Month: August 2016

He’s locked down the OG

by digby

… Richard Viguerie that is. Via email:

Movement conservatives are now in charge of the Trump campaign.

“Who you walk with tells me a lot about who you are” is an aphorism that I have long applied as a foolproof test of whether a candidate or elected official is going to govern as a conservative. This might be seen as a Richard Viguerie companion or corollary to another one of my favorite rules of politics – personnel is policy.

When Ronald Reagan was running for President every time I saw him, and I saw him quite a bit, he was surrounded by people I knew from conservative politics: Senator Paul Laxalt, Jeff Bell, Lyn Nofziger, Marty Anderson, Dick Allen, Judge Clark, Ed Meese, etc.

This gave me confidence that when Reagan was elected he would look to the conservatives with whom he had surrounded himself to staff his White House, and the Cabinet and sub-cabinet appointments in his Administration.

And, with a few notable exceptions, that’s what he did.

On the other hand, when I looked at Mitt Romney, John McCain and Bob Dole, or both Bushes, what I saw were lobbyists, industry insiders, professional political operatives and other “rented strangers” as columnist George F. Will once called those of the professional political class.

So when we look at who Hillary Clinton walks with; Leftwing financier George Soros, Muslim Brotherhood-connected aide Huma Abedin, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and other radical Leftists we know where she is going to lead the country.

But what of Donald Trump?

Trump has spent the past three decades in the company of the show business stars, sports legends, and pop culture figures that promote his business ventures.

He’s readily admitted that, as part of his business strategy, he’s supported both political parties and their candidates – he even donated to Hillary Clinton in one of her past campaigns.

However, since he began to the think about running for President, and once he announced, he has walked mostly with people from the right-of-center, from Senator Jeff Sessions, to Jerry Falwell, Jr., to conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, to his National Co-Chairman Sam Clovis and economic advisors Steve Moore and Larry Kudlow, Trump’s major supporters and many of his inner circle have been from the conservative movement.

Now, the hiring of Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager and Steve Bannon as chief executive of the campaign brought two more movement conservatives into the leadership of Trump’s campaign.

Donald Trump’s recent economic speech, his national security speech and his law and order speech in Wisconsin were full of sound conservative policy prescriptions and were reflective of a strong conservative governing philosophy.

Most importantly, through the ups and downs of his campaign, contrary to the conventional wisdom espoused by the DC political class and the establishment media, Trump has not “moved to the center,” but marched steadily to the right.

With Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon at the top of the campaign, Mike Pence as Vice President and Senator Jeff Sessions at Donald Trump’s side, the Trump campaign is shaping up to be the most ideological campaign since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter.

Does this mean that Donald Trump, the secular businessman, has suddenly erased his glitzy past – of course not. Trump is still Trump with all that comes with that.

However, conservatives can look at Donald Trump’s campaign and draw more and more assurance that through the application of Viguerie’s Foolproof Test and its corollary Donald Trump is going to govern as a conservative, and that is, in the end, exactly what we conservatives want from this election.

Uh huh. Keep telling your followers that. Maybe they’ll keep those checks coming in!

*I’m documenting this stuff so that we can go back and look at it after the recriminations start flying after November if Trump loses.

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Conservative Hollywood’s latest epic

by digby

Steve Bannon, Phil Robertson and Citizens United’s David Bossie

Trump’s new campaign adviser Steve Bannon is more than just the Breitbart chief executive.  He’s a filmmaker too. Here’s the trailer for his latest film for David Bossie’s Citizens United which debuted at the RNC:

Peter Montgomery of Right Wing Watch wrote a lengthy piece about Bannon’s “film career” and then, in a heroic act of self-sacrifice, sat through “Torchbearer” and wrote about it:

It is hard to describe how disturbing this movie is, on multiple levels.

Firstly, it visually and emotionally assaults the viewer by lingering on gruesome images of violence and death, using reenactments and animation as well as the most graphic historical footage from Auschwitz and more recent images of victims of ISIS and Boko Haram being beaten, shot and burned to death. I would call the movie’s infliction of trauma gratuitous, but it seems a very purposeful act meant to provoke and inflame and generate a rage to war.

Also jarring are the vast leaps through time and the excising of inconvenient truths that would undermine the moviemakers’ message, which seems to be that the history of the last 2015 years is a story of barbarity inflicted on Christians and others by those who have abandoned God or worship the wrong God or gods.

The movie’s timeline starts in the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve inviting evil into the world with their disobedience of God. Then we’re in Athens to talk about Aristotle’s belief in a “first cause” and four centuries later the apostle Paul’s trip there; then to Rome for the execution of Peter and Paul, the emperor Nero’s brutal massacres of Christians, and the Roman empire’s continued persecution of Christians over their refusal to adhere to the “civic religion” (dog-whistle alert) of the time, which required treating the emperor as a god.

From there, we hop to the pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock, conveniently skipping over a millennium-plus of history that includes abundant butchery carried out by people and societies fervent in their religious beliefs, particularly European Christians in wars against heretics and each other and during the conquest of the Americas.

Then it’s a short hop to the American Revolution. Robertson contrasts the American founders’ reverence for God with the atheistic French Revolution and Robespierre’s bloody reign of terror. The movie does not address the American Civil War, in which God-fearing Christians on both sides engaged in bloody combat.

At the turn of the 20th century, Robertson says, “worship of science becomes the new religion.” The film includes a segment on the development of the atomic bomb, “the first weapon of mass destruction.” It features a clip of nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer reciting language from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Robertson responds, “So fallen man, unanchored by God, uses the power of creation to destroy. Mechanized war is upon us.”

It is not entirely clear how this segment fits the movie’s thesis that without the Judeo-Christian God as an anchor, there is no protection for human rights and human dignity. Are the filmmakers suggesting that Franklin Delano Roosevelt—whose public prayers for the D-Day invasion are cited admiringly in the film—was “unanchored by God” and was wrong to back development of the atomic bomb in fierce competition with Nazi scientists?

Speaking of Nazis, the movie devotes significant time to Auschwitz, where Robertson talks at length about the details of the horrific, systematized mass murder that took place there, which he blames in part on philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s claim that God is dead.

To be sure, the Holocaust is a brutal historical reality that should continue to be examined and understood as a warning about the way evil can be fostered and carried out at a national level, something that has been on many people’s minds during this political season. But this movie’s use of the stories and images of the people murdered at Auschwitz feels shamefully exploitative, especially in light of the fact that the film contains not a word about the long history of Christian anti-Semitism. Acknowledging centuries of deadly violence against Jews by Christians and in the name of Christianity would, again, undermine or at least complicate the movie’s central claim, and so it is simply ignored.

The same could be said of the film’s use of the civil rights era in the United States. The movie shows footage of the brutality meted out against those who were peacefully protesting segregation, but portrays this as another example of what happens when societies have rejected God and the weak and powerless are vulnerable to the man “with the biggest stick.”

But the big-stick brutality of Jim Crow and the official violence that enforced it were not being waged by a people who had rejected God. They were carried out by people who declared themselves to be acting in His name. Robertson himself has said that black people were more “godly” and “happy” under Jim Crow.

The movie quotes Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail as an example of religious faith in the service of public righteousness. But it utterly neglects how much slavery and Jim Crow were also justified by religious arguments, and how intensely the civil rights movement was seen by many white Christian leaders in the south as an attack on their faith as well as their culture. The late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., whose son had a prominent speaking role at the RNC, preached that the Supreme Court justices who ruled against segregated schools were not heeding God’s word.

Moving to the present era, Robertson warns against poll-driven morality – a not-too-subtle reference to growing support for LGBT people – and says a “sentimental need to be nice to each other” is not enough to ward off barbarism. Warning that “sentimentalism falls prey to nihilism,” Robertson says of the Hippies, “what started out as free love and flowers in your hair ended up with the Manson murders.” The movie includes footage of abortion activists’ anti-Planned Parenthood “sting” videos as well as American pop stars in sensual performances. “We are crotch-driven animals following our instincts,” he complains. “The sexual experience is now the high summit of our happiness.”

As the movie nears an end, viewers are subjected to graphic images of brutality and genocide being carried out by ISIS and affiliated terrorist groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria; Robertson reads from the biblical Book of Revelation.

And then there’s an abrupt shift back into the bayou made famous by Robertson and his family. Robertson wades into the water, where one at a time, people walk out to join him and be baptized. It is strikingly peaceful end to a “war movie.” Even if one is not tempted to join the line of people being baptized by Robertson, the idea of a soothing dip is very appealing after being subjected to “Torchbearer.”

The man who made that … thing is now the top adviser to the GOP nominee for president. We are so far down the rabbit hole now that I don’t know if we’ll be able to climb out.

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Trumpism, broken politics and third-party futility


by digby

I did a little thinking about what awaits the GOP after November for Salon this morning:

Being a person who doesn’t like to make predictions since I’m usually wrong, I even hesitate to predict that Hillary Clinton will win the election despite the polling. This election season has already been so bizarre I’m even less inclined than usual to assume anything. Nonetheless, it’s reasonable to wonder what’s going to become of the Republican Party after November in the event that Donald Trump is defeated. (If he isn’t we have a whole different set of problems beginning with very long lines at the passport office.)

Common sense is neither
by Tom Sullivan

Still from “Lonesome Lenny,” MGM 1946.

Political eons ago in February, Donald Trump tried branding himself a “common-sense conservative.” Common sense gun laws are what we need, if you read the news. Common sense immigration reform. Common sense college football reform. Since Thomas Paine, “common sense” has been bandied about in political circles, a kind of UL label or Good Housekeeping seal attached to every issue de jure. It’s surprising Charlie the Tuna hasn’t tried an appeal to common sense to promote himself to Starkist.

When Glenn Beck argued that North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” is just common sense, or when Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker pleads with Washington for a “common-sense reform” that would let him drug test SNAP recipients, you know the poor phrase, like Lonesome Lenny’s little friend, has been loved to death.

Common sense voter ID laws, for example. North Carolina has hired a rather expensive lawyer at taxpayer expense to ask the U.S. Supreme Court for a common-sense stay on the Fourth Circuit ruling that overturned its common-sense voter ID law. The state is common-sensically worried about the ruling confusing voters so close to the election. Ian Millhiser looks at that argument for Think Progress:

But there are a number of reasons why this argument is unlikely to convince a majority of the justices. For one thing, the reason why the Fourth Circuit issued their opinion in July is because North Carolina told them that it could handle a decision that close to the election. As the appeals court explained,

At oral argument, the State assured us that it would be able to comply with any order we issued by late July. As to early voting locations and staffing, we were told that at a minimum the State could conduct early voting at the Board of Elections office for each county. As to the photo ID requirement, the State informed us that it would comply with an injunction of that law by instructing its poll workers not to require photo ID. And, as the State acknowledges, its SEIMS system is already prepared to implement same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting. The State told us that the proofs for its voter guide were not due until August 5, and that its election official training would not begin until August 8. We issued our opinion, injunction, and mandate a week in advance of those dates. Because of these assurances, we are confident that North Carolina can conduct the 2016 election in compliance with our injunction.

Worse, after the appeals court issued its decision striking much of the state’s voter suppression law, North Carolina waited seventeen days to file its “emergency” application asking the justices for a stay. That’s a pretty good way to communicate to the justices that this “emergency” isn’t really all that urgent.

So, to summarize, the state told the appeals court that it was prepared to implement a July order striking down parts of the law. Then, after the court complied with this deadline, the state sat on its hands for two-and-a-half weeks before it finally got around to asking the Supreme Court to consider this case. And now it expects the justices to say that much of the Fourth Circuit’s order must be stayed because we are too close to Election Day.

The state has, to borrow from Leo Rosten, murdered its parents and then demanded mercy because it is an orphan.

This, on top of the comment noted yesterday by the Board of Elections member in Charlotte, whose common-sense reason for limiting early voting sites in the state’s largest city is, “The more [early voting] sites we have, the more opportunities exist for violations.”

Common sense as in if you want to reduce voting errors you make it so fewer people can vote? Common sense as in how can you be sure voters beside you in line are not space aliens without testing their DNA? Common sense as in the world is flat because anyone with two eyes can see that?

Stick a fork in it. Common sense is neither common nor sense.

Does Michael Flynn have a top security clearance?

by digby

I don’t know. But he is a certifiable loon, that’s for sure.

Anyway, Trump insisted on bringing him to his first national security briefing today:

“I think he’s a great guy. I’ve gotten to know him. He’s been a real fan of mine and defender of mine and he’s a terrific guy, a terrific general — tough, smart. Feels like I do about illegal immigration, in particular,” Trump told Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt in Milwaukee on Tuesday night. “He wants to make sure the right people are coming into our country, not the people that we’re probably taking in right now. We don’t even know who we’re taking in. I mean, we have people coming into our country, we have no idea who they are, where they come from and he’s somebody that I believe in.”

Earhardt followed up by asking whether Trump trusts “intelligence.”

“Not so much from the people that have been doing it for our country. I mean, look what’s happened over the last 10 years. Look what’s happened over the years. It’s been catastrophic. And, in fact, I won’t use some of the people that are sort of your standards, you know, just use them, use them, use them, very easy to use them, but I won’t use them because they’ve made such bad decisions,” said Trump, who will also be joined by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at the inaugural briefing. “You look at Iraq. You look at the Middle East. It’s a total powder keg. It’s a — if we would have never touched it, it would have been a lot better. I mean, we would have been much better off. On top of which, we’ve spent probably $4 trillion. Nobody even knows what we’ve spent. So, no, I have great people, and Gen. Flynn is one of them.”

He obviously needs some intelligence briefings from someone because his own “advisers” Christie and Flynn are clearly not getting through to him.

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Just one more macho jerk

by digby

It can’t be a coincidence that the leadership of the GOP is full of these intemperate weirdos:

This is the face of today’s Republican Party: The nose is pinched, the hair is sandy blond, the eyes are intense. But all you really need to know can be seen in the mouth. This is where Spicer’s talent and nervous energy meet. Watch it open wide enough to inhale his phone as he yells at an editor. Behold its versatility, as he at once chastises Trump for calling Mexicans rapists and murderers while also lauding him for calling attention to the issue of illegal immigration. Even when he is not speaking, it works on overdrive, churning through pieces of Orbit cinnamon gum, which he chews and swallows whole. Notwithstanding his line of work, the man just can’t stand a gross-feeling mouth.

“Two and a half packs by noon,” said Spicer. “I talked to my doctor about it, he said it’s no problem.”

There was one very brief period of his career when this mouth was not working furiously. That was in 2006, when a line drive smashed into his face during a slow-pitch softball game, leaving him with his jaw wired shut as he embarked on the job that launched him on the radar of official Washington — the spokesman for the U.S. trade representative.

For almost three years, he was one of the town’s most ardent advocates for free trade. Today, he is fighting for Trump, the most protectionist GOP nominee in decades. He acknowledges the contradiction, but Spicer’s tradecraft places a greater value on loyalty than consistency.

“There are doctors who help people who have done bad things, there are lawyers who defend bad people,” he said. “I don’t think it’s unique to my profession.”

Trump, his new muse, says aloud what political operatives have always understood: Winning is the important thing. Spicer, who has the compact build of a second baseman, does not like losing, ever. “Whether it’s Nerf basketball or trivia,” said his boss, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

“If the charge against me is that I fight to win and I’m intense,” Spicer said, “then I’m guilty.”

Others call it more of a short fuse. Armstrong Williams, the business manager of then-candidate Ben Carson, bumped into Spicer in a CNN green room last fall. Williams had been complaining about the RNC-organized debates, and Spicer didn’t appreciate the feedback.

“He tore into me,” Williams said. “I could see the fire in his eyes.”

He’s feuded publicly with the media, most notably reporters for Politico, whom he has blasted on Twitter for “made up” stories or “sensational faux reporting.” One editor of a D.C.-based publication said she’s been on the receiving end of so many Spicer tirades that when he calls her at home, her young child will recognize his voice and burst into tears. “Sean Spicer,” she says, “is a curse word in our house.”

That gum thing can’t be good for you, I don’t care what his doctor says.

All that bile can’t be good for you either.

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by digby

Michelle Cottle in the Atlantic has an insightful piece up about what’s going to happen if Clinton wins in the fall. Let’s just say that it’s not going to be an easy time for feminists who write about politics. (Indeed, it’s already been pretty damned awful.) This is an excerpt but I urge you to read the whole thing:

A Clinton victory also promises to usher in four-to-eight years of the kind of down-and-dirty public misogyny you might expect from a stag party at Roger Ailes’s house.

You know it’s coming. As hyperpartisanship, grievance politics, and garden-variety rage shift from America’s first black commander-in-chief onto its first female one, so too will the focus of political bigotry. Some of it will be driven by genuine gender grievance or discomfort among some at being led by a woman. But in plenty of other cases, slamming Hillary as a bitch, a c**t (Thanks, Scott Baio!), or a menopausal nut-job (an enduringly popular theme on Twitter) will simply be an easy-peasy shortcut for dismissing her and delegitimizing her presidency.

Either way, it’ll be best to brace for some in-your-face sexist drivel in the coming years. Despite progress in the business world, women as top executives still prompt an extra shot of public scrutiny. (Just ask Marissa Mayer or Sheryl Sandberg or Carly Fiorina.) And just as Barack Obama’s election did not herald a shiny, new post-racial America, Clinton’s would not deliver one of gender equality and enlightenment. So goes progress: Two steps forward, one step back(lash). As the culture changes, people resent that change and start freaking out, others look to exploit their fear, and things can turn really, really nasty on their way to getting better.

Raw political sexism is already strutting its stuff. At Donald Trump’s coming-out party in Cleveland, vendors stood outside the Quicken Loans Arena hawking campaign buttons with whimsical messages, such as “Life’s a Bitch—don’t vote for one” and “KFC Hillary Special: Two fat thighs, two small breasts… left wing.” One popular T-shirt featured a grinning Trump piloting a Harley, grinning as Hillary tumbled off the bike so that you could read the back of Trump’s shirt: “IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THE BITCH FELL OFF.”

The home-crafted humor was equally tasteful, like the guy in a Hillary mask brandishing a large “Trump vs. Tramp” sign or (my personal favorite) the conventioneer who put together an elaborate “Game of Thrones”-themed ensemble incorporating a life-sized, inflatable Hillary doll—naked, of course.

Social media is awash in references to Clinton as a bitch, among less-flattering terms. “Trump that Bitch!” T-shirts are this season’s must-have couture at Trump rallies. And how about the tween boy yelling, “Take the bitch down!” at a recent Trump event in Virginia? Pure class.

It would be nice to think that this is all merely a heat-of-the-campaign thing—that if Hillary wins in November, the baser attacks will fade, and she will be treated with a smidge more respect. Fat chance. (Just ask Obama how that panned out for him.) “It will probably become even more overt the more power she attains because the more threatening she is,” predicted Farida Jalalzai, a political scientist at Oklahoma State University who focuses on gender. “People will have no problem vilifying her and saying the most misogynistic things imaginable.”

Here’s some testimony from a woman who’s been there:

“The broader problem is that it is just a lazy way, an easy way” to dismiss one’s political adversary, asserted Julia Gillard, who got up close and personal with this phenomenon during her time as the first woman prime minister of Australia.

As head of the Australian Labor Party, Gillard served as prime minister from 2010 to 2013. Her tenure was turbulent and notable for what Gillard termed in her exit speech the “gender wars.” What surprised the former PM most about the experience: that the sexist attacks grew worse as her time in office progressed. “I expected the maximum reaction to my being the first woman prime minister to come in the first few months,” she told me. “What I found living through the reality was that the sort of gendered stuff actually grew over time” as she tackled tough policy decisions. (Gillard too was derided as a “menopausal monster.”)

Gillard recalled a particularly galling episode stemming from her 2011 announcement of a controversial carbon tax and trading scheme. Thousands of protesters showed up outside Parliament House toting signs with charming messages like “Ditch the Witch” and “JuLIAR—Bob Browns [sic] Bitch.” (Brown was the leader of the Green Party.) Rather than denouncing or ignoring the slurs, the head of the opposition party, Tony Abbott, gamely used the signs as a backdrop for delivering an anti-tax address. (Later, on the floor of parliament, Gillard delivered a takedown of Abbott’s behavior that became known as “the misogyny speech” and turned her into a global celebrity.)

Gillard detected subtler differences in treatment as well. For instance, she recalled, the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation did a comedy about her prime ministership. “They chose bizarrely, in my view, to finance a comedy where an impersonator played me,” said Gillard, noting that this was something not done for any other prime minister before or since.

It is, in fact, the subtler, “more insidious gender negativity,” that worries Stony Brook’s Huddy. “There will be concern about outright gender discrimination, but we can call people on that. Then it moves into more subtle realms,” she said. “There are plenty of gender stereotypes still available to say, ‘Maybe a woman isn’t up to this.’” (You know the routine: She’s not a strong leader. Or, She’s too abrasive and aggressive.) These sorts of messages can erode “mainstream” opinion, even those inclined to support gender equality, said Huddy.

“People can play into stereotypes very much associated with gender without saying, ‘Oh, she must be having her period,’” agreed Rutgers’s Dittmar. They raise vague issues about a woman leader’s strength or likability or even age and health, she said, “to tap into those persistent gender stereotypes and norms and raise doubts in the broader public.”

I can guarantee it will be worse for Clinton. The years of vilifying her along with the reversion to negative archetypal assumptions among a whole lot of Americans of all political stripes  is going to make this really ugly. Misogyny and sexism are still so completely acceptable in society that people simply don’t recognize when they’re doing it.

A small example of mindless sexism and mindful feminism:

“You’re the first person to ever win two Olympic tennis gold medals, that’s an extraordinary feat, isn’t it?” he asked the Wimbledon champion. 

Murray, with a smirk, responded: “Well to defend the singles title, I think Venus and Serena have won about four each … it’s obviously not an easy thing to do and I had to fight unbelievably hard to get it tonight as well.”

Thank you Andy Murray.

Sadly, as usual, women will be dismissed for point these things out. It would be nice if we could count on progressive men to do what Andy Murray did in that exchange. We live in hope.

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The new right wing hit man. Same as the old right wing hit man


by digby

Former Breitbart staffer Ben Shapiro has a fascinating piece up about Trump’s new campaign chairman Steve Bannon. It’s worth reading in total but this is just well … perfect:

Bannon Is A Legitimately Sinister Figure. Many former employees of Breitbart News are afraid of Steve Bannon. He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies. Bannon is a smarter version of Trump: he’s an aggressive self-promoter who name-drops to heighten his profile and woo bigger names, and then uses those bigger names as stepping stools to his next destination. Trump may be his final destination. Or it may not. He will attempt to ruin anyone who impedes his unending ambition, and he will use anyone bigger than he is – for example, Donald Trump – to get where he wants to go. Bannon knows that in the game of thrones, you win or die. And he certainly doesn’t intend to die. He’ll kill everyone else before he goes.

Bannon’s ascension is the predictable consummation of a romance he ardently pursued. I joked with friends months ago that by the end of the campaign, Steve Bannon would be running Trump’s campaign from a bunker. That’s now reality. Every nightmare for actual conservatives has come true in this campaign. Why not this one, too?

Trump is reportedly really, really angry about the leaks, which was obvious over the week-end. And that’s a big part of the reason he brought in this creepy thug.

But from what I can tell this guy is also highly overrated. This is from the seminal Bannon profile by Joshua Green in Bloomberg from last fall:

Bannon is a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde figure in the complicated ecosystem of the right—he’s two things at once. And he’s devised a method to influence politics that marries the old-style attack journalism of Breitbart.com, which helped drive out Boehner, with a more sophisticated approach, conducted through the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute, that builds rigorous, fact-based indictments against major politicians, then partners with mainstream media outlets conservatives typically despise to disseminate those findings to the broadest audience. The biggest product of this system is the project Bannon was so excited about at CPAC: the bestselling investigative book, written by GAI’s president, Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Published in May by HarperCollins, the book dominated the political landscape for weeks and probably did more to shape public perception of Hillary Clinton than any of the barbs from her Republican detractors.

Read on to see how it was set up to work:

What made Clinton Cash so unexpectedly influential is that mainstream news reporters picked up and often advanced Schweizer’s many examples of the Clintons’ apparent conflicts of interest in accepting money from large donors and foreign governments. (“Practically grotesque,” wrote Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination. “On any fair reading, the pattern of behavior that Schweizer has charged is corruption.”) Just before the book’s release, the New York Times ran a front-page story about a Canadian mining magnate, Frank Giustra, who gave tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and then flew Bill Clinton to Kazakhstan aboard his private jet to dine with the country’s autocratic president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Giustra subsequently won lucrative uranium-mining rights in the country. (Giustra denies that the Clinton dinner influenced his Kazakh mining decision.) The Times piece cited Schweizer’s still-unpublished book as a source of its reporting, puzzling many Times readers and prompting a reaction from the paper’s ombudswoman, Margaret Sullivan, who grudgingly concluded that, while no ethical standards were breached, “I still don’t like the way it looked.”

For Bannon, the Clinton Cash uproar validated a personal theory, informed by his Goldman Sachs experience, about how conservatives can influence the media and why they failed the last time a Clinton was running for the White House. “In the 1990s,” he told me, “conservative media couldn’t take down [Bill] Clinton because most of what they produced was punditry and opinion, and they always oversold the conclusion: ‘It’s clearly impeachable!’ So they wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber.” What news conservatives did produce, such as David Brock’s Troopergate investigation on Paula Jones in the American Spectator, was often tainted in the eyes of mainstream editors by its explicit partisan association.

In response, Bannon developed two related insights. “One of the things Goldman teaches you is, don’t be the first guy through the door because you’re going to get all the arrows. If it’s junk bonds, let Michael Milken lead the way,” he says. “Goldman would never lead in any product. Find a business partner.” His other insight was that the reporters staffing the investigative units of major newspapers aren’t the liberal ideologues of conservative fever dreams but kindred souls who could be recruited into his larger enterprise. “What you realize hanging out with investigative reporters is that, while they may be personally liberal, they don’t let that get in the way of a good story,” he says. “And if you bring them a real story built on facts, they’re f—ing badasses, and they’re fair.”

Recently, I met with Brock, who renounced conservatism and became an important liberal strategist, fundraiser, and Clinton ally. He founded the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America and just published a book, Killing The Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government. Brock’s attitude toward Bannon isn’t enmity toward an ideological opponent, as I’d expected, but rather a curiosity and professional respect for the tradecraft Bannon demonstrated in advancing the Clinton Cash narrative. What conservatives learned in the ’90s, Brock says, is that “your operation isn’t going to succeed if you don’t cross the barrier into the mainstream.” Back then, he says, conservative reporting had to undergo an elaborate laundering to influence U.S. politics. Reporters such as Brock would publish in small magazines and websites, then try to get their story planted in the British tabloids and hope a right-leaning U.S. outlet such as the New York Post or the Drudge Report picked it up. If it generated enough heat, it might break through to a mainstream paper.

“It seems to me,” says Brock of Bannon and his team, “what they were able to do in this deal with the Times is the same strategy, but more sophisticated and potentially more effective and damaging because of the reputation of the Times. If you were trying to create doubt and qualms about [Hillary Clinton] among progressives, the Times is the place to do it.” He pauses. “Looking at it from their point of view, the Times is the perfect host body for the virus.”

It wasn’t the only one. In June, when the Clinton Cash frenzy hit its apex, Bannon said: “We’ve got the 15 best investigative reporters at the 15 best newspapers in the country all chasing after Hillary Clinton.” There’s more coming, Bannon reveals, including a graphic novel of Clinton Cash, in January, and a Clinton Cash movie set to arrive in February, just as the presidential primary voting gets under way.

This isn’t actually new at all, which Brock knows better than anyone. The innovation, to the extent there was one, was to get progressives to run with the smear on their behalf.  Very clever.

But the mainstream media has always eagerly taken wingnut dirt on Bill and Hillary Clinton and published it, virtually unchecked. I’ve written about their operations back in the day for years, including one called Citizens United (yes, that Citizens United) run by David Bossie who now works for one of Trump’s Super PACs, installed there by none other than Kellyann Conway, Trump’s new campaign manager. I’ve written about the way the mainstream media huddled with Bush operatives to smear Al Gore.There was even a documentary made about it.

It is true that the financial arrangement between Schweitzer and the New York Times took this arrangement to a new level of corruption, but it’s only because money was exchanged this time. They’re been eagerly swallowing the right’s character assassination for decades. Their appetite for it is unquenchable.

But Bannon believing that he’s hidden his real agenda by creating some kind of a pass through is hilarious. The guy is the CEO of Breitbart News for heavens sake. Does he think no one will notice that? But he’s not the only right wing millionaire who thinks he’s the cleverest man in the world (his new boss will fight him for that title) and they are rarely very clever at all. But that doesn’t stop the press from running with whatever slimy offal they throw out there. It makes good copy. Too bad about the country.

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“Daring to try, to do it or die”

by digby

Trump:

“You know, I am who I am. It’s me. I don’t want to change. Everyone talks about, ‘Oh, well, you’re going to pivot, you’re going to.’ I don’t want to pivot. I mean, you have to be you.”

He’s an ill-informed, narcissistic white nationalist heir to a fortune who’s turned his name into a “brand.” That’s who he is.

*I didn’t use the Sammy Davis Jr version for obvious reasons.

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Oh this should be fun

by digby

By now you’ve heard that Trump has shaken up his campaign team a bit by promoting Kellyann Conway to campaign manager and bringing on his alter ago Breitbart’s Steve Bannon as chief executive. Here’s Robert Costa on the new game plan:

Bannon has convinced Trump that rest of campaign needs to be bare-knuckles brawl, w/ full-bore populism/movement politics

— Robert Costa (@costareports) August 17, 2016

I don’t know what they mean by “populism/movement” but it seems to mostly be anti-establishment white nationalism. This article in the Washington Post, co-written by Costa, lays it all out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty:

In the short term, Trump campaign strategists will seek to keep the candidate focused on two themes that have animated him in recent months: defeating terrorism and expanding law enforcement, which they see as going hand in hand and as an effective way to hit Clinton.

Authoritarianism R Us. Shudder.

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