Month: March 2019

He’s always been a childish insult dog


by digby

The Daily Beast reminds us that Trump and Nadler have a history:

Long before there was Crooked Hillary and Lyin’ Ted, there was Fat Jerry.

That 1995 bit of name-calling by Donald Trump was aimed at Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the Democrat from New York who now serves as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The insult may not make much sense to those who have begun taking notice of Nadler only now that he has sent out more than 80 letters to individuals and entities asking for a wide range of documents relating to their dealings with Trump.

But the present Nadler is a person transformed since he underwent stomach-reduction surgery in 2001 and shed more than 100 pounds. He had been noshing himself toward a peak weight of 328 pounds back when he first roused Trump’s ire.

Their original object of contention was Television City, a metropolis within a metropolis that Trump proposed on a 52-acre tract he acquired on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 1980s. The initial plan was for eight towers and 5,700 apartments, as well as television and movie studios.

Nadler met with Trump as the state assemblyman who then represented the area. Trump excitedly told him that the centerpiece would be a 150-story building, the tallest in the world. The lower floors were to be NBC’s new headquarters. Trump would of course occupy a palatial penthouse apartment at the very top.

“Above the clouds,” he told Nadler.

“New Yorkers want the tallest building,” Trump also said. “And so do I.”

Nadler was more of the opinion that New Yorkers wanted an affordable apartment. He opposed Trump’s project, viewing it as a neighborhood-destroyer. Enough of the neighborhood agreed with him that he was elected to Congress after the incumbent, Rep. Ted Weiss, died the day before the primary in 1992.

Mayor Ed Koch had also opposed the project and thought he had killed it when he used generous tax abatements such as Trump had wanted for Television City to convince NBC to remain at Rockefeller Center. Koch engaged in a bit of name-calling himself as he made clear his feelings regarding Trump.

“Piggy! Piggy! Piggy!” Koch said.

Whatever else Trump might have been, he was also determined. He nixed the world’s tallest building and reduced the number of apartments planned to 4,000. But, lest anyone think he was defeated, he changed the name of the project from Television City to Trump City. He changed it again to Riverside South as he sought to finance the project with a $356 million low-interest loan guaranteed by a federal program designed to generate low- and moderate-income housing.

The Housing and Urban Development inspector general issued a 1997 report that called the proposed financing into question. The IG noted that more than 80 percent of the apartments in the Trump project would be affordable only to upper-income individuals.

“Trump’s mortgage guaranty application is purely a ploy to get taxpayers to foot the bill for his luxury housing mega-development,” Nadler said in a statement.

The IG also noted that Trump’s application for mortgage insurance had been refused because the collateral he put up included land that had been promised to the city as a park in an effort to sell the proposal.

“I congratulate HUD for piercing one of Trump’s many scams,” Nadler was quoted saying.

Nadler was joined by Sen. John McCain in opposing the financing. McCain gave a speech from the Senate floor that may have still rankled Trump in 2016. Maybe the truth is that Trump likes war heroes who don’t challenge one of his scams.
[…]
By that point, Trump had already gone into multiple corporate bankruptcies. He was rescued from personal bankruptcy when a Hong Kong group led by the Cheng family provided the needed financing.

But Trump was not done with seeking public funds. He sought to have taxpayers spend $350 million to move the West Side Highway so that it no longer ran between his development site and the Hudson River. Nadler was among those who noted that this same stretch of highway had just undergone a $70 million renovation.

“It’s a sin against taxpayers,” Nadler said, terming the proposed highway project “a pork barrel boondoggle.”

Nadler introduced and single-handedly marshaled legislation that ruled out any federal funding for the project beyond what had already been allocated for a feasibility study.

Trump responded with name-calling and spin.

“Fat Jerry Nadler is doing me a favor,” he said. “He’s too stupid to realize it. He’s making me a lot of money.”

Trump argued that moving the highway to allow direct access to the waterfront would have only been a concession to the community and not an effort to make his property more appealing and therefore valuable. He said the highway as presently located would accord a fortune in free advertising once the project was built.

“I have to say we get a bigger benefit from leaving the highway where it is, because when cars go by they will look at our masterpiece,” Trump was quoted saying.

But Trump did not yet have a base that let him name-call with impunity. And, being a mix of every possible kind of person, New York prizes fairness and tolerance more than most places.

Trump ended up saying he had only referred to Nadler as “Fat Jerry” out of concern for his health.

“I did it for a reason,” he told the New York Daily News. “I really feel that whatever can inspire him to go out and lose that tremendous amount of weight should be done.”

Trump continued, “To be honest with you, he’s a walking time bomb and if I can convince him to put himself, not in great, but in reasonable shape, I’m doing great service to him and his family.”

And people say Trump is devoid of empathy!
[…]
Nadler never responded to Trump’s name-calling, but you can be sure he never forgot it.

And now, Fat Jerry has a new name whose ramifications Trump is only beginning to learn.

Chairman Nadler.

I think Nadler is above taking vengeance for such infantile insults. But it’s clear that he’s known Trump is a criminal conman for a long time. They are both New Yorkers and he knows what he’s dealing with.

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Projection watch

by digby

Remember this?

Are we talking about the same cyberattack where it was revealed that head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the debate?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2016

Why didn't Hillary Clinton announce that she was inappropriately given the debate questions – she secretly used them! Crooked Hillary.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2016

DONALD TRUMP: The media is so corrupt that Hillary was given the exact wording of a question from a previous debate! Remember this? Just recently.

Word for word, given the questions. Here are the questions… Nobody gave me the questions.

I don’t know what I’d do. Would I turn the people in? Or would I take the questions?

She was given the question– I think I’d turn them in, I think I’d ask what’s going on over here.

I want to know, was she given the questions to my debate. But it doesn’t matter because we won…

But she was given the questions to a debate by Donna Brazile, who is now under pressure to resign. She should resign.

But I ask you, why didn’t Hillary say, ‘I can’t do this… I can’t take these questions?’

Nobody from the media is asking that question. Why is it? They’re putting a lot of pressure on Donna Brazile. She was on television the other night. It was brutal. They’re putting a lot of pressure on her, but tell me, she handed the questions to Hillary. She figured out the answers, put whatever she had to do, and then why she didn’t she say: ‘I’m not allowed to do this’?

Years ago, years ago, there was a show called the $64,000 Question. Does anybody remember? Don’t say it? Really? A contestant… got the questions in advance, prior to the show and his life was ruined. But Hillary got the questions in advance, and the press doesn’t even bring it up.

Can you imagine if I got the questions in advance and they found out?

Can you, can you imagine if I got the questions and they found out? They would reinvent a much more sinister form of the electric chair, is that right? It would be awful. I have to ask the press to find out. Why aren’t they asking Hillary why she didn’t turn in the people that gave her the answers and those questions?

He attacked the other side for doing what he did:

Wow @JaneMayerNYer reports Ailes fed Trump debate questions before the first GOP primary debate on Fox in 2015 https://t.co/ix94LVPGgF— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) March 4, 2019

You cannot go wrong if you assume any attack is really projection of his own behavior.

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What are these emoluments and bribes you speak of?

by digby

These people aren’t even trying to hide their bribes anymore. There’s no need to. They can just buy some hotel rooms or some golf memberships. It’s so easy:

T-Mobile in a letter to congressional Democrats said it had spent nearly $200,000 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., since announcing its $26 billion merger with Sprint, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

This is the first time T-Mobile has acknowledged its spending, which it said totaled $195,000 since the announcement of the merger. It represents a significant spike in spending at the Trump property.

“While we understand that staying at Trump properties might be viewed positively by some and negatively by others, we are confident that the relevant agencies address the questions before them on the merits,” Anthony Russo, T-Mobile USA’s vice president of federal legislative affairs, wrote in the letter dated Feb. 21, according to the Post.

The letter was in response to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

Before the merger was announced, only two T-Mobile officials had ever stayed at Trump’s hotel, according to the Post. Since April 29, T-Mobile executives have stayed at the hotel for at least 52 nights.

Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns about the T-Mobile stays at the Trump hotel as the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission continue to review the multibillion-dollar merger.

T-Mobile in the letter wrote that the nearly $200,000 paid for “meeting space, catering, business center services, audio/visual equipment rental [and] lodging” in the hotel, according to the Post.

Russo acknowledged that Trump hotel spending made up about 14 percent of T-Mobile’s corporate budget on D.C. hotels since April. Half of that budget was spent at Hilton hotels, Russo wrote, the Post reported.

Warren and Jayapal in a letter to T-Mobile CEO John Legere last month questioned whether T-Mobile was attempting to “curry favor” with the president by having executives spend tens of thousands at his hotel.

They pointed out that nine of T-Mobile’s top executives were scheduled to check in at the Trump hotel the day after the merger announcement.

“The decision to stay at the Trump Hotel appears to be unusual for several reasons,” Warren and Jayapal wrote. “Your stay began one day after the merger announcement. You had a particularly high profile during your stay, walking the lobby in an outfit described as ‘a walking billboard for T-Mobile,’ posing for Instagram pictures, and, during a later stay, meeting in the lobby with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.”

Legere has said the hotel stays were not politically motivated.

Russo in the letter, sent to Warren and Jayapal on Feb. 21, wrote that the company is “confident” the hotel stays will not have an impact on the merger.

Trump’s son Eric, who took over the family’s real estate business when his father took office, previously told the Post that it was “no surprise” that T-Mobile would want to stay at the Trump hotel, saying the hotel has “absolutely no role in politics.”

We know that Trump ordered that the Justice Department block the At&t-Time Warner merger because he wanted to force Time Warner to destroy CNN in order to preserve it. I think we all knew that at the time. But there’s no reason to believe he also couldn’t be persuaded to back a merger for a little scratch. That’s just good business.

Oh, and by the way, no one seems to remember that Rudy admitted months ago that Trump ordered the deal blocked:

Rudy says “the president denied the merger”

AT&aT was on the defensive all week. But then HuffPost published this interview with Trump’s new lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Man, oh man.

Giuliani said “the president denied the merger,” which flies in the face of everything the W.H. and the DOJ have said for months. All along, the government has said Trump was NOT involved in blocking the AT&T-Time Warner deal. Lawyers and P.R. people have tried to shut down all of the speculation about improper political interference. DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim denied it in a sworn affidavit. Now, all of a sudden, Giuliani says Trump was behind it?!

What Rudy was trying to do

He was trying to defend the president against any suggestion that Cohen improperly influenced the administration. “Whatever lobbying was done didn’t reach the president,” Giuliani said. But then he went further, telling HuffPost’s S.V. Date that “he did drain the swamp… The president denied the merger. They didn’t get the result they wanted.”

Here they go again


by digby

Maybe I’m missing something, but the hazard of an omnibus document demand by House judiciary versus discreet, serial ones is that, however legitimate the areas of inquiry, the wide-ranging nature of it is too easily plays into the “witch-hunt” meme.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) March 4, 2019

MORE from @bfouhy on the new House Judiciary investigation: “It feels like it is setting up a situation where the president’s defenders, his media defenders, can just blast this as purely political.” #MTPDaily https://t.co/iJphb3xpxR

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 4, 2019

I’ve often used this famous Yiddish joke to describe certain events in Democratic politics:

There were these two Jewish men standing before a firing squad in Czarist Russia. Their crime? Being Jewish. So the Cossack captain heading the firing squad looks at Abie and Yankele and shouts, “Jews, take off your hats.” Abie takes off his hat. But Yankele says, “No, I won’t take off my hat.” So Abie leans over to Yankele and whispers, “Yankele, don’t make trouble.”

(There are hundreds of versions of that joke out there. This one comes from a retired professor from San Francisco State named Ralph Beren who now leads seminars at synagogues about Jewish humor and how it’s gotten the people through rough times for millenia.)


I am glad to see that the House Democrats are not listening to this utter bullshit. We have a monster in the White House and the people have a right to know the details of just how bad it really is. If there is no proper accounting for all of this, we are doomed.


I’m sure these people believe the Democrats should just make nice and talk about health care so they don’t have to face any possible blowback. But that is not only an abdication of duty it’s a fools game.  Trump has been calling it a witch hunt for two years. The people who don’t believe this are not likely to be dissuaded by congressional hearings and the people who do believe it will continue to do so regardless of what the Democrats do.


This is a depressingly old story in Democratic politics. I think most Dems have learned there’s no margin in being timorous about this fight. Obviously, some have not and some in the media are happy to follow this old frame. 

Remember when the Republicans prepared impeachment for Hillary before the 2016 election?

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

During the last month of the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump took to issuing a stern warning to America about what they could expect to face if Hillary Clinton were to be elected president.  In Cedar Rapids, Iowa he noted the re-opening of the email case and called it the “biggest political scandal since Watergate.” In Miami he told the crowd, “if Hillary Clinton were to be elected, it would create an unprecedented and protracted constitutional crisis. Haven’t we just been through a lot with the Clintons, right?” Later that day in Orlando he upped the ante saying, “Hillary is likely to be under investigation for many years, probably concluding in a criminal trial.”

Two days later in Denver he made the argument even more explicit:

“Her current scandals and controversies will continue throughout her presidency and we will make it honestly, look, it’s gonna be virtually impossible for her to govern. Now, the Republicans have talked very tough and the Democrats. It’s gonna be just another mess for another four years, folks. A mess. We’ve got to get back to work, right? I mean, we have to get back to work.”

He wasn’t the only one making this argument. The Republicans were basically telling the country that if Clinton were to be elected they would make life a living hell.  Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah, then slated to be the next chairman of the House Oversight Committee  told the Washington Post, “even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan backed him up and GOP candidates across the land gleefully promised to immediately begin the investigations.

On the day before the election the Post reported that the Republicans were already planning an impeachment inquiry:

Chairmen of two congressional committees said in media interviews this week they believe Clinton committed impeachable offenses in setting up and using a private email server for official State Department business. 

And a third senior Republican, the chairman of a House Judiciary subcommittee, told The Washington Post he is personally convinced Clinton should be impeached for influence peddling involving her family foundation. He favors further congressional investigation into that matter.

Senator Ron Johnson R-WI had already made up his mind telling his local paper, “I would say yes, high crime or misdemeanor, I believe she is in violation of both laws.” Congressman Michael McCaul R-TX, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said he believed Clinton had committed treason with her email server.

This was a very effective campaign tactic and I would guess that more than a few voters were concerned. The GOP made it very clear that if she won they were preparing to launch the political equivalent of a nuclear war.  If people wanted to avoid that they should probably vote for Trump and all that unpleasantness could be avoided.

On the day of Trump’s inauguration, Chaffetz posted a picture of him shaking hands with Hillary Clinton at the ceremony and he captioned it:

So pleased she is not the President. I thanked her for her service and wished her luck. The investigation continues.

For mysterious reasons, Chaffetz soon gave up his seat but the congressional Republicans carried on. The oversight committees spent most of their time blocking and covering for Trump and the Russia investigation but they have kept up their insinuations about Clinton and Trump’s ecstatic crowds still chant “lock her up” at the mere mention of her name.

I mention all this ancient history just to put into context the absurd whining and caterwauling by the president and his minions over what he has taken to calling “presidential harassment.” They can dish it out but they sure can’t take it. I’m afraid they are going to have to buckle up because their turn in hell has finally come.

Last week’s astonishing testimony by the former Trump Organization Executive Vice  President Michael Cohen was just the opener. On Monday the Judiciary Committee sent out requests to 80 different Trump associates asking for documents pertaining to a dozen different scandals that were bottled up by the Republicans in the last congress, all pointing to possible abuse of power and obstruction of justice by the president and his henchmen.

These requests went out to virtually every name the media has mentioned in relation to the Trump campaign and the Trump organization as well as the White House and various GOP outside actors.  They are asking for information regarding contacts with Russians, meetings with Putin, the June 9th Trump Tower meeting, Trump Tower Moscow, Cambridge Analytica, emoluments, hush money, pardons, sanctions and much more.  And that’s just the Judiciary Committee. Intelligence, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Ways and Means and Oversight are also following their own leads which includes the issues with Jared and Ivanka’s security clearances, Deutche Bank loans, and the tax returns.

The White House calls this a fishing expedition but that’s not correct. The whole country has been watching these scandals unfold in the press while the authorities operate (as they should) without commenting. The evidence is out there but the press cannot compel people to speak nor can they put the whole story in context. And at this point we don’t even know if the Special Counsel’s Russia probe will ever be fully revealed to the people. This is the congress doing their job at long last. And with this president,  it’s a very big job.

The Republican House did absolutely no oversight of the Trump administration in its first two years, making a mockery of their constitutional duties. And that was a mistake. Had they even attempted  a pretense of oversight of the White House, the category five hurricane that just hit the administration might have been downgraded to a tropical storm. Instead, the president is going into his re-election campaign not only facing the results of criminal investigations from the Special Counsel and various US Attorneys offices but he will be dealing with an onslaught of pent up inquiries from the congress.

Assuming the president is on the ballot in 2020, don’t be surprised to hear the Democrat on the stump saying “it’s gonna be just another mess for another four years, folks. A mess. We’ve got to get back to work, right? I mean, we have to get back to work.” And they’ll be right to do so. This long list of investigations the Democrats have finally launched at long last is just the tip of the iceberg.

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Standing athwart democracy
by Tom Sullivan

Perhaps it is time to update William F. Buckley Jr.’s classic formulation of the conservative mission. In the 21st century in these United States, a conservative is someone who stands athwart democracy, yelling Stop.

That is, if there are any conservatives left. Certainly, few of the old school. What we see today, and what the House Oversight Committee Republicans demonstrated dramatically both before and after losing their majority, is an extremist cult inextricably bound to a right-wing authoritarian (RWA) leader.

David Neiwert maps the problem at Daily Kos:

Authoritarian leaders have a personality type quite distinct from that of their followers. It is called social dominance orientation (SDO), which is essentially a form of narcissism on steroids. If you wanted to create the ideal portrait of an SDO leader, he would look and act like Trump.

SDOs are far more interested in the personal acquisition of power than are RWAs, who by nature are more inclined to march on someone else’s behalf. They also have different reasoning capacities, and are far more calculating and manipulative. What they have in common, more than anything else, is a shared dismissive view of equality as an important social value. They both believe that inequality is the natural state of the world, and that any attempts to tamper with it are doomed to fail and screw everything up. And SDOs revel in getting RWAs to do their bidding.

And do his bidding Republicans in Congress will … right over the cliff. However, it is a misstatement to suggest those in Congress are less interested in personal acquisition of power. They sought it out, after all. They are majors and colonels in Trump’s MAGA army, hungry for their first stars and willing to kiss up to a delusional sociopath and his RWA base to win them.

Columbia law professor Tim Wu writes in the New York Times what that means is the United States is now democracy-optional in spite of the fact that Americans are far more united than the media narrative suggests:

About 75 percent of Americans favor higher taxes for the ultrawealthy. The idea of a federal law that would guarantee paid maternity leave attracts 67 percent support. Eighty-three percent favor strong net neutrality rules for broadband, and more than 60 percent want stronger privacy laws. Seventy-one percent think we should be able to buy drugs imported from Canada, and 92 percent want Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. The list goes on.

Yet even giving a nod to checks and balances, government of the people has ceased to deliver, the popular will thwarted by those standing athwart democracy, yelling Stop.

“Call it the oppression of the supermajority,” Wu writes. “Ignoring what most of the country wants — as much as demagogy and political divisiveness — is what is making the public so angry.”

Along with demographic threats to the privileged social dominance of a shrinking, white Christian majority, I must add. Legislative stalemate and court packing are designed not to enact the will of the majority, but to preserve the power of a soon-to-be plurality who perceive loss of privilege as oppression.

Southern whites refused to accept the legitimacy of black former slaves holding elected office during Reconstruction. The result was the rise of the Klan and a nearly century-long reign of terror. A half century beyond that, anyone non-white, non-Christian, and non-Republican is considered illegitimate by those standing athwart democracy. Not to mention by a sitting president who believes “created equal” is for losers.

Neiwert advises that any attempt by Trump to hold onto the White House should his 2020 reelection bid fail, as Michael Cohen suggested, is itself likely to fail. While much media focus is on Trump himself, “his army of authoritarian followers … remains large and hysterically defensive of him.” That leaves Trump “vast leeway to wreak immense harm” as a lame duck.

With any luck, he won’t last in office long enough to become one.

Trump and Pecker, birds of a feather

by digby

The Daily Beast is featuring a fascinating profile of David Pecker, the owner of AMI, the publisher of the National Enquirer. Its something:

In 2001, I was commissioned to write a profile of David Pecker, the CEO of American Media Inc., the National Enquirer’s parent company. I spent the next few months writing and reporting—only to have the story spiked.

Today, Pecker is at the center of a half-dozen national conversations. About Jeff Bezos. About Stormy Daniels. About the Saudis. About Michael Cohen. And, of course, about Pecker’s friend, the President of the United States.

So I decided to dig back into my files for the old profile. The 18-year-old picture feels shockingly current. The wannabe-tough-guy swagger, the financial woes, the rage at the skyscraper elites—it’s all there. So are ‘catch and kill,’ the D-list celebrities, and the quest to cozy up to the famous and the powerful. It’s just in this telling, the biggest name is Kennedy, not Trump.

This is the man Trump called into his office in 2015 and said, “how can you help my campaign?” and Pecker then offered to help him with the legions who were sure to come forward to testify to his disgusting treatment of women.

This guy:

Talk to employees who have passed through the grist mill of the tabloid publisher American Media Inc., and the portrait of CEO David Pecker that emerges is a man who governs in part by fear and will do just about anything to make quarterly projections. Other character traits frequently mentioned: workaholic, paranoid, vain, dishonest, bully. Ego is always mentioned. Like many successful men, Pecker’s is oversized. “As big as the great outdoors,” quips a former AMI editor. Critics contend it’s an ego that hinders decision-making and frequently obfuscates the facts.

The gangster ethos is another recurring theme. Pecker may be a Jew from the Bronx, but he could pass for an Italian from Palermo. It’s no surprise his favorite film is The Godfather or that he has a penchant for bodyguards and $350 custom Brioni shirts. Delve deeper and it becomes apparent that this is not the usual media story. It reads more like a Mario Puzo novel: betrayal, guns, bomb threats, large wads of cash, and a good marinara sauce. It’s exactly the kind of story you’d expect to find in the tabloids.

Fourteen floors above Madison Avenue, David Pecker, the don of the tabloids, is holding court. Settling into his chair, he tosses off this nugget: “At 21, I had a piece.” He’s talking about his first gun. Such is the street swagger of David Pecker. “I worked at Price Waterhouse, but I couldn’t live on the salary. So I also had my own tax business. I used to go to a job site and carry $10,000 in cash for the payroll. The gun was for protection.”

Pecker appreciates a good firearm. He’s been an NRA member for the past 30 years, and has the card to prove it. When he lived in Greenwich, he was also a member of a private gun club, because there’s nothing like squeezing off a few clips on the weekend to unwind. When he moved the AMI offices to Florida, the gun permit was renewed, a fact that did not go unreported by the local press. In the wake of this unsettling news, a rumor was hatched among AMI employees that the new boss was packing heat.

This is not the usual media story. It reads more like a Mario Puzo novel: betrayal, guns, bomb threats, large wads of cash, and a good marinara sauce. It’s exactly the kind of story you’d expect to find in the tabloids.
Not everyone believed this, but not everyone disbelieved it either. “I wasn’t scared for my life or anything,” says one former AMI editor. “But it certainly is something that flashes in your mind, like ‘Holy shit! You have to be careful with this guy. He’s got a hair-trigger temper.’” One company insider swears the rumor is true, but that Pecker stopped carrying when the news about his Florida gun permit leaked out.

That such outlandish gossip would be given even the slightest credence speaks volumes about the collective mindset of the AMI staff. When told of the gun rumor, Pecker seems genuinely shocked: “God! I can imagine now what kind of things people must be saying about me.” The next moment, though, he’s laughing, more amused than disturbed that his own staff harbor such grim thoughts. At the tabs, it might be better to be feared than loved.

This is Trump’s world.

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Mind boggling lunacy

by digby

They really want to do this:

The Trump administration is still actively working to make a deal to send U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, according to two U.S. officials and two professional staffers at federal agencies with direct knowledge of those conversations. American energy businesses are still hoping to cash in on Riyadh’s push for energy diversification.

“This could be a very big contract. This administration is all about contracts,” said Hussein Ibish, a resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “And there is a big market here that U.S. companies can get in on. The question is if the U.S. will decide, in the end, to go through with an official agreement or not.”

During the first few months of President Trump’s administration, members of his team tried to pull together a nuclear export deal that included private U.S. companies, according to three people with direct knowledge of those efforts and a congressional report issued in late February.

That pursuit raised concerns at the time among professional staff inside the Departments of Energy, State, and Commerce. Those worries grew as it became clear that members of the administration had not engaged in regulatory and legal conversations about the export of such technology. Worse, the nuclear export plan was, in essence, the work of a single company. The firm, IP3, was connected to a pack of former generals, including then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and its proposal was “not a business plan,” one senior political official told investigators from the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, but rather “a scheme for these generals to make some money.”

Professional staff and officials in the administration told The Daily Beast they are still concerned about the possible connection between efforts by private businesses to engage with Saudi Arabia on nuclear energy and the quiet, ongoing discussions between senior U.S. officials and Riyadh about a deal. Those government-to-government conversations, some of which took place in Riyadh, have often excluded professional staff and taken place behind closed doors, according to two individuals with knowledge of the interactions.

It’s all about money for Trump. The parochial moron literally thinks that his job is for the US to make a profit. Even though that makes no sense:

Intelligence officers, steeped in how Mr. Trump views the world, now work to answer his repeated question: Who is winning? What the president wants to know, according to former officials, is what country is making more money or gaining a financial advantage.

While the professionals do not criticize Mr. Trump’s focus, they do question whether those interests are crowding out intelligence on threats like terrorism and the maneuvers of traditional adversaries, developments with foreign militaries or geopolitical events with international implications.
[…]
Some of what bores Mr. Trump in traditional intelligence briefings, according to former officials, are the detailed analyses of the activities and motivations of secondary foreign officials. The president wants information about the leader of various countries, not the underlings.

But the president has also shown less interest in details about potential terrorist plots or cloak-and-dagger spy work — the kind of secret information that excites most officials. In his view, too little traditional intelligence analysis examines economics and trade as a fundamental driver of international conflict. “Economic security at home goes hand in hand with national security abroad,” said Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council.

So in security briefings, Mr. Trump peppers officials with questions about economic competition with China, including Beijing’s efforts to gain technological superiority and to achieve trade advantages over the United States.

He has also shown a fascination with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, repeatedly asking why she will not cut a deal with him on military spending despite his advisers’ explanation that the German government’s coalition agreement constrains Ms. Merkel’s ability to increase defense funding. And he has pressed his intelligence briefers on why Berlin is allowing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Russia to go forward if Germany is truly worried about Moscow’s aggression.

Mr. Trump has also repeatedly spoken to intelligence and military briefers about the cost of American bases overseas and the defense expenditures of allies in Europe and Asia, according to White House officials.

The president’s push also has national security officials thinking about the economic angles of international flash points. When Russia seized Ukranian sailors and ships in the Sea of Azov, officials in Washington began studying the implications to shipping. White House officials argued that the Europeans would have the most leverage given their dominance of the industry. But they also argued that by raising the costs of shipping, the Russians were “shooting themselves in the foot,” a senior administration official said.

He wants to “make a deal” to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. Indeed, I think he’d be ready and willing to sell it to anyone who wanted to sign a contract.

Trump’s entire worldview is that of a small town real estate agent or strip mall developer. There is literally nothing else. And his people — like Bolton and Pompeo — have such blind hatred for Iran that they’re willing to arm the country that spawned al Qaeda and ISIS with nuclear technology. They are as dangerous as their boss.

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Only the best people

by digby

I’m not sure when, if ever, GOP officials are going to admit that Trump’s judgment in hiring people is a problem. You’d think their embarrassing diatribes about Michael Cohen being a liar — the man Trump employed as his Executive VP and Special Counsel for a decade — they might leave them feeling a little bit uncomfortable. Or maybe the legion of people already fired for corruption and turpitude would give them a clue. But they can’t even bring themselves to question him over the likes of Scott Pruitt or Ryan Zincke so there’s little chance they’ll be upset about the fact that he discarded the concerns of the intelligence community about his leveraged, compromised son-in-law.

.@GStephanopoulos: Do Americans and Congress have a right to know what the CIA was concerned about with Jared Kushner?

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy: "… I think the president looked at the concerns. The president says those weren't concerns to him" https://t.co/dcwxlleDkE pic.twitter.com/8ORBslvgLJ— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 4, 2019

His judgment is terrible anyway so allowing him to put his family members into these sensitive situations is truly dangerous. They know they can get away with anything under Daddy’s protection, especially since the Republicans will pretty much give him a free hand to sell-out the country.

The Democrats will be looking into it.

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Yes, Virginia, propaganda works

by digby

Tom Sullivan wrote about the new Jane Mayer Blockbuster in the New Yorker this morning. We already know much of it but it delves deeply into the whole cross-culture between Fox and the GOP and the White House in detail and that really fills out our understanding of the phenomenon.

Matt Yglesias puts this into context. This is not a benign situation at all:

Conservative propaganda television is a big deal

A study by Emory University political scientist Gregory Martin and Stanford economist Ali Yurukoglu estimates that watching Fox News translates into a significantly greater willingness to vote for Republican candidates.

Specifically, by exploiting semi-random variation in Fox viewership driven by changes in the assignment of channel numbers, they find that if Fox News hadn’t existed, the Republican presidential candidate’s share of the two-party vote would have been 3.59 points lower in 2004 and 6.34 points lower in 2008. Without Fox, in other words, the GOP’s only popular vote win since the 1980s would have been reversed and the 2008 election would have been an extinction-level landslide.

And Fox is not the only thing out there. The Sinclair Broadcast Group is not a television network in a traditional sense. Instead, it’s a company that owns a disparate bunch of local television stations affiliated with all four major networks. But Sinclair does exert centralized control over the “local” television news broadcasts. And research from Martin and his colleague Josh McCrain found that when Sinclair buys a local station, its local news program begin to cover more national and less local politics, the coverage becomes more conservative, and viewership actually falls — suggesting that the rightward tilt isn’t enacted as a strategy to win more viewers but as part of a persuasion effort.

It would be ridiculous, of course, to argue that absent conservative propaganda broadcasting, Republicans would never win an election. What would happen, instead, is that in order to avoid constantly losing, Republicans would need to do more to bring key aspects of their policy agenda in line with public opinion and display less indifference to the prevalence of scandal-plagued individuals in party leadership. The conclusion, however, remains the same: Fox appears to be a decisive influence in making the Republican Party as currently constituted an electorally viable entity. And these studies are based on Fox’s past — according to Mayer, the network has only become more propagandistic since the 2016 election.

Taking propaganda broadcasting seriously

On one level, everybody knows that television news is a big deal, everyone knows that Fox News is the most widely viewed cable network, and everyone knows that there is a complicated interrelationship between Fox and the GOP that is qualitatively different from the relationship between the Democratic Party and any media outlet.

But this relationship is rarely taken seriously enough in the analysis of American — or even global — politics.

It’s commonplace, for example, to treat the contemporaneous and narrow electoral victories of Donald Trump and Brexit in the United States and United Kingdom as revealing some important, deep-seated truth about the nature of global capitalism. An alternative explanation, however, is that Rupert Murdoch is a very powerful person in both US and UK media and he intervened decisively to put the Trump and Brexit phenomena over the top.

If true, lancing the boil of this particular destructive form of nationalism requires less a broad rethinking of the foundations of politics and more specific focus and the ability of a handful of propagandists to decisively alter the course of events. The past two or three years have seen a very intense social and political focus on the phenomenon of “fake news” spreading digitally on social media platforms. But while fake news is obviously not desirable, the evidence for its practical impact has been relatively slight compared to the evidence that mass opinion has been manipulated by traditional television broadcasting.