Month: March 2019

When you’re president, you can’t do anything
by Tom Sullivan

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” Donald Trump said on tape, infamously, before winding up in the White House. He meant sexual assault. But assaulting a democratic republic?

No one has explained to the sitting president he is no longer the celebrity CEO of a small, family business where family members and sycophants follow his orders and cater to his whims without question. There are rules here. There are checks. (Sort of.) There are balances. (Sort of.)

Which is why a man accustomed to ignoring rules and getting his way unchallenged is losing in federal court. A lot. The Trump administration has lost in federal courts at least 63 times in two years, reports the Washington Post. Judges have repeatedly upbraided his administration for “failing to follow the most basic rules of governance.”

The Post explains:

Two-thirds of the cases accuse the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a nearly 73-year-old law that forms the primary bulwark against arbitrary rule. The normal “win rate” for the government in such cases is about 70 percent, according to analysts and studies. But as of mid-January, a database maintained by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law shows Trump’s win rate at about 6 percent.

The loss-rate is virtually unprecedented. “It’s not just that they’re losing. But they’re being so nuts about it,” said Seth Jaffe, a Boston-based environmental lawyer who represents corporations in deregulatory cases, adding that Trump’s losses have “set regulatory reform back for a period of time.”

Trump blames “Obama judges,” naturally, not his administration’s failure to do basic due diligence. In case after case, judges are united in finding the administration’s efforts at implementing Trump’s will ham-fisted and lacking legal justification:

Four judges, for instance, have rejected the decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has protected from deportation nearly 700,000 people brought to the United States as children. All four judges said essentially the same thing: that the government’s stated reason for ending DACA — that it was unlawful — was “virtually unexplained,” as U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush in Washington, said in an April opinion. A second explanation — that DACA creates a “litigation risk” — was derided by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in California as mere “spin.”

Three judges have invalidated the attempt to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census, the latest being U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco on March 6. All rejected as unbelievable Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s explanation that the move was intended to improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

On voting rights in particular, an observation by Aaron Blake about Trump’s approach reflects a kind of Republican politics that predates Trump’s arrival:

Trump is by all accounts an impatient man who doesn’t have much regard for the “obstacles” that stand in his way. We’ve seen repeatedly how that’s meant hasty and sometimes aborted solo policy decisions, such as the complete withdrawal from Syria. Administration officials struggling to implement his often-unwieldy ideas may find it hard to justify them or to reason that even if they’re ultimately struck down in court, Trump will have gotten the coverage he wants.

This is precisely how “voter fraud” found a national audience on the right. Allegation after allegation of widespread fraud proved exaggerated if not imaginary, but only after blaring headlines reinforced in the public’s mind that where there are smoke bombs there must be fire. The result is dozens of voter suppression measures passed across the country, litigated, and often struck down. No matter. Republicans will will have gotten the coverage they want. Democracy is undermined. Because the only good democracy (they cannot control) is a dead one.

That form of “untruthful hyperbole” was a feature of Republicans astroturfing a market for imaginary problems before Trump. On Wednesday, David Corn responded in a tweet thread to an attempt by George W. Bush administration flack Ari Fleischer to rewrite the history of WMD hysteria and the Iraq invasion — another manufactured crisis that resulted in the worst American foreign policy blunder in memory.

Truth was a casualty in America before Trump, but it took a malignant narcissist from a minor crime family to turn an entire administration into one.

The one saving grace (so far) of this fiasco of a presidency is its failures at governing should put to rest any notion that electing a rich CEO as president is the way to get things done in Washington. It won’t. Howard Schultz proves that.

Hellfire in Hannity’s world

by digby

This piece by Gabriel Sherman suggests that Trump’s little twitter rant at Fox News over the weekend may not have just been a random freak-out:

…Trump’s attacks on Fox have widened the chasm between the network’s opinion hosts and the news division, which have been fighting a cold civil war since Roger Ailes was ousted in July 2016. Fox journalists, bristling at being branded an arm of the Trump White House, are lobbying Fox News C.E.O. Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace to rein in Fox & Friends, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and Pirro. “Reporters are telling management that we’re being defined by the worst people on our air,” a frustrated senior Fox staffer told me. Fox’s opinion hosts, meanwhile, have made the case that Fox’s prime-time lineup not only reflects the audience’s worldview, but is responsible for the majority of the network’s advertising revenue. “We make the money,” an anchor close to Hannity told me.

The outcome of that civil war will be decided by Fox Corporation chairman and C.E.O. Lachlan Murdoch. Rupert’s oldest son took over the smaller media company that emerged out of the Murdochs’ $71 billion deal to sell their entertainment assets to Disney. Though Lachlan hired West Wing stalwart Hope Hicks, staffers believe he is likely to nudge the network away from its close marriage to Trump. Sources close to Lachlan pointed out that Lachlan is a libertarian conservative, not a MAGA diehard, who in private has expressed annoyance at Trump. “He doesn’t like Trump,” one person who has spoken with Lachlan told me. “There’s a lot of talk of the direction of the network changing under Lachlan,” the senior Fox staffer told me.

Sources pointed out the hiring of Donna Brazile and the appointment of Trump critic Paul Ryan to Fox Corp’s board as signs of Lachlan’s view on Trump. “Donna is a shot in that direction. Management knows they have an image problem.” (A spokesman for Lachlan declined to comment.) Indeed, at an advertiser sales event in recent days, brands complained to Fox News executives about the network’s association with Trump, a source briefed on the meeting told me. (Through a spokesperson, Fox’s head of ad sales, Marianne Gambelli, said this was “completely false.”)

Two sources close to Lachlan told me that he has likely waited to implement any editorial changes at Fox News until the Disney deal closes on March 20, for fear of antagonizing Trump into opposing it. (The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer recently reported that Trump had told former economics adviser Gary Cohn to direct the Justice Department to block AT&T’s takeover of Time Warner. Cohn reportedly didn’t act on Trump’s directive.) And the senior Fox staffer cautioned that any changes will be modest, at least at first. “Lachlan is not James,” the staffer said, referring to Rupert’s liberal younger son. (“Fox News will continue to provide a platform for a diverse range of voices in its opinion programming and fair and balanced news coverage as it always has,” a Fox executive told me.)

Another vector influencing the Trump-Fox relationship is Hannity’s frustration with the Murdochs. Sources said Hannity is angry at the Murdochs’ firing of Ailes and Bill Shine,Hannity’s close friend and former producer. Hannity believes the Murdochs are out to get Trump. “Hannity told Trump last year that the Murdochs hate Trump, and Hannity is the only one holding Fox together,” a source who heard the conversation told me. Hannity has told friends that he intends to leave Fox when his contract expires in early 2021, two people who’ve spoken with him said. (Hannity did not respond to a request for comment.)

Ultimately, creating some distance from the president may be the first step in a larger strategy. Some believe it’s only a matter of time before the Murdochs sell Fox News. “Everyone thinks they’re going to sell it. It’s too small to be independent,” the anchor told me.

“Fox has been underestimated dating back to its inception as the fourth major network and continues to challenge conventional wisdom, exceeding expectations as a strategically bold, transformational media brand,” the Fox executive said. “That won’t change.”

I suspect that’s right.  Their audience is so tied into Trump at this point that they really can’t extricate themselves.  But a sale … now that could change everything.

But this story makes me anticipate a new season of “Succession.”

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“Don’t play psychiatrist any more than George should be”

by digby

#BeBest pic.twitter.com/MIhY5Avh81— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2019

Ok, I’m pretty sure this some kind of strategy. If her marriage isn’t on the rocks there is no way she’d feel compelled to say this. Unless, this whole thing is bullshit:

Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday defended President Donald Trump’s attacks on her husband George Conway saying he’s “a counterpuncher” and asserting that the president is free to respond when he’s accused of having a mental illness.

“He left it alone for months out of respect for me,” Conway, a senior Trump aide, told POLITICO in a brief telephone interview. “But you think he shouldn’t respond when somebody, a non-medical professional accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?”

“Don’t play psychiatrist any more than George should be,” she added. “You’re not a psychiatrist and he’s not, respectfully.”

Conway’s defense of her boss comes as Trump has spent the past two days ripping her husband on Twitter. While the president has generally restrained from attacking George Conway, a longtime conservative lawyer who has repeatedly mocked Trump on Twitter, he broke from that habit on Monday after George Conway claimed he suffered from mental illness.

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“George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted,” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. “I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!”

Trump later on Wednesday took the Twitter feud offline, telling reporters that George Conway is a “whack job” and doing a “tremendous disservice to a wonderful wife.”

George Conway responded in kind to the latest attacks, sending more than two dozen tweets on Wednesday in which he called Trump “nuts” and re-upped his claim that the president suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.

The vicious back-and-forth has grabbed headlines during an otherwise tense week. The White House is anticipating the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and the president has vented about everything from late Sen. John McCain to Saturday Night Live to Fox News.

I keep remembering the story of Martha Mitchell. If George sees some big guys at his door in the next few days, he should run as fast as he can.

In the summer of 1972, Martha Mitchell was on the telephone in her hotel room in Newport Beach, California, when a security guard for President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign walked over and yanked the cord out of the wall. According to Mitchell, for the next 24 hours, the guard, who was working on orders from her husband, former attorney general John Mitchell, refused to let her leave. Every time she tried to escape, the guard caught her. Later she recounted, “From then on I saw no one — allowed no food — and literally kept a prisoner.” At more than one point, things got physical. Mitchell said that the guard, Stephen King, kicked her and, later, during one of her escape attempts, put her hand through a glass window, causing an injury that required six stitches. The incident was humiliating. Mitchell reported, “He came into my room while the doors were closed and I was undressed.” At some point, King called a doctor, who walked into the room without saying a word to Mitchell. He and King threw her on the bed and held her down while the doctor removed her pants and administered a tranquilizing shot to her rear end.

Mitchell wasn’t being held captive as a part of some ransom scheme. It was a threat and a sinister political maneuver. That summer, Nixon was running for reelection, and her husband was serving as the campaign’s manager. A 53-year-old southern belle from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, she was a lively figure in the Washington social scene, known for her humorous tirades against liberals and communists and her willingness to say exactly what she thought. But perhaps more impressive than her talk were her powers of observation. Mitchell was known to listen in on her husband’s meetings and report back to her journalist friends. When four burglars were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters, Mitchell recognized one of them and guessed that her husband and the president were involved, though she couldn’t say exactly how. She got on the phone with a reporter friend to voice her lurking suspicions. Thus began what she called “the most horrible experience I ever had,” which culminated in a sexist campaign to discredit a woman who knew too much.

Trump takes over North Korea negotiations. What could go wrong?

by digby

He still thinks Kim Jong Un is his friend:

President Donald Trump has taken increased control of negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, sidelining his own top negotiator and dismissing the warnings of top intelligence and foreign policy advisors in the wake of last month’s failed summit in Vietnam, officials familiar with the developments tell TIME.

In recent days, Trump shut down an effort by Stephen Biegun, nominally the Administration’s lead negotiator with Pyongyang, to reestablish a back channel through the North’s United Nations mission in New York, according to four U.S. and South Korean officials.

At the same time, Trump continues to dismiss the conclusions of the CIA, State and Defense Departments and other agencies that North Korea will not abandon its nuclear weapons program, continuing to insist that he and Kim can negotiate a deal, according to two U.S.officials.

Trump has long said that he believes he can negotiate a deal himself to relieve economic sanctions on North Korea in exchange for a pledge by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to abandon the nuclear program begun by his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s founder, and continued by his father, Kim Jong-il.

“The President’s constant refrain is that Kim is his ‘friend’,” said one of the officials, who has tried to present Trump with the unanimous assessment by multiple agencies that Kim remains wedded to his nuclear program, both as a family mission and as a deterrent to any U.S.-led effort to overthrow his regime.

Maybe this will work somehow by accident. But it’s a major, major risk for this imbecile to be taking control of dealing with a very volatile nuclear threat. He has no clue what he’s doing.

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Good Cop, Bad Cop in the House?

by digby

I don’t know what’s going on with the House leadership’s stand on impeachment. But they certainly seem to be taking both sides of the argument:

The third-ranking Democrat in the House on Tuesday called President Donald Trump and his family “the greatest threats to democracy of my lifetime,” saying Congress needed to do more to respond to the president’s attempts to undermine American institutions.

Responding to Trump’s renewed attacks on the late Sen. John McCain, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., went so far as to resurface his previous comparison of the president’s actions to those of Hitler.

In an interview with NBC News, Clyburn noted that he had once been asked if he has ever seen a toxic political climate like today’s, and that while he hadn’t, he has studied ones like it.

“Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany. And he went about the business of discrediting institutions to the point that people bought into” it,” he said. “Nobody would have believed it now. But swastikas hung in churches throughout Germany. We had better be very careful.”

McCain was a “hero of our United States armed services,” Clyburn said, adding that Trump was targeting him just like he’d sought to discredit previous presidents, the Congress, and the free press

“We are asking for dire consequences. And I think it’s time for the Congress — House and Senate — to grow spines, and do what is necessary to protect this democracy. This man and his family are the greatest threats to democracy of my lifetime,” he said.

Asked if that should include impeachment, a step that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said should not be pursued without greater political support, Clyburn said that House committees investigating the president should be allowed to continue their work.

“I think all of us know that impeachment is a political concept. And if the committees do their work properly they will be able to bring the public along with them,” he said. “They will be able to set the tone for impeachment if that is deserved.”

I have said from day one that I believe Trump should be impeached. I also think the Democrats have to build their case for it in a systematic way in order to make sure there is a comprehensible narrative to undergird the case. Mueller’s investigation is only part of it — the rest has to be developed with public hearings and investigative reports. And I also think they’d better hurry it up or they’ll run out of time.

I don’t think Pelosi’s repeated “he’s not worth it” statements make a lot of sense. If it demobilizes the opposition to Trump it could end up being a very, very bad idea. However, I’m willing to let this play out for a while to see if there’s something else going on. Clyburn’s comments make me think there is a strategy. Whether it’s a good one remains to be seen.

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Tucker Carlson, wingnut chameleon

by digby

Aaron Rupar at Vox interviewed the researcher who uncovered all those gross Tucker Carlson quotes. This is someone whose job it is to watch Carlson both in the past and in his current incarnation and her view bears out my assessment that Carlson’s “ideology” is really just plain old right-wing white supremacy which he dresses up in whichever conservative cover story is in vogue at the time. And since his main affect is “snotty little twit”, he’s one of the right’s most adept practitioners of their adolescent obsession with “owning the libs.”

Aaron Rupar:

Some people have reacted to these clips by shifting part of the blame to MSNBC, because Tucker was obviously employed by them for most of these clips [Carlson joined Fox News in 2009]. Do you think that speaks to a different day and age? It’s hard to imagine prominent MSNBC hosts these days going on a radio show in Florida and staying stuff like this and getting away with it.

Do you have any thoughts on how that could have happened back then? Do you think it’s a bad look for MSNBC that they didn’t do something about this?

Madeline Peltz:

I don’t know what this says about MSNBC. I know that [from] what I’ve heard from the clips, he says in one of them, “I couldn’t have done this if I didn’t have an office.” He was like, “If I had a cubicle, I wouldn’t be able to appear on this show.” And so I think it was a fragmented audience, and I also think of course there’s not the same social media machine; the aggregation machine that would make this go viral really quickly in 2006. So I think that is a little bit different.

But I agree with what you said that if MSNBC or CNN had a similar situation when one of their top talents was uncovered defending child rape, it wouldn’t take long for them to be disciplined or fired. It just goes to show that Fox is trying to hold the line on this slug of liabilities that is their primetime talent.

And so if they were to discipline or fire Tucker, it would probably lead to a domino effect exposing the systemic rot at the core of the business model.< Aaron Rupar:

Obviously Tucker is on one of these tapes defending child rape. He makes some very racist comments about Iraqis.

Were any of these things he’s joking about or defending in these Bubba clips — are there any that seem hypocritical with the themes he promotes now on his show? Are there any major disconnects that you noticed between what he was saying then and what he’s saying now?

Madeline Peltz:

I think there’s two sides to this question. On the one hand, in these clips — 2006 to 2011, roughly — he says on the show that he’s this hardcore libertarian and he’s very anti-market intervention and very anti-regulation — you know, all your libertarian classic tropes. I think that at that time, that was the cutting edge of contrarian politics, if you think of the rise of Ron Paul and the sort of whirlwind around the ’08 campaign, which Tucker did talk about while he was on Bubba.

And now, what he’s saying on this program [today] is different in terms of, he’s raising these issues of changing racial demographics and saying that women in the workplace lead to higher drug use rates and suicide rates among men — he’s saying that immigrants make America poorer and dirtier.

These are all new talking points, but at the same time, he is just reflecting what is at the height of right-wing culture and politics at the time, which is an overt white nationalism and right-wing populism. [Carlson] knows what’s hot. But at the same time, a lot of his rhetorical turns of phrase and views that he expresses about women or immigrants or people of color are the exact same, in that he sees people who do not look or think like him as less than human.
Aaron Rupar:

Was the right-wing populism part of his identity in the Bubba tapes that you listened to? That’s kind of what he’s known for these days. We did a Vox piece recently about his economic populism as a different idea for someone so prominent in that part of the right wing. Was that at all a strain of what he was saying [earlier]?

Madeline Peltz:

No, not at all. In fact, during many of the clips we produced — and I believe one that was put up by the Intercept recently — he jokes about being an elitist and being heir to this massive industrial fortune. So no, he was not pretending to be the man of people that he is today.

At the same time, his broader worldview is very much the same in terms of stoking hatred in this country; it’s just the sort of dressing around the edges has changed.

Aaron Rupar:

One thing that surprised me is how strong Tucker’s ratings are — he’s regularly crushing Chris Hayes and Anderson Cooper. As someone who watches his show a lot, what explains that? Why are his ratings so strong?

Madeline Peltz:

I think the top reason he has these high ratings is because he plays into this heightened sense of conflict where he’s trying to, quote, “own the libs” and get one over on his guest.

There’s a variety of ways that exact segment can play out. One way is he can have on one of the same people he has on every night, which include Chris Hahn or Richard Goodstein, where they have this same sort of playacting that they do every night.

Or once he had on someone from the party for socialism and liberation, and it was this older woman and she defended the North Korean nuclear regime — he’ll also sort of have these fringe people on, and that’s an example from the left, but that’s what I mean by this heightened sense of conflict.

He’ll also have Ralph Peters on from the right. So I really think it’s that — it’s this absolutely ridiculous image he projects that he’s uncompromised, very principled, and he will just debate you until you give in.

There’s only one of two ways a Tucker Carlson segment goes. One, as I described, is highly dramatized, conflict-driven argument where Tucker ends it by cutting off your mic. Or he has someone on like Glenn Greenwald or Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports, and it’s just like a lovefest, and they compliment each other until a good time is up. And you don’t learn anything from either of these types of segments. But I think it’s kind of like reality television.

I’ve just excerpted some of it. Click over to read the whole thing.

Tucker Carlson is, and always has been, a blight on our society. I’m sure he’ll survive this flap as he’s survived all the others. There is an audience in this country that can’t get enough of what he’s selling.

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My Salon column this morning:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was the kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby”

In the new book “Kushner, Inc.” by Vicky Ward, Jared and Ivanka — people so famous everyone refers to them by their first names — are revealed as exactly what one would expect: spoiled, arrogant, narcissistic, corrupt and recklessly overconfident. As tempting as it is to mock them, it would be a mistake. These two vacuous socialites are a perfect reflection of the inept celebrity president who sits in the White House where all three wield unimaginable power over the lives of every person on this planet.

For Donald Trump to bring his daughter and son-in-law into the White House at all is inappropriate. Everyone knows that nepotism is a poison in any organization but it becomes truly noxious in one as chaotic as the Trump administration. You can’t fire your own relatives if they screw up, and the hierarchy is always skewed by their special access to the top. It’s possible that a mature, seasoned, intelligent leader could handle such a situation with some finesse. Needless to say, President Trump is not that.

I think most people believed early on when he brought the two into the administration that it was more a security blanket than anything serious. He didn’t really understand how the government or the presidency worked and it was understandable that he would want some people around him to confide in and help him get his bearings. Nobody, however, expected that he would defy all logic and actually task them with anything important but he did. Apparently, they both were perfectly happy to take the ball and run the world with it, despite having virtually no experience doing anything but working in their family businesses and running from one disaster after another.

According to Ward, these two callow scions have no doubts about their abilities. She writes of Ivanka that “her father’s reign in Washington, D.C., is, she believes, the beginning of a great American dynasty.” Ivanka herself apparently told former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn that she expected to be president someday. (As I recall, it was reported at one time that she and Jared had chattered among friends about which one would be president first.) Did I mention they are arrogant?

Ward makes it clear that the image of “Javanka” being moderating influences in the administration is nothing more than hype. We’ve known from the beginning that the two are quite adept at playing the media but it appears that in reality they don’t just fail to moderate Donald Trump, they don’t believe they have to. Perhaps the most widely shared anecdote in the book happened after the president’s ghastly remarks about the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. Her response to Cohn’s concerns was to say, “My dad’s not a racist; he didn’t mean any of it. That’s not what he said.”

Considering the president’s utter lack of concern over the international white nationalist movement that has inspired a number of horrific mass killings, including the shocking massacre last week in New Zealand, it’s pretty clear that Ivanka either doesn’t know her father or just doesn’t care. Either way, any sense that she’s “the empathetic one” can be put to rest.

As for Jared, he’s been given the portfolio for world peace. He seems to believe that he is preternaturally capable despite never having done much of anything aside from running a vanity newspaper and nearly running his family’s real estate empire into the ground. Much like his father-in-law, he does appear to be willing to go to any length to wriggle out of a jam. Being at the right hand of the president of the United States has offered him plenty of opportunities.

Even while serving in the White House, Kushner had no compunction about meeting with Chinese bankers and representatives for the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar to secure a loan for a white elephant building that was about to bankrupt his family business. The book describes former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson telling Kushner that his advice to the president to endorse Saudi Arabia’s aggressive diplomatic and strategic campaign against Qatar, an important American ally, “had endangered the US.” There is no evidence that Kushner cared. He got his loan.

It’s hardly surprising that every U.S. intelligence agency strongly urged that Kushner not be given a security clearance. According to the book, Tillerson had heard “chatter” between Kushner and his buddy, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, belittling Tillerson. Whatever Jared has been up to, the intelligence community probably knows about it. None of that mattered. The president overruled his intelligence chiefs and gave both Jared and Ivanka the top security clearances they shouldn’t have.

What comes through most clearly in the book is that these people do not understand the way the law or national security work. From barging into confidential meetings with attorneys to using their own email addresses — after pillorying Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing — to treating anyone and everyone with total disdain and disrespect, they wander through the White House at will, wrecking centuries of protocol and wreaking chaos, serving themselves above all. They’re not actually helping the president do the right thing, not that they would know how to. They don’t know what the right thing is. Neither do they care.

But like Donald Trump, his daughter and son-in-law seem to have a feral survival skill. Nearly everyone with any qualifications has butted heads with the two of them, and even the president apparently tried to figure out a way to get them to quit. But they have hung in there and outlasted virtually everyone else in Trump’s inner orbit.

These two people are recklessly messing with the world as if it’s just another con game, in which they’ll take their profits before moving on to the next chapter of their spoiled, mindless lives. It’s not at all obvious that the mess they are making will be fixable.

On the eve of corruption
by Tom Sullivan

Corruption is on the rise in the United States. Or perhaps, it is revealed. Every day now. The college admissions scandal and the United States’ downgrading to “country to watch” status by Transparency International prompted a recent examination of our culture in these pages, if not in our mirrors. MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent, Ari Melber, outlined this week how Donald Trump’s administration now has “the highest rate of indictments for his aides than any president ever.”

Stephen M. Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, considers the corruption of the Trump administration in a post for Foreign Policy, but begins by adding to the short list above.

The 2008 financial crisis and the Boeing 737 Max grounding are further evidence of a culture where corruption has taken hold. We never held accountable the “masters of the universe” who defrauded the planet and cratered the economy. While the cause of recent crashes are still under investigation, it seems Boeing’s cozy relationship with Federal Aviation Administration regulators allowed it to self-certify it airworthy and rush the plane to market. The world saw a conflict of interest when the U.S. was the last major country to ground it. Walt observes, “Ethiopian authorities chose to send the black boxes for analysis in France rather than in the United States.”

Sexual predation in the Catholic Church, sexual assault in the military and military procurement scandals, and a Trump White House suffused with villains, thieves, and scoundrels (Walt provides an abbreviated summary) is more than a moral and ethical crisis, but a foreign policy one for the United States, Walt believes. Besides creating economic inefficiencies as money get misdirected to bribes, kickbacks and unqualified elites, the widening “swamp” far beyond the Beltway undermines our economic and political influence:

Corruption and other forms of elite malfeasance also nourish populist anger. When elites go to great lengths to game the system and are increasingly seen as out of touch and unaccountable, it is hardly surprising that ordinary people who have been playing by the rules become so angry that they will put their faith in anyone who promises to shake up the system. Such sentiments help explain the otherwise surprising popularity of a candidate like Bernie Sanders or the rapid rise of straight-talking politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ironically, it also played a key role in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, which proved that if you can fake integrity, you’ve got it made.

Over the longer term, rising corruption threatens America’s soft power, and especially its reputation for competence. Other countries are more likely to follow America’s lead when they believe the core institutions of U.S. society are run by people who know what they are doing, and when foreign governments have confidence that the information provided by U.S. officials is accurate. But when grifters rule the roost and privileged elites use their current positions to hog even more for themselves, their offspring, and their cronies, our core institutions will function poorly and other states will lose confidence in our ability to deliver as promised.

That cow is already out of the milking shed. The sitting president’s last summit with the North Korean dictator was a disaster. Europe has all but written off the U.S. A top German politician wants Donald Trump’s ambassador expelled for interfering in Germany’s internal affairs. German politicians have demanded Richard Grenell’s recall since he told Breitbart last June he wanted “to empower other conservatives throughout Europe” to rise up against “elites.” Grenell had not been there a month.

Complicating matters is Trump’s lack of acknowledging foreign policy involves trade-offs between our values and our interests, admits William J. Burns in an interview with The New Yorker. A career diplomat, Burns describes Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a combustible combination of grievance and ambition and insecurity” in a way that sounds like a veiled reference to one of Putin’s biggest fans. The danger Trump poses is in believing “that somehow you can endear yourself to [autocrats] by dumping on your political enemies publicly abroad, and that somehow ingratiating yourself with authoritarian leaders will enable you to have more effective policies and promote American interests.”

Then again, our own combustible combination of grievance and ambition and insecurity is too busy pursuing his own corrupt interests to care about America’s.

Thank god the Trumpies are such morons

by digby

Trump isn’t doing well in the courts (so far — his court packing should probably help a bit) because they are so bad at everything and he can’t keep his mouth shut:

Federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration at least 63 times over the past two years, an extraordinary record of legal defeat that has stymied large parts of the president’s agenda on the environment, immigration and other matters.

In case after case, judges have rebuked Trump officials for failing to follow the most basic rules of governance for shifting policy, including providing legitimate explanations supported by facts and, where required, public input.

Many of the cases are in early stages and subject to reversal. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted a version of President Trump’s ban on travelers from certain predominantly Muslim nations to take effect after lower-court judges blocked the travel ban as discriminatory.

But whether or not the administration ultimately prevails, the rulings so far paint a remarkable portrait of a government rushing to implement sweeping changes in policy without regard for long-standing rules against arbitrary and capricious behavior.

“What they have consistently been doing is short-circuiting the process,” said Georgetown Law School’s William W. Buzbee, an expert on administrative law who has studied Trump’s record. In the regulatory cases, Buzbee said, “They don’t even come close” to explaining their actions, “making it very easy for the courts to reject them because they’re not doing their homework.”

Two-thirds of the cases accuse the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a nearly 73-year-old law that forms the primary bulwark against arbitrary rule. The normal “win rate” for the government in such cases is about 70 percent, according to analysts and studies. But as of mid-January, a database maintained by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law shows Trump’s win rate at about 6 percent.

Seth Jaffe,a Boston-based environmental lawyer who represents corporations and had been looking forward to deregulation, said the administration has failed to deliver.

“I’ve spent 30 years in the private sector complaining about the excesses of environmental regulation,” Jaffe said, but “this administration has given regulatory reform a bad name.”

Some errors are so basic that Jaffe said he has to wonder whether agency officials are more interested in announcing policy shifts than in actually implementing them. “It’s not just that they’re losing. But they’re being so nuts about it,” he said, adding that the losses in court have “set regulatory reform back for a period of time.”

Contributing to the losing record has been Trump himself. His reported comments about “shithole countries,” for example, helped convince U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen in San Francisco that the administration’s decision to end “temporary protected status” for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Central America, Haiti and Sudan was motivated by racial and ethnic bias.

At least a dozen decisions have involved Trump’s tweets or comments.

Deregulation is still happening, of course. They just haven’t been able to do everything they wanted because of the judicial roadblock and their own incompetence. But this is just a trial run for a smoother and more competent fascist wingnut. They’re testing the boundaries and learning from their mistakes.

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Trump just pocketed a cool 3 million

by digby

Sure, this is fine:

President Trump sold a $2.9 million New York City condo to a mysterious buyer on March 8, in a previously unreported deal laid out in public documents.

Officially, the buyer was an entity named Koctagon LLC. Limited liability companies, or LLCs, are often used to shield the identities of people purchasing real estate. When Trump is involved, they can make it difficult to see who is paying millions to the president of the United States.

An analysis of public documents suggests someone named Xiu Qong Li may be behind Koctagon LLC. That person’s name shows up on the second page of the March 8 deed. Another document filed at the same time lists the address for Koctagon LLC as a condo on 45th Street in New York City. That condo is owned by an entity named Smile Caribbean LLC, according to cityrecords. The registered address for Smile Caribbean LLC is a property in Queens that, until a year ago, was partly owned by Xiu Qong Li. Attempts to reach Xiu Qong Li were unsuccessful.

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about the sale. The president retained ownership of his many companies, including the one that sold the $2.9 million condo unit, after taking office. He passed off day-to-day responsibilities to his sons Eric and Don Jr. Eric Trump signed the paperwork in the most recent deal.

Was it a good deal? Oh my yes:

President Trump should be happy with the terms. The condo, which sits on the south end of Central Park in a building named Trump Parc East, went for $3,069 per square foot. That was the highest price anyone has paid for a unit in that building since 2016.

This would seem to potentially fall under the foreign emoluments clause. But I think people forget that there is another emoluments  clause:

I wrote this for Salon back in December 2016::


I would guess that most Americans had never heard of the “foreign emoluments clause” of Article I of the United States Constitution until the last month. We’ve certainly heard a lot about it since. It is a constitutional prohibition against presidents receiving compensation, gifts or other forms of profit or gain from foreign governments. Donald Trump’s potentially colossal conflicts of interest have compelled legal scholars from all sides of the political divide to dust off this old clause in the Constitution in what is probably a vain hope that it will force the incoming president to divest himself of his businesses.


The obvious concern is that Trump will be unduly influenced by foreign interests currying favor by supporting his business (or vice versa). But it turns out that there is a domestic emoluments clause as well, which has not been discussed. And Trump faces potential conflicts on that front as he does on the other.


It remains a mystery as to why, with some notable exceptions, the campaign press largely ignored the the issue of what Trump planned to do about his privately held business if he were elected. His unprecedented refusal to release any tax returns was an obvious sign that he was hiding something. And the required forms that he filed with the Federal Election Commission don’t shed much light on his web of business interests — other than to show that the appearance of conflict is overwhelming. But members of the press largely let that drop, aside for a few questions that Trump waved away with a fatuous declaration that he planned to turn the business over to his kids in a “blind trust” — which meant it would not be a blind trust. He promised that he wouldn’t “care about” the business.


Since the election Trump has said that his ethics adviser, the new White House counsel (and notorious former Republican federal elections commissioner), told him that “the president cannot have conflicts of interest” although he told The New York Times he wanted to “do something” to alleviate questions. He scheduled a press conference for Dec.15 to announce his plans and then canceled it. The last we’ve heard is that he’s not going to divest anything and plans to have his sons run the business.


Legal scholars are scandalized. It is true that the conflict of interest laws that apply to others in government don’t apply to the president. But the Constitution’s two emoluments clauses apply directly to him and him alone. Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, wrote this in The Guardian about the foreign emoluments issue:

Trump’s continued interest in the Trump Organization and his steady stream of monetary and other benefits from foreign powers put him on a collision course with the emoluments clause. Disentangling every improper influence resulting from special treatment of Trump’s business holdings by foreign states would be impossible. The American people would be condemned to uncertainty, leaving our political discourse rife with accusations of corruption. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that Trump has regularly declined to make his business dealings or tax returns transparent. Thus a specter of skewed incentives will haunt a Donald Trump presidency.

Tribe says that if Trump refuses to “cure his continuing violation of the emoluments clause” the Congress has the power and the duty to impeach him.


Brianne J. Gorod, chief counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, addressed the lesser known but equally applicable domestic emoluments clause of Article II of the constitution in an article for The Huffington Post. She explained that this clause was designed to prevent the president from receiving, beyond his salary, “any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them” meaning that the Congress or the individual states could not offer the president side deals or other financial inducements.


How this compromises Trump is obvious. His company owns properties and businesses all over the United States as well as around the world. Gorod laid out a few of Trump’s possible conflicts that appear to violate Article II:

[I]t’s apparent that there may be no shortage of ways in which the new President may be violating the Domestic Emoluments Clause, even as the President-elect’s failure to disclose all of his financial holdings and interests makes it impossible to know the true extent of the problem. 

Perhaps most significantly, with hotels and property developments all over the United States, it’s possible that Trump has been — and will continue to be — the beneficiary of tax breaks from any number of states. As [The New York] Times has reported, since 1980, Trump “has reaped at least $885 million in tax breaks, grants and other subsidies for luxury apartments, hotels and office buildings in New York.” And that’s just in New York. It’s not difficult to imagine that Trump could use the power of the presidency to “encourage” states and cities to offer similar tax breaks to his properties, or that states and cities could of their own will do so to try to curry favor with the Administration. Likewise, Trump plans to maintain a financial stake in the reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice.” It’s quite possible that the show might be the recipient of tax incentives and breaks, and that Trump would be one of the people reaping the benefits.

It’s also not difficult to imagine Trump’s children winking and nodding at various parties to offer favors in exchange for favorable regulations or other benefits. Just this week it was revealed that Trump’s older sons were involved in selling accessto the president for million-dollar donations to unnamed “conservation charities.” (That they would do this after their father and the Republican Party spent months ripping Hillary Clinton for taking the calls of donors to the Clinton Foundation redefines the word hypocrisy.)


There is already the appearance that the Trump family is engaged in enriching itself further through Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump’s children are talking business with foreign leaders and businesspeople during the transition and openly selling access to themselves and the president-elect. Since the actual scope of Trump’s businesses remains shrouded in secrecy, we have no way of knowing the true range of his potential conflicts and avenues of corruption.


Tribe wrote in his piece for The Guardian that “while much has changed since the constitution was written, certain premises of politics and human nature have held steady, among them is that private financial interests can subtly sway even the most virtuous leaders.” Trump is anything but a virtuous leader. The emoluments clauses could have been written specifically with him in mind.

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