employment or public accommodation discrimination case in state court, it must be done in federal court. It is “bad and unholy and immoral.”
Transgender people began posting their photos on Twitter to make their voices heard and their points made. Not that McCrory or the extremists in the legislature are listening.
Well, Trump pretty much said today (on his hideous private plane) that a reporter was asking for it when she got manhandled by his campaign manager — and that’s if the woman wasn’t lying. His press conference was one of the most cretinous he’s done yet. He never fails to prove the worst of what people think of him.
And then there’s this:
Paul Manafort Jr. is almost eerily perfect for the role of Donald Trump’s Republican convention master.
Manafort’s last major political consulting job was handling the 2010 campaign of Victor Yanukovych for president of Ukraine. Yanukovych won, but was ousted in a coup four years later after he had expanded his $75 million mansion, suppressed rival political parties and freedom of the press, and undermined Ukrainian independence by cozying up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin on trade, energy and security.
Now Manafort’s job is to make sure that Trump — who lives in a $300 million mansion, disdains the press and admires Putin — can translate his primary and caucus victories into the Republican nomination in Cleveland in July.
Trump realized that he needed a seasoned pro to identify, woo and keep track of trustworthy convention delegates. If he falls short of the majority needed to win in the primaries and caucuses, his foes will try to fill those delegate slots with disloyal “Trojan horses” or use rules and floor tactics to deny him in the nomination.
That’s where Manafort comes in.
“He’ll do more than just count delegates — he will get the data, get to know everyone, and run much of the operation from here on,” predicted Roger Stone, a longtime Trump associate and a former business partner of Manafort.
Starting with the College Republicans and Young Republicans in the 1970s, moving through many GOP conventions, the 66-year-old Manafort has amassed deep experience in the care, feeding and disciplining of delegates.
His main work over the years has been to run consulting firms that advised controversial clients ranging from the late Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines to leaders in Russia, Nigeria, Burma, Kenya, Angola and the Bahamas.
(Manafort could not be reached for comment; the Trump campaign did not answer a request for comment on their adviser’s foreign work.)
The United States Secret Service said Monday that attendees of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July will not be allowed to enter the event if they are carrying a firearm, despite the growing number of signatures on an online petition asking the RNC to permit firearms.
The petition on Change.org has accrued more than 46,000 signatures directed toward the Quicken Loans Arena (where the convention will be held), the RNC and the Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The petition noted that the Quicken Loans Arena prohibits weapons on its premises, though Ohio is an open-carry state. The arena’s ban “is a direct affront to the Second Amendment and puts all attendees at risk,” the petition’s author wrote.
However, private employers and entities are permitted to ban firearms despite the open-carry law, according to Ohio state law. The Secret Service, in response to interest around the petition, also noted a separate law, Title 18, United States Code Sections 3056 and 1752, that permits the agency to overrule state open-carry laws when it is overseeing a protected site.
“Only authorized law enforcement personnel working in conjunction with the Secret Service for a particular event may carry a firearm inside of the protected site,” Secret Service spokesperson Kevin Dye said in an emailed statement. “The Secret Service works closely with our local law enforcement partners in each state to ensure a safe environment for our protectees and the public. Individuals determined to be carrying firearms will not be allowed past a predetermined outer perimeter checkpoint, regardless of whether they possess a ticket to the event.”
The GOP convention spokesperson Kirsten Kukowksi said the Republican Party will continue to support the Second Amendment, but will follow the orders of Secret Service first and foremost.
“The Republican Party has been and will continue to be a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment. It is in our platform and is strongly supported by our candidates. The Republican National Convention is a national special security event which means the Secret Service is the lead agency and we will defer to their planning as it relates to safety and security of the convention,” Kukowski said in a statement on Monday.
Trump declined to share his opinion about the petition on the Sunday morning talk shows, but said that he would look into it.
The rest of us who go to public places will have to rely on the yahoos with guns not to shoot us by mistake while they’re “protecting” us. But it’s probably a very good thing that all those gun-toting wingnuts won’t be packing heat in the convention center when the Trump riots break out.
Last week, Ted Cruz stated that Muslim neighborhoods should be patrolled by officers of the law to prevent radicalization and just about everyone had an opinion. Lindsey Graham and Rush Limbaugh represented the pro-Cruz and pro-patrol side while NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and NYC mayor Bill de Blasio had the anti-Cruz and anti-patrol side.
As it turns out — at least according to two polls — many Americans are joining ranks with Graham and Limbaugh. According to one poll by Morning Consult, 50% of respondents were in favor of the patrolling of Muslim neighborhoods. 71% of Republicans were completely on-board while only 34% of Democrats were all for it. 20% of Republicans opposed it while 56% of Democrats were against it.
Morning Consult summed up their findings like this:
Have the terrorists won? The main motif to emerge from a new Morning Consult survey taken after the attacks in Brussels last week is that the threat of terrorism may diminish how much people worry about privacy and civil rights.
A majority of Americans voters appear to be willing to do whatever it takes, even backing what amounts to a revocation of essential American liberties and ideals, in an effort to keep us safe.
But whatever you do, don’t pass even one law that might prevent lunatics from getting semi-automatic weapons. Because that would be unAmerican.
Donald Trump managed to shock the world once again. Last week, he actually sank so low that he publicly attacked Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi’s looks. Not that anyone thought he wasn’t the type to say such rude things. He’s made a habit of it for many years. But he is running for president and, more importantly, he did this during a period when all eyes were on Europe in the wake of another devastating terrorist attack, and he was simultaneously criticizing the president for continuing on his historic diplomatic mission to Cuba and Argentina. But that wasn’t what shocked the world. What has put every government on the planet on high alert washis alarming interview in the New York Times on the subject of foreign policy.
We already had some inkling of his general incomprehension in this regard throughout the campaign as he cavalierly talked about torture, the banning of Muslims, and “bombing the shit out of” our supposed enemies. I wrote previously about his bizarre trek to the the capitol to speak with the Washington Post and AIPAC earlier last week. But as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said on his show Monday night, the interview in the Times over the weekend was “like taking a world tour of Donald Trumps ignorance.”
Trump spoke with reporters David Sanger and Maggie Habermann on the telephone for over 90 minutes and on virtually every question they asked he was clearly vamping like a 12 year old giving the book report on a book he hadn’t read. Romney spokesman Kevin Madden characterized the transcript of the interview as being “just full of tautological nonsense.”
He complains incessantly about the money the U.S. is spending on security, which is fair enough, but his solution is to put a gun to the whole world’s head and demand they pay up or the U.S. will let the world burn. Trump is calling for the U.S. to stop being the world’s policeman and start being the world’s mobster extortionist: nice little country you’ve got here, be a shame if anything happened to it. After all, he’s calling for a gigantic increase in military spending, which doesn’t make a lot of sense if he’s believes we should pull back from the world. Indeed, he never says the US should pull back at all. He’s just going to blackmail the world into ponying up the cash for the huge buildup he’s planning and if they don’t agree, they’ll be sorry.
Basically, he thinks of world affairs the same way he thinks of his political opponents. It’s all about whether they’ve been “friendly” to him. When asked if he would be willing to lend humanitarian aid he said:
You know, to help I would be, depending on where and who and what. And, you know, again — generally speaking — I’d have to see the country; I’d have to see what’s going on in the region and you just cannot have a blanket. The one blanket you could say is, “protection of our country.” That’s the one blanket. After that it depends on the country, the region, how friendly they’ve been toward us. You have countries that haven’t been friendly to us that we’re protecting.
Too bad about the humans inside those countries. But then empathy isn’t his strong suit.
He constantly berates George W. Bush for “destabilizing” the Middle East (which is correct) but it never occurs to him that the consequences of say, telling Japan and South Korea to go build their own nukes or putting NATO in mothballs because it costs too much money might just have the effect of “destabilizing” the entire planet.
Like a child, when he can’t think of an answer to a difficult question, he claims he doesn’t want other countries to know his plans so he won’t share them with the press, but he does seem to truly believe that it makes sense for the United States to be “unpredictable.” Nothing could be further from the truth. A nation as powerful as the U.S. has to be as transparent as possible or allies and enemies alike will find it untrustworthy and provocative. We have enough problems with our national security state as it is — caprice is the last element we need to put into the mix.
For 70 years the world has been organized around the idea of collective security backed by the United States. The idea was to prevent another world war and, even more importantly, a nuclear war. There have been huge downsides to that project but withdrawing from that abruptly out of pique or withholding our protection unless they pay up would be disaster. In the eyes of the rest of the world, the U.S. will have become a rogue superpower that has to be stopped.
There are plenty of good reasons for a presidential candidate to question our military commitments and seek new ways to secure the stability of the country and the planet. But sane people should no more turn to this man to do that than they would turn to the Olson twins. It’s very, very dangerous.
Perhaps more telling than any of this, though, is Trump’s equally thoughtless appropriation of the term “America First,” last heard in common usage by anti-semite xenophobe Pat Buchanan, but which originally was the name of an isolationist group that put pressure on President Roosevelt to keep America out of World War II. It was mostly a respectable group of citizens but there were some at the top, notably flying ace Charles Lindberg who had more than a little bit of fondness for Hitler’s Germany. Trump might want to steer clear of any more of those associations. His mass deportation and torture policies are already close enough.
“America First” undoubtedly sounds great to a lot of people and it’s not unreasonable or unusual for a candidate to argue for a foreign policy that puts national interest before global interest. It’s not even unprecedented for a candidate to run as a “Fortress America” isolationist calling for a withdrawal from all global obligations. But if anyone thinks the man who says this is the type of person who will turn the other cheek and refuse to respond unless our shores are directly threatened, I think they do not understand this man’s character:
Look at what China’s doing in the South China Sea. I mean they are totally disregarding our country and yet we have made China a rich country because of our bad trade deals. Our trade deals are so bad. And we have made them – we have rebuilt China and yet they will go in the South China Sea and build a military fortress the likes of which perhaps the world has not seen. Amazing, actually. They do that, and they do that at will because they have no respect for our president and they have no respect for our country.
He went on to blather incoherently about negotiating some trade deal in retaliation and using it as a bargaining chip but in the end he said he wouldn’t want them to know if he was prepared to go to war over these islands. That unpredictability again.
“Get even. When somebody screws you, screw the back in spades. I really mean it. I really mean it. You’ve got to hit people hard and it’s not so much for that person, it’s that other people watch.”
Trump has expressed true admiration for only four leaders: Generals Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton, both of whom were removed from duty for exceeding their authority, and authoritarian strongmen Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. He says all the time, “We’ve got to be strong,” by which he means dominant.
These foreign policy interviews have not shown us an “America First isolationist” by the historical definition and people would be foolish to see those allusions in any literal way. He wants America to be a gangster protection racket, holding up other countries for money lest they “disrespect us” by refusing. If that happens he’s going to have to “hit hard,” because “other people watch.”
Everywhere I go, every leader I meet, they ask about what is happening in America. They cannot believe it. I think it is fair to say that they’re shocked. They don’t know where it’s taking the United States of America. It upsets people’s sense of equilibrium about our steadiness, about our reliability. And to some degree, I must say to you, some of the questions, the way they are posed to me, it’s clear to me that what’s happening is an embarrassment to our country.
As Donald Trump nears the magic number of 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination, he is assuming many trappings of a man who might be president. He has secret service agents protecting him. World leaders react to his comments. He regularly receives far more media coverage than the other GOP candidates.
If he becomes the presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July, he’ll also obtain something most real-estate developers will never receive: his very own top-secret briefings, delivered by the US intelligence community. And there appears to be little stopping him from repeating to his roaring crowds what he hears there.
[…]
That means, if Trump were the nominee, a man famously without filter will be privy to national secrets – and compartmentalizing his thoughts from his public utterances has never been one of his strengths. He has tweeted random, and sometimes untrue, items he read on the internet; he’s trumpeted false crime statistics; he’s even been fine with quoting Benito Mussolini. So far, he’s been able to get away with much of it by disavowing responsibility afterward.
So what would be the ramifications if Trump discloses something classified on the campaign trail? Say the US intelligence community discovers North Korea is about to test another nuclear weapon, or hears Iran is about to embark on a major military campaign. What’s to stop Trump from calling a press conference to blast Pyongyang or Tehran?
He clearly has strong opinions – including legalizing waterboarding – about how to fight terrorism that could be buttressed, rightly or wrongly, by this sort of insider information.
Apparently, there’s nothing to stop him. There’s no law because it’s never been necessary. Nobody dreamed anyone would actually nominate such a man.
It’s not so much that he would do it for nefarious purposes. His recent interviews with the Post and the Times have shown that he’s completely clueless about everything. And he has no impulse control — he can’t even stop himself from calling Ted Cruz a pussy on the campaign trail.
Update: I should have said there’s no specific law against him “spilling the beans”. But as twitter follower @fgcallari points out, there are laws that could apply.
Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik arrive in Chicago on July 27, 2014. U.S. Government
Richard Clark said the FBI really did not need Apple’s help to break into the San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone. The former U.S. counterterrorism official and security adviser to the White House told NPR he believed the NSA could do it, no problem, but that the FBI was “not as interested in solving the problem as they are in getting a legal precedent.” Edward Snowden said the same via Twitter.
The US government dropped its court fight against Apple after the FBI successfully pulled data from the iPhone of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, according to court records.
The development effectively ended a six-week legal battle poised to shape digital privacy for years to come. Instead, Silicon Valley and Washington are poised to return to a simmering cold war over the balance between privacy and law enforcement in the age of apps.
Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing Monday evening that they no longer needed Apple’s help in getting around the security countermeasures on Farook’s device.
Great, right? Ross Schulman, Senior Policy Counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute, tells NPR that if the FBI really is serious about cybersecurity, now it will share what it knows about the iPhone’s vulnerability with Apple engineers so they can fix it.
A discovery of a software vulnerability would be a major reason for the FBI to keep the tool secret and reuse it in other investigations involving older versions of iPhones, like the iPhone 5C at stake here.
The breakthrough came over the weekend, when the information stored on the phone was extracted, said a federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He declined to say anything about the contents of the phone, other than that FBI agents were reviewing the material.
The official also remained tight-lipped about the method that was used to beat the iPhone’s security barriers, as well as the identity of the group that delivered it to FBI agents. Any speculation about the effect of the breakthrough on other cases involving locked phones would be premature, he said.
[…]
Despite the government’s claims, the fight over Farook’s iPhone was seen as a test case over whether technology companies could be forced to develop computer code to assist a criminal investigation. It took on broader implications as well about how far the government could go in forcing companies or individuals into its service.
Seems like the United States once fought a second war with England over its government impressing U.S. persons into its service.
But the Boston Globe believes the Apple corporation reaches too far in its defense, claiming computer code is speech:
As several legal analysts have pointedout, the implications of the company’s First Amendment claims are profound. As a practical matter, nearly all corporate compliance in 2016 involves writing and using software. Not all software is as sophisticated as the code Apple would have to write in the San Bernardino case; just setting up formulas in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet counts as coding too. So if the government makes a company add up lines on a spreadsheet to comply with financial transparency requirements it dislikes, does Apple believe that would be unconstitutional compelled speech too?
So keep your government close, but keep your corporate “persons” closer. That slope has gotten slipperier ever since Santa Clara County vs. The Union Pacific Railroad.
