Month: May 2019

The trade war is only partly about economics

by digby

Paul Krugman brings up one of the big issues around this trade war that I think gets short shrift. It’s not just about economics. It’s about keeping the peace.First he corrects the notion that Trump’s trade war is going to cause an economic crash. (Remember, Krugman won the Nobel Prize for his work on internaitonal trade so he knows what he’s talking about here.)

Then he writes this:

All of this, however, is only about the strict economics of a trade war, which may be the least important aspect of what’s happening.

For trade policy isn’t just about economics. It’s also about democracy and peace.

This is obvious and explicit in Europe, where the origins of the European Union lie in the Coal and Steel Community of the early 1950s — an agreement whose economic benefits, while real, were in a way incidental to its real purpose, preventing any future wars between France and Germany. And membership of the E.U. has always been contingent on democratization — which is, by the way, why the E.U.’s limp reaction to the de facto collapse of democracy in Hungary and, it appears, Poland represents such moral failure.

It’s more implicit in the case of the United States. But the historical record is pretty clear: the postwar trading system grew out of the vision of Cordell Hull, FDR’s Secretary of State, who saw commercial links between nations as a way to promote peace. That system, with its multilateral agreements and rules to limit unilateral action, was from the beginning a crucial piece of the Pax Americana. It was as integral to the postwar order as the I.M.F., which was supposed to provide a safety net for nations having balance of payments trouble, or for that matter NATO.

And Trump’s trade war should correspondingly be seen as part and parcel of his embrace of foreign dictators, lack of respect for our allies, and evident contempt for democracy, at home as well as abroad.

But wait, you say: China is neither an ally nor a democracy, and it is in many ways a bad actor in world trade. Isn’t there a reasonable case for confronting China over its economic practices?

Yes, there is — or there would be if the tariffs on Chinese products were an isolated story, or better yet if Trump were assembling an alliance of nations to confront objectionable Chinese policies. But in fact Trump has been waging trade war against almost everyone, although at lower intensity. When you’re imposing tariffs on imports of Canadian steel, on the ludicrous pretense that they endanger national security, and are threatening to do the same to German autos, you’re not building a strategic coalition to deal with a misbehaving China.

What you’re doing, instead, is tearing down what’s left of the Pax Americana.

Wasn’t this inevitable in any case? I don’t think so. True, U.S. economic dominance has been eroding over time, not because we’re getting poorer, but because the rest of the world is getting richer. But there was reason to hope that a relatively peaceable international order could be sustained by an alliance of democratic powers. In fact, until a few years ago it seemed to me that we were seeing exactly that taking place for the world trading system, which was transitioning from largely benign U.S. hegemony to a comparably benign co-dominion by the U.S. and the E.U.

At this point, however, things look a lot bleaker. It’s not just Trump. And it’s not even just Trump plus Brexit. The Europeans are also turning out to be a big disappointment. As I said, if they can’t even deal with the likes of Viktor Orban within their own community, they’re definitely not up to providing the kind of leadership the world needs.

But where the Europeans are weak, Trump is malign. He’s working actively to make the world a more dangerous, less democratic place, with trade war just one manifestation of that drive. And the eventual negative consequences for America and the world will be much bigger than anything we can capture with economic modeling of the effects of tariffs.

This to me has always been the real danger of Trump and the GOP’s muddled internationalism. It’s one thing to say that it’s time to re-evaluate the Pax Americana and step into a less militarized global role. It’s time for that. But this wild, chaotic destruction with nothing but ignorant bellicosity and a huge military is a recipe for something very terrible happening.

The US has not been a benign actor on the world stage. But it was predictable which meant that as it acted as the fulcrum for internaitonal organizing of various players, at least everyone was playing on the same field. Now we aren’t. And it’s anyone’s guess as to how that’s going to come out.

Trump’s idiotic trade war, based upon a sixth grade understanding of how trade works, is a big part of that.

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ICYWW: Trump approval rating hasn’t really budged

by digby

I think it’s pretty clear that nothing will shake that 40% or so of people who say they approve of this criminal barbarian in the White House. The economy is undoubtedly propping him up, but that’s important, particularly since it usually takes a while before people feel a downturn so it’s getting late for that to make a difference for 2020. And that isn’t happening anyway.

The Democrats are going to have to get every last voter to the polls if they want to win. The Republicans cheat in every way possible so they are automatically spotted a few points. Nobody should assume that these numbers can’t get him a victory.

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The investigation investigation

by digby

This is a good quick run-down of the emerging GOP “investigate the investigators” scandal. I’m reliably told that we shouldn’t be concerned about any of this because the Deep State deserves it. Maybe so. But from a civil libertarian perspective, I think everyone should do a gut check and ask themselves if these people who are fighting the Deep State are sincere and will rein in the intelligence community or simply deploy it to use for their own purposes.

After all, these people also want the most powerful man in the world to be able to order federal authorities to persecute his political rivals. They aren’t against “Deep State” power. They want it to only be used for their own purposes:

On Friday, the former general counsel of the FBI, Jim Baker, decided to speak out. Frustrated by the burgeoning Republican narrative about how the Russia investigation might have been launched under false pretenses and with nefarious motives, the previously quiet top FBI aide stepped onto the public stage.

“There was no attempted ‘coup,’” Baker said at the Brookings Institution. “There was no way in hell that I was going to allow some coup or coup attempt to take place on my watch.”

He added that he stepped forward because he “just became sick of all the B.S. that is said about the origins of the investigation.” Baker, who left the FBI in 2017, said he wanted to “reassure the American people that it was done for lawful, legitimate reasons.”

Whatever legitimate questions might be asked about the process for obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants or the Justice Department’s initial inquiries in the Russia probe, it’s worth noting just how long this “coup” narrative took to build on the political right — and how much GOP leaders initially eschewed it.

Then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) first injected this into the public bloodstream via the so-called “Nunes memo,” which raised questions about the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. At the time, the “coup”/“witch hunt” narrative (which generally hadn’t used those words but occasionally implied such an effort) was largely the provenance of President Trump and some of his most conspiratorial defenders.

Some GOP leaders were clearly uncomfortable with where the Nunes memo might lead. When Trump approved its release, then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) urged colleagues not to overstate its details. The House Intelligence Committee’s then-Republican leaders seemed to heed that advice, passing around talking points telling fellow members, “The Memo is NOT intended to undermine the Special Counsel [Robert S. Mueller III],” and “The Memo is NOT intended to undermine DOJ or FBI.”

Then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) went on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and said, “I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe, for this reason: There is a Russia investigation without a [Steele] dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at Trump Tower. … The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos’s meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.”

When one of the most conspiratorial GOP members of Congress, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), spun an elaborate theory about how the Democrats might have been working with federal law enforcement to get a FISA warrant to “spy” on the Trump campaign, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions — a very conservative former senator — shut him down.

Those days are long gone. Now that the Mueller report has alleged no conspiracy with Russia (and Mueller punted on obstruction, citing DOJ policy), Republicans have largely echoed Trump’s talking points — or at least raised suggestive questions — that the surveillance of Page might have been symptomatic of an effort to take Trump down. And unlike in Sessions’s day, Attorney General William P. Barr is hearing them out.

Contrary to Ryan and Gowdy’s cautions and the talking points passed around at the time, the Nunes memo has now formed the centerpiece of an argument that the Mueller probe began as an anti-Trump political effort. Gowdy’s assurances that there would have been a Russia investigation regardless have been swept aside in favor of an argument that nothing about this was based upon legitimate inquiries or what the Trump team actually did.

Today, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has called for investigating the origins of the probe. Barr has suggested the matter is worth of an inquiry, even adopting Trump’s controversial talking point that the FBI was “spying” on Page (a word that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray took issue with this week). And Republicans have consistently exaggerated the Mueller report’s supposed “exoneration” of Trump (a word Mueller explicitly said did not apply to his obstruction conclusions) in an effort to argue that the investigation was bogus from the beginning.

It’s a pretty predictable outcome of the Nunes memo. And it’s one that even some top Republicans predicted and clearly worried about.

And here’s an excellent primer on the so-called “Ukraine” scandal.

What this tells us is that the right wingers are planning to flood the zone with trumped-up scandals to try to muddy the waters. Judging from the way the press is reacting, I think they will be fairly successful.

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We Could Have All This. We Really Could.

by tristero

Josh Voorhees gives nice short summaries of the programs Elizabeth Warren is proposing. Maybe the details could change but the identification of most of the important issues this country is facing – including but hardly limited to the critical first step of removing Trump as quickly as possible from the presidency — could not be more spot on. And the thoughtfulness of the approach always puts the American people first.

We could have all this. We really could. It will take a lot of hard work and a far less gullible, distracted press. But it’s possible.

As for electability, are you kidding? Just read the proposals. Warren believes that the American people are smart and caring enough to do just that. And believing we’re that intelligent and committed, that  is genuinely appealing to the base instead of pandering or groveling.

Like Digby, I’m endorsing no one. Others also have great ideas. But damn, it’s so great to realize that one of our major politicians has really taken the time to propose something far beyond vacuous slogans. And Warren’s proposed a lot of somethings.

Again, read all about it.

Rudy got it out there, didn’t he?

by digby

This Giuliani mess has gotten even more ridiculous:

Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, said Friday on “Fox News @ Night” that he will not be traveling to Ukraine as previously announced.

Giuliani, a former Republican mayor of New York City, said that he believed he would be “walking into a group of people that are enemies of the president, and in some cases, enemies of the United States and in one case, an already convicted person who has been found to be involved in assisting the Democrats with the 2016 investigation.

“There was a great fear that the new [Ukrainian] president would be surrounded by, literally, enemies of the president [of the United States] who were involved in that and people who are involved with other Democratic operatives,” he told host Shannon Bream.

“I’m convinced from what I’ve heard from two very reliable people tonight that the president [Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky] is surrounded by people who are enemies of the president [Trump], and people who are — at least [in] one case — clearly corrupt and involved in this scheme,” Giuliani said.

That’s absurd, of course. It was his plan, not some set-up. No matter what, they have to paint themselves as victims.

But Rudy didn’t really have to go on that trip, did he? All they had to do was make it clear what the most powerful man in the world wants done, which Rudy managed to do in flamboyant style. The new Ukrainian president now understands very well how to curry favor with Trump and will make his decisions with that in mind. And the bogus Biden Ukraine story got more oxygen with the Democrats and others in the press amplifying the New York Times’ stories that have been fed to them by GOP operatives Peter Schweitzer and Giuliani himself.

Rudy got the job done.

Like Bill Barr and countless others, Giuliani regularly throws himself into the lion’s den in service of Trump’s conspiracy theories. He seems to relish it.

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Another rationale for impeachment

by digby

In my mind, the principle of the matter is the obvious reason to do it, but if you are weighing the politics of the matter, it’s hard to see how open handwringing about the politics of it will help your cause. The kind of cynicism that says you should let criminals get away with their crimes because it’s risky to try to stop them isn’t a compelling message. First of all, the risk is overstated and is based upon a willful misreading of the Clinton impeachment. The Republicans didn’t actually suffer for it and that was after they impeached an already popular president over a sexual matter. The public saw that for what it was. T

rump’s crimes are much, much more serious and a public airing of them is necessary to preserve the constitutional order. We’ve got a rogue political party openly saying “fuck it we’ll do whatever we want, even consort with our foreign adversaries, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” The Democrats simply can’t let this go.

Anyway, there does seem to be some movement among Democrats toward impeachment on a practical basis which is better than nothing:

Democrats know that impeachment is a losing proposition against President Donald Trump right now.

But there’s another rationale for launching impeachment that has some Democrats reconsidering the idea — getting access to the sensitive documents and testimony that Trump’s team is withholding.

Judges have repeatedly ruled that Congress has a greater claim to sensitive government documents and personal information when it can point to an ongoing legal matter, instead of just a congressional investigation or legislative debate. And impeachment would give lawmakers that legal matter — the process is essentially a court procedure run by Congress where the House brings charges and the Senate holds the trial.

The idea might seem toxic to House Democratic leaders who have so far resisted impeachment overtures against the president, aware that the politically explosive move wouldn’t get through the Republican-led Senate and could turn off voters ahead of the 2020 election.

But legal experts and lawmakers across the ideological spectrum acknowledge that formally unleashing impeachment would bolster Democrats’ arguments that they deserve to see the president’s tax returns, interview senior officials, peruse special counsel Robert Mueller’s trove of evidence and see the details of Trump’s personal dealings with foreign leaders. So far, the Trump administration has vociferously argued it doesn’t need to acquiesce to such demands, which it says are merely part of a political hit job. The president’s personal attorneys have even punched back with lawsuits in some cases.

“One could imagine that if this stonewalling of the American people continues, that that may be something the committee would have to consider,” said Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which would lead impeachment proceedings.

“The Democrats’ hand would be strengthened if they were conducting a formal impeachment inquiry,” added Philip Lacovara, who served as counsel to the Watergate-era investigation of President Richard Nixon.

There is no time to waste. If Trump manages to stonewall until the first of the year, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Democrats will just fold up tent and say they have to get back to the kitchen table issues and leave it up to the public to sort this whole thing out on their own. In this messy information environment I don’t think that’s a very wise move.

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What if we’re asking the wrong question?
by Tom Sullivan

“Our constitutional system never contemplated a President like Donald Trump,” Jeffrey Toobin advises in his latest column for The New Yorker. The Framers anticipated some friction between the three branches of government, but not a mutant like Donald Trump who, abetted by cult-like followers, single-handedly initiates a total blockade of the legislative branch.

Though there may be a raft of them, these are not singular fights, Toobin insists, but “an open campaign of total defiance against another branch of government.” The legal system was not designed to address this kind of a coordinated wave attack. “The law has no clear mechanism for adjudicating these claims together—but they belong together,” Toobin explains.

To hell with the unitary executive theory. In the name of America, the sitting president and his followers now upset its very meaning in ways as potentially impactful as the Civil War. Grover Norquist famously wanted to roll back the 20th century and restore the McKinley administration. Trump is bent on restoring monarchical rule that ended on these shores with the Treaty of Paris. His red-hatted faux-patriots are just fine with that.

“If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier… just so long as I’m the dictator. Heh-heh,” chuckled George W. Bush.

Maybe that’s the idea. It’s the way Trump has lived his gold-plated-penthouse life.

Last summer I wrote how in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, a mutant with telepathic powers upset a broad plan to guide the galaxy through a thousand years of chaos and decline to a new period of order. But the plan could not anticipate the Mule, a single individual with the ability to “change the emotions of others … to first instill fear in the inhabitants of his conquered planets, then to make his enemies devoutly loyal to him.”

Our Constitution did not anticipate such a turn of events either, Toobin offers. “The only likely remedy, therefore, will lie with the voters, next year.”

Famous last words.

To date, the media seems not to have learned from 2016 and two years of Trump. Having behaved unethically and immorally without being held to account, Trump has become even more dismissive of constraints on his behavior. His personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, announced he would travel to Ukraine and ask a foreign government to examine the origins of the Mueller investigation as well as former Vice President Joe Biden’s son’s business dealings there. Bait taken, headlines secured, and foreign seeds planted, Giuliani announced he has cancelled the trip. The press delivered Trump’s message for him.

Well he doesn't need to go now does he?

He already said, "Ukraine, if you're listening …" https://t.co/ttr25gRf7Z— digby (@digby56) May 11, 2019

For their part, Democrats seem slowly to be finding their footing. Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley sees signs they are threading the needle between doing what the Constitution demands in sanctioning Trump and pursuing what voters want:

The message Democrats are now sending is: We don’t want to have to take our eye off Everyday Issues That Matter to the American People to talk about impeachment, but we will “check” the president’s corrupt behavior if we have to, for the good of the country. Yes, the Democrats are now presenting themselves as the aging lawman getting called out of his armchair to save the town. And it’s not a terrible plan!

Polls show movement towards support for impeachment or at least towards “keeping Trump in check.”

In the end, The Foundation found a way to render the Mule harmless without killing him. With America’s genius for improvisation, it may still do the same to Trump. But like spinning the wheel on the Titanic, this ship takes a painfully long time to respond. Still, we may yet avoid sinking. But it is not just wit and invention that’s needed now from real patriots, but courage, determination and, most of all, persistence. Lady Liberty may yet have a few tricks up her toga.

With that hopeful thought in mind, it strikes me perhaps Democratic voters looking to 2020 might be focused on the wrong question. By next year the question may no longer be, “Who can beat Trump?” but “Who can beat [fill in the blank]?”

Friday Night Soother

by digby

This is the cutest little guy I’ve ever seen …

This is the tiniest, bravest, most adorable baby pig in the whole world 💞 pic.twitter.com/tDyAB9588H— The Dodo (@dodo) March 21, 2019

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He just can’t stop obstructing

by digby

According to the New York Times, Trumpie’s been putting the squeeze on McGahn:

White House officials asked at least twice in the past month for the key witness against President Trump in the Mueller report, Donald F. McGahn II, to say publicly that he never believed the president obstructed justice, according to two people briefed on the requests.

Mr. McGahn, who was the president’s first White House counsel, declined, one of the people said. His reluctance angered Mr. Trump, who believed that Mr. McGahn showed disloyalty by telling investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, about Mr. Trump’s attempts to maintain control over the Russia investigation.

The White House made one of the requests to Mr. McGahn’s lawyer, William A. Burck, before the Mueller report was released publicly but after the Justice Department gave a copy to Mr. Trump’s lawyers to read. Reading the report, the president’s lawyers saw that Mr. Mueller had left out that Mr. McGahn had told investigators that he believed Mr. Trump never obstructed justice. Mr. Burck had told them months earlier that his client had shared that belief with investigators.

Apparently he did say that. But then he read the report and realized he may have been wrong:

Mr. McGahn initially entertained the White House request. But after the report was released, detailing the range of actions Mr. Trump took to try to impede the inquiry, Mr. McGahn declined to put out a statement. The report also included comments Mr. Trump to aides about how he believed Mr. McGahn leaked to the media to make himself look good.

McGahn did leak to the press to make himself look good. The Trump team should have realized saying that out loud would cause McGahn to balk at helping them out. After all, the guy wants to make himself look good in all this. He wouldn’t like having that opinion on the report any more than Trump liked being caught obstructing justice.

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Trumpen Juden

by digby

A swell group of youthful Trump lovers:

In viral video, leader of #LasVegas chapter of Turning Point USA seen giving Alt-Right "OK" sign while friend screams, "We're gonna run the world! White Power! Fuck N*****s!" Was seen giving same hand sign at recent "Build the Wall" rally. CW: Racial Slurs https://t.co/f0IwuCWAsR pic.twitter.com/qcQIFTzk8i— It's Going Down (@IGD_News) May 10, 2019

TPM explains the provenance of that sickening video:

Turning Point USA, the Trump-aligned right-wing group trying to make conservatism cool on college campuses, had to deal with yet another incident of racism in its ranks Thursday: a video that showed the president-elect of its University of Nevada, Las Vegas chapter endorsing “white power.”

In a cell phone video surfaced by the anarchist news website It’s Going Down and other platforms, a man identified as the elected president of TPUSA-UNLV, Riley Grisar (above, left) is seen making the “a-okay” hand gesture employed by many in the alt-right, and then saying “white power” twice.

“We’re going to rule the country. White power,” repeats an unidentified woman sitting next to Grisar who’s also flashing the hand signal. She adds: “Fuck the n******” then repeats the phrase.

An unidentified cameraman says “white power” as well, then says “Yeah, fuck ‘em all. Fuck ‘em all. That’s right.”

TPUSA released a statement on its Twitter account saying it had “permanently removed the student from any current or future involvement with our organization.” The group made no comment on the other two individuals seen in the video. It also seemed to hedge slightly on Grisar’s culpability, saying that TPUSA had a zero-tolerance policy for hate “no matter the medium or how dated the act or comment.”

TPM’s requests to the UNLV chapter of TPUSA to confirm the identities of the people in the video went unanswered. A TPUSA national spokesperson said he could not identify the other two people in the video. A spokesperson for UNLV confirmed to TPM that a student named Riley Grisar attends the school as an undergraduate and added: “The abhorrent views and language expressed in the video are antithetical to the values of diversity and inclusion that we espouse at UNLV every day. This matter, as well as the interactions that took place on campus last week, has been referred to the appropriate departments for review.”

Racism within TPUSA’s ranks is nothing new. As several outlets noted Friday, from the-then national field director saying she hates black people to anti-Semitic twitter jokes, the group has repeatedly had to answer for members’ bigoted comments after they’ve been publicly exposed.

Yet the group has maintained extensive connections to the modern Republican establishment. In December 2017, President Trump boosted TPUSA and its founder Charlie Kirk on Twitter. Kirk later interviewed Trump in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, steps from the White House. He and then-TPUSA communications director Candace Owens met with Trump in the Oval Office in May last year, Axios reported. Donald Trump Jr. has also appeared appeared at TPUSA events, as has right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

As the International Business Times revealed in November, the group — which sends professional organizers to campuses around the country to work with students — is funded by wealthy conservative donors.