Month: September 2018

Blue America Insomnniac contest for Kara Eastman

by digby

Lately the Republican Party has been slamming Democratic candidates for having been in bands in high school and college. Let’s face it, the arts have never been a conservative thing.

True, none of them attacked Sonny Bono for having been in Sonny and Cher before he became the congressman from Palm Springs, but when it comes to Beto O’Rourke in Texas and Kara Eastman in Nebraska, you’d think they both had joined a terrorist group.

Conservatives fear change and they fear young people.

Kara’s communications director told me that Paul Ryan’s SuperPAC has been spending loads of corporate money in her Omaha district trying to villainize her for her college performance band:

“We find it ironic that the opposition would want to attack Kara, and Beto, for doing something many American teens do– join a band, sing songs about issues that matter to them, and express themselves through music. Congress would be a better place with more musicians, and while we were joking about a College Band Congressional Caucus, Kara is looking forward to working with politicians like Beto who lead with heart– and music.”

When Kara and I first met, Green Day came up. I was the president of their record label and she was a fan and friend. Her husband’s band, Horace Pinker, opened shows on a Green Day tour and Green Day stayed at their house after the first concert. “For me, Green Day will always be the band we watched play in small clubs all over the world,” Kara told me. “How many people can say Tré Cool serenaded them in their apartment? Well, maybe a lot. The last time I saw them live, I paid $5 to get in. After that concert, I brought Billie Joe back to my friends’ house and to this day they still can’t believe they met the lead singer of Green Day. We’ve all come a long way from those days. Now, they are busy playing sold-out arenas with their political anthems, and I am running for Congress.”

“One thing,” she continued, “we still have in common though: Green Day and I are not fans of the Trump administration. A verse from one of Green Day’s newest songs, “Troubled Times,” says this:

What part of history we learned
When it’s repeated
Some things will never overcome
If we don’t seek it
The world stops turning
Paradise burning
So don’t think twice
We live in troubled times

And we do indeed, live in troubled times. We cannot continue passing environmental issues off to our children to deal with later. The time to deal with climate change is now. Working families need to be paid a living wage, so they no longer have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. They should be able to take sick leave when needed and have the time they need to bond with their babies after childbirth. Parents should not weigh the costs before seeking emergency care for their children, or skip preventative care because they can’t afford it. Prescription medications must be affordable. I’m not going to stop until I get into Congress and can work to ensure that we come out standing tall after these troubled times. There is so much work that needs to be done and you can help me accomplish these goals.”

And… Blue America wants to help her get into Congress and help her accomplish these goals.

We’re hoping to raise some contributions for her campaign by giving away a super rare RIAA-certified double platinum award plaque for the 1994 Green Day hit album Insomniac. Check out how great it looks at the top of this page!

Just contribute– any amount– to Kara’s campaign on this page.

We’ll pick one person at random. If you give $2,000 you get a chance to get the platinum award. If you give $27 or $10 you get the same chance to get the award. (Yes, we’re Democrats, not Republicans; that’s how we roll. In fact, if you don’t have the cash to give and you want the plaque, just send a note to us at Blue America, P.O. Box 27201. Los Angeles, CA 90027 and you’ll have the same chance as everyone else.)

Many contributors want to know if their donation will help. There are no guarantees of course, but polling shows that the residents of NE-02, in Omaha and its suburbs, want a new Congressmember representing them. The most recent polling shows a very tight toss up, with Kara slightly ahead of Trump rubber-stamp Don Bacon– 50.7% to 49.3%.

They’re still trying to kill us

by digby

Today is the day that 20 hateful GOP Attorneys General are presenting their case to a Texas judge to kill people by invalidating the regulations that force insurers to cover pre-existing conditions:

Attorneys representing 20 Republican state officials on Wednesday will walk into court and ask a federal district judge to invalidate the Affordable Care Act ― a move that could unleash chaos on insurance markets and, eventually, leave an estimated 17 million Americans without coverage.

It’s an outlandish request that relies on what even the law’s longtime critics are calling an outlandish argument. Jonathan Adler, the Case Western law professor who was an architect of the last big lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality, says the case’s theory is “unmoored” and “absurd.” Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate’s health committee, has called it “far-fetched.”

But while the case seems unlikely to prevail, defenders of the law and advocates for the people who depend on it aren’t ready to dismiss the threat out of hand. And it’s easy to see why, given not just the stakes but also the circumstances of Wednesday’s hearing.

The plaintiffs filed their suit in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth, Texas, where they knew they would get a conservative jurist ― and where they drew Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush nominee.

The last time an issue related to the Affordable Care Act landed in O’Connor’s courtroom was in 2016, when he blocked Obama administration regulations that would have prohibited health care providers from refusing to treat transgender patients for religious reasons. That ruling probably had more to do with his feelings about religious freedom and LGBTQ rights than the Affordable Care Act, but nobody walked away thinking he was a fan of the law, the people who wrote it or the ideas behind it.

Meanwhile, the Texas case has already taken one unexpected, but critical, turn. In June, the Trump administration’s lawyers at the Justice Department filed a brief supporting the lawsuit. Customarily, Justice Department lawyers defend federal statutes, even ones that the administration in power doesn’t like, in order to meet the president’s constitutional obligation that “the laws be faithfully executed.

They really are a wrecking crew aren’t they? They want to kill people…

Most lawyers think this case won’t go anywhere but who knows? The judge is a conservative appointed by Bush and you just don’t know what any of these people are going to do these days.

Meanwhile:

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds recent political events weighing heavy on the minds of voters when it comes to the 2018 midterm elections. Three in ten voters (33 percent of independent voters, 32 percent of Democratic voters, and 25 percent of Republican voters) say corruption in Washington is the “most important” topic for 2018 candidates to discuss. This is the first time corruption in D.C. was included in KFF’s list of possible campaign topics and, along with health care (27 percent) and the economy and jobs (25 percent), it is among the top topics for voters three months before the 2018 midterm election.

Poll: 4 in 10 Americans are “very worried” that they or a family member will lose coverage if #SCOTUS overturns the ACA’s pre-existing conditions protections

KFF polling continues to find pre-existing conditions as a widespread concern and with the impending lawsuit Texas v. United States, a majority of the public say it is “very important” that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) protections for people with pre-existing conditions ensuring guaranteed coverage (75 percent) and community rating (72 percent) remain law. About half (52 percent) of the public are “very worried” that they or someone in their family will have to pay more for health insurance and four in ten (41 percent) are “very worried” they will lose their coverage if the Supreme Court overturns these protections.

They don’t care.

Oh, and if this ends up in the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh will definitely vote to overturn any and all aspects of the ACA. He is a right wing hack. This is their holy grail.

Every. Damned. Time.

by digby

I thought Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s opening statement yesterday was particularly sharp on the court as it already is (terrible) and how Kavanaugh will make it worse.

If you get a chance to watch it, it was well delivered as well. Here is the text:

When is a pattern evidence of bias?

In court, pattern is evidence of bias all the time; evidence on which juries and trial judges rely, to show discriminatory intent, to show a common scheme, to show bias.

When does a pattern prove bias?

That’s no idle question. It’s relevant to the pattern of the Roberts Court when its Republican majority goes off on its partisan excursions through the civil law; when all five Republican appointees — the Roberts Five, I’ll call them — go raiding off together, and no Democratic appointee joins them.

Does this happen often? Yes, indeed.

The Roberts Five has gone on 80 of these partisan excursions since Roberts became chief.

There is a feature to these eighty cases. They almost all implicate interests important to the big funders and influencers of the Republican Party. When the Republican Justices go off on these partisan excursions, there’s a big Republican corporate or partisan interest involved 92 percent of the time.

A tiny handful of these cases don’t implicate an interest of the big Republican influencers — so flukishly few we can set them aside. That leaves 73 cases that all implicate a major Republican Party interest. Seventy-three is a lot of cases at the Supreme Court.

Is there a pattern to those 73 cases? Oh, yes there is.

Every time a big Republican corporate or partisan interest is involved, the big Republican interest wins. Every. Time.

Let me repeat: In seventy-three partisan decisions where there’s a big Republican interest at stake, the big Republican interest wins. Every. Damned. Time.

Hence the mad scramble of big Republican interest groups to protect a “Roberts Five” that will reliably give them wins — really big wins, sometimes.

When the Roberts Five saddles up, these so-called conservatives are anything but judicially conservative.

They readily overturn precedent, toss out statutes passed by wide bipartisan margins, and decide on broad constitutional issues they need not reach. Modesty, originalism, stare decisis, all these supposedly conservative judicial principles, all have the hoof prints of the Roberts Five all across their backs, wherever those principles got in the way of wins for the Big Republican interests.

He goes on to discuss many of them. It’s quite a list. It shows that in this area, we are already deep into the Roberts area. And it’s only going to get worse.

Finally, you come before us nominated by a President named in open court as directing criminal activity, and a subject of ongoing criminal investigation. You displayed expansive views on executive immunity from the law. If you are in that seat because the White House has big expectations that you will protect the President from the due process of law, that should give every Senator pause.

Tomorrow, we will hear a lot of “confirmation etiquette.” It’s a sham.

Kavanaugh knows the game. In the Bush White House, he coached judicial nominees to just tell Senators that they will adhere to the statutory text, that they have no ideological agenda. Fairy tales.

At his hearing, Justice Roberts infamously said he’d just call “balls and strikes,” but the pattern — the 73-case pattern — of the Roberts Five qualifies him to have NASCAR-style corporate badges on his robes.

Alito said in his hearing what a “strong principle” stare decisis was, an important limitation on the Court. Then he told the Federalist Society stare decisis “means to leave things decided when it suits our purposes.”

Gorsuch delivered the key fifth vote in the precedent-busting, but also union-busting, Janus decision. He too had pledged in his hearing to “follow the law of judicial precedent,” assured us he was not a “philosopher king,” and promised to give equal concern to “every person, poor or rich, mighty or meek.”

How did that turn out? Great for the rich and mighty: Gorsuch is the single most corporate-friendly justice on a Court already full of them, ruling for big business interests in over 70 percent of cases, and in every single case where his vote was determinative.

The president early on assured evangelicals his Supreme Court picks would attack Roe v. Wade. Despite “confirmation etiquette” assurances about precedent, your own words make clear you don’t really believe Roe v. Wade is settled law.

We have seen this movie before. We know how it ends.

The sad fact is that there is no consequence for telling the Committee fairy tales about stare decisis, and then riding off with the Roberts Five, trampling across whatever precedent gets in the way of letting those Big Republican interests keep winning 5–4 partisan decisions.

Every. Damned. Time.

This too. Kavanaugh is, of course, a liar on top of everything else:

MUST WATCH: #Kavanaugh privately told me he had never taken a position whether a sitting President can be indicted under the Constitution. That just wasn’t true. #WhatsAtStake pic.twitter.com/cel57AMjgo— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) September 4, 2018

Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to Brett Kavanaugh: "If you are in that seat because the White House has big expectations that you will protect the president from the due process of law, that should give every senator pause" https://t.co/PiEe7WVkrH pic.twitter.com/YmCCnsNFtt— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 4, 2018

Uh Oh. Kavanaugh is a charter member of the Deep State

by digby

Oh my goodness. It appears that Trump’s allegedly personal choice for the Supreme Court had helped the notorious torture memo author John Yoo write the proposal to expand FISA.

Heads may explode: per @SenatorLeahy's question about John Yoo, Kavanaugh did work with Yoo in Sept. 2001 on the legal justification for expanding the scope of FISA in light of the war on terror pic.twitter.com/WyeizyKIbw— Fix the Court (@FixTheCourt) September 5, 2018

And this:

At Wednesday’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) threw Brett Kavanaugh off his flow of so far providing steady and confident answers to senators’ questions with a line of inquiry about allegations that emails were stolen from Leahy’s office during the confirmation wars of the George W. Bush administration.

Kavanaugh at the time was involved in the judicial confirmation process for the White House, and on Wednesday Leahy zeroed in on testimony Kavanaugh later gave during his confirmation to a lower court judgeship.

Leahy presented Kavanaugh with claims the judge made during the mid-2000s confirmation hearings about never receiving the stolen emails. Kavanaugh said that his comments then were 100 percent accurate.

Leahy asked him specifically about information provided to him by Manny Miranda, then a Republican staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee, about what senators were planning to ask Bush’s judicial nominees. Miranda, a Senate investigation revealed, had been covertly reading Democratic staffers emails and leaking them to right-wing outlets.

Kavanaugh explained that broadly, as part of the judicial confirmation process, the White House was in contact with the offices of senators on both sides of the aisle, and sought to be aware of what interested those senators regarding the nominees.

Leahy then offered Kavanaugh an email Miranda sent Kavanaugh in July 2002 indicating that Leahy’s office was interested in a nominee’s financial ties to certain groups. Leahy asked Kavanaugh if he was aware that that information was coming from emails stolen from Leahy.

Kavanaugh said that the information came from the common practice of hearing about senators’ interest through discussions on the Hill.

Leahy didn’t lay off, and badgered Kavanaugh about the specifics of the information offered by Miranda, while claiming that it came from private emails sent to Leahy the night before.

Kavanaugh appeared confused and asked Leahy to point him to relevant portions of the Miranda email in front of him. Leahy appeared to allude to other emails that might have shown Miranda providing stolen information to Kavanaugh.

Kavanugh continued to waffle around Leahy’s questions, which included inquiries about whether he met Miranda in locations other than the White House or the Capitol.

Leahy then asked Kavanaugh if he would be surprised if there was an email showing that he got information from somebody’s spying. Kavanaugh asked if such an email exists, prompting Leahy to coyly allude to the thousands of Kavanaugh documents that have been deemed committee confidential — meaning they can’t be shared publicly.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley jumped in at this point, his voice raised, to defend his handling of the document production, and had a back-and-forth with Leahy about the getting permission to use committee confidential materials during the hearings.

Under storm clouds
by Tom Sullivan

Day 1 of the Brent Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee is behind us. All the Sturm und Drang about the number of missing documents, not enough time to evaluate what’s not missing, etc., makes Democrats appear hopelessly partisan rather than principled. Missing documents is a process argument. In the outside chance Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, there will be another Federalist Trump nominee behind him and Democrats will mount the same stalling exercise again centered on complaints about the process.

Donald Trump is under a storm cloud, a potential felon and traitor. His presidency itself teeters on illegitimacy. His appointments are illegitimate if he is. That is the reason Judiciary should postpone hearings until special counsel Mueller issues his report(s). To the public, the rest is partisan chaff.

Sen. Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, accused Democrats of having a strategy for stalling the hearings — as if Republicans had not provided Kavanaugh coaching in how to survive them. But if the Democrats’ strategy is an attempt to persuade some Republican senator to vote no on process grounds, that argument died with John McCain.

Give Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) points for bringing a calendar showing 35 blacked-out months’ worth of documents from Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush White House. Citing numbers and percentages of missing documents to imply Republicans are hiding something is an abstraction. The visual illustrating a specific period blacked out makes the point without needing a thousand words. But that argument too suggests the Democrats’ objections are about the nominee. They should not be.

It is not fair to Judge Brett Kavanaugh that he faces confirmation at such a fraught time in Washington, but so it goes. What is at question are not his qualifications, political views, the number of pages of public record held back, his personal qualities, or whether he coaches girls’ basketball and loves his mother.

What is at issue is whether his nomination (or any of the sitting president’s judicial nominee’s) is legitimate at a time when the legitimacy of the president who nominated him is seriously in question, not to mention his competency.

After Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s court statements, the sitting president is an unindicted co-conspirator in an election law felony and perhaps worse. Americans deserve to know how much worse before granting him another Supreme Court pick who could sit on the court until 2050. Kavanaugh’s vote could tip a court ruling in Trump’s favor should the question of indicting a sitting president come before it. Such a ruling would call the legitimacy of the sitting president even further into question. Confirmation under these circumstances will call into question the legitimacy of every Supreme Court ruling for decades.

The Kavanaugh hearings satirize our ability to pretend with straight faces everything is normal while a mad king sits in the White House. Releases from Bob Woodward’s new book on the Trump presidency are not blockbuster revelations. They are confirmations of what we already know and refuse to acknowledge publicly. The book reveals, CNN’s Stephen Collinson writes, “There is an ‘unhinged’ ‘liar,’ a ‘fifth grade’ intellect and an aggrieved and abusive ‘Shakespearean king’ raging in the Oval Office.”

No shit?

Dahlia Lithwick writes at Slate:

The more corruption, incompetence, and recklessness we witness spewing out of the White House, the more inclined we are to cling tightly to the blanket of institutional integrity, normalcy, and civility. It’s not just that it’s nuts out there. It’s almost as if the nuttier it gets, the more we need to pretend that wherever it is we’re sitting at the moment is a safe place in which the norms of dignity, respect, and goodwill are still in force. And if John McCain’s funeral was a symbol of that, so too is all the talk of “decorum” and “civility” in the U.S. Senate.

And so, Republicans spent the first day of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings telling us that nothing that’s happening in here has anything to do with the fact that Donald Trump is the president. None of the concern around this Supreme Court seat has anything to do with the fact that the president himself is under investigation for corruption and campaign finance violations, or that his personal lawyer swore under oath that Trump instructed him to commit crimes, or that a foreign power is currently interfering with our election systems. All of that is about a different thing. This hearing is about something stable and immutable and good. And anyone who implies that anything is abnormal is a hysteric or an opportunist or an attention-seeker.

The Democrats’ “give us the documents” strategy is complicit in sustaining that fiction. At any moment another non-blockbuster report could arrive from Robert Mueller telling us the sitting president engaged in obstruction of justice and criminal conspiracy with a hostile foreign power. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats alike pretend we don’t already know that. Where’s Al Pacino when you really need him?

“The whole trial’s hearing’s out of order!”

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Monitor Them, But Don’t Give Them Access 

by tristero

I’ve been wracking my brains to come up with an appropriate way to manage coverage the extreme right. Margaret Sullivan comes awfully close to my thinking, with a few caveats. Some excerpts:

[I]t was a thoroughly lousy idea for the New Yorker magazine to offer a high-profile perch — an onstage interview by top editor David Remnick — at next month’s annual festival to the deposed Svengali. 

There is nothing more to learn from Bannon about his particular brand of populism, with its blatant overlay of white supremacy. 

While we’re at it, there is also nothing more to learn from the die-hard Trump voters in what I’ve called the Endless Diner Series — the media’s recidivistic journeys to the supposed heartland to hear what we’ve heard a thousand times before about blind loyalty in the face of all reason…

Yes, it’s time, well past time, to stop lending the media’s biggest and most prestigious platforms to this crowd of racists and liars. 

Shut them down — not because of ideology or politics, but because there is no news value there…

What happened with Bannon and the New Yorker Festival, though it may appear to be just another digital-age dust-up, is part of a much deeper media problem: the normalization of people and ideas that deserve only scorn — all done in the name of understanding and challenging them. 

Author Roxane Gay offered an unvarnished view on Twitter: Inviting Bannon “demonstrates how the intellectual class doesn’t truly understand racism or xenophobia. They treat it like an intellectual project, where perhaps if we ask ‘hard questions’ and bandy about ‘controversial’ ideas, good work is being done.” 

Gay is exactly right. The “intellectual class” is making a spectacularly self-destructive mistake. They foolishly take the mad pronunciations of the right wing as an opportunity for intellectual engagement. Instead they need to treat rightwing for what it is: marketing and advertisements for bigotry promotion, xenophobia, and hatred of democratic ideals.

It would be heartening to believe that something might be learned from this episode. But the news media, even at its highest and most admirable levels, doesn’t seem to get the point. 

Challenging the likes of Bannon, or pushing back against the likes of Conway, only makes these figures into folk heroes, bravely telling their would-be truths to a corrupt media elite…

There’s nothing more to learn. But, in elevating these ideas and their practitioners again and again, there’s plenty more still to lose. 

Yep, I would just add two more points:

First, agreed that there is no reason for the mainstream media to slavishly report most of what the right says, nor is it useful to try to engage with them (anyone marching marching with the Nazis in Charlottesville was either a Nazi or extremely sympathetic to the their ideology). However, it is essential to keep tabs on them. For that, we need reporting that provides context. For example, always report that Trump has adopted the slogan America First by mentioning that he adopted this slogan from the KKK, from the American Nazis of the early 20th Century and from other far-right extremists.

Related:  let’s make it crystal clear that while the far-right modern Republican party has not a single reasonable answer to America’s problems, America has a lot of real, serious problems that need addressing, from economic inequality to racism to infrastructure. These can be reasonably and best addressed within the context of a liberal, progressive, and social democratic discourse.

What a nice man

by digby

Here’s the video: @fred_guttenberg tells Kavanaugh that his daughter "was murdered in Parkland” and holds out his hand to Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh – a father himself – gives Fred a contemptuous look before turning his back on him and walking away. pic.twitter.com/l4WSQjEMTs— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) September 4, 2018

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One step forward two steps back

by digby

If people think it’s impossible for progress to ever retreat, I would suggest they think again. This new Roberts majority is going to either whittle away at abortion rights or ban it altogether. These are extremists and they will do it. Gay people can’t afford to let their guard down either. Look at what’s happening in this Indiana Senate race:

Months after Sen. Joe Donnelly asserted during his successful 2012 Senate campaign that marriage is between a man and a woman, he came out in support of same-sex unions. Now, as the endangered Democrat campaigns for re-election, Donnelly has touted his support for gay marriage including recently marching in the Cadillac Barbie Indiana Pride Parade.

“Joe is proud to stand with LGBTQ Hoosiers,” his campaign said in a June fundraising appeal that led with a photo of the parade.

When even moderate Democrats like Donnelly in solidly red states such as Indiana proudly announce their support for gay marriage, it shows how united the party is on the issue as public support also grows.

But Republicans are still bitterly divided.

As Donnelly marched in the pride parade, Indiana Republicans were fighting over whether the party should continue to back marriage as a union “between a man and a woman.”

Mike Braun, the Republican hoping to knock off Donnelly this fall, sided with the social conservatives and urged the party to keep that language in the state party platform.

“There was an overwhelming part of the party that wanted to stick with traditional marriage,” Braun said in a recent interview.

Though not the hot-button issue it was before the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry, gay rights continue to be contentious in Indiana.

Wounds haven’t healed from the 2015 fight over the “religious freedom” protections signed into law by then-Gov. Mike Pence, and fight over the law is still being litigated. Meanwhile, social conservatives have pushed back against efforts to pass a hate crime law that would allow judges to impose tougher sentences for crimes motivated by factors such as gender identity and sexual orientation. Indiana is one of five states without such a statute.

Nationally, gay rights groups are concerned that Brett Kavanuagh, President Donald Trump’s choice to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, will be a vote to erode LGBTQ rights. (Kennedy cast the pivotal vote in 2015 to strike down state bans on same-sex marriage.)

Joe Donnelly is at the rightward edge of the Democratic party on many issues. But he, like most of America, accepted marriage equality. The right-wing has not done so. The Trump evangelicals have not done so. And they are currently in the driver’s seat. Don’t assume that Kavanaugh and his buddies believe that’s settled law either. They are radicals. Nothing is settled that they don’t want to be settled.

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The long, slow recovery from the Bush recession can’t save the Republicans

by digby

I’ve heard people say for years that the only reason Bill Clinton survived all the trumped-up scandals in the 90s was that the economy was roaring and people really only care about that.

Turns out it isn’t true:

Imagine that. It turns out that GDP and unemployment numbers really aren’t the only thing American voters care about.

That’s not to say that wage stagnation, which is a real issue, or health care premiums and other economic problems aren’t salient. Obviously, they are. But Trump is so unpopular on a whole host of issues, most obviously his abject unfitness and the GOP’s cowardly unwillingness to confront him, that no passing economic news is enough to overcome the fear and loathing that the majority of Americans are feeling right now.

But they’ll have their judges. Apparently, that makes it all worthwhile.

More poll results on the midterms here.

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Nobody tells him nothin’

by digby

Trump called Woodward in early August. There’s a transcript. This is the man who’s packing the courts and creating an extremist Supreme Court for a generation:

Trump: Hello, Bob.

BW: President Trump, how are you?

Trump: How are you? How are you doing? Okay?

BW: Real well. I’m turning on my tape recorder, with your permission.

Trump: Oh, that’s okay. That’s okay. I don’t mind that at all.

BW: I’m sorry we missed the opportunity to talk for the book.

Trump: Well, I just spoke with Kellyanne [Conway] and she asked me if I got a call. I never got a call. I never got a message. Who did you ask about speaking to me?

BW: Well, about six people.

Trump: They don’t tell me.

BW: A senator. I talked to Kellyanne about it two and a half months ago.

Trump: [?].

BW: She came for lunch.

Trump: Well, it’s too bad. Of course, you and I had a conversation a couple of years ago, and so that I think got you there a little bit. And we had a conversation many years ago, if you remember, in Trump Tower.

BW: Yeah, I do.

Trump: That has to be 20 years ago. And you were thinking about doing a book about me then, which is interesting. Who knew it would’ve been on this subject? Right? That was not in the cards at that time.

BW: That’s right. Well, I’m sorry, I . ..

Trump: I still remember that.

BW: I spent a lot of time on this, talked to lots of people.

Trump: All right. Good.

BW: And as you know and are living, we are at a pivot point in history.

Trump: Right.

BW: And I would’ve liked to have done that, and I maximized my effort, and somehow it didn’t get to you, or . ..

Trump: It’s really too bad, because nobody told me about it, and I would’ve loved to have spoken to you. You know I’m very open to you. I think you’ve always been fair. We’ll see what happens. But all I can say is the country is doing very well. We’re doing better economically just about than at any time. We’re doing better on unemployment maybe than ever. You know, I mean, if you look at the unemployment numbers, you’ve heard me say it. And we’re doing better on unemployment than just about ever. We’re having a lot of — a lot of companies are moving back into our country, which would’ve been unheard of two years ago. If the other administration or representatives of it had kept going, had kept — you know, if the other group had won, I will tell you, that you would have, I think you’d have a GDP of less than zero. I think we would’ve been going in the wrong direction. Because regulations are such a big part of what we’ve done, Bob.

BW: Well, I understand that point of view. And as you know, it’s also a difficult time where the political system and you and my business is being tested.

Trump: Yeah. Yeah.

BW: I take it very seriously. I’ve done books on eight presidents, going back from Nixon to Obama.

Trump: Right.

BW: And I learned something about reporting, frankly, Mr. President.

Trump: Good.

BW: I’ve got to go talk to people and see them outside of the White House and outside of their offices, and gained a lot of insight and documentation. And it’s — you know, it’s a tough look at the world and your administration and you.

Trump: Right. Well, I assume that means it’s going to be a negative book. But you know, I’m some — I’m sort of 50 percent used to that. [Laughter] That’s all right. Some are good and some are bad. Sounds like this is going to be a bad one.

BW: It was a chance missed, and I don’t know how things work over there in terms of . ..

Trump: Very well. We . ..

BW: . . . getting to you.

Trump: Well, if you would call Madeleine [Westerhout] in my office . . . Did you speak to Madeleine?

BW: No, I didn’t. But I . ..

Trump: Madeleine is the key. She’s the secret. Because she’s the person . ..

BW: Well, I talked to Raj [Shah] about it. I talked to . . . I talked to Kellyanne.

Trump: Well, a lot of them are afraid to come and talk, or — you know, they are busy. I’m busy. But I don’t mind talking to you. I would’ve spoken to you. I spoke to you 20 years [ago] and I spoke to you a year and a half or two years ago.

[Listen to Woodward and Trump’s call on The Post’s “Can He Do That?” podcast]

BW: A couple of years ago, I understand.

Trump: And I certainly don’t mind talking to you, and I wish I could’ve spoken to you. But nobody called my office. I mean, you went through, I guess, different people. …

BW: Well, Mr. President, how can I spend all this time talking to people and — like Kellyanne and Raj and Republican senators?

Trump: Who were the senators? No, they never called me about it.

BW: Senator [Lindsey] Graham said he had talked to you about talking to me. Now, is that not true?

Trump: Senator Graham actually mentioned it quickly in one meeting.

BW: Yes. Well, see. And then nothing happened.

Trump: That is true. That is true. Well, that — no, but that is true. Mentioned it quickly, not like, you know, and I would certainly have thought that maybe you would’ve called the office. But that’s okay. I’ll speak to Kellyanne. I am a little surprised that she wouldn’t have told me. In fact, she just walked in. [to Kellyanne] I’m talking to Bob Woodward. He said that he told you.

Conway: Yes.

Trump: About speaking to me. But you never told me. Why didn’t you tell me?

Conway: [inaudible].

Trump: I would’ve been very happy to speak to him. All right, so what are you going to do?

BW: Well …

Trump: So I have another bad book coming out. Big deal.

BW: . . . it goes on, and I . . . What you can count on is that I’ve been very careful. And Evelyn, are you on?

EMD: Yes.

BW: Evelyn Duffy, who’s my assistant, Mr. President.

Trump: Hello, Evelyn.

BW: She transcribed all the tapes because, with permission, I taped people for hundreds of hours.

Trump: Good.

BW: And I think there’s nothing in this book that doesn’t come from a firsthand source. Is that correct, Evelyn?

EMD: I believe that’s —

Trump: But are you naming names? Or do you just say sources?

BW: Yeah, well, it names real incidents, so . ..

Trump: No, but do you name sources? I mean, are you naming the people, or just say, people have said?

BW: I say, at 2:00 on this day, the following happened, and everyone who’s there, including yourself, is quoted. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to ask you about these . ..

Trump: I mean, you do know I’m doing a great job for the country. You do know that NATO now is going to pay billions and billions of dollars more, as an example, than anybody thought possible, that other presidents were unable to get more? And it was heading downward. You do know all of the things I’ve done and things that I’m doing? I’m in the process of making some of the greatest trade deals ever to be made. You do understand that stuff? I mean, I hope.

BW: Certainly, I understand and I would’ve loved to go through a discussion with you about NATO, because this goes back to early in your administration and your concern about it, and the agreement that the countries have that they would increase their defense contribution, what is it, by the year 2024? And you know . . . So anyway, we are . ..

Trump: Well, you know last year, if you see the secretary, [Jens] Stoltenberg, he said I believe $44 billion just last year, and that was from last year’s meeting. And this year it’s much more money they’ve agreed to put up. So it’s a tremendous amount of money. No other president has done it. It was heading down in the opposite direction. So I don’t know if you’re going to report it that way; probably not. But that’s too bad, but that’s all right, but you know, one of those things.

BW: Everything is going to be factual. And it is not a good thing for my business, if I may say this to you, Mr. President, to the presidency, or to the country, to not have real, full exchanges on these. And I broke my spear on it trying to get to you.

Trump: Well, other than Lindsey [Graham], who did quickly mention it, nobody mentioned it.

BW: You say Kellyanne’s there, ask her.

Trump: Nobody told me about it. Well, let me ask her. Why don’t you speak to Kellyanne. Ask her. She never told me about it.

[Conway takes the phone.]

BW: Kellyanne?

Conway: Bob, how are you? Hi.

BW: Hi. Remember two and a half months ago you came over and I laid out, I wanted to talk to the president? And you said you would get back to me?

Conway: I do. And I put in the request. But you know, they — it was rejected. I can only take it so far. I guess I can bring it right to the president next time.

BW: Yeah.

Conway: But I try to follow all the protocols, or else I’m accused of being somebody who doesn’t follow protocol.

BW: President Trump, I just want you to know I made every effort.

Conway: But you had talked to [former White House communications director] Hope [Hicks], right, who said no?

BW: Listen, I talked to anyone I could. [Laughs]

Conway: You talked to a number of people and they all said no?

BW: I talked to Raj.

Conway: Raj.

BW: He was going to work it out.

Conway: Hope. [Me?].

[The president says something in the background that is inaudible.]

Conway: I said you tried talking to everybody? What about when you interviewed, like, other people? They all said yes? That they’d try?

BW: Yeah, well, about six or seven people. I tried. And I couldn’t have — you and I spent a whole lunch on it, Kellyanne. And I said, I want to cover the substantive issues in foreign policy and domestic policy. And you said you would get back to me. Nothing.

Conway: Yeah. So, I did. I presented it to the people here who make those decisions, but . ..

BW: Who are the people?

Conway: But anyway, I’ll give you back to the president. And I’m glad to hear that you tried through seven or eight different people. That’s good. You should tell him all the names. [Laughs] Thank you.

Trump: But you never called for me. It would’ve been nice, Bob, if you called for me, in my office. I mean, I have a secretary. I have two, three secretaries. If you would’ve called directly — a lot of people are afraid . . . Raj, I hardly have . . . I don’t speak to Raj.

BW: Kellyanne is a . ..

Trump: I do, I do, and Kellyanne went to somebody, but she didn’t come to me.

BW: Well, does she have access to you?

Trump: And she should’ve come to me. She does have access to me. Absolutely. She has direct access, but she didn’t come to me. And you know what? That’s okay. I’ll just end up with another bad book. What can I tell you?

BW: It’s surprising to me that these people — did Raj have access to you?

Trump: Not really, but he would’ve been able to do it. But I have an office. You have the office number. I have an office that’s directly into my office.

Conway: [inaudible in background]

Trump: It doesn’t matter. Let me tell you what matters: The economy is the best it’s been in many, many decades. And it’s going to get a lot better. And the country is doing very well. That’s what’s important.

BW: Yes, sir. I thought I would . ..

Trump: We’re doing a good job.

BW: . . . never kind of say, let’s not talk about this because the book is done to a president . ..

Trump: Yeah, I know.

BW: . . . and, but that’s the position we’re in. And it’s one I tried to avoid. You need to know I made maximum effort.

Trump: All right. It’s too bad.

BW: Yes, sir.

Trump: I’m just hearing about it. And I heard — I did hear from Lindsey, but I’m just hearing about it. So we’re going to have a very inaccurate book, and that’s too bad. But I don’t blame you entirely.

BW: No, it’s [?] — it’s going to be accurate, I promise.

Trump: Yeah, okay. Well, accurate is that nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president. That I can tell you. So that’s . . . And that’s the way a lot of people feel that know what’s going on, and you’ll see that over the years. But a lot of people feel that, Bob.

BW: I believe in our country, and because you’re our president, I wish you good luck.

Trump: Okay. Thank you very much, Bob. I appreciate it. Bye.

Dotard.

.