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Month: April 2019

Trump and Miller uniting the white wingers

Published by digby on April 12, 2019

Trump and Miller uniting the white wingers

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

Every week during the Trump administration feels like a year, but this one has been especially overwhelming. Congress is finally conducting oversight so there are multiple hearings making news every day, from the disturbing appearances by Attorney General William Barr to the delicious rematch between House Financial Services Committee chair Maxine Waters and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

We’ve seen WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested, President Trump’s sister resigning from the federal judiciary to avoid investigation into the family’s longstanding tax evasion schemes, the burning of black churches in Louisiana and a proposal in Texas to subject women who have abortions to the death penalty. Oh, and the president’s for-profit country club turns out to be “a counterintelligence nightmare.”

But for all that as well as the Sturm und Drang over the yet-unseen Mueller report and the back and forth over congressional prerogatives, there is one issue that illustrates the fact that heading into election season the president and his accomplices in the Republican Party are preparing for a scorched-earth campaign the likes of which we’ve never seen. I’m speaking of the recent purge of the Department of Homeland Security and the ratcheting up of anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Last Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was fired, reportedly because she refused to break the law at Trump’s request. She had tried her best to be as cruel as he required, lying about and defending the odious child separation policy, to the point of explaining that the cages in which children were being held were not like animal cages because they were larger. Still, Trump was unsatisfied. Except for a few moments of glee when Nielsen ordered the tear-gassing of women and children at the border, the president felt she was too soft.

This dismissal wasn’t entirely unexpected. Trump had abruptly withdrawn his nominee for ICE director citing his desire to “go in a tougher direction.” After firing Nielsen, it became clear that he was purging the department. Prematurely naming Kevin McAleenan, the Customs and Border Protection commissioner, as Nielsen’s acting replacement, it became clear that he also had to fire the next in line by law, Claire Grady, the acting deputy secretary. She resigned on Tuesday. The same day, Secret Service director Randolph “Tex” Alles was also ousted. Rumors abound about more “heading out the door.”

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the administration had repeatedly proposed to ICE officials that they detain immigrants and then ship them to sanctuary cities to send a message to Democrats who oppose the president’s policies. The White House has confirmed that such proposals were aired.

This major move on immigration comes as the situation at the border continues to deteriorate, with thousands of asylum seekers seeking to cross in anticipation of Tump’s withdrawal of foreign aid and likely changes to how the asylum laws are managed. This dovetails nicely with Trump’s desire to keep this issue front and center as he shifts into full-time campaigning mode for the 2020 election. To that end he has put White House adviser Stephen Miller, an anti-immigrant extremist, in charge of immigration policy. Miller was known to be hostile to Nielsen and the ICE whistleblowers who spoke to the Post said that everyone understood Miller was behind the sanctuary cities plot.

It is clear that Trump and Miller believe that they need leadership at DHS who will be willing to go further than family separations, children in cages, tear gassing and releasing prisoners into sanctuary cities to retaliate against political rivals. I shudder to think what they have in mind, but it’s fair to assume that Trump is feeling confident that Barr, who has expressed an absurdly expansive view of executive power, will sign off on anything he wants to do.

Whether the courts will go along with such draconian proposals as an executive order ending birthright citizenship, increased deportations of undocumented workers already in the U.S., or offering parents a “choice” between indefinite detention with their kids or giving them up to seek asylum is unknown. But if the rumors are true, it appears the administration may be prepared to try some or all of those things. According to CNN, Trump told Border Patrol agents that if judges “give you trouble say, ‘sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.’”

He’s certainly ratcheting up the rhetoric:

There is a reason for all of this and it isn’t just Trump and Miller’s genuine disdain for immigrants from what Trump calls “shithole countries.” He has an instinct for the concerns of his base but it’s also likely that the political professionals are telling him that going hard on the immigration issue is vital to maintaining his hold on them.

The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein writes that the GOP of 2019 has transformed under Trump into an extreme, doctrinaire anti-immigrant political party that now unanimously backs the border wall and is ready to support steep cuts in legal immigration. (In earlier eras, the predominant pro-business wing of the party generally favored a loose immigration policy.) One reason for this new unanimity on the issue is the fact that Republican officeholders no longer represent areas of the country with any significant level of diversity. Brownstein further explains:

[T]he Republican acquiescence to Trump also reflects the larger reality that the party is now relying on an electoral base preponderantly tilted toward the white voters most hostile to immigration and most uneasy about demographic change overall — what I’ve called “the coalition of restoration.” Those attitudes, with only a few exceptions, are dominant not only among the white Republicans without a college degree who comprise Trump’s base, but also among the college-educated Republicans who have expressed more qualms about other aspects of Trump’s behavior.

In other words, hostility to immigrants is the glue that’s holding his coalition of white voters together. Those without college educations, conservative evangelicals and the like, will stick with him. But those white college-educated types who don’t care for his antics are still with him on this issue and he can’t afford to lose them.

Trump is the indisputable leader of this anti-immigrant coalition, but he became the leader by listening closely to what these folks wanted to hear and giving it to them. As one Republican strategist told Brownstein:

This is 20 years in the making. The party has been doing this pre-Trump, but he put the exclamation point on it. It’s not the same party. I’ve told folks, ‘This is the party. And you are not going to change it.'”

Trump and Stephen Miller have no intention of trying to change it. They believe it’s their ticket to a second term. And they are clearly willing to push the legal and constitutional envelope as far as necessary to make that happen.

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No-Permit Gun Carry Bill Dead after Advocate Threatens Texas House Speaker’s Family @spockosbrain

Published by Spocko on April 12, 2019

No-Permit Gun Carry Bill Dead after Advocate Threatens Texas House Speaker’s Family

By Spocko

This story starts with an online threat by someone with a gun. Because it was taken seriously by the people threatened, the consequences to the perpetrator extended beyond a single act.  It’s a companion to my case study, What To Do If A Trump Supporter Threatens You. I was going to call it, “What To Do If a Gun McNutt Threatens You.” but that would look too much like a joke. This story is no joke.

In March gun-rights activist Chris McNutt posted rants on Facebook about lack of movement on a Texas bill allowing gun owners to legally carry handguns without obtaining a state-issued license. McNutt, executive director of Texas Gun Rights, then drove to Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen’s home about 50 miles south of Houston while Bonnen was in Austin and his wife and teenage sons were home. McNutt also visited the homes of Reps. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock and Four Price of Amarillo.

Here’s how the story unfolded. The first story is from March 30th in The Facts, a Brazoria County Texas paper. Emphasis mine

After McNutt posted his North Texas visits to social media, the Bonnen family got word the Department of Public Safety felt it would be appropriate to watch the Bonnens’ Lake Jackson home, said Kim Bonnen, the speaker’s wife.

“It’s very rattling as a parent to be sitting 240 miles away and get a text that DPS thinks it’s appropriate to put troopers at your house,” she said.

The Bonnens’ 14-year-old son was the only family member home when McNutt paid a visit Wednesday, Kim Bonnen said. There was no contact between McNutt and the child, she said.

“He chose to pull a tactic of intimidation and threat toward our families,” Dennis Bonnen said.

McNutt could find the speaker and the other representatives at the Capitol to give them whatever information he wanted to share, Dennis Bonnen said. The choice to visit homes where only wives and children are home shows instability and lack of character, Bonnen said.

“To create the impression that he’s willing to threaten my family is unacceptable,” Bonnen said.

Bonnen, a Republican who was elected Texas House speaker in January, said Friday that the activist’s “gutless intimidation tactics” exposed no-license carry as a bad idea, dooming the legislation.

After The Facts reported that Department of Public Safety troopers stopped Chris McNutt, executive director of Texas Gun Rights, in Bonnen’s neighborhood on March 27 Speaker Bonnen issued a written statement condemning the actions and declaring “Their issue is dead.”  Advocate’s actions kill bill allowing no-permit gun carry The Statesman Bonnen’s statement came

Representative Bonnen experienced the fear, terror and underlying threat of violence from gun-rights activists that are regularly used against their critics.  The fear of violence is often dismissed by pro-gun activists and their supporters. They mock people who are concerned about armed men who show up at houses of gun-control activists and protests. “It’s legal!” They will say. Gun-rights activists state proudly they go everywhere armed, then pretend that the implied threat of violence is an overreaction.

Images from Texas Gun Rights Facebook page.

We can’t see what rants McNutt or his group posted on the Facebook pages of legislators, or what emails were sent to them directly. We don’t know what the Bonnen office staff heard in phone calls from Texas Gun Rights members. However, we do know that there was enough evidence for the DSP to have officers stationed at Bonnen’s house.  We also know what the Texas Gun Rights group has posted publicly.  I’ve included some images from their Facebook page.

From Texas Gun Rights Facebook page.
The call to go armed everywhere everyday
 from Texas Gun Rights Facebook page.

Legislators could understand intellectually that making guns legally available almost everywhere would have an impact on political speech, but it wasn’t until a pro-gun legislator saw how this tactic of intimidation and threat toward his family, did he finally get it.  Even the author of the legislation, Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, condemned the action and said Friday he was canceling his request for a committee hearing on House Bill 357.

From The Statesman:

The author of the legislation, Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, said Friday he was canceling his request for a committee hearing on House Bill 357.

“The issue is of great importance to me, but I refuse to act like it is still a possibility and continue to provide false hope to my constituents,” Stickland said in a written statement.

In a video posted Friday on Facebook, Stickland said he was “saddened by the acts of a few individuals that have stolen the conversation about legislation that I deeply care about.”

“There is never a time or place to physically threaten an elected official with violence,” he said. “It’s never OK to target their homes or personal businesses when you know they are not in town.”

Here is Strickland’s response video

The message that this behavior was unacceptable made it to Fox News, reaching an audience that might have ignored a statement condemning this if it came from a Democrat.

Bonnen, a Republican, was in the state capital of Austin but his wife teenage sons were inside the home. He said McNutt’s actions were a demonstration of “insanity” and called him an “overzealous advocate for criminals to get a gun.”

“If you want to talk about issues and you want to advocate, you do it in this building. You don’t do it at our residences,” Bonnen said. “Threats and intimidation will never advance your issue. Their issue is dead.”

The language used by the Speaker was hard-hitting and specific. From The Dallas Morning News

“I could no longer watch as legislators and their families are incessantly harassed by fanatical gun-rights activists who think laws preventing criminals from carrying a gun should be repealed,” Bonnen said in a written statement.

“Their goal is to eradicate sensible gun policies by allowing anyone to carry a gun without a license and proper training — making it impossible for law enforcement to distinguish between law-abiding gun owners and criminals,” he said. “The fear and terror used to push this agenda has made it clear this is bad public policy.”

If Fox News viewers now see how the pro-gun activists intimidated pro-gun legislators, what kind of harassment and threats have legislators who are not pro-gun experienced? I went to the Texas Gun Rights Facebook page and pulled some images  Before being accused of cherry picking and sensationalism for this order, this was how they were in on Facebook on April 11th–a gun pointing at Rep Kyle Kacal’s head.  I have complete screen shots if they are taken down.

State Rep. Kyle Kacal (D) opposes a no-permit gun carry bill, HB 357, which pro-gun extremists call “constitutional carry”

I’m not an advisor to groups in Texas who want to get laws that protect people from unstable people with guns, but if I was I would think that Bonnen’s experience could be referenced during discussions of Red Flag Laws like HB 131 and SB 157. Texans could contact their legislators, like Bonnen, Burrows and Price with a message like this:

Remember how you felt when McNutt threatened your family? Not everyone can have police protection at their home, but you could make it possible to remove the guns from people who make threats to you or your family. HB 131 gives others who are threatened a tool for swift protection of themselves or their family. Extreme Risk Protective Orders and Red Flag laws save lives. Vote yes on HB 131.

Showing legislators how lax gun laws have personally put themselves and their families in danger, and then giving them a bill to pass to protect their families and constituents, is a good method to get change.

It’s Not About Dropping Off Flyers At Legislators’ Homes. It’s About The Guns

McNutt’s response to these stories was to call it a “media hit piece.”  I watched his response video. I listened to him on the Todd and Don Show where he stated that “Texas Gun Rights does not support any threats of violence, never has, never will.”  Great, nice to hear. But what McNutt failed to do was address his actions in the context of what he and his group say on their site and Facebook page.

McNutt posted images of himself going to legislator’s homes. This time pro-gun legislators stopped ignoring the implied threat of people who may be armed with more than flyers.

What the legislators who voted to enable more people to carry guns in more places don’t want to say is,

“We know the implied threat. You might be carrying a gun. We voted to make it legal for you do to that, but we didn’t expect you to threaten our families!”

McNutt broke the unspoken agreement with pro-gun legislators. He also broke a man code, because he went to homes when the legislators were gone and only women and children would be there.  The pro-gun legislators can’t say,  “People should never carry guns at protests and when canvassing,” since that would go against what they voted for. So instead they focus on how it wouldn’t be a fair fight, since the armed man of the house isn’t there to scare away the other armed man, shoot first if they feel threatened or shoot back after the other armed man missed.

So what is the answer to the fear of legally armed people coming to your door trying to convince you of their ideas? Increase restrictions on who can carry guns and where.
But for the pro-gun legislators to do that would be to admit the frightening world they have created. Their answer is armed guards for the people in the home, armed spouses and children. There are other answers than OFFENSIVE weapons to deal with treats. Especially considering the additional danger of guns in the home.

From Texas Gun Rights page, images that show their views that guns are used to scare “bad people” and that guns should be carried instead of kept in a safe.

McNutt’s actions exposed the charade. He did the gun control movement a huge favor. By giving pro-gun legislators an opportunity to push back on the extremist gun owners, they can walk away from extremist behavior. Was it planned? Perhaps, from The Texas Tribune “It was a setup”: House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, gun rights activist come face-to-face at Texas GOP fundraiser Maybe.

Will the legislators who killed the bill be punished for it from their base? Hard to say.  I read a lot of comments where pro-gun people said it was a stupid move and blame McNutt for “killing constitutional carry for years.”  So they might maintain their base, since they also dislike extremists.

This McNutt action can also be used to remind pro-gun legislators of what to do the next time and armed pro-gun extremists show up at protests. Like this guy at a Beto rally.

In the past when armed protesters showed up at a Bonnen or Strickland rally, they might have been comfortable thinking, “They are on my side. I have nothing to fear.”

But things are different now. This is the time to change that law. Guns have no place at any rallies. The pro-gun legislators could start with banning them at theirs. “McNutt ruined this for you.”

They could then extend the restrictions to other situations. Like large events. Remember July 7, 2016 in Dallas?  Mark Hughes carried his AR-15 rifle during the protest. When shooting started, it was confusion and chaos. From The Dallas Morning News

Senior Sgt. Chris Dyer, president of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Association, said large cities like Dallas should pass ordinances that would ban the open carry of firearms during large events like protest marches.

“Normally in a protest, you’re going to have two opposing sides at least,” he said, noting that tensions can result in violence.

Bringing guns into that situation, Dyer said, is “very distracting” for officers.

“Even open carry proponents will see the common sense in restricting open carry in environments like a protest,” he said.

Now that pro-gun legislators were threatened they know how others feel. They can choose a different action going forward. While it might look like they are going against their base, they are really pushing back against a small extremist group whose actions are condemned by the majority of gun owners.

People often give up hope on Texas having sensible gun laws, but I don’t. This recent response shows that there are rational legislators who aren’t led by fanatical gun-rights activists.

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Hurry up every chance you get by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 12, 2019

Hurry up every chance you get
by Tom Sullivan

Among the things Donald Trump fears are such diverse elements as being exposed as a career criminal, not as rich as his claims, and not a self-made “winner.” But it doesn’t take a mock-Spanish cardinal to know that. Or a police psychologist. Being president of the United States is just a temp gig. Defending the facade of success he has spent a lifetime constructing around himself is his full-time job.

Last fall’s massive New York Times examination of Fred Trump and the Trump Organization’s tax and business history did more than knock large chunks off the Trump frieze. It exposed the Trump children and the family business to intense legal scrutiny and civil sanctions for possible tax fraud.

The family’s dubious tax practices have outrun New York’s statute of limitations for criminal penalties, but the expose nonetheless opened Trump’s older sister, federal appeals court judge Maryanne Trump Barry, to an ethics investigation. Judge Barry, 82, filed for retirement 10 days after a February 1 letter notified four people who filed ethics complaints that the matter was “receiving the full attention” of an official conduct review.

Barry’s retirement ended an investigation that might not only have exposed her involvement in tax fraud, but implicated her brother as well:

A lawyer for the president, Charles J. Harder, said last fall, “The New York Times’s allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory.”

But the famously litigious younger Trump, sworn enemy of “fake news” and the New York Times in particular, has yet to file suit against the Times over its expose. The Times based its reporting on 100,000 pages of documents, including “tens of thousands of pages of confidential records — bank statements, financial audits, accounting ledgers, cash disbursement reports, invoices and canceled checks,” plus “more than 200 tax returns from Fred Trump, his companies and various Trump partnerships and trusts.” The sitting president dare not open the Trump Organization’s more recent business dealings in the U.S. and abroad to discovery by bringing a lawsuit against the Times or its reporters.

Nor does he want House Democrats getting their hands on his personal tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service, federal law or no federal law. Like T-party irregulars and his newly rule-of-law-blind Republican allies, the imperious Mr. Trump believes the law is whatever he says it is.

Everything Trump is about money. He measures his manhood by it. Whatever secrets he so zealously guards about the real size of his wealth, his financial liabilities, business associations, and tax-avoidance strategies, his sister just protected by foreclosing an investigation into her own tax history. The last thing brother Scrooge wants is a visit from the Ghost of Tax Years Past.

Donald Trump may before leaving office issue himself a pardon for any federal crimes awaiting his departure from the White House. But his reach will not extend to investigations by the city, county, and state of New York. The same questions the Times investigation raised about Trump family’s federal tax filings — the ones subject to scrutiny in the erstwhile ethics probe into Maryanne Trump Barry — will apply to the Trumps’ state returns. Whatever happens with the demand for Trump’s taxes by House Democrats, New York’s state Department of Taxation and Finance presumably has copies of Trump’s federal taxes he filed with his state returns. We wish their investigators Godspeed.

Update: Replaced a dropped phrase in final paragraph.

Meanwhile, back in the states (they’re preparing to take abortion rights to the Kavanaugh court.) Whatcould go wrong?

Published by digby on April 12, 2019

Meanwhile, back in the states

by digby

First this:

And this:

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law on Thursday the state’s so-called heartbeat bill, which bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected — as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women even know that they are pregnant.

“The signing of this bill today is consistent with that respect for life and the imperative to protect those who cannot protect themselves,” DeWine said at the bill signing ceremony.
The state’s Senate and House both passed Senate Bill 23 on Wednesday.
In a statement, DeWine’s office said the bill — also known as the Human Rights and Heartbeat Protection Act — will go into effect 90 days after it’s filed by the secretary of state.

The bill’s signing was celebrated by some of its supporters, like Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who said, “Sometimes, the evolution of the law requires bold steps.”

“In the last 46 years, the practice of medicine has changed. Science has changed. Even the point of viability has changed. Only the law has lagged behind,” he said. “This law provides a stable, objective standard to guide the courts.”

Courts say anti-abortion ‘heartbeat bills’ are unconstitutional. So why do they keep coming?
But the bill’s critics promised it wouldn’t go into effect without a fight. The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, tweeted, “We’ll see you in court.”

Such laws have previously been declared unconstitutional. In Iowa, a judge struck down that state’s “heartbeat” act in January after it was signed into law last year. North Dakota was the first state to enact such legislation in 2013, but it was also struck down by the courts.
Ohio’s bill is not the first of its kind in that state. Similar legislation was vetoed by former Gov. John Kasich before he left office. He’s now a CNN contributor.
Similar legislation awaits the signature of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp after it was passed late last month. Kemp is expected to sign the bill.
The bills in Georgia and Ohio are just two of a number of similar bills that have been introduced in state legislatures across the country this year. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed a “heartbeat bill” in March

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Golly, I wonder what the courts Trump has packed will end up doing with this?

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Waters reclaimed her time

Published by digby on April 11, 2019

Waters reclaimed her time

by digby

… and Steve Mnuchin did NOT like it one bit. In case you missed this, it’s one for the books:

Waters isn’t having it.

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Mealy-mouthed anti-anti-Trumper reveals himself

Published by digby on April 11, 2019

Mealy-mouthed anti-anti-Trumper reveals himself

by digby

via GIPHY

The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner is the best interviewer in the business. This Q & A with the misanthropic contrarian Bret Easton Ellis, the “American Psycho” novelist who is a perfect representation of the snotty, entitled, anti-anti Trumpers out there who cannot bear to admit that the “middle-aged hysterics” of the liberal resistance might be right about the asshole in the White House:

“When did people start identifying so relentlessly with victims, and when did the victim’s world view become the lens through which we began to look at everything?” So begins Bret Easton Ellis’s take on, of all things, Barry Jenkins’s film “Moonlight,” which he describes as “an elegy to pain.” Ellis’s first work of nonfiction, “White,” is an interlocking set of essays, combining memoir, social commentary, and criticism, on America, in 2019; more specifically, it’s a sustained howl of displeasure aimed at liberal hand-wringers, people obsessively concerned with racism, and everyone who has not gotten over Donald Trump’s election. His targets range from the media to Michelle Obama to millennials (including his boyfriend). Ellis also defends less popular people, from Roseanne Barr to Kanye West, whom he perceives as having been given a raw deal by the mob.
[…]
In recent years, Ellis has continued to publish fiction while also writing screenplays, including for Paul Schrader’s “The Canyons,” which became notorious for its troubled production. Since 2013, he has hosted the “Bret Easton Ellis Podcast,” on Patreon. Ellis and I recently spoke by phone. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how people respond to allegations of sexual assault, whether the President is a racist, and why he finds liberal outrage so annoying.

You have a section in your book where you talk about President Trump’s comment about Mexicans being rapists. And then you have another section where you talk about Michelle Obama being “breathlessly condescending” when she said, “When they go low, we go high.” I am trying to understand why one of those things sets you off and the other you seem kind of neutral about.

You know, I think “sets me off” suggests that I am enraged, and I think the voice in the book is pretty chill and neutral. And what I am talking about is all in context. With the Trump thing, that is true. He said that once, in his very first speech, and didn’t say it again, and there were people who had picked up on it and were still repeating it a year or two years later. Without putting that in context, yeah, I guess that bothered me.

O.K., but Trump says lots of racist things. We can all agree on that, right?

[Pauses] Sure.

So he says lots of racist things. This thing was only said once. Why does people being upset about it, or people being upset about the fact that we have a President who regularly says bigoted things, bother you?

No, no, no, no, no. That just twisted up what I meant.

Tell me what you meant.

You think I am defending a racist.

No, I asked why liberals repeating Trump’s remark about Mexican immigrants being rapists bothers you so much.

Because it didn’t seem to be truthful, and it seemed to be exaggerated and said over and over again. You think I am defending Trump somehow? I am bothered by people using that one thing two years later.

There are a lot of things to get angry about: children being separated from their parents, Trump saying nice things about marchers in Charlottesville. What is it that bothers you about this?

You do know that plenty of people don’t think that? You do understand that?

Don’t think what?

Don’t think all these things you are saying about Charlottesville. What does he have, a ninety-three-per-cent approval rating, or, let’s say, a hundred per cent, from his base? Let’s say it is, over-all, way up, from thirty-eight per cent to fifty per cent, or even higher. And let’s say Latinos are now fifty-per-cent approval for Trump.

That’s not true, but O.K.

Well, whatever.

I am looking at the FiveThirtyEight average. He is at forty-two per cent.

O.K., but whatever. There is another side of the aisle.

I am not arguing that people don’t support him. You aren’t denying Trump says racist things regularly. I am just trying to understand why liberal opposition to Trump bothers you so much.

I don’t know if he does think racist things so regularly. I am not sure if I do.

Oh, O.K. What did you think birtherism was?

I do think birtherism was racist and the Tea Party was an abomination. The hysteria over Trump is what I am talking about. It’s not about his policies or supposed racism. It’s about what I see as an overreaction to Trump.

Sorry, you keep going back and forth here between racism and supposed racism. Do you think he is racist or not?

Yeah, probably he is. Because when I was doing research on him, way back in the nineteen-eighties, during “American Psycho,” the policies he and his father were talking about—in terms of not letting people live in certain buildings, and the overreaction to the Central Park jogging case—was annoying enough to make him a figure in “American Psycho,” where Patrick Bateman sees him as the father he never had.

The animating feature of the book is that you are frustrated and annoyed with the liberal consensus, which is “shrilly” and “condescendingly” looks down on Trump voters. Would that be a fair way of putting it?

I would say that’s a fair way to put it, sure.

Is it that you think there are terrible things going on but we should all take a deep breath, or is it that you don’t think there are a lot of terrible things going on?

I just think that there is a man that got elected President. He is in the White House. He has vast support from his base. He was elected fairly and legally. And I think what happened is that the left is so hurt by this that they have overreacted to the Presidency. Now, look, I live with a Democratic, socialist-bordering-on-communist millennial. I hear it every day.

He’s a character in the book.

He is in the next room right now. And I do put myself in his shoes, and I do look at the world through his lens, because I have to. I live with him, and I love him. And I do hear this, and some of it changes my mind, and some of it doesn’t. I am certainly much more of a centrist than he is. I do listen, and I think that [lack of a] sense of neutrality—of standing in the other side’s shoes and looking at this from the other side—has bothered me among a lot of my friends and from the media.

What would looking at some of the issues that we have been facing from the perspective of Trump voters look like in practice?

I don’t know. I am not that interested in politics. I am not that interested in policy. What I was interested in was the coverage. Especially in Hollywood, there was an immense overreaction. I don’t care really about Trump that much, and I don’t care about politics. I was forced to care based on how it was covered and how people have reacted. Sure, you can be hysterical, or you can wait and vote him out of office.

People did show up at the polls in 2018.

They might very well vote him out. I hope they do, so we have some sense of normalcy in this household.

Big picture.

But I don’t really care.

When I think of when people have freaked out during the past couple of years, I think of the Muslim ban, child separation, and the President saying that there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville. What, as a citizen, do you think would have been appropriate responses?

I don’t know. I really don’t.

Did it bother you when people showed up at airports or said child separation was terrible?

No, not at all. I’m not really bothered by that one way or the other.

But you don’t think people should complain about [those policies]?

No, I feel that whoever has been elected can do whatever they set out to do and what their party wants them to do and what their base wants them to do, and you might not like it, Todd [Ellis’s boyfriend] might not like it, I might not even like it, but this is the reality. It is not some made-up fantasy. This is happening.

There are plenty of people who like what he is doing, so what are we saying?

I have had this conversation with a few erstwhile lefty friends over the past couple of years and after due consideration simply concluded that they like Trump and are just too chickenshit to admit it. They enjoy the fact that he puts down all the liberals, feminists, people of color and other sundry “politically correct” people who enrage them with their “identity politics.” Just like the Trumpers, they think he “tells it like it is” and is unfairly maligned for saying things they believe should be uncontroversial. Bret Easton Ellis’ sophomoric, mealy-mouthed, evasions are typical, particularly the blithe “I don’t really care.”

Ultimately, they hate the left much more than the right which makes them objectively pro-Trumpist. That’s fine. I just wish they’d stop being so cowardly and own it.

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But his country club!

Published by digby on April 11, 2019

But his country club!

by digby

Joe Conason tells a funny story about recently going to Mar-a-lago and having Trump do a double take realizing that an old New York nemesis was sitting on the patio:

It’s an amusing story, but it suggests how easily an unwanted guest can penetrate Trump’s beachside castle — known these days as the “Winter White House” — or, for that matter, his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, or anywhere the president spends time golfing and socializing when he isn’t watching Fox News or tweeting.

The latest unwelcome visitor to be discovered at Mar-a-Lago is a suspected Chinese spy, found to be carrying a thumb drive infected with malware and various other electronic items, along with a large amount of cash. Known as Yujing Zhang, she reportedly “talked her way” onto the premises and was only stopped and arrested thanks to an alert receptionist.

Although she went through two security checkpoints, nobody flagged the unusual devices in her bag. She remains in federal custody in South Florida while authorities try to figure out who she really is and what she was doing.

Trump later dismissed Zhang’s unsettling visit to the club as a “fluke,” but as the Secret Service later explained to reporters, it is club personnel who make security decisions there, not federal agents. The same absence of basic safeguards applies to the club members, their guests and the club employees. So clueless are the clubs about their personnel that dozens of undocumented workers have toiled at the Bedminster club for years.

(Manhattan’s Trump Tower, where he shows up far less often, resembles an armed bunker in Midtown. But the security risks there are baked in among the mobsters, gangsters and other unsavory characters own apartments there.)

At the actual White House, such a lax approach has never been tolerated, of course, nor has it at any other residence occupied by a president, from FDR’s Hyde Park to Dubya’s Texas ranch. Never before Trump has the nation seen national security compromised in such a feckless, arrogant and foolish way.

Why would this president take such crazy risks with American security and secrets? He is operating under the same depressingly familiar motive that drives so many of his decisions: He won’t allow any concern to diminish the profits of the Trump Organization. Indeed, he has raised fees at his clubs substantially as he cashes in on the presidency.

So while Trump continues to defy the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which he swore to uphold, at least Congress can enforce a measure of transparency on all these sordid transactions. In its pursuit of security clearance violations at the White House, the House Oversight Committee should demand full access to the membership and employee rosters of all Trump properties, with a focus on Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster. If the Trump Organization fails to turn over that information, the committee should issue subpoenas. The committee should also call the managers of those properties — as well as Secret Service officials — to explain in public testimony why no guest records are maintained.

I’m so old that I remember when the entire Republican party and political media were having a collective nervous breakdown over the idea that Hillary Clinton used a personal email and private server for non-classified work correspondence. There was never any evidence that the server had been hacked, unlike the government servers everyone else was using but the mere possibility had them in a full-blown meltdown.

Now we have the president’s profit-making country club open to pretty much anyone who can pay, apparently including possible spies. It’s just fine because Trump is doing such a good job.

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Barr buys Trump’s “Spygate” branding

Published by digby on April 11, 2019

Barr buys Trump’s “Spygate” branding


by digby

My Salon column this morning:

If there was anyone left who wondered if Attorney General William Barr was an institutionalist or a Trump loyalist, this week has cleared that up. He is Trump’s man at the Department of Justice, ready and willing to advance the White House line regardless of how it might affect his own credibility. After Barr’s two days of testimony, first before the House Appropriations Committee and then the Senate Judiciary Committee, it’s unclear if he is even aware that such a thing might be important. The much maligned Matt Whitaker, Trump’s former acting attorney general, may end up being remembered as more of an honest broker than Barr is turning out to be.

In his appearance before the House committee, Barr was dismissive of questions about the Mueller report, arrogantly declaring that he’d said everything he intended to say until his version is released to the Congress. He did promise to present a color-coded set of redactions so that the clairvoyants who will be tasked with trying to figure out what the report actually says will know what category of information is being denied to the public, which is nice.

The big news from that hearing was that Barr announced “I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted in the summer of 2016,” which got the right wing very excited. You can’t blame them. Their fatuous “Deep State” counter-narrative, which holds that the FBI and the intelligence community banded together during the election to sabotage Donald Trump’s campaign had seemingly been validated by the attorney general of the United States.

But no one was more excited about it than President Trump, who ranted incoherently about treason and expressed his gratitude that Barr was finally going to get to the bottom of the “attempted coup”:

Barr is on record saying that he believes the president has a right to order the attorney general to investigate his political rivals, so it’s no surprise that he’d have no problem following Trump’s public directive. At his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee he made that clear. When Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., asked him about this, he replied:

One of the things I want to do is pull together all the information from the various investigations that have gone on, including on the Hill and in the Department [of Justice], and see if there are any remaining questions to be addressed.

 Shaheen followed up by asking why this was necessary and what Barr was looking for. He gave a patently disingenuous rationale:

I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. It’s a big deal. The generation I grew up in, which was the Vietnam War period, you know, people were all concerned about spying on the antiwar people and so forth by the government. And there were a lot of rules put in place to make sure that there’s an adequate basis before our law-enforcement agencies get involved in political surveillance. I’m not suggesting that those rules were violated. But I think it’s important to look at that. And I’m not just not talking about the FBI, necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly.

This Republican attorney general comparing the heinous overreach of the Nixon-era Cointelpro program with this counterintelligence investigation into foreign interference in an election campaign was laughable. But considering that Fox News talking heads have absurdly appropriated the traditional left-wing “Deep State” critique of the intelligence community to serve the authoritarian leader who is currently ranting that “we have to get rid of judges” every chance, it’s hardly surprising.

Shaheen followed up by asking, “You’re not suggesting, though, that spying occurred?”

Barr replied, “I think spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur.” Shaheen was taken aback and began to follow up, at which point Barr seemed to realize that he’d let the cat out of the bag and added, “The question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t.”

Of course, he was suggesting exactly that. He knows very well that the DOJ inspector general has already been investigating the Russia investigation, including all the bogus issues Fox and the Republicans have been blathering about for the last year and a half. Indeed, his use of the word “spy” in this context reflects the success of what Trump considers his greatest talent: branding.

Recall that last spring there was a brief kerfuffle over the news that an FBI informant had approached Trump advisers Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis during the campaign (which their testimony later revealed added up to nothing). Right-wing media twisted this into a new scandal in which Barack Obama had ordered a spy to be installed inside the campaign. Trump ran with it:

The AP reported at the time:

Trump has told confidants in recent days that the revelation of an informant was potential evidence that the upper echelon of federal law enforcement has conspired against him, according to three people familiar with his recent conversations but not authorized to discuss them publicly. Trump told one ally this week that he wanted “to brand” the informant a “spy,” believing the more nefarious term would resonate more in the media and with the public.

Barr said in his hearing on Wednesday that if there were “issues at the FBI,” it was “probably a failure among a group of leaders there at the upper echelon.”

This “Spygate” episode is just one tentacle of the laughably baroque right-wing counter-narrative, but it’s clear that the new attorney general is highly conversant with its talking points. This isn’t the first time Barr has shown that he’s spent way too much of his time watching Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs. He told the New York Times last year, “I have long believed that the predicate for investigating the uranium deal, as well as the [Clinton] foundation, is far stronger than any basis for investigating so-called ‘collusion.'”

Now we know that he’s been so thoroughly indoctrinated in this right-wing newspeak that even having access to the real intelligence can’t pry open his mind. He’s a Trump true believer.

“I know nothing about Wikileaks, it’s not my thing” — Donald Trump, lying as usual

Published by digby on April 11, 2019

“I know nothing about Wikileaks, it’s not my thing” — Donald Trump, lying as usual

by digby

I’m unclear about the Assange charges at this point but to the extent they chill freedom of the press obviously it’s bad. From what I understand so far the bulk of the charges are for conspiracy to hack but there is at least one that charges him with deleting chat logs which is simply good journalistic practice. So we’ll have to see how this plays out.

Unsurprisingly, whatever good feelings I had about Wikileaks disappeared some time back and not just because of Assange’s grotesque behavior, during the election campaign:
 
He also released personal information on thousands of innocent Turkish women, putting them in harms way. It has been a long time since Assange was operating as an honest broker for radical transparency. It’s very, very hard to feel sympathy for him. 
You have to love this though:

Trump to Bill O’Reilly: “Wikileaks is amazing”

The problem is, Bill, I would hammer it, but the press doesn’t pick it up. The press is hardly even talking about Wikileaks. You now that. Wikileaks is amazing. The stuff that’s coming out, it shows she’s a real liar. She said, well, you have to say to the public and you have to say to your donors different things. Okay? The press doesn’t even pick this stuff up. You look at, where are you seeing it? [10/11/16]

Trump: “Wikileaks, some new stuff, some brutal stuff”

We have all of these new charges, did you see it just came down today? Wikileaks, some new stuff, some brutal stuff. I mean I’d read it to you but to hell with it trust me it’s real bad stuff. The speech transcripts contain scandalous revelations about Hillary Clinton that disqualify her from seeking public office. And she is. [10/10/16]

Trump says Wikileaks proves Clinton should not “be able to run for president”

No one who supports open borders should be able to run for president because we won’t have a country. And buy the way weeks ago I called out Hillary Clinton for supporting open borders and the media said I was wrong. Now I’ve been proven right. Where is the media rushing to correct these false stories? Because in the Wikileaks it was all about open borders. [10/10/16]

Trump: “Wikileaks. I love Wikileaks”
Wikileaks, I love Wikileaks. And I said write a couple of them down. Let’s see. During a speech crooked Hillary Clinton, oh she’s crooked folks. She’s crooked as a three-dollar bill. Okay here’s one. Just came out. ‘Lock her up’ is right. [10/10/16]

Trump: “You see so much from these Wikileaks. You see so much. There’s so much.”

It’s just the latest evidence of the hatred that the Clinton campaign really has for everyday Americans and you see, and you see so much from these Wikileaks. You see so much. There’s so much. [10/11/16]

Trump: “I’ll tell you this Wikileaks stuff is unbelievable…you gotta read it.”

I’ll tell you this Wikileaks stuff is unbelievable. It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it and you gotta maybe get it because they’re not putting it out. They want to put it out but they can’t do that because without the media and without the press Hillary Clinton would be nothing. She’d be nothing. Zero. [10/12/16]

Trump: “One of the big advantages of me having a rather large microphone… is that I can talk about Wikileaks”

And one of the big advantages of me having a rather large microphone, and meaning a lot of people are listening, is that I can talk about Wikileaks and we are live, it’s amazing. Boom boom boom. I think they are just turning them all off. Watch, you go home, they’ll say, ‘why did it end so abruptly?’ [10/12/16]

Trump: “You hear this? Wikileaks. Big stuff but the press does not report it”

You hear this? Wikileaks. Big stuff but the press does not report it because honestly without the press, without the media, Hillary Clinton is nothing. She’s nothing okay? She’s nothing. [10/12/16]
Trump: Wikileaks reveals Clinton would be “the most corrupt person ever elected to high office”

She would be the most dishonest and the most corrupt person ever elected to high office. The Wikileaks emails show the Department of Justice fed information to Clinton, now think of this. She is under investigation. [10/12/16]

Trump: Wikileaks reveals “the massive international corruption of the Clinton machine”

And so now we address the slander and libels that was just last night thrown at me by the Clinton machine and New York Times and other media outlets as part of a concerted, coordinated, and vicious attack. It’s not coincidence that these attacks come at the exact same moment and altogether at the same time as Wikileaks releases documents exposing the massive international corruption of the Clinton machine, including 2,000 more emails just this morning. [10/13/16]

Trump: “The sad part is we don’t talk about Wikileaks because it’s incredible.”

The sad part is we don’t talk about Wikileaks because it’s incredible. But Wikileaks just came out with a lot of new ones. And it would be wonderful if these very dishonest people back there would talk about it. It would be wonderful. It would be wonderful. [10/13/16]

Trump: “Wikileaks unveils horrible, horrible things about Hillary Clinton”

It’s a total setup. Now suddenly after many, many years, phony accusers come out less than a month before one of the most important elections in the history of our country. It also comes at a time as Wikileaks unveils horrible, horrible things about Hillary Clinton but they’d rather talk about this. [10/14/16]

Trump on Wikileaks: “There’s bad, bad stuff [the media is] not covering”

The Hillary Clinton documents released by Wikileaks make more clear than ever, and they don’t cover them the way they’re supposed to be covering. There’s bad, bad stuff they’re not covering. [10/15/16]
Trump: “Wikileaks came out with lots of really unbelievable things”

And by the way, Wikileaks came out with lots of really unbelievable things. Just minutes ago. In fact, I almost delayed this speech by about two hours, it’s so interesting. But I decided you’re more important than anybody, okay? It’s all a big, beautiful fraud. [10/15/16]

Trump: The media “will not talk about Wikileaks”

The media is an extension of the Clinton campaign as Wikileaks has proven, and they will not talk about Wikileaks. [10/17/16]

Trump: “Boy, that Wikileaks has done a job on her, hasn’t it?”

I said open border, and she, open border, I don’t want open border but she, turned out she wanted open borders. Boy, that Wikileaks has done a job on her, hasn’t it? [10/20/16]


Trump: “We’ve learned so much from Wikileaks”

“We’ve learned so much from Wikileaks. For example, Hillary believes it’s vital to deceive the people by having one public policy — [ booing ] — And a totally different policy in private. That’s okay. [10/20/16]

Trump: “We love Wikileaks. Wikileaks.”

We love Wikileaks. Wikileaks. They have revealed a lot. They’ve revealed that there is a great hostility toward Catholics. They reveal a great hostility toward Evangelicals. [10/21/16]

Trump: “A terrible Wikileaks was released just moments ago… you’ll be sickened by it”

A terrible Wikileaks was just released moments ago, which you’ll go home, you’ll see it, and you’ll be sickened by it and that she can get away with what she’s getting away with. [10/25/16]


Trump: “Wikileaks revelations have exposed criminal corruption at the highest levels of our government”

The Wikileaks revelations have exposed criminal corruption at the highest levels of our government. [10/29/16]

Trump: Wikileaks show “a rigged system with more collusion, probably illegal”

Out today, Wikileaks just came out with a new one just a little while ago it’s just been shown that a rigged system with more collusion, probably illegal, between the Department of Justice the Clinton campaign and the State Department, you saw that. The emails show that the assistant attorney general who’s involved in the investigation has been feeding information directly to John Podesta and the Clinton campaign, can you believe that. She shouldn’t be allowed to run. [11/02/16]

Trump: Wikileaks revealed Clinton was “completely jeopardizing the national security of the United States”

Just today we learned Hillary Clinton was sending highly-classified information through her maid. Did you see? Just came out a little while ago. Who, therefore, had total access to this information, completely jeopardizing the national security of the United States. This just came out, Wikileaks. We need a government that can go to work on day one for the American people. That will be impossible with Hillary Clinton, the prime suspect in a far-reaching criminal investigation. [11/05/16]

Brain worms? by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 11, 2019

Brain worms?
by Tom Sullivan

As U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry negotiated the Paris climate accord and signed on behalf of the United States in 2016. As a witness before a House Oversight Committee hearing on “The Need for Leadership to Combat Climate Change and Protect National Security” on Tuesday, Kerry faced questioning of his climate expertise by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Massie has degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Massie and holds several patents and lives off the grid in easttern Kentucky in a solar-powered home. He drives a Tesla.

“No one should ever confuse me with a partisan; I’m clearly an ideologue,” Massie told BuzzFeed.

But Kerry recently criticized the GOP’s cult leader over a proposal to create an ad hoc committee to debunk the scientific consensus on climate change. As an informal committee, the group would not be subject to ordinary public disclosure. Donald Trump prefers naming “acting” cabinet secretaries as well. Like ad hoc committees, they give him “more flexibility” and avoid the scrutiny of Senate confirmation hearings.

So on Tuesday, Massie the not-partisan ideologue was ready to pounce. Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson provided a transcript:

Massie: Sec. Kerry, I want to read part of your statement back to you: “Instead of convening a kangaroo court, the president might want to talk with the educated adults he once trusted his top national security positions.” It sounds like you’re questioning the credentials of the president’s advisers, currently. But I think we should question your credentials today. Isn’t it true you have a science degree from Yale?

Kerry: Bachelor of arts degree.

Massie: Is it a political science degree?

Kerry: Yes, political science.

Massie: So how do you get a bachelor of arts, in a science?

Kerry: Well it’s a liberal arts education and degree. It’s a bachelor…

Massie: OK. So it’s not really science. So I think it’s somewhat appropriate that someone with a pseudo-science degree is here pushing pseudo-science in front of our committee today.

Kerry: Are you serious?! I mean this is really a serious happening here?

Massie: You know what? It is serious. You’re calling the president’s Cabinet a “kangaroo court.” Is that serious?

Kerry: I’m not calling his Cabinet a kangaroo court, I’m calling this committee that he’s putting together a kangaroo committee.

Massie: Are you saying it doesn’t have educated adults now?

Kerry: I don’t know who it has yet because it’s secret.

Massie: Well you said it in your testimony.

Kerry: Why would he have to have a secret analysis of climate change?

Massie: Let’s get back to the science of it.

Kerry: But it’s not science, you’re not quoting science!

Massie: Well, You’re the science expert. You have the political science degree.

Dickinson calls this exchange “one of the most asinine moments in congressional history.”

Massie is not dumb. He is far smarter than two other GOP members shown in Rolling Stone’s photo. What did this to him?

A Taiwanese woman recently treated for an eye swelling found the cause was tiny sweat bees living under her eyelid and feeding on her tears. The Atlantic warns there are worse things in nature to affect one’s eyesight: pubic lice and botflies, beetles and parasitic worms.

Maybe it’s brain worms. I might breathe easier if it was just parasitic brain worms or an alien invasion.

Trump’s America feels increasingly like John Carpenter’s They Live. People are going about their normal lives oblivious to society being in the grip of a cult committed to making ours a government not of laws, or even of men, but of one man.

Is it possible?

Is there any other explanation?

Where can I get a pair of those glasses?