Month: July 2019

June Cleaver Democrats redux

by digby

I happened upon this post this morning and was struck by the fact that I’ve been arguing about the Democratic Party’s fixation on “kitchen table issues” — and losing on them — for quite a long time:

Monday, April 02, 2007

 
June Cleaver Democrats

by digby

Matt Stoller does good work here taking this egregious WaPoJonathan Weisman piece apart. He also addresses the one quote that came leaping out at me when I read it:

Leon E. Panetta, who was a top White House aide when President Bill Clinton pulled himself off the mat through repeated confrontations with Congress, sees the same risk. He urged Democrats to stick to their turf on such issues as immigration, health care and popular social programs, and to prove they can govern.

“That’s where their strength is,” Panetta said. “If they go into total confrontation mode on these other things, where they just pass bills and the president vetoes them, that’s a recipe for losing seats in the next election.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I read that my immediate reaction was as if he’d said:

“You girls need to stick to the subjects people think you’re good at — cooking and cleaning and childcare. That’s where your strength is. If you try to confront the big boys on the important stuff like national security, war and foreign policy, it’s a recipe for losing seats.”

This, by the way, was the advice coming from the establishment Dems for years. Here’s the memo(pdf) that Stan Greenberg, Bob Shrum and James Carville sent around in 2002 before the Iraq war vote:

This decision will take place in a setting where voters, by 10 points, prefer to vote for a Member who supports a resolution to authorize force (50 to 40 percent). In addition we found that a Democrat supporting a resolution runs stronger than one opposing it. For half the respondents, we presented a Democratic candidate supporting the resolution. Among these voters, the generic congressional vote remained stable, with the Democrats still ahead by 2 points at the end of the survey. In the other half of the sample, we presented a Democrat opposed to the resolution. In this group, the Democratic congressional advantage slipped by 6 points at the end of the survey.

[…]

The debate and vote on the resolution will bring closure on the extended Iraq debate that has crowded out the country’s domestic agenda as Congress concludes. But there is substantial evidence, as we indicated at the outset, that voters are very ready to turn to domestic issues. It is important that Democrats make this turn and provide a compelling reason to vote Democratic and turn down the Republicans.

In this survey, we tested two message frameworks – one offers a transition to the domestic agenda (“We need independent people in Washington who will be a check on what is going on and pay attention to our needs at home”) and one focuses on corporate influence (“Washington should be more responsive to the people and less to big corporate interests”). Both frameworks defeat the Republican alternative that begins with support for the President’s efforts on security.

It is worth noting that we lost that election and the vote for the war has twisted presidential candidates up in knots ever since then. This was just terrible advice. There was never going to be any margin in Democrats backing Bush’s war if it went well.  And if it didn’t, voting for it would dog them.

And at the crux of it was the notion that Americans want Democrats to talk about domestic issues and all this national security stuff is something to get off the table. It just doesn’t work that way. The issues are the issues and Democrats have to address them with seriousness of purpose no matter what they are.

Even if you buy into this ridiculous mommy party/daddy party nonsense, as the establishment seems to do, you should ask yourself if “mommy” has any responsibility for keeping the family safe and being a good neighbor or if she’s just supposed to sit at home and care for the grandparents and tend the childrens’colds? No healthy family that I know of divides the labor like that in the modern world and this outmoded stereotype of Democrats as June Cleaver almost killed us.

The 50’s sitcom fantasy of the good wife is not a definition of leadership, whether it’s as a parent or a president, and Democrats who persist in seeing the two parties this way need to take a look at their assumptions. People care about domestic matters and foreign policy and national security and health care and —- everything. These things are prioritized according to circumstances and the times, but the responsibility for the whole panoply of issues falls to every politician who seeks office. You don’t get to take any issues off the table and any party that does that is in trouble.

I would suggest that it was when the Democrats finally took the issue of Iraq seriously that the country began to take them seriously. And it wasn’t because it was a “daddy issue.” It was because it was the most important issue on the table. It still is.

There are a number of domestic issues that are also becoming priorities and people will expect the Democrats to deliver. And they will, I have no doubt. The Democrats are brimming with ideas from all over the political spectrum about how to deal with economic policy, health care, immigration, labor etc. But they are going to have to walk and chew gum at the same time. In fact, after the mess the Republicans have made, they are going to have to walk, talk, dance and levitate while blowing bubbles in order to set things straight. But they have to do them all and they have to do them well. Ignoring the illegal Iraq occupation and the ever expanding list of Bush crimes won’t make them go away.

Update: Greg Sargent reads all the articles in the Washington Post so the writers and editors don’t have to. Unsurprisingly, he finds that their latest poll contradicts everything Weisman said.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

WWJD? He would tell them the country is full.

by digby

New Pew research on refugees:

Opinions about whether the United States has a responsibility to accept refugees – which were already deeply polarized – have grown even more so, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in April and May. The survey comes as the nation is likely to admit its smallest number of refugees in decades.

Roughly half of Americans (51%) say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees into the country, while 43% say it does not, the national survey found. That is changed only slightly from February of last year.

However, Republicans have become less likely to say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees. Today, about a quarter of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (26%) say the nation has a responsibility to accept refugees into the country, down from 35% in February 2017, a few weeks after President Donald Trump took office.

Opinion among Democrats and Democratic leaners has changed little over this period: Currently, 74% say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees, about three times the share of Republicans saying this.

The recent shift among Republicans has been driven by conservatives. In 2017, a third of conservative Republicans said the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees. But today, an even smaller share (19%) says this. There has been less change among moderate and liberal Republicans: Currently, 40% say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees. As was the case last year, liberal Democrats (85%) are more likely than conservative and moderate Democrats (65%) to say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees.

Earlier this year, a Pew Research Center analysis of State Department data found a sharp decline in the number of refugees who have entered the U.S. so far in fiscal year 2018 compared with prior years.

This is partly due to an admissions cap the Trump administration placed on refugee resettlements, which now limits the number who may enter the U.S. to 45,000, the smallest total since Congress created the current refugee program in 1980.

Demographic divides in views of U.S. responsibility to admit refugees

Partisanship and ideology are major factors in opinion about whether the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees. Yet there also are differences by race, age, education and religion.

Among the public overall, whites are considerably less likely than blacks and Hispanics to say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees. Younger adults, women and those with higher levels of educational attainment are also more likely to say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept them.

By more than two-to-one (68% to 25%), white evangelical Protestants say the U.S. does not have a responsibility to accept refugees. Other religious groups are more likely to say the U.S. does have this responsibility. And opinions among religiously unaffiliated adults are nearly the reverse of those of white evangelical Protestants: 65% say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees into the country, while just 31% say it does not.

These are considered the most religious people in America.

I’m not sure what religion it is, but it isn’t Christianity.

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Get ready for the happy Trumpkin Border Village 

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

There was a time in the early days of Donald Trump’s administration when the president went to some lengths to pretend to care about children. You may remember that early, rambling press conference in the White House in which he expressed his great empathy for the Dreamers, the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, who grew up knowing no other country.

We are going to deal with DACA with heart. I have to deal with a lot of politicians, don’t forget, and I have to convince them that what I’m saying is right. And I appreciate your understanding on that. But the DACA situation is a very, very — it’s a very difficult thing for me. Because, you know, I love these kids. I love kids. I have kids and grandkids.

You will also recall that when congressional Democrats and Republicans hashed out a deal for $25 billion for his idiotic wall in exchange for a path to citizenship for those “kids” he loved so much, Trump stalked off, never to revisit the negotiation again.

Maybe you also remember that when pictures were flashed all over the world of Syrian children who had been gassed with chemical weapons, Trump’s alleged outrage was used as justification for his first attack on a foreign country. He was very emotional about it. “I think it’s an affront to humanity. Inconceivable that somebody could do that,” Trump told the New York Times. “Those kids were so beautiful. To look at those scenes of those beautiful children being carried out.” At a press conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Trump went on and on about the “innocent children, innocent babies, little babies.”

He put on quite a show. I think people may have even believed it. But I suspect that in those early days, Trump still thought that he could be hurt by policies or news stories that made him appear cruel and callous. At some point, he discovered that he can deny that any of it is true, yell “fake news” and demand that everyone believes him instead of what they’re seeing with their own eyes. And it appears that about 40% of the population is more than willing to do that.

Right now we are dealing with a nightmare at our southern border. The government is essentially torturing children and their parents who have come to seek asylum from frightful conditions in their home countries. Trump likes to take credit for ending the family separation policy that appalled the nation and the world some months back, claiming that it was a policy he inherited from President Obama and stopped when he heard about it. (That is a lie.)

But there are still thousands of children who are in U.S. custody far beyond the time it should take to process them and get them to the relatives they almost always have waiting for them somewhere in the country. And it’s impossible to ignore the fact that punishing these kids is part of the plan to “deter” refugees from seeking asylum. Some of them are dying. Others are being traumatized. All of them are being held in conditions no civilized country would even allow hardened criminals to endure.

The New York Times described it this way in a long investigative article published over the weekend, reporting from the now notorious camp in Clint, Texas:

Outbreaks of scabies, shingles and chickenpox were spreading among the hundreds of children who were being held in cramped cells, agents said. The stench of the children’s dirty clothing was so strong it spread to the agents’ own clothing — people in town would scrunch their noses when they left work. The children cried constantly. One girl seemed likely enough to try to kill herself that the agents made her sleep on a cot in front of them, so they could watch her as they were processing new arrivals.

That is just one of dozens of stories, including the reports from attorneys and doctors who inspected the station in late June and said they found about 250 babies, children and teens locked up for weeks without adequate food, water and sanitation. (The CPB moved most of the kids out of the Clint facility when that story broke and then moved about 100 of them back in shortly afterward.)

Interviews with doctors who have been allowed in the camps are difficult to read, as they describe the physical and psychological damage these kids are enduring. A Department of Homeland Security inspector general visited five facilities in Texas in June and issued a report saying that children had few spare clothes and no laundry facilities, and that children at two of the five facilities in the area were not given hot meals until inspectors arrived.

The president who claims to love children so much had this to say:

…..came from, and in far safer conditions. No matter how good things actually look, even if perfect, the Democrat visitors will act shocked & aghast at how terrible things are. Just Pols. If they really want to fix them, change the Immigration Laws and Loopholes. So easy to do!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2019

In that tweet, of course, Trump inadvertently makes their case for asylum. If this persecution is better than what these people say they are escaping, they have a legitimate claim.

Our president also has a solution:

If Illegal Immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detentions centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2019

Children don’t make this decision. For all of his crocodile tears for kids and “little babies,” Trump is quite content to let all these children suffer so he can “send a message” to their desperate parents.

There are dozens of witnesses to these events. Major papers have done in-depth investigative reporting, including interviews with Border Patrol agents who have been involved with these facilities for years. Even though authorities have refused to allow cameras into the facilities and the only photos are those that have been smuggled out, there is no doubt this is happening. The inspector general admitted it.

Yet over the weekend, the acting director of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan, said on ABC that he did not accept reports of unsanitary conditions and limited food and water. He claimed that the issues of overcrowding have been dealt with and there are far fewer kids in the camps than there were last month.

Coincidentally, Trump has suddenly decided he wants to open some of them up to the media. He announced on Sunday, “What we’re going to do is I’m going to start showing some of these detention centers … to the press. I want the press to go in and see them.”

It would not surprise me in the least if officials have managed to move out most of the kids and cleaned up some of the camps, Potemkin-village style. (It’s a tried and true trick in the concentration-camp business.) Once in a while, Trump’s assault on reality requires him to prove himself. I’m sure there will be pictures of smiling, healthy little kids eating ice cream and playing with toys.

Meanwhile, at another border town, the misery is compounding:

In the early months of 2019, CBP admitted ~40 people/day. In June, that dropped to 25, and it appears to be slowing down further. If this trend continues, newly-arrived asylum seekers could be subjected to 6 to 9 months of waiting in Mexico’s murder capital. Many won’t survive.

— Ryan Krause (@krausewords) July 6, 2019

I think that’s probably the goal.

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Yes, it is a source of shame. And deep frustration

by digby

Mehdi Hasan at The intercept:

On June 10, in an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Trump’s lawyers contested the claim that the House’s impeachment power could justify subpoenaing the president’s financial records while gleefully pointing out to the judge that impeachment is not even on the table. They wrote in their brief:

Speaker Pelosi has steadfastly denied that the House’s investigations are in any way related to impeachment. In March, she unequivocally told the Washington Post, ‘I’m not for impeachment.’ In late May, the Speaker reiterated that ‘any suggestion that Democrats are planning to pursue impeachment ‘simply isn’t the truth.’” After she received the district court’s ruling in this case, the Speaker boasted that the Committee had prevailed despite “the fact the House Democratic caucus is not on a path to impeachment.” Just four days ago, the Speaker again told senior Democratic leaders that “she isn’t open to the idea” of impeachment, and Chairman Cummings “sided with Pelosi.”

Is it not a source of shame for rank-and-file Democrats, whether on the left or in the “center,” that Trump lawyers are citing Pelosi’s refusal to impeach him as their defense in court? As their justification for ignoring congressional subpoenas?

Yes, it is. But I’m not surprised. My entire adult political life has been characterized by Democrats refusing to fight the ever more radical Republican Party and conservative movement that fed it.

This isn’t about policy or “kitchen table issues.” I accept that the Democratic Party is a big tent ideologically and the ongoing arguments about policy are healthy and to be expected. It’s about this congenital unwillingness to confront what’s happened and continues to happen to the right wing. They simply will not accept that something toxic and dangerous has evolved before their very eyes. They are the political equivalent of climate deniers.

They are not just silly buffoons. For all of their lunacy and off-the-wall personalities, this is movement with a dark and dangerous post-modern view of how the world works. It is very foolish not to take them seriously. They have a full-fledged propaganda arm, vast sums of money and they control about 40% of the population.

But hey, I’m just screaming into the void here, as usual, watching our politics get crazier, and angrier, hurtling further and further out of control.

Yes, ashamed. And tired of it.

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Counsels of the sages
by Tom Sullivan

Moses, Confucius, and Solon on the East Pediment of the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. prides itself on nearly a quarter millennium of peaceful transfers of power — minus that post-transfer dustup between 1861 and 1865. What’s messier is the transfer of power between generations. That’s happening now amidst every other dizzying mess going on.

At Washington Monthly, David Atkins ponders the clash between the new kids on the House block and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The dispute was over passage of a $4.6 billion bipartisan appropriation to increase funding for the acting president’s border enforcement. House progressives including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wanted to add language added to ensure humanitarian safeguards for children in custody. Pelosi aligned with Democratic moderates to pass the Senate-passed bill unamended without their votes so the legislation could pass by the July Fourth recess.

Pelosi dismissed the opposition of “the Squad”: AOC, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib.

“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

AOC responded, “That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country.”

That public “whatever” is called public sentiment.

And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country. https://t.co/u6JtgwwRsk— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 7, 2019

Atkins acknowledges Pelosi’s political acumen but questions her dismissal of her reinforcements:

The young freshmen in Congress including Katie Porter, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Katie Hill, Rashida Tlaib and Pramila Jayapal are providing more energy and excitement than the party has seen since Barack Obama ran for president. From the Green New Deal to the concentration camps on the border, they are doing more to push the Overton Window to the left and hold the conservative movement accountable for its moral debasement than anyone has in years.

Whether it was strategically advantageous for House Democrats to capitulate to Republicans on the funding for asylum seekers or not–and it’s hard to make the case that islt [sic] was–it was certainly morally outrageous. Some part of the caucus needed to give voice to that outrage.

As for impeachment, tactically wise or not, Atkins argues, voters need to see Democrats have spine enough “to demonstrate that Trump-level crimes will carry the highest possible accountability,” at least in the House where Democrats hold a majority. Somebody needs to push for it even if the leadership won’t.

E.J. Dionne, no wild-eyed radical, laments that we have entered “an Age of Impunity” with global consequences for the helpless. And the U.S. through its actions and its inaction is leading the way. What the new kids on the block question is whether their elders have forgotten how to lead or that sometimes “what’s important isn’t just winning but fighting.“

We may be seeing the stirrings of a changing of the guard among Democrats inside the Beltway. I described that changing on a local level in posts here and
here. “Those progressives” were dismissed as unruly upstarts who would ruin everything … until they won every race in the county in 2008. There are things for the Squad to learn, naturally. One doesn’t invite a first-year medical student to perform your surgery because you are attracted by their verve.

Still, the generation in power (in many cases) holds on too long and dismisses upstarts as too green. It’s not the hippies’ turn. Sit there and watch how it’s done. County committees around these parts lament the lack of younger leaders among their ranks yet provide them no path to leadership. Those who earn it take it.

What these fraught times are testing is whether sage experience that proved reliable in the past still applies in the Age of Impunity, or whether the counsels of the sages contributed to it.

QOTD: Trump

by digby

On Jeffrey Epstein, admitted sex trafficker of minor girls, who will be arraigned on more sex trafficking charges tomorrow::

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” – Donald Trump, 2002

He was there.

Recall also:

Four women who competed in the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant said Donald Trump walked into the dressing room while contestants — some as young as 15 — were changing.

“I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here,’ ” said Mariah Billado, the former Miss Vermont Teen USA.

Trump, she recalled, said something like, “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.”

Three other women, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of getting engulfed in a media firestorm, also remembered Trump entering the dressing room while girls were changing. Two of them said the girls rushed to cover their bodies, with one calling it “shocking” and “creepy.” The third said she was clothed and introduced herself to Trump.

The story also reported:

Of the 11 (contestants) who said they don’t remember Trump coming into the changing room, some said it was possible that it happened while they weren’t in the room or that they didn’t notice. But most were dubious or dismissed the possibility out of hand.

Allison Bowman, former Miss Wisconsin Teen USA, cast doubt on whether it happened. “These were teenage girls,” Bowman said. “If anything inappropriate had gone on, the gossip would have flown.”

But there was also this:

Billado said she told Ivanka Trump (Trump’s daughter), about Donald Trump entering the room while the girls were changing their clothes. Billado remembers Ivanka answering, “Yeah, he does that.”

Trump’s words

Three days before Kind made his statement, CNN reported on comments Trump has made about women to radio talk show host Howard Stern over the years. In a 2005 interview, Trump talked about walking in on naked contestants — but that was in response to a discussion about the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, whose contestants are adults. Trump said:

Well, I’ll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. You know, I’m inspecting, I want to make sure that everything is good.

You know, the dresses. ‘Is everyone okay?’ You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that. But no, I’ve been very good.

He always talks about how he gets away with molesting women. I wonder why?

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Trump’s ace in the hole

by digby

It would be one thing if the Republicans had chosen “constitutional” conservatives in the old fashioned sense of the word to pack the courts. It would have been awful but they might have, at least, been slightly sensitive to the idea of an independent judiciary.

They put Trump loving partisans (is there any other kind?) on the court instead:

Congress sued the Trump Administration this week in a bid to force Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to hand over six years of the President’s tax returns, escalating the battle for Trump’s financial information.

But on Wednesday, the lawsuit was assigned to a federal judge who has already sided with the Trump Administration on a clash with Congress.

That’s U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, an October 2017 Trump appointee who issued a sweeping rejection last month of House Democrats’ attempt to block $6.1 billion in funding that Trump diverted to build a border wall without Congressional approval.

McFadden ruled that Congress did not have standing to sue and wrote that he lacked jurisdiction to preside over the dispute.

“At law too, whether a plaintiff has standing often depends on where he sits,” McFadden wrote in the June 3 ruling. “A seat in Congress comes with many prerogatives, but legal standing to superintend the execution of laws is not among them.”

Lawmakers had sued the Trump Administration in April, alleging that Trump circumvented Congress’s power of the purse after lawmakers denied his request to fund his border wall.

McFadden described the case as “about whether one chamber of Congress has the ‘constitutional means’ to conscript the Judiciary in a political turf war with the President over the implementation of legislation.”

He reached the decision in part because, in his view, lawmakers cannot “haul the executive branch into court claiming a dilution of Congress’s legislative authority.”

The border wall case, though concerning a separate issue from the tax return lawsuit, focused broadly on where congressional and executive power meet. In the tax return suit, House Democrats accuse Trump of conducting “an extraordinary attack on the authority of Congress to obtain information” by refusing to comply with the request for his tax information. The administration argued that the House had an improper motive for pursuing Trump’s tax returns, an argument House Democrats dispute in their lawsuit.

“It is not for the Executive or the Judiciary to examine the Committee’s motivations for its oversight inquiries,” lawyers for the House Ways and Means Committee wrote in the July 2 lawsuit.

In the border wall case, McFadden said that similar concerns were allayed in part because he found that Congress has other options to resolve the border funding matter, including legislation.

“And it is therefore the political tools the Constitution provides, rather than the federal courts, to which the House must turn to combat the Administration’s planned spending,” he wrote.

Right. Mitch McConnell will tell you when you’re allowed to do oversight, bitches. And I think we know that’s only going to happen when a Democrat is in the White House.

Yet, McFadden left room in the opinion for future showdowns between Congress and the White House.

“To be clear, the Court does not imply that Congress may never sue the Executive to protect its powers,” McFadden wrote.

As I said, when a Democrat is in the White House Trump’s judges will re-establish congressional power.

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Don’t cry for me Orangina

by digby

Everything just gets dumber and dumber. Now he’s taking credit for discovering Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

Donald Trump has compared Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Eva Perón, saying that though he first saw the New York congresswoman “ranting and raving like a lunatic on a street corner” and thinks “she knows nothing”, she has “a certain talent”.

“That’s Evita,” he said.

The president’s remarks are contained in American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War, a book by Politico writer Tim Alberta that will be published on 16 July. The Guardian obtained a copy. 

Perón, known popularly as Evita, was an actor married to Argentinian president Juan Perón who rose to fame as a champion of working-class and female voters before dying of cancer in 1952, aged 33. Revered by many in her own country, she has been played in the West End and on Broadway by Elaine Paige and Patti LuPone and on film by Madonna.

Ocasio-Cortez has been compared to Perón before, on both sides of the partisan divide, including by the Republican commentator Charlie Sykes in remarks to the Guardian.

Trump has not previously made the comparison. But he did write in a 2004 book that his “favorite Broadway show is Evita by Andrew Lloyd Webber, starring Patti LuPone. I saw it six times, mostly with [his first wife] Ivana.”

It may be Trump sees himself as a modern-day Evita. Speaking to ABC News in 2018, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, an associate professor of music history and culture at Syracuse University, drew direct comparisons.

Evita, she said, “was star of radio dramas and to a lesser extent film in Argentina, and then she went on and had this political career and political power”.

In Trump’s 2016 campaign, she said, the billionaire reality TV star echoed Evita’s appeal to the “Descamisados”, or “shirtless ones”, by “trying to reach out to people, working class people and you can see that in terms of the demographics of folks who voted for him”.

In American Carnage, Trump says he first saw Ocasio-Cortez during her primary against Crowley, while watching TV with political advisers.

“I see a young woman,” he says, “ranting and raving like a lunatic on a street corner, and I said: ‘That’s interesting, go back.’”

Alberta then says the Trump “became enamored” and “starstruck” by Ocasio-Cortez.

“I called her Eva Perón,” Trump says. “I said, ‘That’s Eva Perón. That’s Evita.”

Alberta writes that Trump, whom he interviewed for the book in late 2018, “places a comically exotic emphasis on the nickname: Ah-vit-tah.” He also reports that Trump treated Ocasio-Cortez’s victory over Crowley as a chance to remind his advisers he is “good at talent. I spotted talent. She’s got a certain talent.”

She’s got talent. Now, that’s the good news. The bad news: she doesn’t know anything

Trump does row back on his praise, telling Alberta: “She’s got talent. Now, that’s the good news. The bad news: she doesn’t know anything. She’s got a good sense, an ‘it’ factor, which is pretty good, but she knows nothing. But with time, she has real potential.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that his “spotting” AOC as a talent during the primaries is 100% Prime Grade-A bullshit. It’s right up there with him saying he saw thousands of Muslims dancing in the streets on 9/11. There was no footage of her ranting and raving and Trump wasn’t sitting around watching shows about Democratic primaries with his “political advisers.”

He lies. But you knew that.

He’s employed undocumented immigrants for decades. Now he puts their babies in cages.

by digby

Trump at his Bedminister Golf Club in 2018, giving businessmen access for cash and pocketing taxpayer money. And

Somebody FINALLY asked Trump about his undocumented employees:

“I don’t know because I don’t run it,” Mr. Trump said when asked if he was confident that undocumented immigrants were no longer working at his golf courses. “But I would say this: Probably every club in the United States has that because it seems to be, from what I understand, a way that people did business.”

He’s acting as if he didn’t know nothin’ about hiring no immigrants for all the years he did run the Trump organizaiton. He did. He was sued for doing it in the New York when he built Trump Tower.

Once again taking credit for the things that go well and blaming others for anything that doesn’t. A spoiled child.

And essentially, he’s blaming Eric for this. He’s the one he supposedly left in charge of the golf courses….

The New York Times first reported in December that Victorina Morales, a Guatemalan undocumented immigrant, and several others living in the country unlawfully, had been employed at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., where Mr. Trump was heading on Friday.

[Read more about an undocumented immigrant who worked as a maid since 2013 at a Trump golf course.]

Many undocumented workers at other Trump properties, including resorts in Philadelphia, Westchester County, N.Y., and Jupiter, Fla., have come forward since then and said they were also employed using phony Social Security numbers and green cards.

After the revelations, the Trump Organization said that it had begun to use E-Verify, an electronic verification system that checks documents provided by new hires against Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security records to identify fakes, at all properties. The same month, dozens of undocumented workers were fired at clubs in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., Pine Hill, N.J., and at the Bedminster club.

As he was about to step onto Marine One to head to the Bedminster club on Friday, Mr. Trump seemed to indicate that the Trump Organization had strengthened its hiring processes to ensure that they were no longer employing undocumented immigrants.

“But we’ve ended — whatever they did, we have a very strict rule that, those rules are very strict,” Mr. Trump said, standing on the South Lawn.

“We” or “they” did “whatever they did” at the Trump properties he still owns and his son runs. Properties which he visits every weekend, from which he profits handsomely by charging the government and people who want access to the president. They had undocumented workers working there while Trump, the president who wants to build a wall and is putting immigrant babies in cages, was in the White House.

Oh well.

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The great propagandist

by digby

Trump is one of the all-time biggies:

The extreme rightwing ideology that inspired the Christchurch mosque killer has been promoted so effectively by the far right that it has entered mainstream political discourse, new analysis reveals.

Researchers have found that organised far-right networks are pushing a conspiracy known as the “great replacement” theory to the extent that references to it online have doubled in four years, with more than 1.5 million on Twitter alone, a total that is rising exponentially.

The theory emerged in France in 2014 and has become a dominant concept of the extreme right, focusing on a paranoia that white people are being wiped out through migration and violence. It received increased scrutiny after featuring in the manifesto of the gunman who killed 51 people in the Christchurch attacks in New Zealand in March.

Now the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a UK-based counter-extremist organisation, has found that the once-obscure ideology has moved into mainstream politics and is now referenced by figures including US president Donald Trump, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini and Björn Höcke of the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Tweets from Trump earlier this year, for example, were interpreted by many as making a white nationalist case for his controversial border wall.

Despite its French origins, the ISD’s analysis has revealed that the theory is becoming more prevalent internationally, with English-speaking countries now accounting for 33% of online discussion.

Julia Ebner, co-author of the report at ISD, said: “It’s shocking to see the extent to which extreme-right concepts such as the ‘great replacement’ theory and calls for ‘remigration’ have entered mainstream political discourse and are now referenced by politicians who head states and sit in parliaments.”

She said that of the 10 most influential Twitter accounts propagating the ideology, eight were French. The other two were Trump’s account and the extreme-right site Defend Europa.

Jesus.

I’ve always been grateful for his twitter feed because it is a record of the grotesque nature of his insanity. But this is very, very bad.

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