Month: January 2018

Daddy’s not going to be happy about thisby digby

Even Ivanka betrayed him:

Ivanka described Trump’s hair as a perfectly engineered hairdo that takes many steps to complete. “She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate — a contained island after scalp-reduction surgery — surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray,

That’s page 79, from the Michael Wolff book, of course. Here’s what Bannon had to say about her:

She was a non-event on the campaign. She became a White House staffer and that’s when people suddenly realized she’s dumb as a brick. A little marketing savvy and has a look, but as far as understanding actually how the world works and what politics is and what it means — nothing. Once you expose that, you lose such credibility. Jared just kind of flits in and does the Arab stuff.

Frankly, you can say the same thing about her father.

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He’s upset and he’s provoking international incidents with nuclear capabilityby digby

Yesterday’s scary tweetfest indicates that he’s very upset, probably about the Wolff book but it could be something else, and his way of blowing off steam is to provoke nuclear powers Pakistan, China, North Korea and stick his small ham hands into the protests in Iran.
This isn’t good:

President Trump’s boast last night that he has a “bigger & more powerful” Nuclear Button (caps, Trump’s) than North Korea has some administration insiders worried that we could blunder into war.

What they’re saying: “Every war in history was an accident,” said one administration insider. “You just don’t know what’s going to send him over the edge.”

The “him” was Trump, but could also refer to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who started the “nuclear button” exchange with a New Year’s Day speech on Monday in which he said: “The U.S. should know that the button for nuclear weapons is on my table” (desk).

The N.Y. Times’ succinct homepage headline: “Trump Taunts Kim.”

But, but, but: Trump insiders caution that the media tends to over-interpret and over-cover statements that Trump has made just to stir the pot, and with little prior thought.

Their view is basically: Sometimes, a tweet is just a tweet.
Why it matters: The danger here is that Kim is also an unpredictable actor, and not one fully understood by U.S. intelligence.

As one outside adviser to the West Wing told me: “This is the most important issue on the president’s desk. We are in a hair-trigger environment. And this is potentially a shooting war with nuclear risk.”

The adviser added: “What intel analysis or foreign policy advice leads to employing this as a tactic?”

Some West Wing insiders remain convinced that the risk of war is higher than most outsiders realize.

That’s an understatement. He’s nuts, he’s emotional and he’s an imbecile. Anything could happen.

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Trump and his businesses are not soon partedby digby

I wrote about a couple of little noticed stories about Trump violating the emoluments clause for Salon this morning. It seems rather beside the point today, considering all the chatter about Steve Bannon’s book, Trump’s crazy tweets and the Fusion GPS op-ed, but it’s part of the mosaic of Trump’s anti-democratic, corrupt presidency and it should be documented. Who knows? It might even be evidence in an impeachment trial some day.

Over the holidays, a Daily Beast story by Betsy Woodruff passed under the radar. She reported that Donald Trump is still personally involved in running his businesses. The media didn’t pay much attention, but perhaps that’s not surprising, considering that nobody in a million years actually believed Trump was going to leave his company solely in the hands of his two scions, Donald Jr. and Eric. After all, he’s spent a third of his first term making personal promotional appearances at Trump properties. He’s not exactly keeping it on the down-low that he’s still got his hand in the business.

Still, they like to keep up the pretense that Trump isn’t paying attention to Trump Organization details because he’s so busy running the country. Woodruff published an email from the director of revenue management at the Trump Hotel in Washington, Jeng Chi Hung, written to an acquaintance on Sept. 12, 2017, which suggests that simply isn’t true.

The company is interesting to work for being under the Trump umbrella. DJT is supposed to be out of the business and passed on to his sons, but he’s definitely still involved . . . so it’s interesting and unique in that way. I had a brief meeting with him a few weeks ago, and he was asking about banquet revenues and demographics. And, he asked if his presidency hurt the businesses. So, he seems self aware about things, at least more than he lets on. I am far left leaning politically, so working here has been somewhat of a challenge for me. But, it’s all business.

This email may have passed unnoticed, but there’s been quite a bit of coverage of the D.C. hotel, including the fact that all the visiting dignitaries insure that the president knows they’re spending money that’s going into his own pocket. (We don’t know how much that money that might be, since he still refuses to turn over his tax returns.)

Trump’s never really been committed to being a full-time president. At a press conference in January, Trump announced he had turned down a 2 billion-dollar deal just the week before. He said “I didn’t have to turn it down because, as you know, I have a no-conflict situation because I’m president, which is — I didn’t know about that until about three months ago, but it’s a nice thing to have.” He added:

I could actually run my business and run government at the same time. I don’t like the way that looks but I would be able to do that, if I wanted to. I’d be the only one that would be able to do that. you can’t do that in any other capacity. But as a president I could run the Trump Organization — great great company — and I could run the country. I’d do a very good job but I don’t want to do that.

He later told The New York Times, “In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly.”

Trump’s sons originally promised not to make any new “deals” in foreign countries, although the existing foreign deals would go forward as planned under their oversight. This was somehow supposed to ensure that the president wasn’t subject to favors that might benefit his company at the expense of American foreign policy and national security. Trump promised he wouldn’t care about his own personal fortune and that was that.

Everyone is aware by this time that that there is a constitutional prohibition against the president taking gifts from foreign dignitaries, often called the “emoluments clause.” But until now it’s been hard to make a case that Trump is violating it simply because prominent overseas visitors were picking up tabs at the Trump hotel. On Tuesday, McClatchy published a report that may change all that.

Their reporters gathered information from countries all over the world where existing Trump properties and “deals” exist and found that:

[G]overnments have donated public land, approved permits and eased environmental regulations for Trump-branded developments, creating a slew of potential conflicts as foreign leaders make investments that can be seen as gifts or attempts to gain access to the American president through his sprawling business empire.

The Trump Organization dismissed all this, but the money involved is huge and it puts Trump right in the crosshairs of the emoluments clause. McClatchy pulled together info culled from half a dozen different watchdog organizations that dug up financial details from governments that don’t always make such information public. What they have found is probably the tip of the iceberg.

In countries from Indonesia to India to Panama to Uruguay to the Philippines, governments are offering special favors. They are building special roads to Trump resorts and hotels, providing sewer and pipe projects, and offering trademarks for Trump-branded properties and consumer items, all of which will add up to millions more in profit for the Trump Organization.

President Trump has his whole family traveling all over the world taking meetings and fulfilling such “deals.” If he’s asking about the banquet revenues and the “demographics” for his hotels, you can bet he’s getting information about his properties and brand profits, and he knows exactly who’s being “loyal” and who isn’t. Anyone who thinks that doesn’t carry weight with Donald Trump hasn’t been observing him very closely.

So far, no wily terrorist type has gotten it into his head that attacking a Trump-branded property overseas might provoke the mad tweeter into overreacting, but it’s certainly possible someone will figure that out at some point. Trump’s name is now synonymous with religious intolerance, xenophobia and racism all over the world. Having buildings and resorts with his name in sky-high letters — in countries full of people who resent what he stands for — presents a great temptation. That danger was always one of the main reasons he should have divested.

Trump has been tweeting away the last few days, causing one international incident after another, and no one is quite sure what’s going on inside his head. He may be getting information from his lawyers or the intelligence community that’s causing him anxiety. But for all we know, he’s stressing about one of his businesses. That’s something the citizens of this country should never have to worry about.

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“He not only lost his job, he lost his mind”by digby

Trumpie’s not happy with his former campaign chairman and senior white house adviser over the quotes in Michael Wolff’s new book.

Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.

Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans.

Steve doesn’t represent my base-he’s only in it for himself.

Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.

We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.

Uh huh:

Bannon was on the National Security Council.

This is going to be very interesting.

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“Demographically pursuing justice”
by digby

Draining a different swamp
by Tom Sullivan

Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia.

The prospect of former Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann attempting to “stand for biblical principles in DC” again has Charlie Pierce praying to baby Jesus to give her the go-ahead.

In toying with whether or not to run for Al Franken’s Senate seat, Bachmann told The Jim Bakker Show, she was pondering the downside. “But there’s also a price you pay,” Bachmann said. “And the price is bigger than ever because the swamp is so toxic.”

But it’s a bigger, more luxurious swamp under the sitting president. It’s a toxic amalgam of Jesus Christ, Ayn Rand, and Horatio Alger behind wide-eyed faith in the Market. Mixed with a little ruling-class authoritarianism, of course. That’s the swamp that needs draining.

Jeff Spross, The Week‘s business and economics correspondent, examines how we might deprogram ourselves from faith in markets as the central organizing principle of society. For Spross, The Great Transformation, by the political economist Karl Polanyi offers some guidelines.

Faith in the Market represents a kind of “deranged utopianism,” Spross writes:

Polanyi published The Great Transformation in 1944. He had spent his life watching the runaway free market ideology of the early 1900s undermine one Western nation after another, leading to rival nationalisms and World War I, and then finally culminating in the global catastrophe of the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism. In our own time, the global turn towards neoliberalism in the 1980s unchained capital to amass enormous market power and roam freely across the globe, taking jobs with it. Regulatory and welfare state protection were rolled back, while governments turned to austerity and tight money policy.

The result was decades of rising inequality, job dislocation, and wage stagnation, ending in yet another global economic collapse in 2008. Polanyi would not be surprised to see Trumpism and European ethno-nationalism ascendant in the aftermath.

The good news is that societies don’t inevitably destroy themselves in reaction to market society’s contradictions. Sometimes, they successfully beat back the reach of markets, build social protections, and de-commodify key parts of human life. Polanyi called it the “double movement.” After World War II, Europe built large and generous welfare states, made unions nearly ubiquitous, and codified worker rights and bargaining power into law. America responded with the New Deal: Social Security, Medicare, another (albeit smaller) rise in unionization, antitrust law, regulation, and mass public investment.

If a wave election brings Democrats back into power in 2018, they had better come prepared, Spross arvises, with a menu of reforms from “a universal child allowance, expanded Medicaid, or even single-payer health care and a universal basic income” to massive infrastructure spending.

But it’s not just faith in the Market that has led to this juncture, I’d argue. It is the belief in the public corporation as the Market’s principle agent of capitalism. One business model to rule them all, one that threatens government of, by, and for the people. Your software and hardware get regular upgrades. But suggest the corporate model for organizing a business needs one and out come the long knives.

Go back and look at conservatives’ reactions to Pope Francis and ask yourselves whether this isn’t an economic cult.

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

I’m not saying Trump wouldn’t get his hair mussed.

by Spocko

I expect big indictments this week.  As I wrote two weeks ago, when the heat is on Trump starts sending out nuclear tweets, it’s what he does.

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018

Christ what an asshole.

  

Beyond abnormalby digby

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates has only tweeted 15 times. But she did today:

POTUS on 12/28: “I have the absolute right to do what I want with the Justice Department.” Today he slanders career DOJ professionals as “deep state,” calls for prison for a political opponent, and tries to sic DOJ on a potential witness against him. Beyond abnormal; dangerous. https://t.co/eW4MCIEOGB— Sally Yates (@SallyQYates) January 2, 2018

Indeed. Presidents aren’t kings and they aren’t ordained by God. Supposedly, we are a country of laws, not men.

But let’s not forget what he ran on:

His slavering followers are still screaming for it.

What Trump actually said in that interview over the week-end was this:

SCHMIDT: You control the Justice Department. Should they reopen that email investigation?

TRUMP: What I’ve done is, I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department. But for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter.

Basically he said that he hasn’t ordered the Justice Department to “lock her up” as long as he’s “treated fairly.” If he feels they aren’t doing that then all bets are off.

It’s a threat. And he’s getting more and more agitated by the day as his tweet today illustrates.

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25th Amendment for dummiesby digby

Robert Dallek isn’t a craven partisan or a scruffy, no-name blogger. He’s a highly respected presidential historian. This piece he wrote for Newsweek is sobering:

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution may define the conditions for suspending a president’s authority, but it does not constrain the reasoning behind it.

As written, the amendment states that if a president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office,” the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet can suspend him. Historically, such an inability was attributable to illness or medical problems, but, in light of President Donald Trump, I offer we expand our interpretation: Medicine aside, it is clear Trump is unfit to serve, and lawmakers must invoke the 25th Amendment against him.

He goes on to recite all the historical examples of presidents who were physically incapacitated and how the realization of that as a problem, particularly in the nuclear age, led to the 25th Amendment being ratified.

Then he talks about our current situation:

In all this, however, nothing was explicitly said about questions of personal temperament to acquit one’s presidential duties. There were glimmerings of this concern not only with LBJ but even more so with Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis in 1973-74. Rumors about Nixon’s excessive drinking, as the crisis engulfed him, raised fears that the country was in jeopardy of dangerous presidential actions. The country had to wait until Nixon’s taped conversations reached the public 30 years later before it understood the extent to which Nixon’s irrationality had put the nation in peril. In a drunken stupor, he had slept through an unauthorized decision by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and White House chief of staff Al Haig to raise the country’s defense condition (or DEFCON) in response to a Soviet threat to interfere in the Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

The rise of Trump to the presidency now brings the question of presidential competence back into focus. Trump’s stumbling performance in his first 11 months represents a new low in the history of the modern presidency. It cannot be chalked up to medical disability, at least not at this juncture, but Trump is vulnerable under the amendment anyway.

First, Trump is untrustworthy. He makes promises he cannot keep, such as building a “beautiful” wall on the southern border. Second, he lies repeatedly—about the size of his inaugural crowds, the 3 to 5 million illegal voters in the 2016 election, Barack Obama’s birthplace and his voice on the Hollywood Access tape. Most recently, he has denied ever meeting the women who came forward Monday to accuse him of sexual harassment, and said they were lying. This brings me to my third point: Trump’s accusers are credible. In the #MeToo era, sexual misconduct should certainly be among the clearest evidence of presidential incompetence.

These shortcomings have made Trump the most unpopular first-year president in history: He has never won 50 percent support, either in the 2016 election or in opinion polls since taking office.

It is difficult to explain Trump’s poor record of leadership, though it might be the result of inexperience and unwise policies that command the support of only 35 to 40 percent of the country’s voters. But more compelling is the likelihood that we are dealing with someone who is indifferent to how almost all presidents have behaved in the recent past.

Trump is unable to discharge the powers of the presidency, as we understand the presidency. In other words, the presidency is part and parcel of a functioning democratic government, and Trump is unable to act in the interest of that democracy. His untrustworthiness, lying and appalling behavior demonstrate time and again his contempt for the duties of the office and the rule of law.

The 25th Amendment offers to the vice president and Cabinet the possibility of suspending Trump’s presidential authority. They could justify it as a guard against imperiling the country’s stability and national security that preserve our democratic system. (Of course, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and the apparent cooperation of Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, may bring a halt to Trump’s presidency by a different route.)

We cannot know what people will say in the future about Trump and his presidency. But I suspect many historians like myself will see him as the least-qualified man to hold the office since Harding in 1921-1923, despite Trump’s insistence to the contrary.

To date, Trump has nothing to celebrate as a notable achievement. The best that can be said for Trump is that he’s extremely ineffective at governing. At worst, though, he lacks the temperament to lead a great nation. He can and should be replaced by his vice president. In short, Trump lacks the wherewithal “to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Even Steve Bannon said he behaves like an 11 year old and is “losing a step.” And he told Trump that the 25th Amendment was the greatest risk to his presidency. Trump had never heard of it.

That’s not actually true, of course. The Trump cabinet led by Mike Pence is as obsequious as a gaggle of 15th century royal courtiers. They are even more unlikely to step up than the GOP congress. Still it’s notable that someone of Dallek’s reputation would write this. It’s not something I ever expected to see.

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Record mendacity FTW!by digby

Uhm, this really isn’t normal. And as you can see from the chart above, he’s actually lying more often as time goes on.

With just 18 days before President Trump completes his first year as president, he is now on track to exceed 2,000 false or misleading claims, according to our database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. As of Monday, the total stood at 1,950 claims in 347 days, or an average of 5.6 claims a day.

As Greg Sargent notes:

From his historic unpopularity to his unprecedented lying, Trump really is shattering all kinds of records, just as he says he is, except they aren’t the ones he claims.

He was right about one thing. He predicted that we’d get tired of all the “winning” and beg him to stop. We’re begging.

Unfortunately he also promised that he would refuse.

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