Month: November 2018

Journalists being disrespectful

by digby

… are doing their jobs:

Hey US media folks, here, I would argue immodestly, is how you interview a Trump supporter on Trump's lies:pic.twitter.com/D8qElaic7o— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 14, 2018

A journalist for Al Jazeera media network might have found the secret to interviewing spokespeople for Donald Trump: Asking them to provide the facts that back up their claims.

Mehdi Hasan, who hosts the show “UpFront” on Al Jazeera English, did just that during a Nov. 9 interview with Steven Rogers, an adviser for Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.

Hasan thought it was pretty good, as he pointed out in a tweet of a clip from the segment.

On the show, Hasan got Rogers to admit the president’s claim that the United States is the only country in the world to offer birthright citizenship is completely wrong.

“No, it’s false. It’s a misstatement,” Rogers conceded, then tried to spin things to the right. “That doesn’t mean it’s a lie, OK?”

Hasan also grilled Rogers about Trump’s false claim that Californians were rioting in protest of their cities’ sanctuary city policies.

When Rogers tried to argue that there were “street skirmishes” in Oakland because of undocumented immigrants, Hasan shut him down hard.

“The spokesman for the California Police Chiefs Association says that there were no riots taking place as a result of sanctuary city policies,” Hasan pointed out. “There were no riots. [Trump] just made it up.”

Rogers wasn’t able to counter Hasan’s facts, notably Trump’s false claim that U.S. Steel would be opening up six steel mills.

“Look, I don’t know of what context these statements were made, but I can tell you this: The president of the United States has been very responsive to the American people, and the American people are doing well,” Rogers said.

Hasan snapped back, “The American people can be doing well, and the president can be a liar. There’s no contradiction between those statements.”

This is how it’s done:

Binders full of narratives
by Tom Sullivan

It is easy in the ferment over vote counts and seats counts and litigation to lose sight of what Democratic victories in 2018 mean in 2019 and beyond. Standard media narratives have yet to adjust.

Many new faces will take office bringing fresh energy to governance not just at the national level but in the states. Kathy Hoffman is one of them.

Hoffman just won election as Arizona’s new superintendent of public instruction. Incensed by the appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary, the 31-year-old speech therapist from a Phoenix suburb burned out her Prius campaigning for an office the first-time candidate was not supposed to win.

The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty explains Hoffman’s race was one of many campaigns that offered an “antidote to cynicism“:

The main thing Hoffman had going for her, however, was her own tenacity.

“Most people would have said she wouldn’t have had a chance to win, but she just kept knocking out opponent after opponent,” said Arizona Federation of Teachers President Ralph Quintana, who noted that neither his organization nor the Arizona Education Association endorsed Hoffman in the Democratic primary.

But Hoffman stuck to her narrative: “I kept talking about my students and my colleagues. I kept it very focused on my classroom experience.”

Like other Democrats this cycle, Hoffman went to bed trailing on election night and woke to find she had won. A charter-school-movement leader and former three-term congressman tasted defeat.

Power is shifting. Younger candidates are stepping forward. The media is still stuck in its rut. “Liberals should stop believing what conservatives say liberals believe,” writer John Stoehr explains in a series of tweets on the green-energy “protest” outside Nancy Pelosi’s office in the Capitol. The action featuring incoming progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fit easily into the Beltway’s “Dems in disarray” narrative. Even some on the left bought it, Stoehr complains.

6. The 29-year-old Latina has been stumping for liberal candidates across the country, making liberal arguments in unapologetically liberal ways. That she spoke with activists demanding action from leading liberals should have come as no surprise to anyone any time anywhere.— (((John Stoehr))) (@johnastoehr) November 14, 2018

7. But then came this bit of disinformation from the spokeswoman of Paul Ryan to Capitol Hill reporters, which set the tone for the entire day: "Huh, well this is unconventional," AshLee Strong wrote in an email. "The incoming speaker is getting protested by one of her freshman."— (((John Stoehr))) (@johnastoehr) November 14, 2018

8. From this point onward, Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t doing what a young dynamic liberal legislator does. No, no, no! She was “protesting” Pelosi!— (((John Stoehr))) (@johnastoehr) November 14, 2018

The story also fit neatly into the establishment “centrists” vs. insurgent “leftists” narrative. In some Beltway office there must be binders full of narratives.

In fact, Stoehr writes, Ocasio-Cortez told the climate activists, “Should Leader Pelosi become the next Speaker of the House, we need to tell her that we’ve got her back in showing and pursuing the most progressive energy agenda that this country has ever seen.” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN, “We’re here to back her up in pushing for 100% renewable energy.”

22. Pelosi: We welcome the presence of these activists, and we strongly urge the Capitol Police to allow them to continue to organize and participate in our democracy.— (((John Stoehr))) (@johnastoehr) November 14, 2018

Vox examines the bold policy proposals climate activists want to see, proposals not likely to go far with Republicans in control of the Senate and White House. But shifting the narrative from controversy to policy is a necessary part of the process:

Just as the Republican House climate caucus is shrinking, the Democratic House climate caucus is growing. And as it grows, its ambitions increase. The Overton window is shifting before our eyes.

In the long term, Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats tells me, the movement will focus on “repeating the success we had in recruiting, training, and helping elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.” The idea, he says, is to “build a caucus of like-minded, mission-driven legislators who will fight tirelessly for solutions that match the urgency and scale necessary to tackle the systemic crises in our country.”

Retraining the press and progressives conditioned to accepting standard narratives may be almost as challenging as advancing climate change legislation in a company town.

Nixon didn’t ban Dan Rather from the White House

by digby

There has always been a contentious relationship between some members of the press and the White House. It’s supposed to be that way. There’s always an aggressive Jim Acosta from one of the news networks. But until now no president has banned them from the White House or insulted them crudely and personally.

Take Dan Rather and Nixon:

April 08, 1974

Dan Rather stands waiting to be recognized, calm amid the cries of “Mr. President,” and cool in the press conference glare. President Nixon half smiles and seems to tense as he points to Rather. It is the beginning of another confrontation in what has become a running, real-life drama in prime time television.

The most recent encounter came during the President’s press conference in Houston. When CBS White House correspondent Rather introduced himself, the nonworking press in attendance applauded and Mr. Nixon asked, not good-naturedly, “Are you running for something?” Rather, usually unflappable, was a mite rattled this time and shot back rudely, “No sir, Mr. President, are you?” Then he asked a tough Watergate question.

The brief dialogue dripped bitterness, like an exchange of kidney punches between two boxers who, having fought often and inconclusively, have come to dislike each other personally. And there were practically audible gasps at the breach of press conference decorum. To Rather, a 42-year-old tall, dark, handsome and persistent Texan, his role is to be neither “an attack dog or a lap dog. I want to be a watchdog. If I see something wrong, I start barking and barking and barking. Sometimes I’m wrong; sometimes I’m not.”

He has been barking at presidents since 1964, when he won the White House beat by his reporting of the Kennedy assassination from Dallas when he was CBS Southern correspondent. Lyndon Johnson called him “Dan,” but treated him as something of an apostate. How could Rather, a fellow Texan, be pressing all those prickly questions?

As for the present incumbent, Rather insists, “I feel no hostility toward Mr. Nixon. He was pleasant when I dealt with him in ’66 and ’67. But I knew from the day he became President that we weren’t going to get along. He’s a distant person. It’s his nature that he needs to be by himself, and in his job that can’t be.”

President Nixon and his staff have made no secret of their dislike of Rather for what they consider to be his unnecessarily critical treatment of the President. In 1971 presidential aide John Ehrlichman made a special visit to CBS News president Richard Salant to complain about Rather and suggest that CBS might transfer Dan to, say, El Paso…

But Rather, for public consumption at least, says he is happy making presidents sweat. Mustering all of his drawling charm, Rather smiles pleasantly and explains, “I’m not trying to win a popularity contest.”

Trump justcn’t ake the heat because he’s a thin-skinned bully who doesn’t know how to deal with anything but a tabloid media who treats him like a celebrity.

Seriously, he consistently makes that creep Nixon look good by comparison.

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Mitch’s “fuck you” o’ the day

by digby

Yes, he is an arrogant POS without any respect for democracy. Scum:

2018 is not 1998 and Trump is not Bill Clinton

by digby

Jonathan Chait thinks Democrats should not impeach the president:

So what’s the point of all the investigation? The point is to establish legal accountability for the president. Well-functioning democracies don’t have criminal oligarchies running the country with legal impunity. The kind of deep systemic corruption Trump is implementing, in which establishing a political alliance with a ruling family is a key step in amassing and protecting wealth, depends on selective legal enforcement. More to the point, it requires business partners. Maybe Donald Trump can’t be hauled off to prison, but his partners can. And that prospect can scare off the collaborators Trump needs.

Second, and more to the point, even if Robert Mueller can’t kick Trump out of the White House directly and the Senate won’t, there’s a body of people who can: the 2020 electorate. And the Trump investigations are building a powerful case that will be brought to bear on that election.

Probably the most important indicator of public opinion with regard to the Mueller probe is a poll from last spring. It found that nearly three-fifths of the public is unaware that Mueller has uncovered any crimes at all. Mueller has already produced indictments or guilty pleas from eight Americans, with more obviously looming.

The breadth of Trump’s legal exposure exceeds that of any president in American history. It is so vast that it is hard to comprehend. Some, and possibly all, of the following appear to have colluded with Russia on behalf of the Trump campaign: Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Michael Cohen. Trump has been doing business with the criminal underworld in Russia and elsewhere for years, the secrets of which may be revealed by Mueller, or by House Democrats obtaining his tax returns. Federal prosecutors are investigating whether he violated campaign-finance laws by directing hush money to various mistresses. The state of New York is investigating the Trump Foundation for alleged misappropriation of funds and the Trump Organization for decades-long tax fraud. He is being sued for violating the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. He is also being sued for fraud.

And this is just the information we know so far, which has come out despite a Congress dedicated to protecting him from investigation, a benefit he will enjoy for only a few more weeks.

I agree that he’s unlikely to be convicted in the Senate. Republicans are all accomplices in his crimes. But I have serious doubts that if the House pursued impeachment that it would blow back on them when you consider that Trump is extremely unpopular, his administration is a blazing dumpster fire in every way and the overwhelming amount of criminal behavior he’s suspected of dwarfs anything we’ve ever seen before. In fact, it’s entirely likely that it would actually blowback on Republicans for failing to do their duty.

Obviously, we don’t know yet whether there is enough evidence to back an impeachment in the House. That’s what the investigations will show. Democrats don’t have to make that conclusion in advance. They should just follow the evidence. But they also shouldn’t fight the last war and think that this will hurt them the way it hurt the GOP for impeaching Clinton. It’s a very different situation.

Also, they ended up with the presidency in 2000 anyway, IIRC.  History isn’t the greatest guide in these political times.

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A dumb, unbalanced mob boss in the White House

by digby

This article in Slate correctly suggests that this spat between Trump and Macron is particularly ridiculous since Macron is actually doing what Trump supposedly wants him to do:

[Macron’s] argument was that Trump’s dismissive attitude toward the transatlantic alliance and longstanding defense pacts like NATO makes it necessary for Europe to take greater responsibility for its own defense. “We must have a Europe that defends itself more on its own, without only depending on the United States and in a more sovereign way,” Macron said.

The idea of establishing an integrated European military to complement NATO, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also backed, is controversial—a step toward integration that’s vastly out of step with the current mood on the Continent. But the larger idea here, that Europe should take responsibility for its own defense rather than relying on others (the United States, mainly) is exactly what Trump has been calling for since he took office. Trump ought to be applauding Macron, not castigating him.

Trump remains fixated on what he misleadingly calls paying “for NATO,” even though Macron is basically doing what Trump wants. With defense spending at 1.8 percent of GDP, France is already close to the 2 percent NATO goal on members’ defense spending that has become Trump’s obsession, and Macron announced in July that it will meet the threshold by 2024. And while outdated stereotypes from the “freedom fries” era persist in the U.S., France is among the more hawkish European powers.

It’s more obvious than ever that Trump doesn’t actually care all that much about European defense-spending targets. He’s hostile to the transatlantic alliance itself and even more so to anything that smacks of European integration.

There’s something sinister in the invocation of the world wars here. (Macron, who spent the past week touring World War I battlefields in Northern France, certainly doesn’t need the U.S. president to tell him about his country’s history with Germany.) Is Trump’s implication that France should be more concerned about the threat from its historical enemy Germany than from Russia or China? It’s not out of the question that Trump actually believes this, considering that he called the EU “as bad as China” on trade, invoked Pearl Harbor in a negotiation with Japan’s Shinzo Abe, and has, let’s say, unorthodox views on Russian foreign policy.

Macron’s pro-European sympathies clearly irk Trump. The remark about France being “nationalist” is plainly a response to Macron’s speech in Paris on Sunday—widely read as a direct rebuke of Trump, who was in attendance—in which he rejected nationalism as a “betrayal of patriotism.”

Trump has expressed support in the past for far-right French nationalist leader Marine Le Pen and, coupled with his invocation of Macron’s poll numbers, appears to be again suggesting that the French president is out of touch with the true “nationalist” nature of his constituents. We’ll see at France’s next election, but judging from Le Pen’s recent moves to distance herself from Steven Bannon’s efforts to build a united nationalist front in Europe, it’s not certain that Macron’s right-wing opponents will actually welcome Trump’s intervention. Trump has gotten slightly more popular in France lately, but he’s still one of the few world leaders the French like even less than their own.

All of this is true. But I think he’s giving Trump too much credit. After all, just a few years ago as a businessman he loved the EU and was pronouncing globalism great for the bottom line. This is all about Trump’s limited ability to understand world affairs. And by limited, I mean the fact that he doesn’t understand it at all and has reduced everything to some kind of simple-minded monetary transaction which, in this case, doesn’t make any sense.

He literally doesn’t understand that when he’s asking NATO to pay up, what he’s asking is for them to build up their own defenses. He thinks that the NATO countries are supposed to be writing checks to the US Treasury for their “protection.” And he thinks they are behind on “paying their bills.”

Seriously. That’s obviously what he thinks. He makes that clear every time he talks about it. He is clueless about all of it.

It’s true that he likes nationalism and authoritarian leaders but it’s not ideological. His leadership model is mob moss, which just comes down to “nice little planet you have here, be a shame if anything happened to it.”

This level of ignorance would be unusual for any adult who even nominally follows politics. That he’s still this dumb, even after being president for more than two years, is mind-boggling.

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It’s not in his nature

by digby

Via TPM:

France’s government has fired back at a flurry of critical tweets by Donald Trump, suggesting the U.S. president lacked “common decency” by launching his broadside on a day when France was mourning victims of the November 2015 terror attacks.

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said Wednesday: “We were commemorating the assassination of 130 of our compatriots three years ago in Paris and Saint-Denis, and so I will reply in English: ‘Common decency’ would have been appropriate.”

Nursing grievances from a weekend visit to France, Trump lit into French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday over his suggestion for a European defense force, over French tariffs on U.S. wine and even Macron’s approval ratings.

The tweets underscored tensions between the once-chummy leaders and displayed Trump’s irritation over criticism of how he acted in France.

Asking Trump for common decency is like asking a shark for compassion. It’s just not in either one’s nature.

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The Oval Office is now Trump’s panic room

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

President Donald Trump is not himself. And by “not himself” I mean he seems to have lost his swagger. Ever since the midterm elections, he’s been churlish and petulant. His brazen braggadocio is suddenly dull and off-key. The question is what exactly has him brooding and upset.

Sure, he held a press conference the morning after the election at which he ludicrously asserted, “I’ll be honest: I think it was a great victory. And actually, some of the news this morning was that it was, in fact, a great victory.” The news that morning was nothing of the kind, of course. And even he couldn’t pull it off. He rapidly devolved into his patented media-bashing to change the subject and ended up looking like the worst sore loser in presidential history.

That same day he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replaced him with someone he believed would protect him from the Mueller investigation — a man described by George Conway — Kellyanne Conway’s husband — as a “constitutional nobody.” And that wasn’t his worst day last week.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a big scoop revealing that the feds have unearthed plenty of evidence that Trump had personally broken campaign finance laws. More troubling for him is that the three people given immunity — lawyer Michael Cohen, National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg — know where a lot of other metaphorical bodies are buried. (We hope there are no real bodies involved.)

Luckily Trump had a chance to de-stress over the weekend on a nice trip to France for some military pageants, which he loves more than anything. Sadly, this got off to a bad start when he watched a Fox News show that misinterpreted a comment from French President Emmanuel Macron, who has suggested that Europe needs to create its own army to defend itself against Russia, China and the U.S., and took to Twitter to lash out. The Washington Post reports that British Prime Minister Theresa May called Air Force One during the trip to congratulate Trump on his electoral “victory” and he inexplicably exploded at her over Iran.

So the trip didn’t start off well and only got worse as Trump acted like a sullen child at the ceremonies he deigned to attend. He didn’t even bother to go to the one to commemorate the American dead of World War I — which ended 100 years ago this week — instead staying inside and tweeting threats at California as it suffered from catastrophic wildfires. He finally roused himself to attend the big final ceremony, although he couldn’t bring himself to walk with the other leaders. He greeted his only real friend, Vladimir Putin, as enthusiastically as one of those dogs who throw themselves at their masters returning from a deployment to Iraq. He didn’t care for his former buddy Macron chiding him by suggesting that nationalism wasn’t really all that great considering the wars it precipitated, including the horrifying meat-grinder they were all there to memorialize.

He’s been pouting ever since his return. He’s holed up in the White House furiously posting hysterical tweets about stopping the vote count in Florida and making irresponsible declarations about Democratic fraud and cheating. The Los Angeles Times reports that Trump has “retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources.” The chaos in the White House on Monday and Tuesday was so intense that one former staffer called it, “like an episode of ‘Maury’ … the only thing that’s missing is a paternity test,” according to Politico. Rumors of firings and resignations are flying around so fast that they are bumping into each other.

In one of the weirdest Trump administration episodes yet, it was reported on Tuesday that Mira Ricardel, John Bolton’s second in command at the National Security Council, had abruptly been fired. Then that was taken back, and nobody really knew what was going on until First Lady Melania Trump’s office announced that Ricardel “no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House.” Melania had apparently demanded Ricardel’s ouster because of some issues over airplane seats during her Africa trip and the president reportedly gave the OK to fire her, saying “I don’t need this s**t.” (Perhaps that Wall Street Journal exposé about the hush money added a little stress in the private residence as well?)

This is all a far cry from those giddy early days of the administration when Trump went on a Victory Tour to celebrate with his adoring fans, isn’t it? He had barely eked out a tiny win, not all that different from last week’s GOP victory in the Senate (where Democratic candidates got 14 million more votes, at last count), but he was able to sell it as a result of his brilliance because it was so unexpected. It’s likely he thought that was going to happen again — but the “Red Wave” didn’t materialize and reality is starting to bite, and bite hard.

Trump feels betrayed by all those Republicans who failed to win and made him look like a loser. He’s been stabbed in the back by Emmanuel Macron, his little buddy, who hasn’t found that flattering Trump got him anywhere and has stopped trying. Kim Jong-un, the man who sends him “beautiful letters” after the two of them “fell in in love,” is making a fool of him by continuing to build missile sites after Trump announced to the world that North Korea’s nuclear threat was over. Then there’s the latest in a long line of former intimates who’ve turned state’s evidence, possibly including his old pal Roger Stone, who appears to be on the verge of indictment. Firing Sessions, the man who committed the original sin of following the rules instead of being his “Roy Cohn,” hasn’t made him feel any better.

I suspect the biggest reason for all this is the ultimate betrayal: His followers failed him by not voting in great enough numbers to defy all the predictions and prove that he is the biggest winner in American political history. He may not be stable and he may not be a genius, but right now he knows that he looks like a loser. Perhaps he also instinctively realizes that may just break the spell some of his voters have been under since he was unexpectedly elected two years ago — the belief that even though he is personally a mess and his administration is nonstop chaos, he’s an unbeatable giant-slayer, an omnipotent superhero who transcends the normal definition of leadership. He lost, and his followers will never see him the same way again.

Once a con man is exposed, he blows town and moves on to the next mark. But Donald Trump is the president of the United States. He’s trapped and he has nowhere else to go.

Re-enfranchising NC voters
by Tom Sullivan

At 49.2 percent, the 2018 election was on average the highest midterm turnout in over a century, by Ed Kilgore’s reckoning. As many as 39 U.S. House seats could flip to Democrats when ballot counting is done. With Rep. Jeff Denham’s (R-CA) loss in California’s 10th District, the Democrats’ count now stands at 34.

Even with historic turnout, there were no turnovers in North Carolina which since 2011 has lived with some of the most egregiously GOP gerrymandering in the country, not only in federal districts but state House and Senate districts as well. Voting rights advocates have won challenges against them all, but court cases have dragged on since the last census. Democrats gained state legislative seats in 2018, but the GOP held its majorities in both North Carolina chambers. The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority is unlikely to strike down partisan gerrymanders in the new session, so the fate of state congressional districts ruled unconstitutional gerrymanders by a panel of federal judges may stand for the last election of the ten-year cycle.

Voting rights advocates have taken another tack with state districts. Mark Joseph Stern writes at Slate:

On Tuesday, one week after the midterm election, Common Cause and the North Carolina Democratic Party brought a lawsuit on behalf of multiple voters in the state alleging that the current partisan gerrymander is unlawful under the state constitution. Their complaint illustrates, in painstaking detail, how GOP mapmakers “packed” Democratic voters into a handful of deep-blue districts, then distributed the remainder of Democrats across safe Republican districts, where their votes wouldn’t matter. They “cracked” cities into multiple mangled districts, pulling in rural Republican regions to diminish Democratic votes.

The cited examples are standard fare for districts drawn under the GOP REDMAP program. But by attacking the state districts as unconstitutional under the state constitution, advocates may have a firmer case, Stern argues:

The North Carolina Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause is more robust than its federal counterpart, guaranteeing citizens “substantially equal voting power” and “the right to vote on equal terms.” It also commands that “[a]ll elections shall be free”—that is, not manipulated by the state to predetermine the outcome.

This case ultimately will go before a North Carolina Supreme Court state Republicans have so far been unable to manipulate to their advantage through election tricks and traps. Democrats gained two seats on the court in the last two general elections. They now hold a 5-2 majority with the election last week of civil rights attorney Anita Earls.

Stern notes as well that while the ruling against the federal gerrymander likely will not survive SCOTUS review next year, a followup state challenge might succeed in time for approval of new congressional seats by the 2020 election. Success with both cases could hand state control back to Democrats in time for 2021 redistricting. (There are already Democratic pledges to support independent redistricting should that happen.) Given fair congressional districts in 2020, Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows (NC-11) will need to start packing up his office.

Mississippi Mud

by digby

This is gross on so many levels I don’t even know what to say:

Asked about the racial controversy over a fellow Republican referring to a “public hanging” while running against a Black man, Mississippi’s governor asks why people aren’t outraged about a real problem, the “genocide” perpetrated by Black women getting abortions. https://t.co/47cdkaJfcC— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 13, 2018

Here’s her statement said when she said she’d be in the front row of a public hanging if her supporter invited her was a form of “exaggerated regard” which doesn’t even make sense. To then argue that this disgusting allusion to lynching isn’t as bad as the “genocide” of fetuses at the hands of black women is so grotesque I feel sick just thinking about it.

I hope the Democrats put up a fight down there. There’s a reason she didn’t get over the top in the first round. She’s awful.

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