Month: September 2019

Trump, Hong Kong and China. Not Good.

by digby

I’ve been writing about Trump’s crude imperialism for a while, most recently last June.

Now we may see him confronted with a serious foreign crisis, some of it his own making and I don’t think we know how this is going to come out:

What’s happening: Senior officials tell me they are increasingly concerned about Beijing’s treatment of activists in Hong Kong and, increasingly, fear overreach that could also target Taiwan. This comes as any chance of an armistice in the trade war seems to be shrinking away.

Based on numerous conversations with Trump administration officials over the last few weeks, it is clear that many of the president’s top advisers view China first and foremost as a national security threat rather than as an economic partner.

This is a new normal. And it’s poised to affect huge parts of American life, from the cost of many consumer goods — likely to go up under a punishing new round of tariffs — to the nature of this country’s relationship with the government of Taiwan.

Trump himself still views China primarily through an economic prism. But the angrier he gets with Beijing, the more receptive he is to his advisers’ hawkish stances toward China that go well beyond trade.

The big open question remains whether Trump’s anger with China — especially its flooding of the U.S. with deadly fentanyl and its backtracking on promises to make huge agricultural purchases — will ever grow to such a point that he wants to move in a tougher direction on national security and human rights. If he gets to that point, his advisers will have plenty of hawkish policy ideas waiting for his green light.

A New York Times op-ed by Hong Kong activists Joshua Wong and Alex Chow — titled “The People of Hong Kong Will Not Be Cowed by China” — has been circulating inside the administration. And U.S. officials have been reviewing reports of Chinese authorities snatching protesters off the streets.

Senior administration officials have also contemplated selling another tranche of advanced weaponry to Taiwan, beyond the recent F-16 fighter jet sale, according to 3 sources briefed on the sensitive internal conversations. A senior administration official cautioned that these talks may go nowhere and that Trump would probably hesitate to expand his fight with China to include Taiwan.

Trump administration officials have also discussed terminating the State Department’s self-imposed restrictions on contact with Taiwanese officials. A policy under discussion would let Taiwanese officials attend meetings at State Department headquarters and send direct letters to State.

A State Department official responded to this reporting: “The Department of State regularly reviews our activities with Taiwan, within the scope of our unofficial relationship. As of this time, no decisions to change current practices have been made.”

If the State Department made such a change, it would stick in China’s craw and lessen the chances of a trade deal. But it wouldn’t be the first departure from the status quo under this administration. Trump enraged Beijing and broke decades of protocol a few weeks after he was elected by taking a phone call from Taiwan’s leader.

As the Hong Kong situation deteriorates, the Trump administration is entering the tensest stage of its economic standoff with China. The situation is further complicated by China’s militarization of the South China Sea and dominant role in propping up North Korea’s rogue regime. 

Trump’s latest round of China tariffs kick in today, imposing a new 15% tariff on billions worth of consumer products.

Trump’s advisers say he was genuinely infuriated that, in his view, the Chinese recently reneged on 2 key promises: to buy huge amounts of agricultural goods from American farmers and to stop the flow of deadly fentanyl into the U.S. So any progress toward getting the talks back on track would likely have to start with the Chinese making a new offer on agriculture purchases and cracking down on drug trafficking.

About a week and a half ago, Chinese and U.S. officials at USTR and Treasury had a phone call about agricultural purchases, per a U.S. administration official. Another source briefed on these lower level discussions said the Chinese are frustrated that Trump is not giving them enough credit for the agricultural goods they bought earlier this year.

Sources briefed on the talks say the the two sides still aren’t wrestling with the thorniest trade issues that caused the impasse in the first place. The most optimistic scenario for those favoring a deal is that the two sides can generate enough goodwill in the next couple of weeks that a Chinese delegation, led by trade negotiator Liu He, could visit Washington at the end of September. Senior administration officials have discussed such a trip, but nothing is locked in.

The bottom line: During the 2.5 years of his presidency, Trump has fundamentally changed how the world’s top two economies relate to each other. And his advisers think there’s no going back.

Trump gets a good bit of foreign policy advice from Vladimir Putin. (Putin was the one who told him he should cancel the military exercises on the Korean peninsula.) So it would probably be a good idea to analyze Putin’s strategic interests in all this as well to understand what Trump might do.

I’ll just remind you of this comment from Trump during the campaign:

Here’s how he put it in that Times interview in 2016 when talking about China building islands in the South China Sea as a military fortress to control valuable shipping lanes.

Trump: “We have tremendous economic power over China. We have tremendous power. And that’s the power of trade. Because they use us as their bank, as their piggy bank, they take — but they don’t have to pay us back. It’s better than a bank because they take money out but then they don’t have to pay us back.

David E. Sanger: So you would cut into trade in return —

Trump: No, I would use trade to negotiate.

Maggie Haberman: Oh, OK. My last question. Sir, my last —

Trump: I would use trade to negotiate. Would I go to war? Look, let me just tell you. There’s a question I wouldn’t want to answer. … I wouldn’t want them to know what my real thinking is. But I will tell you this. This is the one aspect I can tell you. I would use trade, absolutely, as a bargaining chip.

It’s not just a bargaining chip. It’s a weapon. Trump has declared economic war on  China. Here’s how he put it in that Times interview in 2016 when talking about China building islands in the South China Sea as a military fortress to control valuable shipping lanes.

Trump: “We have tremendous economic power over China. We have tremendous power. And that’s the power of trade. Because they use us as their bank, as their piggy bank, they take — but they don’t have to pay us back. It’s better than a bank because they take money out but then they don’t have to pay us back. 

David E. Sanger: So you would cut into trade in return — 

Trump: No, I would use trade to negotiate. 

Maggie Haberman: Oh, OK. My last question. Sir, my last — 

Trump: I would use trade to negotiate. Would I go to war? Look, let me just tell you. There’s a question I wouldn’t want to answer. … I wouldn’t want them to know what my real thinking is. But I will tell you this. This is the one aspect I can tell you. I would use trade, absolutely, as a bargaining chip.

Trump already declared economic war on China. Whether that turns into a shooting war is still unknown. But the whole thing could easily get out of control very quickly.

.

Tall tales and gas guzzlers
by Tom Sullivan

A random shooting here. A natural disaster there. A toddler running the White House. Another shot in the face. Rays of hope appearing like the calm in the eye of a Category 5 hurricane. Sometimes it feels the clock is ticking on America and time is running out.

Don’t go looking to Matt Taibbi for hope this Labor Day. Taibbi’s jaundiced eye is particularly yellow in his examination of the cult surrounding the acting president. “The average American likes meat, sports, money, porn, cars, cartoons, and shopping,” he writes at Rolling Stone. Democrats need to worry their 2020 pitch is relentlessly negative about all that.

What makes MAGA cultists love their hero is not his absent appeals to their better selves. Rather, Trumpism means never having to say you’re sorry for being like him:

Ronald Reagan once took working-class voters away from Democrats by offering permission to be proud of the flag. Trump offers permission to occupy the statistical American mean: out of shape, suffering from gas, poorly read, anti-intellectual, treasuring things above meaning, and hiding an awful credit history.

Trump in this way is more all-American than Mark Spitz, Liberace, Oprah, Audie Murphy, and Marilyn Monroe. He’s a monument to the consumption economy. He represents fake boobs, the short con, the tall tale, gas guzzlers, and a hundred other American traditions.

He glided down a golden escalator into Calaveras County in 2015 and bet Jim Smiley Democrats his frog could outdistance their prized jumper. The MAGAs lined up to watch him get the better of smartypants Democrats with the help of a little Russian-made quail shot. They’re already lining up again for 2020.

Taibbi continues:

This is why the endless chronicling of Trump’s lies does little to dent his popularity. Trump’s voters don’t need to read PolitiFact to see what Trump’s about. They see it in his waistline. Few politicians in history have revealed what they are to voters more than Trump. Christ, we even know what the man’s penis looks like.

“The cool thing about Trump,” says 38-year-old Cincinnati native Jeremy Holtkamp, “is that it’s just about being an American.”

So is selling snake oil and running a shell game. Trump assures MAGAs they are not the ones being conned. Democrats will get nowhere trying to convince them they are.

Meanwhile, 94-year-old Jimmy Carter is back to building homes for Habitat for Humanity after hip surgery in the spring. The former president and his wife Rosalynn Carter head to Nashville, Tennessee in October to help build 21 new homes.

In MAGA America, because people are not selling merchandise emblazoned with his face or rude taunts, that makes Carter a loser. But in Jackson Mississippi, Habitat and $1,000 a month, no strings attached from a local guaranteed-income pilot project — Springboard to Opportunities — are transforming Cheryl Gray’s life:

Gray’s relationship with money changed dramatically. She used to want to put her children in the hottest clothes to prove that she was providing for them, but now saw the value of visiting the clearance racks. She paid off $4,000 in credit card debt. She found an $11-an-hour teaching job at a preschool and another part-time job, so she could save more money. As her new bank account grew from zero to $1,000 to $2,000, she began looking to leave the projects.

And she’s sending $60 a week for her children’s tutoring.

You won’t hear that celebrated at a Trump rally.

Your fellow Americans are cray-cray

by digby

I’m not saying some people treat Q like an all powerful deity. But I am saying this guy is imploring Q to smite their enemies with the weather. pic.twitter.com/dJpgXwNUxk

— Travis View (@travis_view) September 1, 2019

Here is the complete series in the first tweet:

Conspiracy theories aren’t confined to the right, of course. But nobody does it with quite the same “creativity” (aka insanity) that they do.

.

QOTD: Texas Governor Greg Abbott

by digby

“I am heartbroken by the crying of the people in the state of Texas. I am tired of the dying of the people of Texas. Too many Texans are in mourning. Too many Texans have lost their lives. The status quo in Texas is unacceptable, and action is needed.”

Pardon me while I go scream into a pillow for a while.

Ok, I’m back. And I will just politely say that Governor Greg Abbott needs to STFU.

The shooting happened hours before a series of firearm laws go into effect in Texas, where four of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history have happened.

The new measures will loosen gun restrictions and allow weapons on school grounds, apartments and places of worship.

He sorta-kinda apologized for this but whatever:

Dated the day before a white supremacist gunman opened fire at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart — known to be frequented by people in Mexican and Latino communities — killing 22 people, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a fundraising letter imploring Republicans to “take matters into our own hands” and “DEFEND” the state from immigrants.

Marked Aug. 2, the mailer came stuffed in an envelope lashing out at Democratic lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for refusing to do anything about the “CRISIS on the SOUTHERN Border.”

“45,000 illegal immigrants CROSSED into Texas,” the front of the envelope states in big red text. “THAT’S WHY WE MUST DO THIS…”

The letter, which was first reported by the Texas Signal, then begins, “If we’re going to DEFEND Texas, we’ll need to take matters into our own hands,” and again states that “45,000 illegal immigrants” were caught crossing the “Mexican border into Texas.”

Comparing that number to entire populations of Texan cities, the governor lashed out at Washington, DC, lawmakers, saying they refuse to work with president Trump to secure the border.

He then called out “radical socialists like [Rep.] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” insinuating that the “Democrat machine” wants to “turn Texas blue.”

“If they can do it in California, they can do it in Texas — if we let them,” he wrote, asking for donations to help thwart the looming “disaster” and “DEFEND TEXAS NOW.”

That worked out well, didn’ it?

How about this?

I guess the “action” he plans to take must be to pass a law that nobody should ever leave their houses without wearing full-body armor because he sure as hell won’t lift a finger to stop gun-toting criminals and maniacs from using the citizens of Texas as targets for their rage.

.

Nobody ever heard of a Category 5 until Trump showed up.

by digby

Sure, this is the sort of thing a normal person says:

Back here on planet earth where presidents have access to the best information in the world and also remember what they’ve said in the past, the real story:

A total of 35 recorded tropical cyclones have reached Category 5 strength on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale in the Atlantic Ocean north of the equator, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes of such intensity occur once every three years in this region on average.

Only in six seasons—1932, 1933, 1961, 2005, 2007, and 2017—has more than one Category 5 hurricane formed. Only in 2005 have more than two Category 5 hurricanes formed, and only in 2007 and 2017 did more than one make landfall at Category 5 strength.[1] Starting 2016 through this season, four consecutive years featured Category 5 hurricanes, By year they are, Hurricane Matthew, Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Michael, and Hurricane Dorian. The majority of these storms featured in the four consecutive years of Category 5 storms were M storms.

He repeats himself constantly and inappropriately. He doesn’t remember half of what he’s said.

When do people start recognizing that something is very wrong with his brain?

.

Trump’s Whining and Crying campaign strategy

by digby

Axios reports on the Trump campaign 2020 strategy. The Tweeter in chief plans to attack social media. How novel…

President Trump’s campaign and key allies plan to make allegations of bias by social media platforms a core part of their 2020 strategy, officials tell Axios.

The big picture: Look for ads, speeches and sustained attacks on Facebook and Twitter in particular, the sources say. The irony: The social platforms are created and staffed largely by liberals — but often used most effectively in politics by conservatives, the data shows.

Why it matters: Trump successfully turned the vast majority of his supporters against traditional media, and he hopes to do the same against the social media companies.

Republicans’ internal data shows it stirs up the base like few other topics. 

“In the same way we’ve seen trust in legacy media organizations deteriorate over the past year, there are similarities with social media companies,” a top Republican operative involved in the effort told me.

Between the lines: The charges of overt bias by social media platforms are way overblown, several studies have found. But, if the exaggerated claims stick, it could increase the chances of regulatory action by Republicans.

“People feel they’re being manipulated, whether it’s by what they’re being shown in their feeds or actions the companies have taken against conservatives,” the operative said.

“It’s easy for people to understand how these giant corporations could influence them and direct them toward a certain favored candidate.”

How tech execs see it: They know the escalation is coming, so they are cranking up outreach to leading conservatives and trying to push hard on data showing that conservative voices often outperform liberal ones.

Reality check, from Axios chief tech correspondent Ina Fried: What is real is that most of the platforms have policies against bias that some conservative figures have run afoul of. 

Managing editor Scott Rosenberg notes that Twitter is Trump’s megaphone, while Facebook is often his favorite place to run ads.

What’s next: By the time 2020 is over, trust in all sources of information will be low, and perhaps unrecoverable.

A nation without shared truth will be hard-to-impossible to govern.

I don’t think anyone has much trust in social media anyway as a source of “truth” but this is really just an extension of the right’s decades-long campaign to discredit the mainstream media as a biased. And it’s obviously working very well already:

How tech execs see it: They know the escalation is coming, so they are cranking up outreach to leading conservatives and trying to push hard on data showing that conservative voices often outperform liberal ones.

Lol!!!! They think the conservatives are acting in good faith!

They are not, obviously. It’s a campaign strategy. But I’m sure the tech-heads will do exactly what the MSM does: bend over backwards to “prove” they aren’t biased and in the process put their thumbs on the scale for Trump. And so it goes.

.

I still think it was Kellyanne

by digby

The game she and her husband are playing gives it away, in my opinion:

Almost a year later, we still don’t know.

Outside of a tiny circle of insiders, no one knows who wrote the instantly viral op-ed column about President Trump that appeared in the New York Times last Sept. 5. Despite an informal White House investigation, plenty of outside sleuthing and a whole internet’s worth of guessing, his or her identity remains unknown.

The column — “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration — set social media aflame and cable chat shows ablabber with speculation about who the “senior official” behind it could be.

Kellyanne Conway? Mike Pompeo? Nikki Haley? Mike Pence? In the year since publication, dozens of names have been floated. All have denied it, sometimes ostentatiously. No one has stepped forward or conclusively been shown to be the author.

History suggests this cannot last. Others who started out as anonymous in high-profile cases have eventually been revealed.

The sensation surrounding the Times op-ed writer began almost instantly upon publication of the 900-word column. The article described in very general terms efforts by White House staffers, including the author, to thwart Trump’s “amorality” and “impulsiveness,” which had resulted, according to the writer, “in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.”

The most outraged reaction came, perhaps predictably, from Trump himself. “If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!” he demanded in a tweet a few hours after the column was published. Trump never explained what aspect of national security was imperiled by the unflattering column. Nevertheless, he thundered: “TREASON?”

Prompted by the president’s pique, the White House conducted a brief hunt for the writer. Aides reportedly compiled a list of suspects. There was talk of administering lie-detector tests or seeking sworn statements, though nothing seems to have come of it.

Then-White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tried a novel approach: She posted the Times’ main phone number on Twitter, and she urged people who “want to know” the identity of “this gutless loser” to call and ask the paper’s editors for his or her name. The phone campaign did not work, either; some people called the Times to praise it for running the column.

The Times’ editors said they took the rare step of shielding the writer’s identity to protect him or her from “reprisals” — which, judging by Trump’s explosion, seemed like a possibility. They said they verified the person’s identity through direct contact with the author and the “testimony” of an equally anonymous “trusted intermediary” who brokered the article to the newspaper.

In the year since, the op-ed itself has largely been forgotten, new sensations and scandals burying it daily like the sediment of successive civilizations. But questions remain: Is the author still working in the administration? What policies or initiatives did s/he actually thwart, if any?

And, of course, the big one: Whodunnit?

The fact that Anonymous remains anonymous seems like more than just a loose end. In an age of oversharing and TMI, it is tantamount to a small miracle of restraint and discretion.

To date, only five people know — or are known to know — the identity of the author. They are Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger; editorial page editor James Bennet; op-ed editor James Dao; the “intermediary;” and the author him/herself. (The list of those who presumably don’t know includes the journalists in the Times’ newsroom, among whom are some of the finest investigative reporters in the world.)

It is possible that someone inside the administration knows, too, thanks to a clue the author dropped in the op-ed. The writer quoted “a top official” who complained to him or her about a meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump changed his mind about “a major policy decision.” The author quoted this official as saying, “There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next.”

Bennet and Dao declined requests for an interview for this story. In a statement, however, Bennet wrote: “As we said a year ago, this op-ed offered a significant first-person perspective that had not yet been presented to Times readers, describing the efforts made by some inside to carry out policies they believed in while containing what they saw as the president’s troubling impulses. The substance of that piece has been born out by reporting at The Times and elsewhere over the past year.”

Journalists protect sources regularly, but Anonymous isn’t just any old source. In the few instances in which there was public curiosity about an anonymous source or writer, the person’s identity eventually became known.

You have to love this. The village will always village, even with Trump:

“I always used to joke with Ben Bradlee that the only way three people could keep a secret is if two of them are dead,” said Woodward, citing a quip attributed to Benjamin Franklin. “There’s some truth to that, but people really are capable of keeping secrets if they want to.”

In an odd intertwining of history, Woodward played an indirect role in boosting the profile of the Times’ anonymous op-ed writer. During the week the article was published, Woodward had begun promoting his book about Trump, “Fear,” which documented infighting and chaos within his administration. The book and the op-ed told a consistent story, and the attention paid to one reinforced the other.

But Woodward is dismissive of the op-ed column now.

“What’s lacking in the op-ed piece are specifics,” he said. “If the person [who wrote it] had come to me when I was writing the book, I would have said, ‘What are the specifics? What did you see? What did you participate in?’

“If they couldn’t offer those details, I wouldn’t have put it in the book. I would have said, ‘Take it to the New York Times.’ ”

Says the man whose books are full of hyperbolic bullshit that nobody could possibly verify.

Kellyanne and her husband George are playing both sides in all this very cleverly. The problem is that I don’t know what they think they’re preserving their credibility for? Enabling Trump could literally lead to the end of the world. Its certainly destroying what was left of our tattered political system and hacks and functionaries like them won’t do any better in the rubble than the rest of us.

Of course, I could be wrong. I would laugh hysterically if it turns out to be Mike Pence. I mean … wow. But I really, truly doubt it. I don’t think he could fake that adoring gaze. He said it himself — he spends more time on his knees than on the internet.

John Roberts is shirking his bootlicking duties

by digby

Trump spent the morning watching Fox News and tweeting looney tweets quoting the likes of Jason Chaffetz:

In case you’re wondering what this crazy business about the Chief Justice is about, this explains it:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says he will ask Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to investigate possible abuse of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court during the 2016 election.

Noting that President Trump is “down” on the FISA court, Graham, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters on Thursday he will make a call to ask, “‘Would you please look and see what happened?’ because I don’t want to lose the FISA program.”

As the chief justice, Roberts has the power to appoint judges to the FISA court.

Evidently, Trump and his accomplices want Roberts to discipline the FISA court in some way and are unhappy that he hasn’t stepped up to lick Trump’s boots the way he is supposed to. The court is there to serve the King. Everybody knows that.

.

You might need a weatherman to know
by Tom Sullivan

Air Force One is scheduled to visit Fayetteville, NC on Monday, Sept. 9, flooding permitting. The acting president has scheduled a rally there ahead of the September 10 elections in NC-3 and NC-9.

The NC-3 event is a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Republican Walter Jones in February. The heavily Republican, heavily rural coastal district is expected to remain in Republican hands. The president is coming to Fayetteville to support Republican state senator Dan Bishop (author of the infamous “bathroom bill”) in the NC-9 tossup do-over election delayed from 2018. An absentee ballot investigation concluded there resulted in a call for a new election and the indictment of a Republican campaign operative and six colleagues on multiple charges.

Early voting projections show Democrat Dan McCready with an edge. Unlike coast-hugging NC-3, North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District hugs the South Carolina border from Charlotte east to Fayetteville. Democrats will have a greater advantage in Mecklenburg (Charlotte) County and in Union County touching the southeast Charlotte suburbs. Voting populations trail off in the district and get more Republican as one moves east.

This will be a low turnout election. Data from Dr. William Busa of EQV Analytics backs up that prediction with graphics and commentary. Early voting so far is 56 percent of the same point in 2018. This post from Aug. 31:

While the calendar tells us that Early Voting (which ends Sept. 6) is just a bit more than half-way over, the truth is otherwise. The long Labor Day weekend now underway will take a big bite out of voting action through next Monday, particularly because 2 of NC09’s 8 counties have closed all of their Early Voting sites today, all 8 counties will be closed on Sunday, and 6 will be closed on Monday. And to top it off, there’s now a possibility that Hurricane Dorian could discourage travel in NC09’s eastern counties beginning as early as this Wednesday. Long story short: as of today we’ve probably seen the vast majority of all the Early Voting ballots that will be cast in this race.

What’s worse for Bishop, Busa finds Democrats’ percentage of Early Voting up 3 percent over this point in 2018. Republicans? Their vote totals are down 4 points with Hurricane Dorian targeting the eastern, redder reaches of the district Thursday and Friday. By Monday, there could be flooding.

August 26-28 polling by Harper Polling and Clarity Campaign Labs gives McCready a 46-42 percent advantage, with 3 percent going to third-party candidates. With leaners thrown in, the pollsters give McCready a 49-44 edge. Donald Trump’s approval rating in the district has fallen since last year, Roll Call reports, with 47 percent approving and 48 percent voicing disapproval.

Two caveats. There are still plenty of registered Democrats in these parts who have voted Republican since the Reagan years. Many Reagan Democrats simply never switched registration. This adds a margin of error to turnout estimates based on registration. Plus, Republican voters tend to bat last (on Election Day).

Dave Wasserman of Cook’s Political Report tells the Charlotte Observer:

“We still view this race as a toss up, but would still be more surprised by a McCready victory,” said Dave Wasserman, an analyst for the Cook Political Report. “It’s hard to believe Democrats’ enthusiasm advantage would be greater than last fall, before they took back the House.”

Then again, Dorian might have something to say about who wins in NC-9 on September 10.

Republicans have held this seat in different configurations since 1963. Losing it ahead of 2020 could bode ill for Trump and Republicans. Taking back the seat could demonstrate the winds generated by Democrats’ 2018 blue tsunami are still blowing in their favor.