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Month: September 2017

QOTD: Clinton

Published by digby on September 14, 2017

QOTD: Clinton

by digby


To David Remnick in the New Yorker:

[Trump] “is immature, with poor impulse control; unqualified for the position that he holds; reactive, not proactive; not strategic, either at home or on the world stage. And I think he is unpredictable, which, at the end of the description one can give of him, makes him dangerous. The latest incident with North Korea? Going after our ally, South Korea, while North Korea is threatening the region, threatening us? Going after China, which we need, whether we like it or not, to help us try to resolve the aggressive behavior of Kim Jong Un? It puts a smile on Kim’s face. Just like him going after nato and the Atlantic alliance puts a smile on Putin’s face. He admires authoritarians. In fact, before this crisis with North Korea, he was praising Kim Jong Un. He clearly has a bromance toward Putin, whom he lauds as a great leader. 

He’s being played by the Putins and the Kim Jong Uns of the world. I’m not even sure he’s aware of that. Because he has such a limited understanding of the world. Everything is in relation to how it makes him feel. And therefore he has little objective distance, which a leader must have. Making decisions in the Oval Office requires a level of dispassionate, reasoned analysis. We’ve seen no evidence he’s capable of that.”

When she’s right, she’s right.

Ooops. He forgot to negotiate again

Published by digby on September 14, 2017

Ooops. He forgot to negotiate again

by digby


I find this unfolding Trump DACA drama mordantly amusing:

___

3:40 a.m.

The top House and Senate Democrats say they have reached agreement with President Donald Trump to protect thousands of younger immigrants from deportation and fund some border security enhancements — not including Trump’s coveted border wall.

The agreement represents the latest instance of Trump ditching his own party to make common cause with the opposition. It was announced by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi late Wednesday following a White House dinner that Republican lawmakers weren’t invited to attend. It would enshrine protections for the nearly 800,000 immigrants brought illegally to this country as kids who had benefited from former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which provided temporary work permits and shielded recipients from deportation.

Trump ended the program earlier this month and gave Congress six months to come up with a legislative fix before the statuses of the so-called “Dreamers” begin to expire.

___

6:30 a.m.

President Donald Trump is denying assertions by the two top congressional Democrats that they have an agreement with him that will preserve protections for young immigrants in the U.S. illegally while adding border security without the wall he has coveted.

Trump sent out a series of tweets before daybreak Thursday taking issue with characterizations by Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of talks the group at a White House dinner Wednesday evening.

Schumer and Pelosi said they’d reached an agreement to restore the so-called DACA program in exchange for some additional security enhancements to ward off illegal immigration. But Trump said in a tweet: “No deal was made last night on DACA.”

“Massive border security would have to be agreed to in exchange for consent. Would be subject to vote,” the president said.

___

8:30 a.m.

Democratic leaders in Congress and President Donald Trump can’t seem to agree on just what it is they agreed to at a White House dinner.

Here’s the version from New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi: They say there’s an agreement on putting into law an Obama administration program that’s given protection to certain young immigrants. These are immigrants living in the country illegally who were brought here as children to remain in the United States.

They say Trump said he’d encourage the House and Senate to act.

The leaders also say both sides agreed to work out a U.S.-Mexico border security package — but it wouldn’t include Trump’s border wall. They say Trump made clear he’ll pursue that later.

Schumer and Pelosi in a statement that Trump’s tweets Thursday morning denying a deal “are not consistent” with what took place at their dinner.

___

8:50 a.m.

President Donald Trump says he’s “fairly close” to reaching a deal with congressional leaders on protections for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. But the president says he needs “massive border security.”

Trump spoke Thursday morning — after denying assertions by Democratic leaders that they reached an agreement with him on the so-called DACA program.

In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi insist they agreed, with Trump, to “enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly” and to work out a package on border security — excluding Trump’s planned wall along the U.S. southern border.

Trump told reporters Thursday morning that House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agree with him on DACA.

That’s after Trump tweeted early Thursday that “no deal was made last night” on the issue.

___

10:36 a.m.

President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders have reached an understanding on protections for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

That’s the word Thursday from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Speaking on the Senate floor, Schumer said: “We all agreed on a framework. … We agreed the president would enshrine DACA protections into law … What remains to be negotiated are the details of border security.”

Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi dined with Trump at the White House on Wednesday night and issued a statement on an agreement.

On Thursday morning, Trump said he’s “fairly close” to reaching a deal with congressional leaders. The president insisted he needs “massive border security.”

Trump spoke after denying assertions by Democratic leaders that they reached an agreement with him on the so-called DACA program.

___

10:55 a.m.

A spokeswoman says President Donald Trump “does not support amnesty,” but may be open to a pathway to citizenship for some people living in the country illegally.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters tells reporters traveling with the president to Florida that “the Trump administration will not be discussing amnesty.”

But she says the president wants “a responsible path forward” on immigration reform that “could include legal citizenship over a period of time.” She later said that is just one possible example of what Congress might do.

Walters is also repeating the president’s assertion that “no deal” was made on protections for young immigrants during a dinner Wednesday night between the president and Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

She says they had “a constructive conversation,” but “there was no deal made.”

___

11:20 a.m.

President Donald Trump says he’s “not looking at citizenship” for young immigrants living in the in U.S. illegally and “not looking at amnesty.”

But Trump tells reporters in Florida that: “We’re looking at allowing people to stay here.”

Trump was referring to the hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who’ve been protected from deportation and given permission to work in the country under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Trump says he’s been working with both Democrats and Republicans to come up with a solution before a six-month deadline he imposed.

Trump is denying he reached a deal with Democrats on the issue Wednesday night, but says that: “Everybody’s on board.”

___

11:20 a.m.

President Donald Trump says that, “ultimately,” funding for a border wall with Mexico must be part of any immigration deal. But he says that funding can come at a later date.

Trump tells reporters in Florida that: “We have to have an understanding that, whether it’s in the budget or some other vehicle, in a fairly short period of time, the wall will be funded.”

He says, “Otherwise we’re not doing anything.”

Trump and Democratic leaders talked Wednesday night over dinner about what to do with the hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer announced they’d reached an agreement with Trump that does not include wall funding. But the White House says that’s premature.

___

11:52 a.m.

The top Senate Republican says the program to protect young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally should be part of any discussion about immigration, border security and enforcement.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also says Congress is looking forward to getting a legislative proposal from the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the White House is insisting that’s up to Congress.

The statement comes amid more confusion over statements and comments from President Donald Trump after his dinner with Democratic leaders Wednesday night.

Trump said Thursday he was “fairly close” to a deal with congressional leaders to preserve protections for young immigrants. He pushed back against the Democratic leaders, who claimed he reached a deal with them on protections for young immigrants. He also said his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border would “come later.”

Then this:


Speaker Paul Ryan says in AP interview that deporting people brought to US illegally as children not in America’s interest.

Basically th Republicans are ready to legalize the DREAMers. But they feel they should get something in return. Trumpie screwed the pooch again by failing to actually “negotiate” and now he’s having to back off.

The Art o’ the Deal … lol.

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Will the cult stick with him?

Published by digby on September 14, 2017

Will the cult stick with him?

by digby

I wrote about Trump, DACA and his cult following for Salon this morning:

Over the weekend, the mainstream press published a flurry of articles about Donald Trump the pragmatic independent outsider who has no loyalty to any party and will work with anyone to Get Things Done. This excited reaction was in response to the president’s agreement to raise the debt ceiling and fund disaster relief with the help of Democrats. But that’s nothing compared to the delirium that broke out after he had dinner with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on Wednesday night, and the Democrats announced that they had reached an agreement to legalize the Dreamers without funding his Big Beautiful Wall.

That would be a big win for the good guys, to be sure. Of course, when it comes to Trump, trusting him on a handshake has rarely turned out to be a wise decision for anyone, so we’ll have to see.

After Pelosi made the announcement on Twitter, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders immediately responded:

Schumer’s office responded to that by saying that Trump had not agreed to shelve the wall entirely but had agreed not to make it part of the DACA package. So as I write this, I’m not entirely sure what the agreement actually was.

When I wrote recently about Trump’s decision to end the DACA program, I suggested that if Democrats had to agree to fund the wall in order to secure the future for the Dreamers, it would be worth it. They may not have to do that if the president is able to persuade Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to bring this deal to the floor, and if they can persuade enough Republicans to join with the Democrats to pass it as is.

On the other hand, this is an issue that is much tougher for the GOP to swallow, and one can assume it’s going to be a battle. For all the hosannas from the Beltway press about Trump’s “pivot” to the Democrats, the fact remains that the Democrats don’t control Congress. And at this point, nobody knows how much clout Donald Trump still has with the Republicans.

The big question, of course — the one that has everyone on the edge of their seats — is whether this sort of “independence” will hurt him with his followers, the folks who chanted “build the wall” like a mantra during the campaign.

Breitbart’s headline after Trump’s latest Schumer-Pelosi meeting was “Amnesty Don: Trump caves on DACA.” Rep. Steve King of Iowa, one of the original MAGA disciples, tweeted this when he heard the news:

That certainly sounds bad. But is it true? A new HuffPost/YouGov survey has some clues.

This poll was conducted after the debt ceiling and disaster aid deal — and a majority of Trump voters said that if their leader agrees with the hated Pelosi, longtime villain of the right, then they do too, by an overwhelming margin of 69 percent to 14 percent. When Republicans were asked if this represented a “betrayal of the Republican Party or an effective act of bipartisanship,” only 8 percent said it was betrayal.

Now, this question might result in a very different answer when it comes to DACA. After all, raising the debt ceiling is an abstract procedural issue and disaster relief was going to the great state of Texas and wasn’t something Trump promised never to do. But this moment exposes once again just how empty conservative ideology really is.

The Republican base has been upset with the congressional leadership for a long time because it failed to crush Barack Obama and destroy his presidency. Now that GOP leaders are locking horns with President Trump, the man who dogged Obama for years about his birth certificate and then heroically defeated the loathed Hillary Clinton, the base despises them even more. According to Huff Post/YouGov, Republicans support Trump in a hypothetical disagreement with Ryan and McConnell by a 46-point margin. That rises to 62 points among Trump voters.

Where this all leads for the Republican Party is anyone’s guess. But if I had to guess, I’d go with this instant reaction from Trump’s bestie who wrote “Well @SenMajLdr GREAT JOB! You failed so miserably with Healthcare and ‘excessive expectations’ now @POTUS has to deal with Dem Leaders!” He thought better of that tweet and deleted it in favor of this:

Sad!

On the other side of the aisle, Trump’s hold on his base seems to be spooking some Democrats who, according to a Politico article on the resilience of “Teflon Don,” have conducted some polls and focus groups finding that white swing voters aren’t bothered that Trump praises white supremacists (surprise!) and don’t much care about free college. So it’s time to throw our aprons over our heads and run around in circles.

But when you look further at the data, swing voters are in fact very much in favor of electing a Democratic Congress to serve as a check on Trump. And the Democrats lead by a whopping 17 points on the question of “who fights for people like me?” Democrats lead by nine points in a generic partisan poll, which Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com says should lead to a House majority, even with the gerrymandered GOP advantage.

Republicans are retiring in droves, and the Democrats have recruited some high-quality candidates around the country. In special elections since last November, Democrats have flipped six seats in state legislatures, while the Republicans have flipped one. Democrats just picked up three seats in Oklahoma, a state as red as it gets.

And let’s face facts: Donald Trump is historically unpopular. Midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the president, and he’s not doing well at all, which makes these bipartisan lovefests more than a little troubling.

I understand that Democratic trolling could drive a wedge between Trump and his followers; from the sound of Breitbart’s caterwauling, that may already be happening in some circles. But such a division hasn’t happened yet on any mass scale, and it would be unwise to assume it will. Trump has been hemming and hawing about the Dreamers since he was inaugurated, and it hasn’t budged his base. In fact, it may actually have helped him. The HuffPost/You Gov poll showed that 40 percent of Democrats were impressed with Trump’s bipartisan outreach. It would be a bitter irony if Donald Trump, whose approval rating has been mired in the mid 30s, were to make gains with Democratic voters because he cut a deal to fix a crisis that he created by pretending he had a deadline that he could have ignored.

If you’re wondering what Trump himself was tweeting after his momentous meeting with Democratic leaders, some things never change:

If anyone knows what his cult followers want to hear from their dear leader, he does.

Update: On Fox and Friends, Steve Doocey now says that the wall was symbolic. And former congressman and grinning jack-o-lantern Jason Chaffetz said the wall is already there and just needs funding. Or something.

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“Dealing” with the Devil by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 14, 2017

“Dealing” with the Devil
by Tom Sullivan

The devil went down to Georgia
He was lookin’ for a soul to steal
He was in a bind
‘Cause he was way behind
And he was willin’ to make a deal

— Charlie Daniels Band – “Devil Went Down To Georgia”

“They may think they can use him, but they know they cannot rely on him.” So says The Atlantic’s Eliot Cohen about foreign leaders approach to dealing with America’s reality-show president. One hopes Democrats’ leaders in Congress are similarly canny:

Following a dinner with Trump at the White House, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said the “productive meeting” focused on “DACA,” a program established by former President Barack Obama.

“We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides,” Schumer and Pelosi said in a statement.

White House spokesperson Sarah Huckbee Sanders last night denied her boss had agreed to exclude the wall. This morning her boss joined her.

Noteworthy by their absence last night were House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Way behind (like the Devil), the president wants quick wins, and his Republican colleagues seem unable to deliver. One Republican lawmaker told the Washington Post that what matters to the president, is “putting wins on the board — not the specifics.”

The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol told the Post, “Democratic voters may loathe Trump, but he could conceivably give them lots of policy victories.”

Despite blaring headlines to the contrary, this does not make him an independent, just self-dealing. But we knew that. Foreign leaders know that. The president’s followers are just beginning to figure that out. After last night’s reporting, they were not happy.

There is much more of that from the professional right at Raw Story.

But as we saw during the campaign, the president’s believers behave not like doctrinaire movement conservatives, but adoring fans.

Thomas Edsall thinks they are still prepared to follow wherever he leads, and will sell out conservative dogma and their own religious faith to do so. The Public Religion Research Institute asked voters in 2011 if they could still support “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life.” The poll found:

White evangelical Protestants were the least forgiving. Sixty-one percent said such a politician could not “behave ethically,” twice the 30 percent who felt that such a politician could manage it.

Every other religious group was less judgmental. Catholics, 49 no, 42, yes; white mainline Protestants: 44 percent no, 38 percent yes; the religiously unaffiliated, 26 no, 63 yes.

And now?

Five years later, in October, 2016, P.R.R.I. asked the same question. The percentage of white evangelical Protestants who said that a politician “who commits an immoral act in their personal life could still behave ethically shot up from 30 to 72 percent. The percentage saying such a politician could not serve ethically plunged from 63 to 20 percent.

A recent paper by political scientists at Brigham Young University finds Republican voters:

malleable to the point of innocence, and self-reported expressions of ideological fealty are quickly abandoned for policies that — once endorsed by a well-known party leader — run contrary to that expressed ideology.

The study concludes:

Those most willing to adjust their positions on ten issues ranging from abortion to guns to taxes are firm Republicans, Trump loyalists, self-identified conservatives and low information Republicans.

The Barber-Pope study suggests that for many Republicans partisan identification is more a tribal affiliation than an ideological commitment.

But Edsall’s piece was likely written before last night’s blast from Breitbart and others. We’ll see soon enough which sirens’ songs the GOP base heeds more.

In the meantime, Mike Lux offers them a Sunday school lesson:

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

No wonder Mueller needed such a big team

Published by digby on September 14, 2017

No wonder Mueller needed such a big team

by digby


He’s got a lot on his plate:

Russia’s effort to influence U.S. voters through Facebook and other social media is a “red-hot” focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election and possible links to President Donald Trump’s associates, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Mueller’s team of prosecutors and FBI agents is zeroing in on how Russia spread fake and damaging information through social media and is seeking additional evidence from companies like Facebook and Twitter about what happened on their networks, said one of the officials, who asked not to be identified discussing the ongoing investigation.

The ability of foreign nations to use social media to manipulate and influence elections and policy is increasingly seen as the soft underbelly of international espionage, another official said, because it doesn’t involve the theft of state secrets and the U.S. doesn’t have a ready defense to prevent such attacks.

Agencies including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are now examining what could be done to prevent similar interference and espionage in future elections, starting with the 2018 midterm congressional vote, the official said. At the same time, Russia is ramping up its hacking operations, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said.

“Russia has clearly assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture by increasing cyber espionage operations and leaking data stolen from those operations,” Coats said Wednesday at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington.

Mueller’s office declined to comment on the status of the investigation. Russian officials have repeatedly denied their government was behind hacking in the U.S.

The focus of Mueller’s probe comes as the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own investigation, say social-media companies including Facebook have to be more forthcoming about what they saw occurring on their platforms last year and how they have responded.

[…]

Richard Ledgett, the former deputy director of the National Security Agency who retired earlier this year, said it’s unlikely that social-media companies knew how Russia was using them before the election because U.S. intelligence agencies didn’t even fully grasp what was happening.

The NSA had some knowledge before the election of the computer infrastructure Russia was using, but it was looking abroad and not at what was happening through social media in the U.S., Ledgett said in an interview.

“The surprise was the integration into a whole campaign,” Ledgett said. “It’s the amplification of some stories and the suppression of other stories to bias you. That’s really hard to fight against. That’s where people need to think critically.”

One hurdle for the government in responding to such state-coordinated attacks is that there are constitutional concerns about intelligence agencies monitoring social media, one official said.

Going forward, the government should probably share information about influence operations by foreign adversaries with U.S. social-media companies, Ledgett said. Ultimately, though, the companies have to police themselves, and individuals need to be educated consumers of information, Ledgett said.

The U.S. response is seen as complicated, though, because it lacks policy direction from the top. Coordination across multiple agencies probably will be required, including from the FBI, the Homeland Security Department and the Federal Election Commission.


Trump’s Reluctance

Trump has appeared reluctant to embrace the conclusion of intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, repeatedly calling the federal investigation a “witch hunt” and “fake news” promoted by Democrats angry that they lost the presidential election.

The FBI declined to comment, pointing instead to comments that Director Christopher Wray made during a national security conference in Washington on Sept. 7.

“The FBI also has a counterintelligence mission, which is more of a forward-looking mission, just more geared towards prevention — that is prevention of Russia interference in, say, a future election,” Wray said at the conference, hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. “I’m impressed with the strides that are being made on that front.”

I think it’s pretty clear that the Republicans, led by their president, have no problem with Russian interference in elections. Indeed, it is likely they welcome it. After all, it benefited them in 2016 and they probably feel it will benefit them at least in the near future since Trump is clearly not going to do anything that might upset his own advantage. As long as he’s in there and the GOP is in charge of congress they will keep this under wraps as much as possible. Sure, some things will have to come out. But as long as it’s just expelling some diplomats and other minor tit-for-tat, the status quo holds and everybody’s happy. Trump is still the commander in chief and he is the most powerful man on earth. And he still hasn’t said a word against any of this.

Mueller’s probe complicates this but I suspect they’re thinking it won’t affect 2018 and by 2020 the worst thing that happens is Trump doesn’t run again. For right now, they do not want to upset the apple cart. Why would they? It’s working for them.

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No touching

Published by digby on September 13, 2017

No touching

by digby

Word to the wise. If you don’t already know it, this is wrong. Don’t do it.

In the book, Tur reveals that Trump forced an unwanted kiss on her just before a November 11, 2015, appearance on Morning Joe. The details are pretty gross (emphasis added):

Trump arrives. Word spreads. I take a few steps toward the entrance and see Trump’s private security detail, coming in just ahead of him. Despite my desire to avoid any interaction, I walk toward the front doors and spot Trump—who shifts his path ever so slightly so he’s walking straight toward me—barreling, really. Suddenly he is so close I can smell what he had for breakfast. And then, before I know what’s happening, his hands are on my shoulders and his lips are on my cheek. My eyes widen. My body freezes. My heart stops.

Tur adds that after Trump let go of her and continued on to the set, he seemed “very proud of himself,” but that she was “mortified.” The reasons, aside from the smell, are obvious:


F**k. I hope the cameras didn’t see that. My bosses are never going to take me seriously. I didn’t have time to duck!

The cameras didn’t pick up the kiss, but Trump was, indeed, proud enough of his maneuver to brag about it on air:

“Katy Tur, what happened? She was so great. I just saw her back there and I gave her a big kiss.”

In the book, Tur recounts the humiliating, and intended, reaction. “A middle-aged man in the crowd is laughing openmouthed,” she writes, adding “As the student at the next table picks up her jaw, she looks around the room and finds me. Her eyes are wide. She has the same uncomfortable smile as Mika.”

Remember this part of the Access Hollywood tape:

You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

He was in public so he couldn’t really go for the gold.

Her description of the event is that feeling of being ambushed by someone physically larger than you against your will in a professional situation where to make a stink will derail your standing. It’s all about humiliation and dominance. It’s horrifying when it happens to you.

And then the asshole proceeded to call her out by name at his rallies full of slavering misogynists and she needed escorts to her car. Nice guy.

But hey, no big deal. They love him for his trade policies.

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He’s still freaking out

Published by digby on September 13, 2017

He’s still freaking out

by digby

Behind the scenes in the West Wing, President Trump continues to rant and brood about former FBI Director Jim Comey and the Russia investigation that got him fired.

Trump tells aides and visitors that the probe now being run by special counsel Bob Mueller is a witch hunt, and that Comey was a leaker.

So White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was reflecting her boss’s moods when she attacked Comey at length from the podium yesterday, after being asked about Steve Bannon’s assertion to “60 Minutes” that the firing was one of the worst mistakes in modern political history:

“I think there is no secret Comey, by his own self-admission, leaked privileged government information. … Comey leaked memos to the New York Times … He politicized an investigation by signaling he would exonerate Hillary Clinton before he ever interviewed her or other key witnesses.”
Sanders even suggested that Comey himself should be investigated: “His actions were improper and likely could have been illegal.”
[…]
The president’s friends are most worried about Mueller digging into past business deals, which is why his team keeps raising concerns in public and private about the “scope” of the investigation.

Right. Because the Whitewater investigation was convened to find out if President Clinton had ever had any blowjobs in the White House. These investigations go where the facts lead them. If they hit a dead end, they hit a dead end. But seeing as Donald trump has been lying his ass off about business dealings with Russians they’re going to go into his business dealings. If they turn up crimes, that’s the price you pay for being a criminal for decades and then deciding you are so great that you can be president and nobody will ever catch you. That’s called hubris and I thin we know that this guy has plenty of that.

TIf a prosecutor finds something in the course of an investigation that appears to be criminal he or she is going to pursue it. That’s how this works for everyone, even the president. Read up on the ITT scandal that was uncovered during Watergate. It had nothing to do with the break in at Democratic headquarters. They nailed Nixon on it anyway.

He is freaking out because he knows they’re going to look in places he doesn’t want anyone looking. And for very good reason.
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Bannon knows something

Published by digby on September 13, 2017

Bannon knows something

by digby

I noticed Bannon’s apparent prevarication on Russia on 60 Minutes when I originally watched the interview but moved on to other things and forgot about it. Aaron Blake at the Washington Post wrote about it this morning:

Stephen K. Bannon labeled the Russia investigation a “farce” and a “waste of time” during his interview with “60 Minutes” this weekend. But those strong words papered over what was otherwise a pretty nervous and nonsensical defense of President Trump on Russia.

If you watch the video above, you’ll see Bannon repeatedly stumble over his answers to Charlie Rose’s questions. Bannon echoed the Trump White House’s long-running strategy of deflecting on Russia, responding to questions about whether there was interference by saying there was no collusion and that it didn’t have an impact. Both times Bannon tried this, though, Rose called him out for not answering the question.

And by the end of the segment, Bannon offered perhaps his most illogical argument of the entire interview, suggesting that Trump didn’t more directly criticize Russia because he doesn’t want to pick a fight (!). This is a president, of course, who picks fights with pretty much everyone — up to and including members of his own party, his own staff, and powerful and adversarial countries like China.

Blake goes into the whole exchange but he put together a map of all the countries Trump has picked fights with:

Most notably, Trump has repeatedly gone after China, including this month when he threatened to cut off trade with it over its relationship with North Korea. Then there were the times he berated the Australian prime minister, told Mexico it was going to pay for his border wall, told Germany it was exploiting the European Union, and on and on.

In the very same interview, in fact, Bannon praised Trump’s counterpunching. “I think I’m a street fighter,” Bannon said. “And by the way, I think that’s why Donald Trump and I get along so well. Donald Trump’s a fighter. Great counterpuncher. Great counterpuncher. He’s a fighter.” Russia seems to be one of very few exceptions to that rule.

Of course it is. That’s why it stands out that Trump cannot bring himself to criticize Russia for anything, not even when they brag about stealing the presidency. 

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Impeach Hillary Clinton

Published by digby on September 13, 2017

Impeach Hillary Clinton

by digby

Jordan Klepper’s new show “The Opposition” looks like it’s going to be good. He’s doing a sort of Jesse Waters send up as a snarky, man on the street conservative. Looks like it will be fun for us stupid liberals who don’t understand that Trump voters need to be coddled because of their deep hatred for us:

I especially enjoyed the nice lady who said she wants to “bury” Hillary Clinton. (I mean, who doesn’t amirite???)

Anyway:

In just a few weeks, Comedy Central will finally premiere the next series to follow The Daily Show, taking over Larry Wilmore’s old time slot: The Opposition with Jordan Klepper. In his new show, the former Daily Show correspondent will play an Alex Jones-esque megaphone for those who are tired of the “fake-news” media—including CNN, The New York Times, and the like. Character-driven late-night shows are an art form the network has honed with previous successes like The Colbert Report and The President Show—and now Klepper will join their ranks attempting to pull of what is, perhaps, the trickiest use of the gambit yet. Klepper has challenged himself with satirizing alternative-news sources like Breitbart and InfoWars—without mimicking them so closely that The Opposition itself becomes tiresome to exhausted audiences. Viewers already got a whiff of what the show’s formula might look like in a trailer, but in its first clip, The Opposition makes an immediately strong impression.

From the looks of it, this show will be a sort of nouveau Colbert Report anchored by an exaggerated version of Klepper’s old Daily Show persona. This clip finds Klepper at a Trump rally in Phoenix—where, he notes, there is no shortage of reporters. “Look closely. You’re gonna see a lot of cameras out there—and that’s the mainstream media,” he warns before deadpanning, “Don’t trust anyone who’s talking to a camera.”

What does his show oppose? The Resistance, of course—but The Opposition’s long list of enemies doesn’t stop there. “We are anti-mainstream,” Klepper explains. “Anti-Soros; anti-globalist; we’re anti-Oprah’s Book Club; we’re anti-pho. Not antifa, the movement—the Vietnamese soup.” For Klepper and his team, it’s all about exposing the hard truths—like the fact that Chuck Todd totally has a ponytail.

As Klepper conducts man-on-the-street interviews, the clear influence of his Daily Show past is very much present. His Daily Show character was a privileged white dude with plenty of opinions but very little self-awareness; his Opposition character appears to use that as a starting point, but will also dial up the self-assuredness.

And before he signs off, Klepper has one last trick up his sleeve: a petition to impeach Hillary Clinton. As the unsuspecting citizens he finds voice their support for this facetious movement—and, in some cases, even provide signatures—it’s hard not to think of Kimmel’s popular “Lie Witness News” segment, which have exposed plenty of ignorance within the population. We’re guessing there will be more tricks where this one came from on The Opposition, which premieres September 25.

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Wait, voting is like shooting people? What? #trollingthevote

Published by digby on September 13, 2017

Wait, voting is like shooting people? What? 

by digby

I wrote about the latest voter “fraud” nonsense for Salon this morning:

It’s pretty much beyond dispute at this point that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election in a number of different ways. The extent of the damage, and whether or not the Trump campaign and other Republicans who were clearly the beneficiaries helped them do it, is still unknown. In the past it would have been automatic for the government to establish a blue-ribbon commission to investigate and make recommendations about how to prevent such events in the future. The 9/11 Commission comes to mind. That obviously is not happening now. In fact, the president is doing everything he can to prevent any investigations at all.

Never let it be said that Donald Trump isn’t concerned about the integrity of our elections, however. He is convinced that he was the victim of an unprecedented tidal wave of election fraud amounting to millions of illegal votes, all cast for his opponent in 2016. Determined to prove that he was cheated out of the popular vote, he immediately convened his Election Integrity Commission to look into the matter. It’s led by vote suppression zealot, Kansas Secretary of State and paid Breitbart columnist Kris Kobach, the man who wrote the template for Arizona’s odious “show me your papers” law that was struck down by the courts.

I’ve written about Kobach here on Salon for years. He is one of the foremost GOP experts on vote suppression and anti-immigration law. Those issues have long been central to conservative political strategy but have achieved new salience with demographic challenges to the Republican coalition, since that relies more and more upon a large racist and xenophobic faction at its base. Kobach is determined to ensure that both legal and illegal immigration is stopped and that voting is made as difficult as possible for minority groups and young people who tend to vote Democratic.

As analyst Ron Brownstein said on CNN on Tuesday when asked about the commission and the issue of “voter fraud”:

This is not a neutral “good government” argument. As the court said about the North Carolina [voter fraud] law, they talked about surgical precision aimed at minority voters. You have a diversifying country, and you have in Trump a candidate who relied on whites for 90 percent of his votes in that rapidly diversifying country. He’s looking at approval ratings among nonwhite voters of under 20 percent. So there is a clear kind of direction in the way this might be going in terms of the recommendations . . . that is about resisting the implications of a changing America.

On the same program, Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander explained the specific strategy behind Kobach’s commission:

As the chief election official in the state of Missouri that has a Republican supermajority, I have seen the GOP voter suppression playbook up close . . . The commission is step one. Convince the American people that American democracy doesn’t work so they can then take laws that make it harder to vote and spread them all over the country. And that is the core of the Trump reelection strategy.

Kobach got off to a bad start when he demanded that all states turn over all the personal information on their voters to the commission. He had to back off when many states, even those run by Republicans, refused. This looks even worse today than it did at the time, with Tuesday’s report that the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation demanded that the commission be stacked with right-wing extremists. That didn’t happen, but the president did appoint the man the foundation confirmed was the one who made that demand to the commission, Hans von Spakovsky. As the Campaign Legal Center has said, von Spakovsky is “widely considered to be the architect of the voter fraud myth.” One can only imagine what he and Kobach had planned to do with that information.

On Tuesday, Kobach held the second meeting of the commission and was once again embarrassed by his sloppy extremism. In a Breitbart column last week, he declared that voter fraud had tipped the election in New Hampshire last fall, costing the Republicans a Senate seat. The reason? There were people who registered to vote on Election Day with out-of-state drivers’ licenses and didn’t get a New Hampshire license within 60 days. As usual, the governing assumption was that these were mostly Democrats because Republicans are all honest as the day is long.

Dave Weigel of The Washington Post debunked this story at the time. These people were mostly college students, and there is no law that says your vote doesn’t count if you don’t change your driver’s license within 60 days. Nonetheless, Kobach and the commission hightailed it up to New Hampshire to “investigate,” where Kobach was confronted with his misleading assertions. He now says his evidence was “anecdotal” and admits he shouldn’t have said it “appears” there was fraud. He looked foolish, but didn’t admit he was wrong.

But that was nothing compared to the master trolling presentation by the thoroughly discredited economist John Lott, whose usual field is the study of gun violence on behalf of the NRA. Evidently, Lott wrote an article on voter fraud a decade ago from which to hang his alleged expert testimony, but his proposal was clearly designed simply to provoke Democrats. He suggested that if the left is so adamant about background checks for gun owners, the government should use that system to determine whether someone is eligible to vote. Quoting Senator Chuck Schumer, Lott said:

Democrats have long been concerned about voter suppression but they’ve also long lauded the background check system on guns, saying it’s simple, accurate, in “complete harmony with the right of people to go and defend themselves.” If they don’t believe that it suppresses people’s ability to defend themselves, would we believe that using this system would suppress being able to go and vote?

The sophomoric Republican commission members could barely keep from snickering and high-fiving each other over how they’d totally pwned those libs. It’ll be a cold day in hell before they try to pass gun control legislation again!

Oh, wait: This was about voter fraud. And they want to stop people from voting, don’t they? What are they talking about?

To recap: our election campaign was clearly tampered with by a foreign country. The president of the United States may or may not have been in on it, but he’s certainly been active in trying to cover it up. Meanwhile, he’s convened a commission that’s completely lacking in credibility to investigate election fraud that doesn’t exist, and they’re spending their time trolling Democrats about gun control.

It’s Breitbart’s world. We just live in it.

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