Month: February 2018

More of that Trump “populism” for 2018

by digby

The good news is all those tax cuts are such a big help that they don’t have to worry about their economic anxiety anymore. They can get right to the nitty gritty:

Now we’re talking. No need to pretend, just let it all hang out. The only thing that’s missing is calling the rest of the world a shithole.

By the way, these candidates aren’t the only ones with this message:

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This is not hypocrisy, it’s cynical, ignorant, rank dishonesty

by digby

NBC’s First Read notices that Trump is inconsistent on his concerns about national security:

If there was one issue Donald Trump campaigned on more aggressively than the others in 2016, it was the importance of handling classified information — when it came to Hillary Clinton’s private email account and server.

“She set up this illegal server knowing full well that her actions put our national security at risk and put the safety and security of your children and your families at risk,” Trump said in Phoenix, Ariz., on Oct. 29, 2016.

“Think of it, can you imagine Anthony Weiner has probably every classified email ever sent. And knowing this guy, he probably studied every single one, in between using his machine for other purposes,” Trump added in Tampa, Fla., on Nov. 5, 2016, referring to the FBI looking at Clinton emails that were on a computer owned by Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner.

“Hillary Clinton will be under investigation for a long, long time for her many crimes against our nation, our people, our democracy, likely concluding in a criminal trial,” he said on Nov. 6, 2016 in Minnesota.

Why is this stroll down memory lane important? Yesterday, we learned that White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — who had access to highly classified information and was even viewing the Presidential Daily Brief — lost his top-security clearance.

That came, of course, after NBC News reported that scores of top White House aides, including Kushner, lacked permanent security clearances. And also yesterday we learned from the Washington Post that officials “in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.”

And who can forget this story from last spring? “President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.”

We’ve seen the Trump White House engage in plenty of hypocrisy over the past year — the vows to clean up the “swamp,” the promises that wealthy Americans wouldn’t benefit under the tax law — but its carelessness about who is seeing classified information might be the biggest hypocrisy of all.

And regarding that Washington Post report about how foreign governments have discussed how they can manipulate Kushner, no one can survive a story like that — unless you’re the president’s son-in-law.

“Hypocrisy” implies that Trump actually understands the importance of national security and simply holds himself to a different standard than he held Clinton. He doesn’t know what it is and doesn’t care. He won’t even read his briefing. He publicly called on the Russian government to help him win during the campaign. He never hid his ignorance and malevolence. The media just pretended that it was an act.

I have said it a million times. Republicans don’t care about hypocrisy. They use it against Democrats because they do care. But if anything thinks calling them out about it will result in the GOP feeling shame, think again. They laugh at the idea. Worrying about hypocrisy is for weaklings and suckers.

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Admiral Rogers and the Parscale gambit

by digby

I wrote about the startling testimony of Admiral Rogers in light of Trump’s decision to choose his 2016 digital guru as his re-election campaign manager three years out for Salon this morning:

Tuesday was an exhausting news day. It started with President Donald Trump quoting a bunch of Fox News guests proclaiming his innocence and culminated in what can only be described as a primal tweet:

WITCH HUNT!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2018

That was just the beginning. We learned that Jared Kushner has had his top security clearance downgraded — and it was likely because National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster found out that he has been having meetings with foreign dignitaries on the sly, while certain governments have been keenly interested in taking advantage of his inexperience, debt and blatant conflicts of interest. And that’s not even counting the fact that he’s up to his neck in the Russia investigation. The White House insists that he’s still got his portfolio of bringing Middle East peace and handling relations with China and Mexico, among other things, but nobody can figure out how he can possibly do it if he is not privy to the top U.S. intelligence.

The president could, of course, just slip him the paperwork — he has that power — but it appears that Trump is trying to put a little public distance between himself and his son-in law, only mustering a lame defense that he’s been “treated unfairly” and that he’s a good person who works for nothing. (Trump doesn’t seem to realize that we all know that rich people in great debt who work for free, like Kushner and Paul Manafort, might be getting something else out of the deal.)

Meanwhile, White House Communications Director Hope Hicks testified before the House Intelligence Committee and, like Steve Bannon before her, apparently just refused to answer most of their questions. The White House has not claimed executive privilege and she didn’t plead the Fifth — so normally this would result in a witness being held in contempt of Congress. But this committee is run by Devin Nunes and his Trump coverup band of Republicans, so that was that. She did admit to telling some “white lies” on her boss’s behalf sometimes, so that’s something.

In other news, The Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand got a hold of private Twitter messages revealing that Trump pal and Nixon dirty trickster Roger Stone was actually in touch with Wikileaks during the campaign, even though he said he wasn’t. Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold at The Washington Post reported that police arrested a security guard at a Trump hotel in Panama when the hotel’s majority owner tried to fire the Trump Organization and Trump employees wouldn’t leave. Now the Panamanian government is involved in the dispute, which causes exactly the kind of conflict of interest that might be expected when a president refuses to divest himself of properties and interests in foreign countries.

But perhaps the most important story of the day was a rather stunning appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command. On the verge of retirement and clearly not pulling any punches, he let it all hang out, testifying that the president hasn’t issued any special directives to counter Russian election interference and saying “Clearly, what we’ve done hasn’t been enough.” He specifically criticized the administration’s decision not to bother implementing sanctions mandated by Congress as punishment for their intrusion in 2016:

Not just the sanctions but more broadly, my concern is, I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion there’s little price to pay here, and that therefore I can continue this activity . . . everything, both as the director of NSA and what I see on the Cyber Command side, leads me to believe that if we don’t change the dynamic here, this is going to continue and 2016 won’t be viewed as something isolated. This is something that will be sustained over time.

One can only surmise that President Trump is fine with that, assured for some reason that he will be the beneficiary. In fact, he is so fine with it that he announced he had hired his controversial digital guru from 2016, Brad Parscale, as his campaign manager for 2020.

You may be wondering why in the world Trump is announcing his campaign manager already — after only a year in office. But Trump seems to love campaigning more than being president, which he isn’t very good at. There is also the matter of a lot of fundraising already being done for the campaign, large amounts of it being spent on salaries for relatives and cronies of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, along with big bucks for rent in Trump Tower. It’s best to have someone “managing” all that money.

Parscale would normally be an odd choice for such a job. He is enmeshed in some very shady business deals, although that seems to be a requirement for any job with Donald Trump. He had no political experience before 2016; he basically was a webmaster who fell into the job of working with Jared Kushner and the shadowy digital companyCambridge Analytica on their social media strategy, which was the only sophisticated aspect of their operation.

Parscale took credit for developing the Facebook and Twitter strategies that he claims won Trump the election, so choosing him for a top Trump 2020 campaign job while the Russia investigation is ongoing is simply mind-boggling. After all, special counsel Robert Mueller just indicted 13 Russians for using those platforms for their propaganda effort, and there is plenty of suspicion that more Americans may have been involved in targeting and strategy.

Nobody knows if Parscale was involved — but he was very, very close to the action. And it’s not as if there aren’t any other campaign operatives Trump could turn to. After all, the person who really ran his campaign is right there in the White House — Kellyanne Conway.

Trump’s top intelligence officials are all saying that he hasn’t bothered to order any kind of serious response to the interference, and they believe the Russian government understands that it is free to keep going. With the naming of Parscale, it’s almost as if Trump’s sending a message to interested parties that he’s counting on the “digital campaign” to win the election for him in 2020, and he’s putting the man in charge who will see to it that anyone who wants to “volunteer” will get all the help they need.

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Dear Leader protects the Nunes strategy

by digby

I think people are forgetting how incredible this is. If we learned in the past that a president had said this in private it would have been a scandal. Now he says it in public and it innoculates him because everyone says “oh it’s just a tweet.” He’s still the president and this is still outreageous:

Basically he believes that the Inspector General may not back his lackey Devin Nunes’ strategy to paint the FBI as full of Clinton stooges so he’s publicly demeaning him and calling his integrity into question. This way his followers will be prepared to only believe things that are favorable to their Dear Leader.

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Democrats “cleaning up” in special elections
by Tom Sullivan

Philip Spagnuolo, a substance abuse counselor, picked up a New Hampshire state House seat last night in a district Donald Trump won by 13-points in 2016. The Hill reports the special election was triggered by the death in September of state Rep. Donald Flanders (R). Spagnolo defeated his Republican opponent by 7 points.

In Connecticut, Democrat Phil Young defeated Republican Bill Cabral in the the contest to fill the vacancy in House District 120 created when former State Rep. Laura Hoydick, a Republican, resigned upon becoming mayor in Stratford. Republicans had held the seat for over 40 years. Hillary Clinton narrowly won the district in 2016.

The night was not all the Democrats’. In Kentucky, Republican Robert Goforth defeated Democrat Kelly Smith for the 8th House District vacated by Republican Marie Rader who resigned in December for health reasons. Goforth bested Smith by a 2 to 1 margin.

But by now, astute reader, you may be detecting a trend. “Democrats are cleaning up in special elections,” reads the subhead in Matthew Yglesias’ report at Vox:

According to an extremely useful comprehensives spreadsheet compiled by Daily Kos, across 70 special elections in 2017, Democrats ran 10 points ahead of Clinton and 7 points ahead of Obama’s 2012 results. Those numbers have accelerated into 2018. Across 16 races, Democrats are running 27 points ahead of Clinton and 15 points ahead of Barack Obama.

Historically speaking, special election results usually are somewhat predictive of midterm general election outcomes, though I don’t think anyone believes it’s realistic for Democrats to obtain a nationwide 27-point swing relative to Clinton’s numbers.

Per the Daily Kos tally, the New Hampshire win marks the 40th special election win for Democrats since Donald Trump won in November 2016. Republicans have flipped four seats.

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

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

by digby

Those words were spoken by President Lyndon Johnson, February 27, 1968, exactly 50 years ago today. It was a different time. Today most people don’t watch “the evening news.” and there is no person who can lay claim to speak with authority to most of the nation. Authority is diffuse now, we all seek and find it in our own corners of modern media.

Back then Uncle Walter had the trust of most Americans and when he said this on the evening news it stunned many people. This wasn’t a hippie kid, anti-war protester — it was Cronkite. It must be true:

Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we’d like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I’m not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of ground. Another standoff. On the political front, past performance gives no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems, now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold on, but it probably won’t show the dynamic qualities demanded of this young nation. Another standoff.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi’s winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that — negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.

There’s no one in American media who who has the authority to do this today. In fact, I think that maybe Robert Mueller may be the only person in the country who has it.

And that’s just … pathetic.

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Very fine people

by digby

Charlottesville, 2017

I’m sure this is nothing to worry about …

Antisemitic incidents in the US surged 57% in 2017, the Anti-Defamation League said on Tuesday, the largest year-on-year increase since the Jewish civil rights group began collecting data in 1979.

Close to 2,000 cases of harassment, vandalism and physical assault were recorded, the highest number of antisemitic incidents since 1994, it said.

The rise comes amid a climate of rising incivility, the emboldening of hate groups and widening divisions in American society, according to ADL’s national director, Jonathan Greenblatt.

“A confluence of events in 2017 led to a surge in attacks on our community – from bomb threats, cemetery desecrations, white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, and children harassing children at school,” he said.

Rising numbers were in part attributed to the fact that more people were reporting incidents than ever before, the ADL said, adding that its staff independently verify the credibility of each claim.

Incidents were reported in all 50 US states for the first time since 2010, with higher numbers reported in areas with large Jewish populations.

Donald Trump’s administration has been accused of failing to condemn religious bigotry. Jewish groups scolded the president last year for not mentioning Jews or antisemitism in a statement about the Holocaust.

Following August violence at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists waved insignia from Nazi Germany and yelled “Jews will not replace us”, Trump was slammed for suggesting a moral equivalency between members of the far right and counterdemonstrators. “You had people that were very fine people on both sides,” he said.

Some of Trump’s best family members are Jewish so he can’t possibly be an anti-Semite, amirite?

Maybe he’s just a standard issue dumb bigot who is so clueless that he thinks he can make distinctions between the “good ones” and the “bad ones” but there are not good Nazis.

This is of a piece with the ethnic nationalism that’s growing all over the world and the fact that it’s happening in the US is truly disturbing since this country has always taken pride in the fact that it is an immigrant nation. Now we have this:

The U.S. is no longer devoted to securing “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants.”

That’s according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) anyway, which changed its official mission statement late Thursday and dropped the language to describe the country.

The federal agency that grants visas and U.S. citizenship now refers to itself as an organization that “administers the nation’s lawful immigration system.” The new mission statement also eliminates the word “customers” to refer to visa applicants.

In a letter to employees, L. Francis Cissna, USCIS’s director, said the changes were a “straightforward statement (that) clearly defines the agency’s role in our country’s lawful immigration system and the commitment we have to the American people.”

It’s clear all right. Is it Nazi? No. But it’s definitely a reflection of this new right wing ethnic nationalism. And that leads nowhere decent people want to go.

Give guns to all the best golfers

by digby

The New Yorker’s John Cassidy takes what I consider to be the appropriately horrified tone in discussing Trump’s outrageous discussion with Governors yesterday. As he notes, most of us didn’t get past his supercilious assertion that he would have run into the school unarmed to tackle the shooter but there was more to it. And it was just insane. After Washington Governor Jay Inslee offered some solutions his state has tried and told the president that the teachers do not want to be responsible for armed defense of the schools:

Trump called on Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, who explained how his state has already adopted a “school-marshal program,” in which teachers and other school employees are given weapons and firearms training. “And, candidly, some school districts, they promote it,” Abbott said. “They will have signs out front, a warning sign that, be aware, there are armed personnel on campus.” Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas and a former U.S. Attorney who once developed a school-safety program for the N.R.A., spoke next. His said that his state, too, had “licensed certain school districts and those who want to be trained to handle an active-shooter situation.”

Trump seemed pleased as punch, particularly by Abbott’s contribution. “Well, I think that’s great,” he said. “Essentially, what you are saying is that when a sick individual comes into that school, they can expect major trouble, right, major trouble. The bullets are going to be going towards him, also. . . . You know what’s going to happen, nobody’s going into that school.”
In making this argument, which follows the logic of the jungle, and of failed states like Yemen and Iraq, Trump seemed blissfully, or purposely, unaware of the fact that many school shooters end up shooting themselves, and, therefore, might well be immune to the logic of deterrence. Adam Lanza, who killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, shot himself in the head before the police arrived. Similarly, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two Columbine shooters, made no effort to escape after carrying out their massacre, and they shot themselves after the police arrived.

Trump also didn’t deign to explain how a teacher with a handgun could be expected to fend off a disturbed teen-ager with an AR-15, or how students might be expected to react to the sight of their teachers carrying guns. Instead, he asserted that arming educators would be cheaper and more effective than hiring more armed guards, or relying on local police officers, such as the ones who failed to stop Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida. “They don’t love the students; they don’t know the students,” Trump said dismissively. “The teachers love the students. They want to protect the students.”

The thought of teachers expressing their affection for their students by bringing high-powered weapons into their classrooms is grotesque. For a sitting President to endorse such an idea is almost beyond comprehension. But as the discussion illustrated, Trump wasn’t merely outlining his own vision. In this area, as in so many others, some gun-friendly red states have already adopted the twisted N.R.A. logic, at least in fledgling form.

The most that can be attributed to Trump is that he is putting his own unhinged spin on this decivilizing agenda. Repeating his earlier claim that he didn’t want all teachers to have guns, he said, “I want highly trained people that have a natural talent, like hitting a baseball, or hitting a golf ball, or putting.” At this point, he joined his hands together, as if he were gripping a putter on a golf course, and moved them back and forth. “How come some people always make the four-footer and some people under pressure can’t even take their club back?” he asked. “Right? Some people can’t take their club back. You don’t know what it is.”

Republicans have shown for some time that they loathe and despise public school teachers. They reduce them to penury, force them to take on every illness of society and them blame them when things go wrong. Now they want the schools to be locked down prisons where the teachers are moving targets for every disturbed kid who gets excited at the prospect of holding a great big gun in his hand and taking out everyone he believes has caused his misery. I would guess teachers are high on that list.

We have a very, very sick element in our society and it’s not just the people who are shooting up every public space in America.

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The hottest hoax on record

by digby

I’m sure this is nothing to worry about:

“Crazy,” “weird,” and “wacky.” That’s how scientists are describing the temperature in the Arctic.

Over the weekend, the world’s northernmost weather station, located just 440 miles from the North Pole, warmed to 43 degrees Fahrenheit during what’s normally the coldest time of the year. That’s about 60 degrees above average for February. The rising temperatures, caused by a “warm air intrusion,” have left scientists in shock. Sea ice in region is also at its lowest levels on record.

“This is simply shocking. I don’t have the words,” meteorologist Eric Holthaus tweeted.

Those Chinese hoaxters are very, very good at what they do.

I shouldn’t be so flippant. This is an emergency. And we’re just … helpless as long as these f-ing morons are running the world.

These days I look at little kids and my chest gets tight with fear for them. It’s terrifying.

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Trump’s primal scream

by digby

Is he about to blow?

WITCH HUNT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2018

I trust everyone can see the utter, fatuous absurdity of the president of the United States quoting Fox News right wingers kissing his ass by endorsing his persecution of his former rival in public:

“He’s got a very good point. Somebody in the Justice Department has a treasure trove of evidence of Mrs. Clinton’s criminality at her own hands, or through others, that ought to be investigated. I fully agree with the President on that.” @judgenapolitano on @marthamaccallum Show

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2018