Month: January 2019

America’s shooting gallery

by digby

And here I thought that the answer for gun violence was to have a lot more guns around:

The number of homicides committed using guns has gone up by nearly a third nationwide in recent years, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC found a 31 percent increase in homicides involving firearms from 2014 to 2016. In 2014, 11,008 homicides involved a gun. The number rose to 14,415 by 2016, the CDC team said.

Guns were by far the most common weapon used in homicides, the CDC team found.
[…]
Daniel Webster, a gun policy expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said one surprising factor behind the recent increase in gun killings is the outcry against police killings of unarmed people.

Gun deaths went up in Baltimore, he said, alongside the unrest that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Police pulled back from much of the day-in, day-out patrolling they had been doing in many parts of the city. “That kind of policing activity dropped substantially,” Webster said.

“Policing was preoccupied with quelling the riots. There is evidence of a pullback of general policing activities by Baltimore police,” Webster, who wrote a detailed report on the effect in January, told NBC News.

“When you add a breakdown in trust between communities and police, I think that is a recipe for more violence.”

Webster also noted that more states had loosened rules on gun ownership and the carrying of guns at around the same time that firearms homicide rates went up.

Yeah, I’d guess that might have had something to do with it too.

By the way, the Supremes agreed to hear a new gun rights case today:

In an ominous sign for potential victims of gun violence, the Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it will hear New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, a challenge to New York City’s gun licensing regime.

It’s the first Second Amendment case the Supreme Court will hear since 2010, and only the second such case since 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, which held for the first time in American history that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. It’s also the first Second Amendment case since Brett Kavanaugh, who penned a starkly pro-gun dissent as a lower court judge, took over from the more moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy.

And the Court’s decision to hear New York State Rifle should trouble gun violence advocates for another reason. The case involves such a minor and incidental burden on gun rights that it is unclear why the Court would pick this case as their first foray into Second Amendment litigation in nearly a decade. If the Court sides with the plaintiffs in this case, that would suggest that many gun laws must fall in this decision’s wake.

New York law requires handgun owners to obtain a license to possess such a gun, and it provides for two different kinds of licenses. A “carry” license permits individuals to carry a handgun for “target practice, hunting, or self-defense.” Meanwhile, a “premises” license permits individuals to “have and possess in his dwelling” a handgun, but they can only take the gun outside of the home for limited purposes. In New York City, that includes bringing the gun to seven different firing ranges where the gun owner may practice shooting.

The individual plaintiffs in this case, each of whom have premises licenses, do not challenge this overarching regime. Instead, they raise an exceedingly narrow grievance. As the appeals court explained, each of them “seek to transport their handguns to shooting ranges and competitions outside New York City.” One of them is also wealthy enough to own two homes. Yet he objects to the fact that he must buy a second gun if he wishes to keep a firearm in each residence, rather than being permitted to transport one gun between the homes.

Yet, the fact that New York State Rifle is not a grand showdown over some massively important gun rights question should trouble supporters of gun regulation far more than if this case struck at the heart of the Second Amendment. Though the Supreme Court has not heard a Second Amendment case in nearly a decade, nearly all federal appeals courts agree on a broad framework that should apply in such cases. As ThinkProgress explained last summer,

Under this framework, “severe burdens on core Second Amendment rights” are subject to a test known as “strict scrutiny,” the most demanding test courts typically apply in constitutional cases. Meanwhile, “less onerous laws, or laws that govern conduct outside of the Second Amendment’s ‘core,’” are more likely to survive judicial review.

Thus, laws that impose major burdens on gun owners are especially likely to fall, while more incidental burdens will typically be upheld. And the specific burden at issue in New York State Rifle is hardly an attack on “core Second Amendment rights.”
[…]
New York State Rifle in other words, is a huge case because it concerns a tiny issue. If the Supreme Court is willing to declare that even very minor burdens on gun owners violate the Constitution, then it is unclear what can still be done to prevent gun violence.

Sounds great.

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QOTD: John Kerry

by digby

What would John Kerry say to Trump if they were sitting across from each other? “Resign.” https://t.co/jKtRgh4Vm8 pic.twitter.com/NXbMzQ5gfx

— CNBC (@CNBC) January 22, 2019

Asked what message he has for President Trump, former Secretary of State John Kerry told those listening at a CNBC Davos World Economic Forum panel that the president should “resign.”

QUESTION: If you had Donald Trump sitting across from you, what would your message to him be?

JOHN KERRY: I can’t play that — just — I would, but I know that you see, that he doesn’t take any of this seriously. 

QUESTION: So what would your message be?

KERRY: Resign.

It is the only sane answer.

Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s poodle?

by digby

This story hasn’t gotten much coverage in all the recent din, but it seems to me that it’s pretty important:

When the Trump administration announced last month that it was lifting sanctions against a trio of companies controlled by an influential Russian oligarch, it cast the move as tough on Russia and on the oligarch, arguing that he had to make painful concessions to get the sanctions lifted.

But a binding confidential document signed by both sides suggests that the agreement the administration negotiated with the companies controlled by the oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, may have been less punitive than advertised.

The deal contains provisions that free him from hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while leaving him and his allies with majority ownership of his most important company, the document shows.

With the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election continuing to shadow President Trump, the administration’s decision to lift sanctions on Mr. Deripaska’s companies has become a political flash point. House Democrats won widespread Republican support last week for their efforts to block the sanctions relief deal. Democratic hopes of blocking the administration’s decision have been stifled by the Republican-controlled Senate.

The Treasury Department announced the sanctions last April against Mr. Deripaska, six other Russian oligarchs and their companies, including Mr. Deripaska’s aluminum giant, Rusal, as well as the holding company that owns it, EN+, and another company it controls, EuroSibEnergo. Like other oligarchs, Mr. Deripaska is closely allied with the Kremlin.

The sanctions were in retaliation for “a range of malign activity around the globe” by Russia, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said at the time.

The personal sanctions on Mr. Deripaska went into effect immediately, but those on his companies were delayed several times, and Mr. Mnuchin struck a conciliatory tone toward the companies. He clarified that the goalof the sanctions was “to change the behavior” of Mr. Deripaska, and “not to put Rusal out of business,” given the company’s pivotal role as a global supplier of aluminum.

Mr. Mnuchin indicated that the Treasury Department might be willing to lift the sanctions from Mr. Deripaska’s companies if he reduced his stake to less than 50 percent.

Last month, Mr. Mnuchin announced that the department had reached an agreement to lift the sanctions on Mr. Deripaska’s companies in exchange for a commitment “to significantly diminish Deripaska’s ownership and sever his control.”

The department laid out the broad contours of the agreement in a letter to Congress, which was released publicly. But the confidential document, which was not released publicly but was reviewed by The New York Times, describes the deal in considerably greater detail, including proprietary information about the corporate restructuring, much of it not previously reported.

It shows that the sanctions relief deal will allow Mr. Deripaska to wipe out potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in debt by transferring some of his shares to VTB, a Russian government-owned bank under limited United States sanctions that had lent him large sums of money.

The confidential document, titled “Terms of Removal,” also shows that the agreement would leave allies of Mr. Deripaska and the Kremlin with significant stakes in his companies. The document is signed by executives representing Mr. Deripaska’s three companies as well as the official in the Treasury Department who oversees the division that handled the negotiations.

The new information could lend ammunition to criticism that the Trump administration either knowingly let a Kremlin-allied oligarch off easy, or was outmaneuvered by a sophisticated legal and lobbying campaignfunded by his companies.

The House got a bunch of Republicans to come over to block this weird deal and the Senate got 11 Republicans to vote against it coming up just 2 shy of the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster. Nobody really understands what the big hurry to give old Oleg this big break but it’s at least a little bit suspicious.

One of the theories is that Trump’s sanctions on Chinese aluminum ended up hurting American industries so much that they felt they had to let up Russian aluminum, which is very convenient. There are also suggestions that Treasury was outmaneuvered by the crack Deripaska legal team. Possible, of course. Trump’s team really is incompetent on every level. But it’s also possible that Mnuchin ordered this because Trump told him that he wants “good relations” with Russia — or something.

Whatever the reason, the whole thing is politically absurd considering the boiling water Trump is in at the moment. Why anyone in his orbit, much less Trump himself, would do something like this, at this time, is simply mind-boggling. But then, no matter what, he just keeps licking Putin’s boots no matter how hot the water gets, raising more and more suspicions, so I guess this is just par for the course.

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Don’t think the wall is about race? Think again.

This is what Pelosi means when she says the Wall is immoral.

Ron Brownstein breaks down the poll:

Opinions about the wall have become deeply interwoven with attitudes about the larger changes in culture, demography and gender relations that are reshaping American society. While Trump and congressional Democrats are mostly debating the wall on the grounds of effectiveness and efficiency, polling also suggests that for each party the barrier has become a powerful symbol of whether these underlying changes in American life should be welcomed or resisted.

“Who are we as a country? That’s the question on the table,” said Robert P. Jones, the founding CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization that studies public attitudes about religion and culture. “That’s a really fundamental question. And it’s getting fought out in this symbolic territory over something like a wall, which to both sides can symbolize some of their deepest values and conflicts with the other party.”

The wall’s symbolic resonance complicates the challenge of reaching a legislative compromise between Trump and congressional Republicans — who are demanding funding for it as the price of reopening the federal government — and Democrats, who not only view it as ineffective but are reluctant to validate a keystone of Trump’s hardline immigration policies and what many in the party see as a symbol of racism.

During the 1970s and 1980s, political scientists and legal scholars described the battle over abortion rights as “a clash of absolutes” that crystallized the emerging cultural divide between the groups in society that welcomed more permissive attitudes toward sex and more fluid family arrangements and traditionalists led by the emerging religious right movement that mobilized in opposition to them.

In the same way, the wall may be becoming a “clash of absolutes” that crystallizes the key 21st-century cultural divide over the nation’s growing ethnic and racial diversity.

“It may be the clearest and most honest debate we’ve had about the fault lines in the country, but only if you peel it back and recognize it’s not just about” border security, said Jones. “With the shutdown and the centrality of the wall you can say at least the real issues are coming straight to the fore.”

As I’ve written before, attitudes toward demographic, cultural and even economic change have become the central dividing line between the Republican and Democratic political coalitions.

Republicans mobilize what I’ve called a “coalition of restoration” revolving around the groups that express the most unease and hostility about the big changes reshaping America, especially older, blue-collar, evangelical and non-urban whites.

Democrats rely on a competing “coalition of transformation” centered on the mostly urbanized groups that are most comfortable with these changes, particularly young people (millennials and the first post-millennials, who will enter the electorate in 2020), minorities and college-educated and secular white voters, especially women.

In this sharply divided political alignment, the wall looms as a concrete (literally, in earlier versions of Trump’s plan) manifestation of deeper views about whether these changes are rejuvenating the country or threatening its traditions.

Views on the wall and race relations correlate

Polling data from the Public Religion Research Institute’s annual American Values Survey, conducted last fall, capture how closely attitudes about the wall track views on immigration, race and gender relations.

Overall in the survey, 41% of Americans supported building the border wall, while 58% opposed it. That’s in line with an array of recent polls from CNN, the Pew Research Center, Quinnipiac and ABC/Washington Post showing support for the wall registering around 40%.

The Public Religion Research Institute poll is especially revealing because it asked opinions about the wall as part of a much broader survey examining Americans’ attitudes toward a wide range of cultural and demographic changes. It found that wall supporters and opponents express virtually mirror-image views on those broader shifts, according to previously unpublished results from the poll provided to CNN.

It may be least surprising that views about the wall track with opinions about immigration’s impact on American society. Wall supporters express vastly more hostile views than wall opponents about the impact not only of undocumented but also legal immigration.

In the Public Religion Research Institute survey, three-fourths of adults who support the wall say immigrants burden local communities because they use too many public services; two-thirds of wall opponents say immigrants are not an undue burden.

Two-thirds of wall supporters say it bothers them when they come into contact with immigrants who don’t speak English well; three-fourths of wall opponents said it does not bother them.

Likewise, two-thirds of wall supporters say the growing number of immigrants “threatens traditional American customs and values,” while four-fifths of opponents say the change instead “strengthens American society.”

Over eight-in-10 wall supporters back a temporary ban on immigration from some Muslim countries, while three-fourths of wall opponents oppose a ban. And while nearly seven-in-10 wall opponents reject legislation to reduce the level of legal immigration, over eight-in-10 wall supporters want the US to accept fewer legal immigrants.

But views about the wall also closely correlate with attitudes about race relations.

In the Public Religion Research Institute survey, three-fourths of wall supporters said recent police killings of African-Americans were “isolated incidents” rather than “part of a broader pattern of how police treat” blacks. However, almost three-fourths of wall opponents saw a broader pattern.

Almost exactly three-fourths of wall supporters rejected the idea that “generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” Nearly two-thirds of wall opponents agreed with that statement.

Perhaps most dramatically, almost two-thirds of wall supporters said discrimination against whites is now as big a problem as discrimination against minorities. Three-fourths of wall opponents rejected that view.

The gulf between wall supporters and opponents extends even to views about changing relations between men and women. Nearly two-thirds of wall opponents say the feminist movement accurately reflects the views of most women. Nearly two-thirds of wall supporters say it does not.

Just over three-fifths of wall opponents say the #metoo movement has helped “address sexual harassment and assault in the workplace”; less than half as many wall opponents agree. One in three wall supporters say the movement has “led to the unfair treatment of men”; only one-in-11 wall opponents agree.

On the broadest measure of gender relations, just 25% of wall opponents believe discrimination against men is now as great a problem as discrimination against women, while 74% reject that view. By a 54% to 45% majority, wall supporters say men do face as much discrimination as women.

On the most sweeping measures, wall opponents express enormous anxiety about the direction of social change in the country, while supporters are much more optimistic.

When reminded that the Census Bureau projects that racial minorities will compose a majority of the nation’s population by around 2045, fully 82% of wall opponents said the effect of the change will be mostly positive, while only 16% believed it will be negative. Wall supporters took a very different view: 58% expected the changes to trigger mostly negative impacts, while just 38% expected positive change.

Three-fourths of wall supporters agreed that the “American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence.” Almost two-thirds of wall opponents disagreed.

Perhaps most tellingly, the two sides produced almost exactly inverse responses on a summary question that collects attitudes on all the changes remaking American life. Fully 59% of wall supporters agreed that “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.” An identical 59% of wall opponents disagreed with that sentiment.

[…]
The problem is that in this “clash of absolutes,” the wall has acquired such symbolic power for each side that it would require enormous dexterity to craft a solution that allows both sides to insist they have held firm.

In particular, as Jones notes, for Trump the wall has become the physical embodiment of his core promise: to make America great again by reversing the economic, cultural and demographic changes that his supporters believe have marginalized them.

“The way that Trump has talked about himself, even in the campaign, is as a kind of wall,” Jones said. “All this talk that, ‘I’m the only one who can stop the changes you don’t like,’ ‘I am the only thing standing between you and hordes of people on the border,’ ‘I am the only one who can roll back the clock. … I am the thing standing between you and chaos.’ That’s what walls symbolize.

And let’s not forget that he’s nothing but a cheap con-man who is using their prejudice and intolerance for his own purposes which aren’t even ideological. He is a racist and xenophobe but mainly he’s using them to feed the yawning maw of his ego and set himself up for more riches. That doesn’t mean these people really don’t feel the way they feel. But Trump has done something special for them. He’s made them feel proud of their bigotry.

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Clinton? Trump? What’s the Diff, Really? 

by tristero

Back in ’16, I had several super-smart, super-progressive friends actually say that to me. Sometimes, I was so flabbergasted that I could barely sputter a reply. And because they were far more reasonable creatures than me (in Franklin’s sense), I never could convince them otherwise.

Well, as if anyone actually needed another data point, here’s the diff. Really.

Seriously, my dear friends, what on earth were you thinking? Because lemme tell you, the Trump Supreme Court is just getting started.

All your base (are) belong to us
by Tom Sullivan

Does gigantism precede extinction, or rarity, as Darwin postulated? Think Progress takes note of a study Oxfam released Monday on global inequality. The wealth of the world’s 26 top billionaires now equals that of the bottom half of the population of the planet:

Billionaires have increased their wealth by 12 percent this year, the report states, while at the same time the wealth of the poorest half of the world has fallen by 11 percent.

This consolidation is happening at a rapid rate even for the billionaire class, which according to the report has doubled in size since the 2008 financial crisis. In 2016, 61 billionaires controlled half of the world’s wealth, then in 2017 that number was 43, before becoming 26 in 2018.

With all the hard work bootstrap billionaires are doing to earn that, how do they find time to speak with their yacht schedulers?

This widening economic divide is fueling authoritarianism, Oxfam warns:

Rather than working to heal the divide between rich and poor, some leaders are instead seeking to vilify immigrants, other ethnic groups, other nations, women and people in poverty. In more unequal countries, trust is lower and crime higher. Unequal societies are more stressed, less happy and have higher levels of mental illness.

Venture capitalist Nick Hanauer is famous for his almost-banned TED talk and his caution to “Fellow Zillionaires” that pitchforks are coming for them. Hanauer is still warning of the toxicity of widening inequality. In the forward to the report, he writes:

Only a society that seeks to include all its people in the economy can succeed in the long term. To build such a society, the wealthiest should pay their fair share of tax – and as this year’s Oxfam report demonstrates, right now they are doing the opposite. Top rates of tax on the wealthiest people and corporations are lower than they have been for decades. Unprecedented levels of tax avoidance and evasion ensure that the super-rich pay even less.

There can be no moral justification for this behaviour beyond the discredited neoliberal dogma that if everyone maximizes their selfishness, the world will somehow be a better place. It has no economic justification, either. In fact, it is economically self-defeating, as the ordinary people who drive a prosperous economy are instead impoverished in favour of the bank accounts of billionaires. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the richest in our society can and should pay a lot more tax to help build a more equal society and prosperous economy.

“Public Good Or Private Wealth?” offers three sets of recommendations for reducing the wealth gap “between rich and poor and between women and men” and creating what it calls a “Human Economy.”

Steep declines in global tax rates since the 1970s have accelerated inequality. The productivity-pay gap in the U.S. has grown as well. Americans feel it.

From “The Productivity–Pay Gap” by EPI, August 2018.

Think Progress continues:

In July a report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) revealed that in 2015 the top one percent of families took home an average of 26.3 times the amount the bottom 99 percent took.

The EPI report added that between 2009 and 2015, the income for the top one percent grew faster than everyone else’s in 43 states, as well as the District of Columbia. Despite President Donald Trump’s continued boasts of a soaring stock market, the EPI report revealed that median wages have grown only 0.2 percent in the last year.

Market consolidation and aggregation of wealth and political power in the hands of a few is becoming a proximate threat to the republic. Democracy hangs in the balance.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not the only member of Congress who gets that. A growing number of Americans do.

All your base (are) belong to us 👾 https://t.co/brwNKJ8wrh— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 19, 2019

The chyron presidency

by digby

This is what happens when you have a president who is so in over his head that the only way he can survive is by watching cable news 24/7:

For all his media bashing, President Trump sees the White House as the greatest show on Earth and obsesses over the staging — micromanaging his own lighting and constantly consuming the coverage of himself as if it were sports highlights.

Why it matters: We learn in a forthcoming book by campaign confidant Cliff Sims (“Team of Vipers,” out Jan. 29) that this fixation extends to the chyrons — the all-caps text at the bottom of the screen.

Sims describes Trump as he watches TV in his private dining room off the Oval:

“He consumed TV like the late Roger Ebert must have watched movies. … He commented on the sets, the graphics, the wardrobe choices, the lighting, and just about every other visual component of a broadcast. Sure, he liked to hear pundits saying nice things about him or White House officials defending him from attacks, but everything came back to how does it look?

With that in mind, the most Trumpian tactic the comms team employed was arguing with TV networks about the ‘chyrons,’ the words displayed at the bottom of the screen that act as headlines for whatever the commentators are discussing.

‘People watch TV on mute,’ the President told me, ‘so it’s those words, those sometimes beautiful, sometimes nasty little words that matter.’ …

When the President would deliver a speech somewhere outside of D.C., the research team would take screenshots of all the chyrons that aired while he was speaking. Then, adding those images to headlines and tweets from influential reporters and pundits, they would race to print out a packet before Trump made it back to the White House.

The goal was for Sarah or Hope or me — or whoever hadn’t traveled with him — to meet him on the ground floor of the residence and hand him the packet to review mere moments after Marine One landed on the South Lawn.”

Since Axios revealed the first excerpt from Sims’ book, there has been rising curiosity and anxiety inside the White House.

“Team of Vipers” includes behind-the-scenes revelations — some comical, some troubling — about a range of Trump insiders, including some still in the West Wing.

A publishing source said Sims and others involved in the book have been peppered with incoming queries from aides who want to know how they’re portrayed. “They know he has the goods,” the source said.

The book is chockablock with glimpses of a world where Trump sees himself as star, writer, producer, director, audience and critic — all at once:

“‘The graphics on Fox are the absolute worst — are you looking at this?’ he said at one point. ‘CNN and MSNBC are both so much better. I hate to say it — honestly, I really hate to say it — but MSNBC has the best graphics. Fox is the best — they have the best talent. I mean, look at the rest of these people. They can’t believe what’s happening right now. But Fox’s graphics are terrible. They’ve got to do something about it.'”

Interesting that he just knows they are there to properly serve him. He’s right, of course.

Update:

Oh my God. More from the book:

President Trump watched on television, increasingly angry as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan criticized his handling of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. He held the remote control “like a pistol” and yelled for an assistant to get the Republican leader on the phone.

“Paul, do you know why Democrats have been kicking your a– for decades? Because they know a little word called ‘loyalty,’ ” Trump told Ryan, then a Wisconsin congressman. “Why do you think Nancy [Pelosi] has held on this long? Have you seen her? She’s a disaster. Every time she opens her mouth another Republican gets elected. But they stick with her . . . Why can’t you be loyal to your president, Paul?”

The tormenting continued. Trump recalled Ryan distancing himself from Trump in October 2016, in the days after the “Access Hollywood” video in which he bragged of fondling women first surfaced in The Washington Post.

“I remember being in Wisconsin and your own people were booing you,” Trump told him, according to former West Wing communications aide Cliff Sims. “You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog! And what’d I do? I saved your a–.”

The browbeating of the top Republican on Capitol Hill was one of the vivid snapshots of life inside the Trump White House told by one of its original inhabitants, Cliff Sims, in his 384-page tell-all, “Team of Vipers,” which goes on sale next week and was obtained in advance by The Post. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Sims, who enjoyed uncommon personal access to Trump, recounts expletive-filled scenes of chaos, dysfunction and duplicity among the president, his family members and administration officials.

Unlike memoirs of other Trump officials, Sims’s book is neither a sycophantic portrayal of the president nor a blistering account written to settle scores. The author presents himself as a true believer in Trump and his agenda, and even writes whimsically of the president, but still is critical of him, especially his morality. Sims also finds fault in himself, a rarity in Trump World, writing that at times he was “selfish,” “nakedly ambitious” and “a coward.”

The author reconstructs in comic detail the Trump team’s first day at work, when the president sat in the residence raging about news coverage of the relatively small size of his inauguration crowds, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer scrambled to address it.

Spicer had worked the team “into a frenzy,” and it fell to Sims to write the script for his first statement to the media. Nervously chewing gum, Spicer dictated “a torrent of expletives with a few salient points scattered in between.” At one point, Sims’s computer crashed and he lost the draft, so it had to be rewritten. And in their rush to satisfy the impatient president, nobody checked the facts. Spicer, he writes, was “walking into his own execution.”

“It’s impossible to deny how absolutely out of control the White House staff — again, myself included — was at times,” Sims writes. The book’s scenes are consistent with news reporting at the time from inside the White House.

Sims depicts Trump as deeply suspicious of his own staff. He recalls a private huddle in which he and Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime bodyguard and confidant, helped Trump draw up an enemies list with a Sharpie on White House stationery. “We’re going to get rid of all the snakes, even the bottom-feeders,” Trump told them.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly told the staff that he viewed his job as serving the “country first, POTUS second,” which Sims interpreted as potentially hostile to Trump’s agenda.

Sims recounts that Kelly once confided to him in a moment of exasperation: “This is the worst [expletive] job I’ve ever had. People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired. If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place.”

A conservative media figure in Alabama, Sims came to work on Trump’s 2016 campaign and cultivated a personal relationship with the candidate-turned-president. Sims writes rich, extended dialogue from his conversations with Trump and others in the administration.

As White House director of message strategy, Sims regularly met Trump at the private elevator of the residence and accompanied him to video tapings — carrying a can of Tresemmé Tres Two hair spray, extra hold, for the boss. At one such taping, about an hour after Trump had tweeted that he saw MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a facelift,” the president sought feedback from Sims and Spicer.

“They’re going to say it’s not presidential,” Trump said, referring to the media. “But you know what? It’s modern-day presidential.” The president then raged about the “Morning Joe” program on which Brzezinski appears and instructed Spicer, “Don’t you dare say I watch that show.”
[…]
At times, Trump evinced less rage than a lack of interest. Sims recounts one time when Ryan was in the Oval Office explaining the ins and outs of the Republican health-care bill to the president. As Ryan droned on for 15 minutes, Trump sipped on a glass of Diet Coke, peered out at the Rose Garden, stared aimlessly at the walls and, finally, walked out.

Ryan kept talking as the president wandered down the hall to his private dining room, where he flicked on his giant flat-screen TV. Apparently, he had had enough of Ryan’s talk. It fell to Vice President Pence to retrieve Trump and convince him to return to the Oval Office so they could continue their strategy session.

Sims reconstructs moments of crisis for the West Wing communications team in play-by-play detail, including the domestic abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter and the firing of James B. Comey as FBI director.

He paints Spicer, counselor Kellyanne Conway and communications adviser Mercedes Schlapp in an especially negative light, calling Conway “the American Sniper of West Wing marksmen” and describing her agenda as “survival over all others, including the president.”

Read it all. It’s just … wow.

Paul Ryan was the Speaker of the House. I assume Trump treats them all that way. And they come back for more. Very impressive.

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Trump always saw the campaign as a money making project

by digby

“It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” Donald Trump, 2000

Since we now know that Trump was doing a big deal in Moscow, potentially worth more than any deal he’s ever done, (reportedly in the hundreds of millions), while he was campaigning as Vladimir Putin’s best buddy, that comment has a little more salience doesn’t it?

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Unhappy Trumpers

by digby

It’s been a while since the media checked the pulse of the all-important Trump voter. This time some of them are a little more sensible than usual, reflecting some of the erosion in the poll numbers:

Two years ago, Jeff Daudert was fed up with politics. He wanted to shake up the status quo. He didn’t mind sending a message to the establishment — and, frankly, he liked the idea of a disruptive president.

But the 49-year-old retired Navy reservist has had some second thoughts.

“What the [expletive] were we thinking?” he asked the other night inside a Walmart here, in an area of blue-collar suburban Detroit that helped deliver Trump the presidency.

While Trump’s relationship with much of his base remains strong, two years after his inauguration his ties are fraying with voters like Daudert, the kind who voted in droves for Trump in 2016 in key pockets throughout the industrial Midwest and flipped previously Democratic states to him. The shutdown fight, as it has played out over the past month, is further eroding his support among voters who like the idea of beefing up border security, but not enough to close the government.

Many here, even those who still support Trump, say they hold him most responsible. They recite his comment from the Oval Office that he would be “proud to shut down the government.” When he said it, they listened.

“It’s silly. It’s destructive,” Daudert said, adding that all he knows about 2020 is that he won’t be supporting Trump. “I was certainly for the anti-status quo. … I’ll be more status quo next time.”

Here, far from the nation’s capital and in an area not dominated by federal workers, the government shutdown is resonating in an unusual way. A trampoline park is giving government employees and their families an hour of free jumping. A local credit union is offering low-interest loans for furloughed employees who need to replace a lost salary.

Some local governments in the area are beginning to allow federal workers to defer property taxes, utility bills and parking tickets. Food drives are being discussed to help TSA workers at Detroit’s airport, and a local yoga studio is offering free classes for federal employees.

“As a community it affects us because other people are being affected,” said Jasmin Cromwell, who runs Bodhi Seed Yoga & Wellness Studio, “whether we know them or not. Maybe I’m getting too yoga-like but we are all connected. It affects everyone. It affects us as a nation.”

Recent polling indicates that the government shutdown has caused skittishness among parts of Trump’s base, which has been one of the most enduring strengths of his presidency. A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, conducted Jan. 10 to Jan. 13, found his net approval rating had dropped 7 points since December.

One of the biggest drops came from suburban men, whose approval rating of Trump fell a net change of 18 percentage points, while evangelicals and Republicans also dipped by smaller margins. Among men without a college degree, the downward change was 7 points.

As Jeremiah Wilburn, a 45-year-old operating engineer, browsed the aisles at Walmart for a new pair of coveralls, he reflected on some of those shifts. Like many voters here, after siding twice in the elections with former president Barack Obama, he decided to gamble with Trump in 2016. And for most of the past two years, he was pleased. The economy was humming, jobs were flowing and wages seemed stable.

Until now.

“I was doing fine with him up until this government shutdown,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. You’re not getting the wall built for $5 billion. And Mexico is not paying for it, we all know that, too. Meanwhile, it’s starting to turn people like me away.”

He worries about the impact the shutdown will have on the economy. He’s concerned about the impact on his brother, who works for the TSA in Florida.

To him, the shutdown standoff has also poked holes in Trump’s ability to say that he cares for the working class, given that 800,000 federal employees and additional contractors going without a paycheck.

“You can’t expect people to come to work without getting paid,” Wilburn said. “If I were them, I certainly wouldn’t come to work.”

[…]

“We’re booming right now. How can I not like a guy that gives me more money and lowers my taxes?” said Jeff Cordel, a 57-year-old construction worker. “I haven’t heard the word layoff since he’s been in, and that’s saying something around here.”

But there is also a nagging concern that a downturn could be coming, in part because of forces that Trump has unleashed. Some overtime shifts have gone away. Several large buildings that once housed a Kmart or a bowling alley or restaurant are now empty.

“Times have been good. But things are slowing down a bit,” said Matt DeVuyst, a 62-year-old electrician who had just polished off a large breakfast at Coney Island, a staple of the Michigan diner scene. “If they don’t find common ground with China, who knows? We’re stable but nervous. It’s the fear of the unknown.”

Mike Keys, who in 2016 won a seat as a Democrat on the board of trustees in Macomb’s Clinton Township, said the anxiety in the area can make Trump’s economic optimism seem slightly off-key.

“Yeah, the economy is getting better, there’s more jobs. But pay raises? We’re not seeing that,” he said. “If you haven’t gotten a substantial raise in the last five or 10 years, you see [Trump] talking about the greatest economy — there’s a disconnect.”

At a Kroger in St. Clair Shores, across a lake from Canada, residents were deeply divided.

In the cereal aisle, Henry Black, a 69-year-old who spent his career at General Motors, voted for Trump, likes what the president has done and had a dire warning for him if he shifts course on the border wall.

“Trump needs to stand firm on this,” he said. “If he gives in to the Democrats on this, he’s finished.”

Near the pharmacy, Erica McQueen, a 38-year-old from St. Clair Shores, voted for Trump and also has liked a lot of what he’s done.

“But it gets overshadowed by the stunts he pulls,” she said. The shutdown, she said, was one of them.

“The wall is getting out of hand,” she said. “It’s too much. It’s ridiculous. I’m sick of seeing it, I’m sick of hearing about it.”

Like other onetime Trump supporters, she’s now openly wondering if she can back him again.

“Something miraculous has to happen,” she said, “for me to vote for him again.”

It’s tempting to shake these people and say “what were you thinking!!!!” But I’m not going to do that. Whatever they were thinking is in the past.

I’m going to look on the bright side and be happy that at least a few of my fellow Americans aren’t so far down the rabbit hole that they’ve completely lost their minds and think this lunatic is actually doing a good job. There are still tens of millions of them who still worship Dear Leader. But if their numbers are dwindling, even a little, we might just be able to survive this.

.

Bizarro World Judiciary Committee


by digby

Lindsey Graham is serious about throwing down some red meat for Dear Leader.  His motives remain unclear,  but my personal belief is that the delusional egomaniac thinks he’s running the country by manipulating Trump by distracting him with shiny objects and co-opting the base so he can exert influence on foreign policy. As I said, delusional.

Anyway, get ready for Bizarro World Judiciary Committee. Fox News is going to be drooling all over him for providing public hearings.  And if they can force the old biddy to testify one more time in public, it will give Trump and his followers a bigger thrill than they’ve seen in years:

New tensions are flaring on the Senate Judiciary Committee over plans by newly minted Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to dig into Obama-era scandals.

Graham, a close ally of President Trump’s, has outlined several areas he wants to probe now that he has the Judiciary Committee gavel.

They include the FBI’s handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications targeting former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
[…]
…And he’s committed the panel to digging into issues at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI that Trump publicly pressured former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate.

Graham told reporters earlier this month that he would do a “deep dive into the FISA issue” as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. And he told Fox News last month that he believed the FBI “phoned in” the Clinton probe and were “in the tank” for the Democratic presidential nominee.

“There’s a certain unevenness here about how you investigate campaigns,” Graham said, adding that he believed there was “100 percent” a double standard between how the bureau handled the investigation into Clinton compared to investigating the Trump campaign.

Graham also said late last year that he would “totally” investigate the FBI’s handling of its investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and Clinton’s email. He added separately last month that he would “get to the bottom of” the FISA warrant applications against Page and that he wanted to have “an in-depth discussion” with former FBI Director James Comey.

Asked about his investigation plans and the criticism from Democrats, a spokeswoman for Graham pointed to a pair of tweets from the GOP senator on Friday where he doubled down.

Graham described as “stunning” a Fox News report that Justice Department official Bruce Ohr discussed his views on a controversial research opposition dossier on Trump with individuals now on special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

“These purported revelations will NOT get a pass in Senate Judiciary Committee,” Graham added.

Seriously. They are going to re-investigate the fucking emails.