Oh my
by digby
"what digby sez..."
Month: August 2019
He thinks he’s King George
by digby
The Wall Street Journal reports:
President Trump made his name on the world’s most famous island. Now he wants to buy the world’s biggest.
The idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland has captured the former real-estate developer’s imagination, according to people familiar with the deliberations, who said Mr. Trump has, with varying degrees of seriousness, repeatedly expressed interest in buying the ice-covered autonomous Danish territory between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
“Some of his advisers have supported the concept, saying it was a good economic play… while others dismissed it as a fleeting fascination that will never come to fruition. It is also unclear how the U.S. would go about acquiring Greenland even if the effort was serious. “
The worst part is that he has advisers who think it’s a “good economic play.”
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Yet another degenerate Trump associate
by digby
Oh look, yet another underage sex trafficker with ties to Trumpworld
An accused pedophile helped Steve Bannon secure a $100,000 speaking gig from a prestigious Washington think tank, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast. The emails—between Republican fundraiser and investor Elliott Broidy and Lebanese-American political operative George Nader—shed light on the relationship between Trump’s ex-adviser and a man now in jail awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.
The emails point to a closer relationship between Bannon and Nader than previously known. It’s been widely reported that Nader met with Bannon in the White House during his time as a Trump adviser there. But these emails show they stayed in contact after Bannon left government, and that Nader helped the ex-Breitbart chief secure an appearance with a six-figure payday. A Bannon spokesperson, meanwhile, said Nader was “irrelevant” to Bannon’s speech.
Nader’s work drew the attention of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who questioned him extensively as part of his probe into foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential race. But Mueller wasn’t the only federal prosecutor interested in Nader. On June 3 of this year, he was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and charged with possessing child pornography. And just last month, the feds rolled out additional charges for child sex trafficking. Nader is in jail awaiting trial, and has pleaded not guilty.
Broidy, meanwhile, also appears to have drawn attention from the feds: The Daily Beast confirmed in April that one of his former associates has spoken with FBI agents about his business dealings.
The emails between Nader and Broidy, sent in September and October 2017, involve arrangements for a conference on Qatar hosted by the Hudson Institute. Broidy, then seeking business from the government of the United Arab Emirates, was running a quiet public relations campaign designed to undermine the Qatari government’s influence in Washington and with American Jewish leaders. He was particularly incensed that Nick Muzin, a former staffer to Sen. Ted Cruz with deep ties to Jewish leaders, had signed on to lobby for the government of Qatar. They’d run in the same tight-knit circle of Jewish Republicans and Broidy saw Muzin as a traitor. The country’s connections to Iran—with which it shares a huge gas field—have long angered many in the pro-Israel community. And its ownership of Al Jazeera also fuels opposition from many supporters of Israel.
[…]
Just a few months earlier, the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates started a blockade of Qatar. It was a bid to isolate the peninsular nation, which those governments blamed for funding terrorism. The Qataris kicked off a well-funded lobbying effort to tell their side of the story in Washington and stay in the Trump administration’s good graces. Muzin’s outreach to Jewish leaders—which Broidy sought to countervail—was part of the Qataris’ effort to shore up support.As part of Broidy’s project, he helped arrange a conference to be held at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank known for its foreign policy work. The conference, set for October of 2017, would make the case against Qatar.
In September, Broidy communicated with Nader—whom he had known since Trump’s inauguration—about those plans. And on Sept. 22, Nader emailed Broidy about getting Bannon involved [all punctuation sic].
“Hope all is going well with you and the Conference,” Nader wrote. “Send me please an update[.] Steve is interested in participating.”
Nader then shared Bannon’s email with Broidy.
“Send him pls a letter to brief him…on the conference, what you like him to do and when,” Nader continued. “You should get him key time and all by himself with proper guy to introduce him. Let me know what you have in mind!”
Two days later, Broidy sent Nader a curious email. It opened with the words “Dear Steve,” and then described the plans for the conference. “I would love to have you as one of the keynote speakers,” Broidy wrote in the email sent to Nader but addressed to Bannon. The email included a draft of the conference’s agenda. It appears Broidy wanted Nader to proof-read the invitation before it went to Bannon, who had left the White House in August 2017.
On Sept. 29, event organizers circulated a draft of a Save-the-Date invitation for the conference. Bannon’s name wasn’t on it.
“You need to add please Steve Bannon,” Nader wrote in an email to Broidy. “He is as important if not more to that invitation and kindly send me too a draft of the full program as is for now[.]”
Two weeks later, Bannon was in.
“Still working on many details,” Broidy wrote to Nader on Oct. 17. “Will get schedule to you when ready. Steve is on board, FYI $100k honorarium.”
Five days later, Broidy was still keeping Nader looped in on Bannon’s participation. He forwarded Nader an email he sent directly to Bannon that day. “I am very excited about your appearance at the conference tomorrow,” he wrote in the email to Bannon that he forwarded to Nader. “George asked me to resend some talking points. See you then.”
A person close to Bannon said that the two men got to know each other better after Bannon left the White House, and that Nader was one of many people who approached Bannon on behalf of event organizers about making speeches.
But a Bannon spokesperson discounted Nader’s role in Bannon’s speech.
“This is just one of many speaking requests Mr. Bannon receives,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Hudson Institute is a highly respected think tank, and because of that, he accepted an invitation with others such as Sen. Cotton and Gen. Petraeus. George Nader was irrelevant; neither he nor anyone has influenced Mr. Bannon’s longtime position on the condemnation of Qatar as an urgent threat to Israel: a state sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other Islamic terror organizations.”
The conference went forward, largely as planned, and a source familiar with it confirmed that Bannon received the $100,000 payment. It featured a host of luminaries, including Gen. David Petraeus; Zalmay Khalilzad, who later became the State Department’s Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation; Democratic and Republican members of the House of Representatives; and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. Bannon, in his speech, was characteristically bombastic and praised the blockade.
“I think the single most important thing that’s happening in the world is the situation in Qatar,” he said. “What’s happening in Qatar is every bit as important as what’s happening in North Korea.”
A lawyer for Nader declined to comment for this story. Spokespersons for Broidy and Bannon declined to comment as well.
The Hudson Institute stands by its work.
[…]
In an ironic twist, Bannon has since gotten to know Muzin—Broidy’s old nemesis—and discussed going into business with him. The Daily Beast reported earlier this year that Muzin pitched an executive at Juul, the e-cigarette company, on his lobbying services and said Bannon would be able to help out with his influence efforts. Juul didn’t take them up on the offer.For Broidy and Nader, the weeks before the Hudson conference were a comparatively simple time. Two months after the event, hackers stole troves of emails Broidy had sent and received. The emails were fodder for a host of news stories about his business dealings and relationships with foreign government officials, including officials looking to influence Trumpworld. Many of Nader’s communications with Broidy have also become public since the hack. And numerous reports have revealed Nader’s work as a gatekeeper between Gulf dignitaries and denizens of Trumpworld. The emails The Daily Beast obtained indicate that, on at least one occasion, he also helped connect a Republican financier to Bannon.
Broidy has alleged in court that the Qatari government sponsored the hacks. The Qataris say the allegations are baseless, and the litigation is underway.
The vast number of grifters, weirdos and fascists who surround him is rather awe-inspiring. Never say he isn’t brining people together.
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What country is Donald Trump the president of again?
by digby
This piece in the Daily Beast by Jay Michaelson is a good analysis of this latest Israel imbroglio. *Sigh*
On the face of it, Israel’s decision Thursday to ban Ilhan Omar and Omar Tlaib, two duly elected members of Congress, from entering the country is unprecedented, outrageous, and a shocking disrespect of diplomatic protocol.
It also appears, on the surface, to be yet another perfect match between the Islamophobe-nationalist American President, Donald Trump, and the Islamophobe-nationalist Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Both are seeking to demonize two American Muslim lawmakers to drive a wedge between nationalist Jews and liberal politics, and both are craven in their disregard for the truth, facts, or the values in play.
A perfect marriage, one might say, as Israel’s decision, announced by its deputy foreign minister, came just hours after Trump tweeted that letting the Americans visit “would show great weakness.”
Beneath that surface, though, the two men face very different political landscapes – and there’s reason to hope this will all blow up in Trump’s face.
First, it’s worth remembering that this entire episode is a gigantic, stinking pile of shit.
Reps. Omar and Tlaib are being blocked supposedly because they support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. The extent of that support is debatable, but even if it were wholehearted, the BDS movement is not the antisemitic hate-fest that right-wingers like to say it is. It is supported by tens of thousands of Jews. It is nonviolent. And it is a response to Israel’s fifty-year occupation of the West Bank and refusal to negotiate in good faith with Palestinian leaders.
One need not support BDS (as I have written many times, I do not) to recognize that it is a valid form of political expression aimed at righting a massive injustice being done to millions of innocent people. If anything, Trump’s ultra-nationalism makes the case for BDS more urgent, not less.
Next, even if BDS were somehow objectionable, Trump and his ilk have slandered Omar and Tlaib far beyond anything having to do with it. “They hate Israel & all Jewish people,” Trump tweeted last week (a claim he repeated in his Tweet Thursday). And of course, Trump has infamously jeered that the two should “go back” to their home countries – which in Tlaib’s case is Michigan. Her ancestral home is Palestine, as Trump is blocking her from “going back.”
Finally, the very notion that Israel, a supposedly democratic country, bans people from entering based on a political opinion is, as my fellow rabbis like to say, a shanda. A scandal. A disgrace. Repugnant. Vile.
I’ve had numerous friends and colleagues put on Israel’s ban list (I wouldn’t be surprised if I myself am on it, based on the ten years I spent writing for a left-leaning Jewish newspaper) and even turned back at the airport in Israelafter taking the eleven-hour flight from New York. In some cases, Israel’s ban list is actually taken from online blacklists created anonymously with no transparency or accountability.
All that being said, this is still a win for Netanyahu. He’s facing yet another election next month, after he failed to form a government in the wake of the last one, and he has opponents on his right and his left. He needs to shore up his base, and time and time and time again, he’s used Islamophobia to do so.
Trump, however, is another story.
Netanyahu, remember, is a cold, calculating political animal, who has survived literally decades of scandals—bribery, financial improprieties, you name it—through his wit, nerve and political opportunism. Who knows what Netanyahu really believes—the point is, he knows what to say and do to win.
Trump couldn’t be more different. He works on instinct, which often serves him quite well; he intuitively empathizes with and exploits white grievance better than any other politician alive today. When Trump scapegoats Tlaib and Omar, sometimes along with their Squad-mates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, there is some political strategy there: tarnish the Democrat brand by associating it with its youngest, most liberal, least Christian, least white, and least male representatives.
But more than strategy, there’s Trump gut sense that Muslim and non-white women aren’t really American.
That sense is often in conflict with public opinion, however,
Mainstream Americans, Republicans included, did not approve of Trump’s racist mob shouting “send her back” at a rally. A majority of Americans, and 24% of Republicans, believe the chants to be racist. That’s why Trump had to awkwardly backpedal, absurdly insisting that he didn’t approve of the chants, even though video clearly shows him approving.
This decision could be similar. It’s one thing to attack Omar and Tlaib for careless comments or tweets, even when cynically blowing those out of proportion. It’s another thing to want to ban members of Congress from visiting a key U.S. ally.
Not only is doing so a breach of democratic norms—it’s nakedly prejudiced. It casts Omar and Tlaib as Muslims first, Americans second. And while doing so may play well with Trump’s base and with some “Israel First” American Jews, it is not how reasonable, moderates centrists see things. Like Superman in the McCarthyist 1950s, they know that discriminating against people because of their religion is Un-American.
Clearly, there’s no one straw that’s going to break the Trumpist camel’s back. There have just been too many of these straws, for too long. Does anyone even remember Trump calling Mexican migrants “rapists” as he launched his campaign in 2015? Or insulting a Muslim blue-star family?
No, it won’t work that way. But the camel’s back is sagging, bit by bit and straw by straw. With each over-the-top comment, Trump loses a few more moderates in the suburbs of Philadelphia or Detroit; a few more Reagan Democrats; a few more Panera Moms. There won’t be one moment where Mitch McConnell’s GOP has finally had enough of Trump. Rather, there will be a thousand moments where one suburban Mom feels he’s gone too far this time.
This is another of those moments.
That’s the difference between Trump and Netanyahu. One still has to shore up his base, but the other has to appeal to the middle. And that, it seems, requires more self-control, judgment, and intelligence that Donald Trump has in his brain.
Indeed. In fact, self-control, judgment, and intelligence are not words one can associate with Trump in any circumstance.
I hope this analysis of Trump and the suburbs holds up. It was true in 2018 and there’s little reason so believe they are returning to his side. But all elections are a choice between specific people so you just never know. I find it hard to believe that anyone would choose Trump over any of the people running in the Democratic primary but then again, I am still gobsmacked that anyone voted for him in 2016 s owhat do I know?
As far as this ugly business with Tlaib and Omar — I just don’t know what to say anymore. But when you’ve lost AIPAC…
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A nation that cannot acknowledge its trauma
by digby
I came across this 2016 piece from Rick Perlstein the other day and thought it was worth reprising in light of where we are with our gun violence rituals, the rise of white supremacist terrorism, impeachment and the upcoming election:
THERE IS A MUSEUM AT THE FORMER SITE OF THE GESTAPO HEADQUARTERS IN BERLIN. It is searing and frank: a history of the relationship of the Nazi party and the people of Berlin, telling a story of the way ordinary Germans made Hitler’s rise possible. Berliners flock to it. When I visited, the line of people shuffling past the informational panels was three or four deep, everyone meditating on this awful indictment of their grandparents’ generation.
There may be such museums in the United States, but I’ve never seen one. I’m more familiar with museums like the one memorializing the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, where two domestic terrorists who despised the U.S. federal government killed 168 people, including 19 children in daycare. Unlike the museum in Berlin, the Oklahoma City museum is meant to be uplifting: Heroic first responders rush toward the explosion. A doctor performs makeshift surgery with a pocket knife. Around one corner, an authentic pile of rubble betokening the awesome power of the blast. Around the next, a miracle—the Bible that emerged unscathed.
Other sections narrate a thrilling police procedural: the truck axle thrown three blocks clear of the blast, whose miniscule identification number allowed intrepid investigators to uncover where Timothy McVeigh had rented the truck he turned into a bomb. The officer who, in an extraordinary coincidence, pulled over the getaway car because of its missing license plate and apprehended the sullen young man in the “Sic Semper Tyrannis” T-shirt. The arrest, the trial—justice.
Of course, the museum also tells the story of how Oklahoma “came together.” It almost frames bombing as a blessing. “Caring Communities Provide Safe Havens,” one panel read, above a picture of a church.
I saw the word “terrorism” only once, in a self-congratulatory text about how initial suspicions of “Muslim terrorists” were overcome, fair-minded Americans turning their rage on a corn-fed American boy instead: another blessing, this opportunity to prove that America was not racist. There was no mention of right-wing talk-radio host G. Gordon Liddy advising his listeners the previous year to confront agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fireams: “Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests.” Or Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolutionaries taking over Congress via rhetoric depicting the federal government as an alien occupying army. Or Jesse Helms informing President Bill Clinton that if he visited North Carolina, he should bring bodyguards.
A political cartoon on display depicted someone asking, “How many hurt?” The answer: “260 million Americans”—the entire U.S. population at the time. The implication, of course, is that no one except four people—one duly executed by lethal injection, another in jail for the rest of his life, a third sentenced to 12 years and a fourth granted immunity—had anything to do with creating the political context of antigovernment rage that made the bombing possible.
This denial is how a childlike nation gets past trauma. It demonstrates how unprepared our nation is for the trauma about to be visited upon it.
Donald Trump made scores of promises that he not only will not fulfill but, with ontological certainty, cannot fulfill. To take one small example, he told an audience that he would grow jobs in the coal industry, and also jobs in the fracking industry. Never mind that these two goals are opposed—if America consumes more coal, it will require less fracked natural gas, and vice versa.
Then there is Trump’s promise to restore the easy prosperity of America’s mythic mid-century past, and his ur-promise, the fascist one: ethnic cleansing and the ushering in of boundless national glory. When these things do not appear—when, instead, his rise ushers in global financial panic and geostrategic chaos—his worshipful admirers are unlikely to blame him, let alone themselves. They learned from watching The Apprentice that “Mr. Trump” is all-knowing and omni-competent, and will blame those whom Mr. Trump instructs them to blame: The quislings in the media. The (Jewish) financiers. The immigrants. The Muslims. The liberals. The “Republican establishment.” Nasty women. A spiral of violent recrimination may well ensue; rinse, lather, repeat.
Enduring and resisting this onslaught will be traumatic. We will need unflinching assessments of exactly what it is we are going through. But our nation, indoctrinated into an Oklahoma City-museum conception of trauma and healing, is woefully unprepared. And our mainstream media is the most unprepared of all.
Years ago, amidst President George W. Bush’s worst depredations of the rule of law, I used to fantasize about confronting mainstream media sachems with a thought experiment: Imagine you are a commentator in Weimar Germany. A dynamic new political party comes on the scene. They pursue their goals via means that are, shall we say, extra-parliamentary. Their leader’s book promises that he alone can fix the nation’s problems. And that the fault lies not in ourselves, but in our resident aliens.
At what point, I wanted to ask, would you consider it your moral duty to break from the settled routines of “fairness” and “objectivity”—gotta hear both sides!—to inform your audience that what was going on was not normal?
During Bush’s terms, my daydream felt a little unfair and over the top. No longer.
On election night, I heard commentator after commentator on NBC talk about this like any other election: Whether Trump could reach across the aisle. How he would staff his transition. Whether Democrats could “cut deals” with him. And, yes, how it all could be explained because, after eight years of a Democratic president, the nation simply wanted “change.”
The week before, a reporter from USA Today called to ask for historical examples that could inform our quest to heal and unite the country after a divisive campaign. When I responded that adults understand that true healing only happens when a problem is forthrightly acknowledged, that working through our divisions means we should confront our trauma before coming out the other side. His response suggested a sci-fi robot: That does not compute! He asked me to re-explain my answer, as if he had never heard such a strange thing.
For this is not how mainstream media professionals are trained to think. They think like those museologists in Oklahoma City. Americans “come together.” Consensus is in our DNA. Here, ugly things, racist things, violent things, sexist things, are epiphenomenal.
We’ve always been this way: Even in 1836, when America’s crisis over slavery was bringing the country closer and closer to civil war, Congress’s response was to outlaw any debate over slavery in Congress. Southern slaveholders pushed it, but I bet respectable Whigs welcomed it. So much less unpleasantness if you pretend a crisis doesn’t exist.
What about our Democratic politicians? Some get it. Russ Feingold, conceding his loss to Wisconsin incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson, began routinely, apologizing for not getting the job done, thanking his wife, his supporters, his staff—and then: “But obviously something is happening in this country tonight. I don’t understand it completely. I don’t think anyone does.”
This was exactly the right tone. If you are not acknowledging a feeling of being at sea following Nov. 8, 2016, you’re simply not being authentic.
Hillary Clinton, however, took the Oklahoma City-museum route in her concession. She smiled and smiled. She praised the “rowdy” crowd, blurted the customary thank-yous and I-love-yous. She acknowledged that the loss was painful—“and it will be for a long time.” But it sounded no more solemn than a typical concession speech by a failed candidate for a backbench congressional seat.
There were feints at Trump, to be sure, who she hopes “will be a successful president for all Americans” and will defend “the rule of law, the principle that we are all equal in rights and dignity, the freedom of worship and expression.” But there was certainly no sense of civic emergency. No markers laid down that a presidency won with a minority of the votes—along with massive voter suppression—must be circumspect in the mandate it claims. Most definitely nothing to make Donald Trump sit bolt upright and contemplate that the people who actually believe in the rule of law might represent roadblocks in his path.
No, just boilerplate: “We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power. And we don’t just respect that. We cherish it.”
But “we” do not, at least not all of us.
Donald Trump showed that, when he averred he would contest the results if he lost. His mob showed that, when that promise was lustily cheered.
Maybe that was all she could say: hate the game, not the player. Maybe she felt she had to “calm the markets.” Well, here is one way the markets responded: Traders at the New York Stock Exchange chanted, “Lock her up.”
Now comes the test of our institutions: the bulwarks that outlast elections, meant to stand between strongmen, mobs and their awful instincts. How will they fare? Once more, indications are not encouraging. The FBI, for example, put its thumb on the scales for the victor. Police unions chose to endorse a proud and open lawbreaker. And from the evidence of Clinton’s concession speech, those atop the commanding heights of the Democratic Party clearly lack the will for the heroic fight ahead to resist the lawless madman who commands the executive branch.
Who will lead the resistance? More fundamentally: Can a nation that cannot acknowledge genuine trauma even resist?
We still don’t know the answer to that, three years later.
All over the place on China
by digby
Donald Trump’s top aides are urging him to back Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters, but the president isn’t interested, multiple people familiar with the administration’s internal debates say.
In recent days, national security adviser John Bolton, China hands at both the National Security Council and the State Department, and several economic advisers have pushed for a more assertive posture on the Hong Kong demonstrations, which have paralyzed the former British colony and roiled markets.
They are finding little traction with a president focused more narrowly on trade negotiations with Xi Jinping — and worried that criticizing the Chinese leader’s efforts to stamp out dissent in Hong Kong will scuttle the possibility of inking a deal this winter.
As the protests have intensified over the past month, the president has remained determined to keep China’s human rights abuses from complicating his trade negotiations, going so far as to make a unilateral concession to Xi in the run-up to the G-20 Summit in June, according to three people briefed on the conversation. Aspects of the conversation were first reported by the Financial Times.
But after the initial publication of this report, the president appeared to reverse himself, issuing the latest in a series of contradictory remarks on the issue on Wednesday evening — this time demanding that Xi “deal humanely with Hong Kong.”
It was the most full-throated statement of support Trump has delivered to the pro-democracy protesters.
“Of course China wants to make a deal,” the president wrote on Twitter, referring to the ongoing trade negotiations between the two countries. “Let then deal humanely with Hong Kong first!”
In a subsequent tweet, he added: “I know President Xi of China very well. He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people. He is also a good man in a ‘tough business.’ I have ZERO doubt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem, he can do it. Personal meeting?”
The remarks marked a reversal from the promise Trump made to Xi in a phone conversation in mid-June. The president surprised his aides when he told Xi that he would not condemn the Chinese government over a crackdown in Hong Kong. He understood it was an internal issue in which the U.S. would not interfere, he said.
The president’s off-the-cuff commitment caused confusion within the administration. For one, aides were uncertain whether there was a time horizon on the president’s vow of silence, particularly when he went on to make a statement at least mildly supportive of the protesters.
“Well, what they’re looking for is democracy, and I think most people want democracy. Unfortunately, some governments don’t want democracy,” Trump told reporters last month.
The mixed signals from Trump have led to muted and contradictory statements from elsewhere in the administration — as officials try to avoid breaching the commitment the president made to Xi.
Asked for comment, a senior administration official said only that “freedoms of expression and assembly are core values that we share with the people of Hong Kong and these freedoms should be protected. The United States firmly rejects the notion that we are sponsoring or inciting the demonstrations.”
Former officials in both parties have been critical of the administration’s approach to China, though there is broad agreement that the U.S. needs to be tougher on Beijing.
“What I see is kind of a basic arithmetic: a lack of coherence within the administration, plus a lack of real understanding about how China works, equals no good results,” said Daniel Russel, who served as a senior national security aide to President Barack Obama.
He has no understanding of or interest in anything but his infantile “trade deal” view of international relations. It’s literally the only thing he knows and what he knows about that is wrong.
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Trump’s single-digit salute to immigrants
by Tom Sullivan
One of the first images assaulting weary eyes this morning is a Bill Bramhall cartoon from the New York Daily News featuring the Statue of Liberty. Her right hand holding the torch that greets immigrant to these shores has been removed. A crane reading Cuccinelli is replacing it with a hand with an upraised middle finger.
The White House issued a new rule Monday that will deny green cards and potential citizenship to legal immigrants, NPR reports, “if they use — or are deemed likely to need — federal, state and local government benefits including food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid.”
For those who missed it, Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, edited the famous Emma Lazarus poem during a Tuesday interview to read, “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.” He later denied he had referenced the poem at all, as bald-faced liars will do. Cuccinelli suggested the Lazarus poem on the statue’s base referred to “people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class.”
Translation: In one nation under Trump, immigrants not from Europe can take a flying leap.
“People coming from Europe” is another in a long line of euphemisms Trump and his allies use in place of “white,” writes Amanda Marcotte. Among them are “Western civilization,” “Western values,” “culture and demographics,” and “our cultural cohesion.” Cuccinelli’s is simply less lyrical and over-direct.
Liesl Schillinger offers a reflection in the Washington Post on the meaning of the statue, the poem, and the song Irving Berlin made from it:
He and his family were poor refugees from a shtetl in imperial Russia; their house had been burned down, and they had fled to America. The father had been a cantor at the village synagogue in Russia, but in New York the only job he could find was at a kosher meat shop. That’s what he did to support his family until he died, by which time the boy who would one day set the Lazarus poem to music was 13. That boy did not grow up to become a burden on American society: He went on to write “White Christmas,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and … “God Bless America.” His name was Irving Berlin. Like poor immigrants before and after him, he contributed to America’s idea of itself and to America’s ideal of itself. Immigrants made America. Immigrants make America.
Many have observed that Cuccinelli’s family, as many of ours, would not be admitted to this country under the proposed immigration regime. Schillinger writes, “Most likely, the large, impecunious Berlin family would have been barred from citizenship as a potential ‘public charge.’ You can’t gain traction to stand if the land where you live will not give you a foothold.”
Denying that to the latest disfavored immigrant group is the point, as is cruelty itself.
At this rate, even asylum seekers held on the border who successfully gain admittance can expect this treatment even if they accept no federal, state or local government benefits whatsoever. The Trump administration will find the overcrowded, unsanitary room and board provided by US Customs and Border Protection during their captivity a disqualification for citizenship.
That nice Trump family
by digby
This article about Ivanka’s future plans is a big yawn. Honestly, who cares? But this part of it shows that she’s her father is a gross pig. She is a damaged person:
She operated in fear around him, says a friend. Sometimes she would tell a taxi to drive around the block if she saw him getting out of a car in front of her. When Ivanka would receive a call with his number on the caller ID, she’d become very anxious. She’d have a momentary panic about what he was going to say about her life and whether she was about to be blindsided by his disapproval. “I think she knew,” the friend says, “and at times resented, that she was a prisoner to the condition of seeking his approval at all times.” When they’d talk, “she was very careful. It was like listening to a person talking to her boss.”
But in her father’s presence, Ivanka never talked back or even rolled her eyes. Friends I spoke with have not seen them fight. She played the dutiful daughter on flights to Mar-a-Lago with her friends when her father would do cringey things like put a VHS tape of his recent media clips on the TV or ask them which female stars they considered hot. Among the members of New York society in the ’90s and early aughts, he was seen as a credit clown, a joke, but never to Ivanka. His chauvinism frustrated her, however, and she was repelled by the way he talked about women’s bodies — who was fat, who was not. In 2003, when Paris Hilton’s sex tape was leaked on the internet, Donald wouldn’t stop talking about it, saying, “Paris is laughing all the way to the bank, she’s got the last laugh, she’s marvelous.” Ivanka could not believe her father was not only idolizing an airhead heiress caught blowing a guy on a night-vision video but encouraging her to follow Paris’s lead. (Speaking from the White House, Grisham says, “This is untrue and is disgusting.”)
“The thing with Paris hurt Ivanka a lot,” says a friend. “He was heartbreaking to her at times.” But as with so much of her father’s behavior, she buried her feelings and moved on. She told herself that the story of her father’s attitude toward women was, simply, complicated, according to friends. Donald hired many women at the Trump Organization, she knew, and these women weren’t universally pretty; he wanted to employ women with traditionally masculine attitudes and almost enjoyed feeling discomfited by them, having them boss him around. Her father may have had issues with women, she felt, but he did not meet the textbook definition of a misogynist — a belief she seems to hold to the present day.
I believe the sex tape thing. Why?
When asked on The View how he would react if Ivanka, a former teen model, posed for Playboy, Trump replied, “It would be really disappointing — not really — but it would depend on what’s inside the magazine.”
He added: “I don’t think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
“Isn’t that terrible? How terrible? Is that terrible?”
“After I met Ivanka and praised her to her father, he said, ‘Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father . . .’
Ivanka deploys Trumpian lies in defense:
In May, Ivanka Trump gave a lengthy interview to CBS News in which she said claims about her father’s conduct with women – specifically in the New York Times article in which it was alleged he asked people if they thought his daughter was “hot” – were “pretty disturbing”.
“I was bothered by it, but it’s [the story has] largely been discredited since,” she said.
It has not been discredited. He’s said much worse and she knows it. It’s all on tape:
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They never leave a penny on the sidewalk
by digby
They could avoid the appearance of conflict. But that would mean not having taxpayers put money in their pockets. So they won’t:
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, flew to Canada for one of his regular visits to the Yukon mountains to hunt stone sheep with friends. He was accompanied by Secret Service agents on that August 2017 trip, just as he had been since his father was sworn in as president six months earlier.
The Secret Service frequented several Vancouver hotels: Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel, Pinnacle Hotel Vancouver Harbourfront and Lakeview Inn and Suites. But it spent the most money at the president’s hotel, the Trump International Hotel and Tower Vancouver, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.
The Secret Service is required to protect the president’s children, but the tendency of Trump and his family to funnel funds to their own properties has complicated what had been a routine practice. Critics say the Trumps are using the presidency to boost the president’s businesses by forcing the federal government to spend taxpayer money at Trump properties.
Congress hasn’t launched a formal investigation into federal spending at Trump properties, but some House Democrats are eyeing it as a future area for congressional examination.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House Oversight Committee, said lawmakers have focused on the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which forbids President Donald Trump from accepting gifts from foreign officials, even those who patronize his hotels. But Raskin said another clause in the Constitution is being flouted — one that bars Trump from receiving any money from the federal government aside from his annual salary. The president still profits from his properties despite leaving day-to-day management to his children.
“The presidency should not be a money-making operation,” Raskin said. “The president is directing his subordinates in the executive branch of government … to stay at Trump properties.”
Donald Trump Jr., visiting Indonesia’s capital on Tuesday to promote two Trump-branded resorts, defended his father, President Trump, and their family’s company against allegations that their global business presented conflicts of interest for the president.
The president’s son, an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said that the company had walked away from deals that could have made tens of millions of dollars so as not to create the appearance of any improprieties.
“We made a very conscious decision of the family not to do that right now,” he told reporters. “We have turned down a lot of deals.”
He also defended his father against any suggestions that the family’s international business interests could affect his foreign policy.
“He wouldn’t make decisions on a country based on a real estate deal,” Mr. Trump said. “I would like to shut down that nonsense right here.”
Well ok then. Since the Trumps are honest as the day is long there’s no reason to be suspicious.
Mr. Trump was in Jakarta for a private event with wealthy prospective buyers to promote the sale of residential units at two planned luxury resorts in Indonesia that have yet to be built.
He and his billionaire business partner, Hary Tanoesoedibjo, chairman of the MNC Group, held a news conference to extol the virtues of the two Trump-branded resorts, one in Bali and the other at Lido, south of Jakarta. The resorts will include hotels, golf courses and residential units.
After Mr. Trump was elected president in 2016, he said in a Twitter post that he would embark on “no new deals.” But the Trump Organization said it was keeping the Indonesia projects because Mr. Trump had signed binding contracts with Mr. Hary in 2015.
Mr. Trump initially reported receiving between $2 million and $10 million for the projects. The agreement does not call for the Trump Organization to put up any money.
Sure, that’s perfectly fine. I’m surprised he found the time to do this business what with all his political work for his father’s re-election — which he had promised he would not do.
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Shame on You, Maryland Public TV!
by tristero
You really want to put Pat Buchanan back on the air? Seriously?
Buchanan said that the United States is “committing suicide” by “not reproducing itself” while “Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate.”
Buchanan has repeatedly referred to undocumented immigrants as invaders. His 2006 book is titled State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. He said on Fox News: “You’ve got a wholesale invasion, the greatest invasion in human history, coming across your southern border, changing the composition and character of your country.”
Buchanan declined to disavow the idea that people of color have inferior genes compared to white people when pressed by a radio host. And as a Nixon aide, The Boston Globe reported, Buchanan “suggested in a memo to President Nixon that efforts to integrate the U.S. might only result in ‘perpetual friction’ because blacks and the poor may be genetically inferior to middle-class whites.”
Buchanan has repeatedly defended Adolf Hitler, including claiming that he was “an individual of great courage” and that he didn’t want war. He also complained that the Supreme Court had too many Jewish justices after Eleana Kagan was nominated to the court.
Buchanan defended Bob Jones University’s ban on interracial dating (the prohibition was removed in 2000).
Buchanan was asked if he had a problem with California becoming “majority Hispanic, majority Latino.” He replied: “Yes, I do. Yes, I do. If their — because of the Mexican situation, Mexico has a claim on this country.” He also complained that immigration would turn the country into “a polyglot boarding house for the world, a tangle of minosquabbling rities.” He additionally warned against the country becoming “multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic,” explaining: “I prefer the kind — I grew up in a different country.”
Buchanan said that “in a way, both sides were right” during the Civil War.
Buchanan falsely claimed that “this has been a country built, basically, by white folks” and that only “white males” died at the battles at Gettysburg and Normandy.
Buchanan said that “America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. … We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?”