Month: March 2019

Yes, we do know Trump voters. How can we not? They are a national obsession

by digby

Paul Waldman has a good piece up this morning about the reflexive need for some Democrats to insult their own voters:

If you thought we were past the tiresome “How can Democrats appeal to Trump-loving Trump voters in Trump Country?” conversation, I’m going to disappoint you. And I’d like to use some recent comments from South Bend, Ind., Mayor and presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg to illustrate how problematic the discussion among Democrats is when it comes to thinking about different areas of the country and what kind of people live where.

Buttigieg was in the coastal enclave of San Francisco when he gave a radio interview that included this:

There are some folks I encounter here who seem to have trouble believing that things like Trump voters actually exist. And so I feel sometimes like I’m an emissary from the middle of the country, just pointing out that things look a little bit different in rural communities, industrial communities like mine, and that we really need to find ways to knit this picture back together into one America.

There’s a bit more to the discussion, but it goes on in that vein. Buttigieg’s intentions are good, since he wants to promote mutual understanding and common purpose. But he frames the problem as one that stems from condescending liberals who don’t sufficiently appreciate the lives and perspectives of people in the Midwest. In other words, the divide that exists is the fault of liberals alone. If they could just do more to understand the people who wind up voting for someone like Donald Trump, that would be the path to achieving unity.

Waldman goes on to point out that this tut-tutting of “coastal elites” — to our faces, no less — is really kind of stupid since we all live in places where plenty of Trump voters exist:

As Adam Serwer of the Atlantic points out, “There are more Trump voters in New York than Wyoming, Alaska, and the Dakotas combined.” Trump got about a million and a half votes in Buttigieg’s home state of Indiana, slightly less than the 1.6 million he got in the coastal state of New Jersey, and much less than the 2.8 million he got in New York, let alone the 4.5 million he got in California. Those are “real” Americans, too, even if they happen to live within driving distance of the ocean.

Not to mention the fact that we don’t live a cave and have read and watched approximately 7,239 profiles and in-depth interviews with Trump voters over the past five years. If anything, you’d think that they are a huge majority and the rest of us don’t exist.

Waldman also hits on something that continues to chap my hide. He admits that there are undoubtedly many liberals who are contemptuous of the Trump voters. Of course there are. But this isn’t a one way street by a long shot. In fact, it’s the other side that makes a fetish of their contempt — and profit from it:

[Y]ou can also find lots of conservatives who are contemptuous toward liberals and the places where they live. Yet if a Democrat ever insulted the “heartland,” there’d be hell to pay, while Republicans insult heavily Democratic places all the time. Ted Cruz could sneer at “New York values” as a way of attacking Donald Trump in 2016, but what would happen to Kamala D. Harris if she told Buttigieg that Democratic primary voters didn’t want any part of his “Indiana values”?

One more vivid example from recent history: In 2004, the conservative Club For Growth ran an ad against Howard Dean, in which a couple told him to “take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.” Everyone laughed. Now imagine the outcry if a liberal group told, say, Mike Huckabee to “take his trailer park-living, tobacco-chewing, NASCAR-watching, squirrel-eating freak show back to Arkansas where it belongs.” The condemnation would be furious and immediate, much of it coming from the elite media, who would yet again instruct Democrats that if they want to succeed they really need to stop being so condescending and reach out to those heartland voters.

Apparently, it’s a one-way street.

I would just remind Democratic candidates that this is playing into Donald Trump’s hands:

Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2019

And, by the way, the county most affected by the wildfires he was referencing voted for Donald Trump.

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It’s not just Trump and the fringe pledging revenge

by digby

Just as America deserved to have its elections sabotaged because of all the bad things it’s done in the past, I’m sure the Democrats must deserve this too:

Republicans are setting their sights on top Obama-era officials as they plan their own probe into the 2016 election.

Eager to move on from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and the Trump campaign, GOP senators are gearing up to investigate the investigators. The idea is gaining traction with the Republican caucus, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

Mueller’s report hasn’t been released yet, but Republicans have seized on a four-page letter from Attorney General William Barr that summarized key conclusions of the two-year probe, including that Mueller “did not establish” that President Trump or members of his campaign coordinated or colluded with Moscow in its election interference.

“Republicans believe that the FBI and [Department of Justice] — the top people — took the law in their own hands because they wanted [Hillary] Clinton to win and Trump to lose,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said during an interview with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto as part of a media blitz discussing his plans for an investigation.

He said that he will be looking at “abuse” of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application process and the counterintelligence operation into Trump’s campaign, adding that “there will be a lot of inquiry as to how this all happened.”

GOP senators are already naming former officials who would be at the top of their lists to question, including former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

“The Judiciary Committee has primary jurisdiction and doing oversight of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and so that … is something we need to do. Trying to find out how this thing got off the rails and hopefully prevent it from happening again,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Cornyn rattled off a list of Obama-era officials he would want to speak with, including Lynch, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, but he homed in on Comey.

“I think Director Comey is probably near the top. He’s the one who said that his intention of leaking memos of his conversation was designed to prompt the appointment of a special counsel. It just strikes me as some vindictiveness and animus toward the president motivating a lot of the action,” Cornyn said.

Graham, who earlier this month teased that he wants to bring in Comey, added that the former official would be called to publicly testify and “will answer for your time as FBI director.”

Comey has been a years-long source of ire for Trump, who fired the FBI director in May 2017. The White House initially cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s private email server as the reason for his unusual firing, but Trump told NBC News days later that he was thinking about “the Russia thing” when he decided to fire Comey.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), an ally of Trump, also wants a laundry list of former Obama officials’ communications to be made public, including any communications from former President Obama about an investigation into the Trump campaign. Paul is also calling on Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to testify under oath.

“We need every ounce of information about the people at the very top of our intelligence community that were promoting the inclusion of this fake dossier,” Paul said. “We based this investigation on a lie. We should investigate who the liars were.”

Trump’s allies have claimed that the Russia investigation was started because of information in the controversial opposition research dossier compiled against Trump.

But a 2018 memo from the House Intelligence Committee, which was controlled at the time by Republicans, found that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump campaign officials had improper contacts with Russia was triggered by information the bureau obtained about George Papadopoulos, a former adviser to the campaign.

With Republicans losing control of the House, the center of gravity for a GOP counter investigation is shifting to the Senate, where Graham, an ally of Trump who is up for reelection in 2020, controls the high-profile Judiciary Committee.

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt.” In the wake of the report being handed over, he has seized on the idea that officials within the Obama Justice Department were using an investigation to try to undercut his campaign.

“How did this start? How did it start? You had dirty cops. You had people that are about FBI folks. I know so many. They are incredible people. But at the top, they were not clean, to put it mildly. And what they did to our country was a terrible, terrible thing,” Trump said during an interview with Sean Hannity.

It’s not the first time Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have floated trying to dig into the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s private email server, the FISA warrant application for Trump campaign aide Carter Page, the controversial opposition research dossier compiled against Trump or the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the campaign.

But a probe during the last Congress was derailed amid a disagreement between Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), then the chairman of the committee, and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the panel, about the scope and direction of the panel and concerns that it could bump heads with Mueller’s investigation and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But with Mueller’s probe wrapped and the Intelligence Committee expected to finish its work in the coming months, senators are digging in for a new chapter that focuses on some of the largest scandals of the 2016 election. The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway was invited by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to a Senate GOP caucus lunch this week, where they discussed the Russia investigation, a spokesman for the GOP senator confirmed.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a member of Graham’s committee, is calling for public oversight hearings, including issuing subpoenas to force cooperation if necessary. Under Judiciary Committee rules, Graham would either need a deal with Feinstein to issue a subpoena or would need a majority of the GOP-controlled panel.

McConnell, asked about Graham’s plans, said the South Carolina Republican had “raised a legitimate question” about potential misbehavior within the Obama administration during the 2016 campaign.

“I think it’s not inappropriate for the chairman of the Judiciary Committee with jurisdiction over the Justice Department to investigate possible misbehavior,” McConnell told reporters during a weekly press conference. “The House is not going to miss an opportunity in … the coming months to look at what they perceive to be things that require oversight. The Senate is involved in the oversight business just like the House is.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who has stuck by Trump, told radio host Hugh Hewitt that there needs to be more scrutiny of how “so many Obama officials and senior officials in the FBI came to believe that an American presidential campaign was colluding with a foreign intelligence service.”

Cotton was asked if his “premise” was that Obama administration officials tried to “sabotage” the transition.

“I don’t think based on what we’ve seen over the last three years you can have any other working premise,” Cotton said.

This isn’t a joke. They’re going for it.

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“The difference between me and Trump”
by Tom Sullivan

“Both sides do it” and other false equivalencies perpetuated in political debate keep cropping up no matter how much the national media and the right have their thumbs on the scale. The press has a tenuous business model to protect and does not want to alienate potential consumers of their products and advertising. The authoritarian right has political model fueled by resentment and projection. False equivalency allows the people of Trump country to demonize their opponents while avoiding “personal responsibility” for toxifying American politics.

No, in their minds shouting, “Lock [fill in the blank] up!” at rallies is justified. Their cult leader, no matter his wealth and power, status and privilege, is a knot of resentments and insecurities reflective of their own. In happier times, they would be the subject of an illustrated parable from Theodor Geisel.

Paul Waldman ponders a reality in which, instead of liberals being exhorted to bind America’s wounds by better understanding Trump voters, it is conservatives’ turn:

I have a crazy dream that goes like this. After a whole bunch of think pieces asking why Republicans are so contemptuous toward components of the Democratic base — let’s say African Americans — a Republican contender for president starts telling his party that they have to change the way they think, feel and talk. “For too long, members of my party have treated African Americans with scorn,” he’d tell an interviewer. “But as someone who has spent time in those communities, let me explain how they see the state of our country, and why we need to find ways to meet them where they live. Republicans are out of touch and that has to change.”

That would never happen, of course, the GOP base being “made up of only the most worthy of Americans, hailing from the small towns and rural areas where all virtue finds its true home.”

Now, one can certainly find liberals who are condescending towards Trump voters, Waldman concedes. “Elite liberal” condescension is a conservative media trope. But the right feels perfectly justified in advertising theirs:

One more vivid example from recent history: In 2004, the conservative Club For Growth ran an ad against Howard Dean, in which a couple told him to “take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.” Everyone laughed. Now imagine the outcry if a liberal group told, say, Mike Huckabee to “take his trailer park-living, tobacco-chewing, NASCAR-watching, squirrel-eating freak show back to Arkansas where it belongs.” The condemnation would be furious and immediate, much of it coming from the elite media, who would yet again instruct Democrats that if they want to succeed they really need to stop being so condescending and reach out to those heartland voters.

Last night’s MSNBC special on the Green New Deal featured an exchange between New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bob Inglis, the former South Carolina congressman. Deemed apostate for believing climate change was real, Inglis lost his seat to T-party candidate Trey Gowdy in a 2010 primary. Inglis was on set in the Bronx not just as a Republican from “real America” who believes climate needs addressing, but to draw a parallel with Ocasio-Cortez who ousted a more conservative Democrat in a 2018 primary.

Inglis might believe climate change is an urgent problem, but the Green New Deal’s inclusion of universal basic income was a bridge too far. Inglis fulfilled his designated “both sides” role by suggesting there is now a T-party of the left, and the forum on climate change was the mirror image of a Trump rally. Universal basic income should wait.

A few catcalls erupted from the otherwise patient audience. Someone shouted that Inglis was a moron.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, that’s unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez responded curtly, calling down the heckler. Pivoting immediately to Inlgis, she continued, “And that’s the difference between me and Trump.”

She. Is. Good. That particular exchange occurs at timestamp 7:50, but the entire clip sets the stage.

Keep this tweet of the exchange handy. You may need it at Thanksgiving.

Friday Night Soother

by digby

Let’s face it: All dogs like to smell poop. But this dog smells something else, too — opportunity.

Train, a Chesapeake Bay retriever, sniffs out the scat, or poop, of elusive wild animals like jaguars and oncillas in the name of conservation.

It might sound like an unsavory task, but these scat samples are goldmines for researchers like Train’s owner, conservation biologist Karen DeMatteo.

DeMatteo and a research team in Argentina are trying to pinpoint the habitats of endangered animals, but it’s hard to figure out where they live if you can’t find the animals themselves.

That’s where Train comes in.

“Everybody leaves poop behind in the forest,” DeMatteo says.

Scat can reveal a lot, including the species of an animal and even its sex.

“You can figure out which habitats they like and which habitats they avoid,” DeMatteo says.

Using this data, she and the rest of her team determine which wilderness areas — or corridors — should be prioritized in conservation efforts. 

“Everywhere, people are expanding,” DeMatteo says. “We can try to figure out areas of potential overlap between humans and wildlife. We can identify areas that need more work, areas that are great corridors, or areas that are kind of lost to the cause.”

Train was originally a rescue dog from the Humane Society. He first entered a program to train drug-detection dogs, but it didn’t work out.

“He failed out of narcotics school because he was too energetic,” DeMatteo says. “He was like a bull in a china closet.”

Train is almost 12 and a rescue dog from the Humane Society.

So she found Train a more suitable career path.

At the time, DeMatteo was looking for dogs to go to the Argentine province of Misiones to work on a research project. Since Train already knew the basics of drug detection, he was a viable candidate.

As it turns out, Train couldn’t care less that he was searching for poop instead of drugs — all he wanted was a ball to play with at the end.

His high energy may have hampered him in narcotics school, but it was a welcome trait in Argentina, where he trekked through vast stretches of wilderness. Last year, Train covered about 1,000 kilometers of Argentinian forest in search of animal droppings.

“Train was just a machine,” DeMatteo says. “We just switched him to use all that energy and search really big areas and find this poop for us.”

But his energy is perfect for searching acres of land

DeMatteo’s team uses dogs to confirm the locations of multi-species corridors — pathways through developed areas that allow wild animals to travel between wilderness habitats.

Before, most similar studies were done with cameras mounted in the wild and equipped with sensors to photograph animals as they passed by. But that method is not the most efficient one because scientists must wait for the animals to cross the camera’s path. Also, the cameras get stolen.

But using Train, along with a border collie named April, has opened doors for the researchers. For example, private landowners who might have been hesitant to allow camera traps on their property are more receptive to the dogs.

“They’re afraid you’re going to take their land or do something funny, and we explain that we just want to look for poop and find out where animals are moving. And they’re like, ‘Oh, cool, can I come?'” DeMatteo says.

Even though Train is nearing 12 years old, he shows no sign of stopping. He’s headed to Nebraska later this year to track mountain lions.

Sometimes the researchers will wake up after trekking long distances and wish for a day off. But they have to keep up with Train, who always wakes up ready to go.

“You’re like, ‘Oh my God, how does he do it?'” DeMatteo says.

She admits the job can be tiring for humans. But working alongside Train makes up for it, she says. 

“It just makes life really great to get up and work with a dog every day.”

When a summary isn’t a summary

by digby

Emptywheel on Barr’s new letter:

Since his obviously limited summary released Sunday night, DOJ has been refusing to provide basic transparency about the Mueller Report or its plans for release. That refusal is best exemplified by DOJ’s unwillingness to reveal how long the Mueller Report is.

Four days later DOJ has just made public a letter to the Judiciary Committees leaders. And while it doesn’t provide an exact page count, it finally offers a ballpark of the page count: “nearly 400 pages long (exclusive of tables and appendices).”

It issues a hilarious denial that Barr’s four page summary — which Barr said “summarize[d] the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation” [my emphasis] — wasn’t a summary but then uses the word “summary” in describing what it was.

I am aware of some media reports and other public statements mischaracterizing my March 24, 2019 supplemental notification as a “summary” of the Special Counsel’s investigation and report. For example, Chairman Nadler’s March 25 letter refers to my supplemental notification as a “four-page summary of the Special Counsel’s review.” My March 24 letter was not, and did not purport to be, an exhaustive recounting of the Special Counsel’s investigation or report. As my letter made clear, my notification to Congress and the public provided, pending release of the report, a summary of its “principal conclusions” [sic] — that is, its bottom line.
[snip]
I do not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the report or release it in serial fashion.

As the bolded language from his original summary makes clear, Barr is now redefining what he summarized in it.

Finally, the letter describes what he will redact (meaning he has reversed on what the NYT got told about DOJ releasing a “summary”) in a public release by mid-April.

Specifically, we are well along in the process of identifying and redacting the following: (1) material subject to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) that by law cannot be made public; (2) material the intelligence community identifies as potentially compromising sensitive sources and methods; (3) material that could affect other ongoing matters, including those that the Special Counsel has referred to other Department offices; and (4) information that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties.

Of course, this is a letter to Jerry Nadler, who has a solid constitutional claim to be entitled to grand jury information — indeed, to the entire report. So while it may remain a reasonable solution for public release (though, note his silence on the exhibits, which must be released too), it is a absolutely unacceptable response to the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

At least it shows he’s beginning to feel embarrassed enough about his original hackish summary that he has issued a somewhat less hackish one.

Heidi Przybyla explained on MSNBC why Democrats are so aggressively pushing for an earlier date. It has to do with how the Republicans have dealt with this sort of thing in the past. One example would be when James Comey announced that he was recommending to the DOJ that they not indict Hillary Clinton over her email on July 5th, 2016 — Jason Chaffetz dragged Comey up to the hill for a public hearing two days later.

Granted, this is a much bigger investigation (although you wouldn’t know it from the oceans of ink that was spilled on the email case) so they gave Barr more time. But they aren’t going to allow the Republicans to drag their feet. They’d be idiots to do it.

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Yes, he really said this

by digby

Last night in Cedar Rapids Donald Trump actually said this:

In this country, we cannot criminalize political differences. We do not abuse the law enforcement and intelligence power to target our political opponents.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have to spell out why that is an astonishing thing for him to say. Even after he said that his crowds were chanting “Lock them up!” and he stood there smugly grinning.

Here is Trump’s twitter archive on Hillary Clinton for March 2019:

Here’s the president’s lawyer:

“We’re now trying to prove who did it,” Giuliani said. “The premise is, somebody had to have started the ‘He colluded with the Russians’” narrative. 

Asked whether the president himself wants an investigation to examine this question, Giuliani said, “Goddamn right he [does]. This is not ‘Oh, gee, it’s over, let’s forget about it.’”

Bizarroworld is giving me a headache this week.

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The public isn’t moving

by digby

I don’t know if Barr’s release of the longer summary of the Mueller Report next month will change anything but his letter didn’t. Huffington Post summarized all the polling that’s come out this week:

What do people think the report means?

In the HuffPost/YouGov poll, 18 percent of Americans who’d heard at least something about Mueller’s report said it found that Trump committed crimes, with 29 percent saying it found that others in his campaign committed crimes, and 31 percent that it found nobody on his campaign did so.

Trump voters who’d heard about the report overwhelmingly said it found no evidence of criminal conduct on the part of anyone on Trump’s campaign; Clinton voters, who’d mostly expected the report to conclude that Trump committed crimes, were substantially more equivocal.

Asked for their own opinions about the truth, 29 percent of Americans said they personally believe Trump committed crimes, 24 percent that he did not commit crimes but that others on his campaign did, and 23 percent that nobody on his campaign committed crimes. Views, again, were politically divided:

Other polls asked differently worded questions, with correspondingly different results. But most found divided perceptions about the report’s findings, with much of the public finding their pre-existing views confirmed, and a substantial share still unclear on the conclusions or feeling that matters are not yet entirely settled.

Per CNN/SSRS, 43 percent of Americans said Trump and his campaign have been exonerated of any collusion with Russia, with 56 percent saying that they were not exonerated, but that collusion couldn’t be proven.

 
Per an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, 36 percent of Americans said Mueller’s report clears Trump of any wrongdoing, with a 56 percent majority saying questions still exist.

In a new CBS survey, 34 percent thought the Mueller report cleared Trump of illegal activity and 23 percent that it had not, with the remaining 43 percent unsure or believing it was too soon to say. Sixty percent, however, thought it was at least somewhat likely that senior Trump advisers had improper dealings with Russia before Donald Trump was sworn in as president. Half of Democrats say they’re disappointed by the findings, while a majority of Republicans describe themselves as pleased and relieved. 

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, nearly half of Americans said they agreed with the statement that “President Trump or someone from his campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election,” with 40 percent disagreeing. (Questions framed as agree/disagree can make respondents more likely to say they’re in agreement.) 

And in a Politico/Morning Consult poll, voters said 55-to-21 that Mueller had not found evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election. There was less unanimity on Mueller’s findings about obstruction ― 15 percent thought he’d concluded that Trump obstructed the investigation, 27 percent that Trump did not, and 37 percent answered that he made no such determination.

Are people even paying attention to the story?

Sort of. Most of the public said they’d heard something about the report, but in surveys that asked how closely they’d followed the story, only between 23 and 35 percent reported paying the closest attention possible. The people paying the closest attention were also the least likely to be swayed: In the HuffPost/YouGov survey, 63 percent of Trump voters said they had heard a lot about the report, compared to 41 percent of Clinton voters and just 31 percent of nonvoters.

Do people have faith in the report?

Few are outright skeptical of the report itself, but there are some doubts. In the HuffPost/YouGov survey, 66 percent say they believe Mueller’s report is somewhat or very accurate, and just a tenth that it’s not very or not at all accurate. Per the CBS poll, 44 percent believe the investigation was conducted fairly, just 10 percent unfairly, and 47 percent are unsure or say it’s too soon to know.

Mueller’s own ratings are up. In February, Americans approved of Mueller’s job as special counsel by just a 3-point margin, according to HuffPost/YouGov polling. They now approve by a 16-point margin, thanks in large part to a substantial thaw in opinion among Trump voters, who formerly opposed him in large numbers but are now close to evenly split. The Economist’s polling, also using YouGov, noted a similar improvement in Trump voters’ view of Mueller, as did Marist’s polling.

Clinton voters, meanwhile, continue to feel positively about Mueller. But they’re far more suspicious about Barr. Clinton voters in the HuffPost/YouGov poll disapprove of Barr by a 50-point margin, while Trump voters approve by a 63-point margin.

What do people want to see happen next?

Americans support the release of the full report by a margin rarely seen on charged political issues. In seven of the most recent surveys that raised the question, between 57 and 84 percent of respondents supported releasing the full report, with at most a third saying the report should not be released. In the HuffPost/YouGov survey, most who wanted the report to be made public also said it was very important that it be made available.

Opinions on other next steps are less clear. A 57 percent majority, according to the CNN/SSRS poll, want Congress to hold hearings to investigate the findings in the report, with 43 percent saying Congress should end the investigation. But CBS, which asked specifically about Democrats in Congress, found Americans saying 58-to-38 that they should move on to other issues.

In Marist’s polling for NPR and PBS NewsHour, about two-thirds of Americans want Mueller and Barr to testify to Congress about the special counsel’s findings. But the public is close to evenly split on whether Democrats should hold further hearings or end the investigation.

Did the report change anyone’s minds about Trump or the investigation?

Public opinion on Trump and Russia, thus far, has been largely characterized by inflexible partisanship, with Trump voters insisting on his innocence, Clinton voters convinced of his guilt, and the rest of the public skeptical of the president’s integrity but not especially tuned into the story.

The HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that, based on Mueller’s investigation, just 20 percent of Americans consider the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia to be a very serious problem, down from 31 percent last month. That shift is mostly due to a change among Clinton voters: In February, 73 percent said the relationship was a very serious problem based on what Mueller had uncovered. Following the report, just 44 percent said the same.

That’s a lot more movement than past polls have found. But it’s not a shift that seems likely to help Trump politically. His opponents’ vehement distaste for him has never been limited to, or even largely based on, his campaign’s relationship with Russia. Both polls found Trump’s approval rating at an identical 41 percent among the public, and an identically dismal 3 percent among Clinton voters.

Other polling, meanwhile, also finds little evidence of a sea change among any segment of the public.

“Despite the two years of attention focused on Russia and the convictions and all that,” Marist pollster Lee Miringoff told NPR, “it pretty much is exactly where it was.”

Per CNN, the 43 percent who believe the report fully exonerates the president is virtually identical to the share who extolled his innocence in previous polls ― suggesting, in their words, that “the summary letter released Sunday did little to move public opinion on this matter.” (That 43 percent is also, notably, more or less synonymous with the upper bound of Trump’s narrow band of approval.) Trump, the Morning Consult pollsters concluded, “got no bounce with voters after attorney general said he was cleared of collusion.” A Pew Research poll also found little movement in broader perceptions of Trump’s conduct after the report was finished. Those perceptions remain largely unfavorable, with a majority of Americans saying that Trump has probably acted illegally.

What this says to me is that Democrats tend to act in good faith on this much more than Republicans. You know if the shoe were on the other foot,  100% of GOP voters would reject Barr’s conclusion letter outright and would right now be calling for Mueller’s head on a platter. I’m sure there’s some of that on the other side but I haven’t seen it. And the polling bears that out.

People are rightfully skeptical of Barr because of his history and that memo he wrote to get the job. They are far less skeptical of Mueller and would like to see what he’s come up with before making any judgment about the outcome.

So now we go back to “waiting for the Mueller Report.”

TGIF.

No Trump, these asylum seekers are not prizefighters

by digby

Trump mocks immigration lawyers and asylum seekers pic.twitter.com/ekYhGcFLpa— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 29, 2019

I think we know who the big fat con is, don’t we?

Here is reality:

The translator leaned over, telling her about upcoming court dates & the importance of attending — or being subject to a deportation order in absentia.

Of course this little darling had no idea what was going on. She blew raspberries my way & giggled the whole time.
2/x— 𝙅𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙋𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙮 (@Jose_Pagliery) March 28, 2019

When it was all over, she didn't want to get up & leave. She seemed so content just sitting by my side and swinging her legs from the pew.

I complimented the rainbow unicorn on her jacket. It's cold outside & you should really put it on, it's such a beautiful jacket, I said.
4/x— 𝙅𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙋𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙮 (@Jose_Pagliery) March 28, 2019

The child care center worker held her hand, and they walked out.

I have no idea where her mom is. She has no idea where her mom is.

I couldn't stop thinking about little Merolin for the rest of the day.

5/5.— 𝙅𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙋𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙮 (@Jose_Pagliery) March 28, 2019

Trump is now threatening to close the border by next week unless the Mexican government stops all the asylum seekers.

Dara Lind at Vox explains that part of the reason for the upsurge in migrants crossing outside ports of entry is the administration’s slowing of the process. So naturally, Trump wants to make everything much, much worse:

Shutting down ports of entry would be an economic disaster. It would also disrupt the lives of border communities that rely on the flow of people between the US and Mexico — including the major cities of San Diego (and Tijuana) and El Paso (and Ciudad Juarez).

Approximately $1.5 billion worth of commerce happens along the US-Mexico border every day. Nearly half a million people cross the border legally every day through Texas ports alone.

Even reductions in port capacity or temporary shutdowns tend to lead to panic among the business community and local residents. El Paso is currently concerned that already-long waits at the ports could get longer as agents are reassigned to care for unauthorized migrants. When the San Ysidro port of entry in San Diego shut down for a few hours in November, as agents responded with force (including tear gas) to an organized march of asylum seekers, the temporary closure cost about $5.3 million in lost business revenue.

Of course, making it harder for people to cross legally generally only encourages people to cross illegally — something that’s already been seen as the US has limited the number of asylum-seekers it allows to present themselves at ports.

Trump’s Friday tweets actually tacitly acknowledge that drug smuggling is more likely to happen at ports than between them — something he generally explicitly lies about. But drug smugglers are less likely than, say, banana exporters to just throw up their hands if a port is shut down, rather than finding other illegal ways to get drugs into the US.

Every time Trump tweets something like this, border-state legislators and business associations react with alarm. Generally, DHS officials stress that they understand the importance of keeping the ports open. But Trump by all appearances does not.

It’s not that “shutting down the border” is the administration’s only proposed solution — Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen wrote a letter to Congress on Thursday asking for changes to the law regarding family detention and child deportation, and predicting that they would need more funding. But it’s an idea Trump himself can’t let go of. And now, for the first time — if for completely different reasons — there is an actual prospect that the administration will do something that looks vaguely similar to Trump’s threats.

This is what he wants of course. There was no crisis. But he needs one so he’s creating it. And he obviously doesn’t care at all how many children and vulnerable people her hurts or even how much he damages the economy. In fact, he wants to damage cross-border business — so he can blame the vulnerable brown people he and his base hate.

God he is exhausting. But I think that’s a feature for him, not a bug.

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My Salon column this morning:

QOTD: a sick person

by digby

Guess who:

I have a better education than them, I’m smarter than them, I went to the best schools and they didn’t. Much more beautiful house, much more beautiful apartment, much more beautiful everything.  

And I’m president and they’re not.

Yes, he said that at this rally last night. And they cheered wildly. 

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