Month: October 2019

Whistleblower 2: But His Taxes
by Tom Sullivan

“Iceberg! Right ahead!” Still image from “Titanic” (1997)

There is at least one other whistleblower complaint regarding Donald Trump. This one involves the president’s annual Internal Revenue Service tax audit.

Donald Trump’s July 25 Ukraine call forced Democrats into announcing a formal impeachment inquiry after months of pressure. Since then, there has been worry on the left that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s suggestion impeachment would narrow-focus on the Ukraine matter would leave the Trump administration unaccountable for other perfidies: the Muslim ban, caging children, etc. That may happen. But it is far from clear House Democrats will be able to limit their inquiry to Trump’s alleged extorting Ukraine to help his reelection campaign. Ukraine could end up being one of the more minor crimes that spill out once current and former officials start spilling beans.

What is in Trump’s taxes may not supplant the Ukraine affair, but he acts plenty guilty in concealing them. House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal is considering making public a whistleblower complaint alleging “inappropriate efforts to influence” the IRS audit required annually of the president and vice president since the Watergate era. Neal is waiting for advice from House lawyers. The administration has stonewalled Neal’s efforts to obtain six years of Trump’s tax returns to review whether or not the IRS is properly following policy on the executive audits.

Bloomberg reports (Sept. 27):

The release of such a complaint could bolster Neal’s lawsuit seeking to obtain six years of Trump’s tax returns, which he filed in July after the Treasury Department rejected the committee’s request. Neal has said he needs the returns to ensure the IRS is following its policy of annually examining the president’s returns.

Neal sent a letter on Aug. 8 to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin requesting any communications between IRS and Treasury employees involved in the Trump audit by Aug. 13. Bloomberg could not confirm whether Mnuchin complied.

Catherine Rampell observes that if the allegations in this second complaint are true, they “might set in motion the release of lots of other secret documents showing that President Trump has abused his authority for his personal benefit.”

Rampell writes:

Still, from an optics standpoint, this IRS-audit-oversight rationale seemed a strange one for Neal to cite. Especially because it was the primary rationale offered, and there was no reason at the time to believe the IRS was actually being bullied. So, for the first time in history, the administration refused a Ways and Means tax request, on the grounds that Neal’s stated legislative purpose was “pretextual.”

But now, in retrospect, Neal’s stated purpose looks either extremely ingenious — or extremely lucky.

That’s because this summer an anonymous whistleblower approached the House committee to say its concerns had been justified. The whistleblower offered credible allegations of “evidence of possible misconduct,” specifically “inappropriate efforts to influence” the audit of the president, according to a letter Neal sent to the treasury secretary.

The allegations give weight to Democrats’ arguments that this administration merits the oversight it is desperately trying to avoid, Rampell concludes:

As is so often true with allegations of Trumpian wrongdoing, we’ve learned once again that there’s a there there — and there, and there, and all sorts of other places you mightn’t have thought to look.

That was my point Saturday about not knowing what will tumble out once Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House Democrats turn the Trump White House House upside down and shake it.

Area Conservative Excuses Trump Loving Politicians. MSM Forgives and Forgets 

By Spocko

I don’t usually care what right-wing conservative op-ed writers have to say, except when I want to mock them.  (David Brooks: The Firefighters’ Mistake: The Rush To Extinguishment. Getting the fire’s point of view.)

However, this op-ed by Peter Wehner said some things similar to what was in a great article in the Atlantic: The Most Dangerous Way to Lose Yourself ; “Identity fusion” might explain why people act against their own interests.

“Fundamentally, fusion is an opportunity to realign the sense of self. It creates new systems by which people can value themselves. A life that consists of living up to negative ideas about yourself does not end well. Nor does a life marked by failing to live up to a positive self-vision. But adopting the values of someone who is doing well is an escape. If Donald Trump is doing well, you are doing well. Alleged collusion with a foreign power might be bad for democracy, but good for an individual leader, and therefore good for you. “Fusion satisfies a lot of need for people,” Dovidio says. “When you fuse with a powerful leader, you feel more in control. If that person is valued, you feel valued.”

Fusion with the Donald.   — photo: AARON LAVINSKY – STAR TRIBUNE

People on the left would point out that something that Trump did wouldn’t help them personally, so why would they support it? From the article:

“Even if this personal enrichment didn’t come to fruition for his voters, the researchers found that fusion with Trump only increased after his election. The presidency itself made him more powerful, and hence a more attractive target to fuse with”

Trump is getting more powerful and richer in office. I identify with him, therefore I am too. Trump is sticking it to the libs. Therefore I am too.

When Trump gets away with breaking the law or has multiple affairs and his wife doesn’t leave him, he is crushing it in a kind of life many want. 

Trump is their avatar on the world stage, they see him as rich and powerful, so they are too.

If Trump is under attack, they are too.

In Wehner’s piece he talks about cognitive accommodation:

All of this is tied to the psychology of accommodation. As a conservative-leaning clinical psychologist I know explained to me, when new experiences don’t fit into an existing schema — Mr. Trump becoming the leader of the party that insisted on the necessity of good character in the Oval Office when Bill Clinton was president, for example — cognitive accommodation occurs.

When the accommodation involves compromising one’s sense of integrity, the tensions are reduced when others join in the effort. This creates a powerful sense of cohesion, harmony and group think. The greater the compromise, the more fierce the justification for it — and the greater the need to denounce those who call them out for their compromise. “In response,” this person said to me, “an ‘us versus them’ mentality emerges, sometimes quite viciously.”

“What used to be a sense of belonging,” I was told, “devolves into primitive tribalism, absolute adherence to the leader over adherence to a code of ethics.”

Sounds like how a mob forms right before a lynching, doesn’t it? Many fine people.

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Wehner, a speech writer for W. Bush and an adviser to Romney, wants to push the idea that Republican politicians are really good, moral people and they will snap back to Idealized Republican once Trump is gone. 

As the psychologist I spoke to put it to me, many Republicans “are nearly unrecognizable versions of themselves pre-Trump. At this stage it’s less about defending Trump; they are defending their own defense of Trump.”

“At this point,” this person went on, “condemnation of Trump is condemnation of themselves. They’ve let too much go by to try and assert moral high ground now. Calling out another is one thing; calling out yourself is quite another.”

The drive to explain adherence to Trump right now is HUGE, so once that is explained, the Republican think tanks need to lay the ground work for the minute they abandon him. They are preparing for the Republicans return to MSM respectability. 

Republican politicians expect that the mainstream media will welcome them back with open arms when Trump goes down.

Future Media To GOP “Welcome Back! Now tell us what is wrong with the Democrats.” 

The mainstream media will LOVE to have Trump supporting Republicans on their shows the instant it looks like he is toast. The first will be the Republicans who sort of stood up to Trump, even though they voted for him 100 percent of the time. Then those who “retired.” but didn’t attack Trump when they had a chance. Next the quiet ones who didn’t speak up but didn’t retire.

The media will welcome them as they talk about bipartisan-ism and how we need to “come together as a country and heal.”  some of l these people will be Republican lite-Democrats. I expect  they will talk about how we must cut the deficit because “The Economy” blah, blah, blah. And we can’t too crazy with health care because of “Jobs.”

The saddest time will be during the Rehabilitation Tour of 2020 when MSM hosts will have on Republican guests who will talk about what they did behind the scenes to stop worse things from happening. But they did nothing to stop Trump until the House forced him down.  I can’t wait for the lack of hard hitting questions! Don’t look back at the caged children, look forward to undermining Democrat’s Socialist Agenda.

There is an old Vulcan Proverb:

Media that forgive War Criminals–and Politicians who enabled Trump–should neither live long, nor prosper. 

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The difference between smart and stupid in living color

by digby

David Frum points out the difference between Trump’s approach to impeachment and Bill Clinton’s. Let’s just say it’s stark:

On December 19, 1998, the day the House voted to impeach Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice, he read a short statement at the White House. He urged the Senate to adjudicate the impeachment in a “reasonable, proportionate, and bipartisan” manner. He tried to appeal to a greater good, saying, “We must get rid of the poisonous venom of excessive partisanship, obsessive animosity and uncontrolled anger. That is not what America deserves. That is not what America is about.”

That is not the tone we’ve heard from Trump in the past 48 hours. It’s as if the Trump campaign has read the Clinton playbook, and at every turn opted for the opposite.

At this distance of 20 years, we can reconstruct what might be called “the Clinton rules”:

1. Don’t be defined by impeachment. Bill Clinton delivered his 1998 State of the Union address exactly one week after the Drudge Report posted the sensational news of his affair with a White House intern. In his lengthy address, he did not reference the scandal at all. At intervals during the following year, Clinton made statements about major turning points in the scandal—for instance, his grand-jury testimony. But most of the time, the president took pains to show himself as engaged in anything and everything else. Message: The Republicans are obsessed with my sex life; I am focused on my job.

2. Express contrition for proven wrongdoing. After Clinton’s early denials of a relationship with the intern Monica Lewinsky were exposed as false, he expressed contrition for his offenses while arguing that impeachment represented an excessive response. “I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned,” he declared at the White House prayer breakfast on September 11, 1998. “It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine: first and most important, my family; also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness.”

3. Leave no fingerprints on any countermeasures. Through 1998, one Clinton accuser after another was felled or tainted by damaging revelations of sexual scandal: House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his would-be successor, Robert Livingston; House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde. Perhaps others in Congress were kept in line by fears that something similar might befall them. The counterattacks came from people like the Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. Despite ample speculation that the White House political operation was somehow involved, nobody could ever prove a link.

4. Persuade the waverers. Clinton had a base, too, of course—those ready to believe that, at the least, there was plenty of blame to spread around. Maureen Dowd led the media pack, calling Lewinsky “a ditsy, predatory White House intern” and mocking her weight and appearance. But the Clinton impeachment strategy was not focused on his superfans. It was focused on that famous 1990s demographic bloc, the soccer moms: women who disapproved of Clinton’s character, but liked Clinton’s economy. The strategy for 1998 and ’99 always kept these waverers uppermost in mind, again and again offering them a middle way: Condemn Clinton and move on.

5. Never read the stage directions aloud. As the House of Representatives neared the end of its impeachment debate, December 16, Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox against Iraq, the largest U.S. air strike since the Gulf War of 1990. Clinton skeptics wondered whether the timing was a coincidence. White House officials insisted otherwise, and not a word was ever said or written to prove them wrong. Clinton held the upper hand by that point, but any suggestion that he had subordinated national security to his political needs could have upended everything for him.

Now contrast Trump’s approach.

1. Talk more about impeachment. In these precious first defining days, Trump has been raving nonstop against the whistle-blower, the House, and all his political foes—seen and unseen. His Twitter account is wholly obsessed with impeachment. He makes no pretense of focusing on the job that the American people elected him to do. It’s Nancy Pelosi who has delegated impeachment to a committee of the House while she focuses on running her chamber. He’s made it clear that so long as impeachment is even being discussed—there have been no votes yet—he cannot and will not focus on any other aspect of his job.

2. Show no contrition. Trump’s message is aggrieved victimhood. He did not try to extort the Ukrainian president into helping him politically, he insists. He likened the whistle-blower’s sources to spies. But these two defenses contradict each other. If the allegations are untrue, then he was not spied upon; if he was spied upon, the allegations are not untrue. But he does not worry about logic or consistency. His message is emotional—poor, poor me—and is aimed only at those willing to join his pity party.

3. Leave fingerprints everywhere. Trump has called for a treason trial of the House committee investigating him—and for the most heinous punishment of those who brought to light his conversations with Ukraine’s president. The whistle-blower has reportedly sought protection. Meanwhile, Trump’s personal emissary, Rudy Giuliani, has appeared on television to implicate Trump’s secretary of state in every improper action of this administration.

4. Make no attempt at persuasion. Suppose you do not like Trump much, but do appreciate the prosperity of the past few years. This White House has nothing to say to you. Unless you are up-to-speed on conspiracy theories from Infowars or QAnon, you cannot even comprehend the president’s defense—much less believe it. Trump is running an impeachment defense for the 35 percent of the country that likes him a lot, and is gambling that 35 percent will suffice.

5. Read the stage directions aloud. On September 28, Rudy Giuliani tweeted a warning that impeachment of Trump would jeopardize “domestic tranquility.” The next day, President Trump warned that impeachment would “destabilize” the United States. Team Trump is ramping up threats of disorder and potential violence—even a “Civil War like fracture”—if the president is held to account, and sending those threats from its own return address. The intended message is: Removing these people might be dangerous. But what Team Trump is really communicating is: Leaving them where they are is definitely more dangerous.

Through most of 1998, Bill Clinton’s approval rating exceeded 60 percent. On the day the House voted for impeachment, it jumped to 73 percent. Americans signaled that they opposed removing Clinton, and it didn’t happen. Trump’s approval has never reached 50 percent in any non-Rasmussen poll. Already a plurality favors impeachment. Trump supporters have taken to tweeting images of the large empty spaces of the United States to send the message that the tumble weeds and prairie dogs will be severely displeased if Trump is impeached.

People used to say Clinton got himself into trouble because he was undisciplined. And it’s true. But compared to Trump he was a buddhist monk. Of course the real difference is that Clinton is very smart and Trump is very dumb.

And as Frum says:

At the core of Trump’s trouble is this: He seems unable to cope psychologically with the truth of his presidency’s unpopularity. He appears deeply personally committed to the fiction that his presidency musters massive public support. That fiction leads him to underestimate the danger facing him and overestimate his resources against that danger.

And he doesn’t understand the process. On even an elementary level. So he’s going to keep making things worse for himself. He literally doesn’t know any better.

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