Month: December 2019

Epistemological relativism morphs into Epistemological Nihilism

by digby

On MSNBC this week, New York Times’ columnist Michelle Goldberg offered a name Wednesday for one aspect of what’s happening before our eyes. Responding to Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.) saying “there are no set facts here” — she said it summed up the long-term Republican strategy: “epistemological nihilism.”

There are no facts, there is no reality, nothing matters.

I was intrigued that Goldberg brought up the term “epistemological nihilism” because it reminded me that I used to use the term “epistemological relativism” a decade ago talking about the Bush administration.
(Both of these are philosophical terms with serious meaning.)

Epistemological relativism for dummies

by digby

Senate Science Committee member Marco Rubio said today, “I’m not a scientist, Jim, I’m just an old country GOP hack” and everyone’s all atwitter. (Actually, he said “I’m not a scientist, man” in answer to the question of the age of the planet.)

But we should be grateful that in keeping with the new kinder gentler Republican party that he didn’t say what he really thinks: teaching science in schools is akin to communist indoctrination. Via LGF:

Rubio said there also could be activity in the legislature by evolution proponents who wish to remove the theory compromise language. “I think there’s still going to be folks out there talking about this – on both sides. … I think this will be a battle that will go on for quite some time,” he said.

The “crux” of the disagreement, according Rubio, is “whether what a parent teaches their children at home should be mocked and derided and undone at the public school level. It goes to the fundamental core of who is ultimately, primarily responsible for the upbringing of children. Is it your public education system or is it your parents?” 

Rubio added, “And for me, personally, I don’t want a school system that teaches kids that what they’re learning at home is wrong.” 

Rubio, a Cuban-American, made a comparison to the strategy employed by the Communist Party in Cuba where schools encouraged children to turn in parents who criticized Fidel Castro. 

“Of course, I’m not equating the evolution people with Fidel Castro,” he quickly added, while noting that undermining the family and the church were key means the Communist Party used to gain control in Cuba. 

“In order to impose their totalitarian regime, they destroyed the family; they destroyed the faith links that existed in that society,” he said.

This is a very slick politician and I think he’s quite dangerous. That answer is the usual wingnut gibberish, but he is very good at dogwhistling to the rubes. He signals very clearly that he is on board with the whole idea that evolution should not be taught as … science.

This gets back to one of the most fascinating aspects of right wing ideology over the past couple of decades: their bizarroworld post-modernism. Recall this from Lynne Cheney’s jeremiad against “relativism” called Telling the Truth:

“In rejecting an independent reality, an externally verifiable truth, and even reason itself, he [Foucault] was rejecting the foundational principles of the West.”

There was a time when the right used to argue that there was such a thing as objective truth and it was the left who said it was arguable. But due to their need to accommodate the primitive superstitions and literal biblical interpretations of so many of their followers conservatives have become extreme epistemological relativists, unable to make a clear statement as to whether or not the sun came up this morning if it means that a fundamentalist somewhere might have a problem with it. Rubio proves it with his slippery endorsement of the idea that schools should teach that science is all a matter of opinion.

But one thing has remained of their arguments through every permutation: it’s always about phantom totalitarians infiltrating their families and businesses. I can only speculate about why that might be, but I lean toward this explanation from Corey Robin:

Historically, the conservative has sought to forestall the march of democracy in both the public and the private spheres, on the assumption that advances in the one necessarily spur advances in the other. Still, the more profound and prophetic stance on the right has been to cede the field of the public, if he must, but stand fast in the private. Allow men and women to become democratic citizens of the state; make sure they remain feudal subjects in the family, the factory, and the field.

I guess I just assumed that when Lynne Cheney was talking about the foundational principles of the West she was talking about the Golden Age of Greece and the Enlightenment. It turns out she was taking her inspiration from the Dark Ages.

So we know this rejection of reality has been happening for a long time. Al Gore wrote a book called “The Assault on Reason” in 2004. But perhaps Goldberg’s phrase is the best way to understand specifically what’s changed in the Trump era.

 Where before they were practicing relativism they have now moved on to nihilism.

I think that’s worth thinking about.

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Bill Barr’s latest atrocity

by digby

Bill Barr added to his  long list of  fascistic comments in a speech this week. Like authoritarians before him, he warned the people that unless they “respect” the government, they shouldn’t expect the government to protect them from criminals:

But I think today, American people have to focus on something else, which is the sacrifice and the service that is given by our law enforcement officers. And they have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves ― and if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.

That’s the Attorney General of the United States of America, not even pretending to adhere to American values.

Emptywheel made the right point about this

HuffPo asked who he meant to include in this comment, but DOJ refused to answer.

So I guess we should just assume Barr means to target his comments at the most visible critic of policing powers in the country, Donald Trump, who routinely attacks law enforcement on his high follower Twitter account. That would suggest that the Attorney General just threatened to withdraw the protection of the FBI from the President, his family, and all his flunkies last night.

Bill Barr and I totally disagree on policing, so it’s no surprise we disagree here. I think the FBI should continue to protect Trump and his associates, even while they investigate some of them for their criminal behavior. I think it’s a rash threat, on Barr’s part, to withdraw that support simply because Trump doesn’t like being investigated like any other suspected criminals.

If only. Unfortunately, we all know that Barr will do ANYTHING to protect Trump. He’s speaking to American people of color and citizens who protest the government.

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Hissy Fit Redux

by digby

In the hearing yesterday, Professor Pam Karlan was talking about the history of the constitution and the founders and she said, “the president can name his son Baron but he can’ make him a baron” and the right wing fever swamp rose up in a collective primal scream.

A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.

— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 4, 2019

It was, of course, completely bogus, the comment was anything but insulting or demeaning toward the kid.  But Karlan ended up having to apologize anyway just to stop the incessant screeching.

This is a patented right wing hissy fit.  I wrote about this a long time ago:

The Art of the Hissy Fit

By Digby , TomPaine.com
Posted on October 25, 2007

I first noticed the right’s successful use of sanctimony and faux outrage back in the 90’s when well-known conservative players like Gingrich and Livingston pretended to be offended at the president’s extramarital affair and were repeatedly and tiresomely “upset” about fund-raising practices they all practiced themselves. The idea of these powerful and corrupt adulterers being personally upset by White House coffees and naughty sexual behavior was laughable.

But they did it, oh how they did it, and it often succeeded in changing the dialogue and titillating the media into a frenzy of breathless tabloid coverage.

In fact, they became so good at the tactic that they now rely on it as their first choice to control the political dialogue when it becomes uncomfortable and put the Democrats on the defensive whenever they are winning the day. Perhaps the best example during the Bush years would be the completely cynical and over-the-top reaction to Senator Paul Wellstone’s memorial rally in 2002 in the last couple of weeks leading up to the election.

With the exception of the bizarre Jesse Ventura, those in attendance, including the Republicans, were non-plussed by the nature of the event at the time. It was not, as the chatterers insisted, a funeral, but rather more like an Irish wake for Wellstone supporters — a celebration of Wellstone’s life, which included, naturally, politics. (He died campaigning, after all.) But Vin Weber, one of the Republican party’s most sophisticated operatives, immediately saw the opportunity for a faux outrage fest that was more successful than even he could have ever dreamed.

By the time they were through, the Democrats were prostrating themselves at the feet of anyone who would listen, begging for forgiveness for something they didn’t do, just to stop the shrieking. The Republicans could barely keep the smirks off their faces as they sternly lectured the Democrats on how to properly honor the dead — the same Republicans who had relentlessly tortured poor Vince Foster’s family for years.

It’s an excellent technique and one they continue to employ with great success, most recently with the entirely fake Move-On and Pete Stark “controversies.” (The Democrats try their own versions but rarely achieve the kind of full blown hissy fit the Republicans can conjure with a mere blast fax to Drudge and their talk radio minions.)

But it’s about more than simple political distraction or savvy public relations. It’s actually a very well developed form of social control called Ritual Defamation (or Ritual Humiliation) as this well trafficked internet article defines it:

Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.

The article goes on to lay out several defining characteristics of ritual defamation such as “the method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.” Perhaps its most intriguing insight is this:

The power of ritual defamation lies entirely in its capacity to intimidate and terrorize. It embraces some elements of primitive superstitious belief, as in a “curse” or “hex.” It plays into the subconscious fear most people have of being abandoned or rejected by the tribe or by society and being cut off from social and psychological support systems.

In a political context this translates to a fear by liberal politicians that they will be rejected by the American people — and a subconscious dulling of passion and inspiration in the mistaken belief that they can spare themselves further humiliation if only they control their rhetoric. The social order these fearsome conservative rituals pretend to “protect,” however, are not those of the nation at large, but rather the conservative political establishment which is perhaps best exemplified by this famous article about how Washington perceived the Lewinsky scandal. The “scandal” is moved into the national conversation through the political media which has its own uses for such entertaining spectacles and expends a great deal of energy promoting these shaming exercises for commercial purposes.

The political cost to progressives and liberals for their inability to properly deal with this tactic is greater than they realize. Just as Newt Gingrich was not truly offended by Bill Clinton’s behavior (which mirrored his own) neither were conservative congressmen and Rush Limbaugh truly upset by the Move On ad — and everyone knew it, which was the point. It is a potent demonstration of pure power to force others to insincerely condemn or apologize for something, particularly when the person who is forcing it is also insincerely outraged. For a political party that suffers from a reputation for weakness, it is extremely damaging to be so publicly cowed over and over again. It separates them from their most ardent supporters and makes them appear guilty and unprincipled to the public at large.

Ritual defamation and humiliation are designed to make the group feel contempt for the victim and over time it’s extremely hard to resist feeling it when the victims fail to stand up for themselves.

There is the possibility that the Republicans will overplay this particular gambit. Their exposure over the past few years for incompetence, immorality and corruption, both personal and institutional, makes them extremely imperfect messengers for sanctimony, faux or otherwise. But they are still effectively wielding the flag, (or at least the Democratic congress is allowing them to) and until liberals and progressives find a way to thwart this successful tactic, it will continue. At this point the conservatives have little else.

What do you suppose today’s enforcers of proper decorum would say to this?

Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place – the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain

Under Trump these little rituals are much more ridiculous than they’ve ever been since their own Dear Leader is one of the crudest, most disgusting humans to ever appear on the public stage.  But it doesn’t stop them.

Neither does it stop the mainstream media from taking what they obviously see as a cheap way to curry favor with wingnuttia and pretend that “both sides” are equally crude and uncivilized:

Pandering to fatuous, bad faith right wingers is why we can’t have nice things. https://t.co/zS5waSqlMJ

— digby (@digby56) December 4, 2019

This one was particularly fatuous but the point was to portray Democrats as a coastal elitist witches. That gets the cult very, very excited:

Kellyanne Conway w/absurd attacks on Professor Karlan on Fox & Friends: “If you went to work today to manicure nails, to manicure lawn, if you went to work with a jackhammer or a welding machine … that woman yesterday looks her nose down on you … who the hell are you, lady?” pic.twitter.com/iq1gpGCAGE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 5, 2019

Professor Karlan’s non-apology (the what-about-the-president-not-apologizing part) just dug the hole deeper, igniting a third, fourth and fifth round of scrutiny and guaranteeing her long career will be remembered for an outburst of metaphorically bared teeth and snarling eyes.

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) December 4, 2019

If you or someone you know is thinking about applying to law school, first consider that in order to graduate you’ll actually have to pay to listen to lectures by self-righteous snobs. pic.twitter.com/oj8ahE8uYj

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) December 4, 2019

They seem nice don’t they?

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Getting under his skin

 by digby

 This is pretty good:

That has to chap Trump’s hide.

Biden’s pitch is pretty simple — Trump is a monster and I’m not. According to Ron Brownstein, that’s the message that propelled the two previous successors to presidents Nixon and Clinton. Will it work again?

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A Change in the Gold Standard 

by tristero

The most notable thing in yesterday’s hearing was a significant and barely noticed change in the gold standard Democrats applied to their strategy.

Their three witnesses were clearly mainstream Democrats, likely politically moderate if not liberal. In other words, there was no attempt by the Dems to call an “even-a-conservative-thinks-Trump’s-a-danger” lawyer from, say, the Federalist Society or some other far-right group.

Put another way, Democrats no longer feel the need to prove that “See, the grownups also agree with us!”

This is, as they say, a sign of growing maturity.

Note; As for the fellow called by the Trumpists who pretended to be non-partisan, Maddow convincingly demonstrated in her show opener last night that he is really a long time Republican apologist. Nadler also made mincemeat of his posturing in his closing remarks.

Trump-effect fallout?
by Tom Sullivan

Graphic displayed by House Judiciary Committee Democrats Wednesday shows “fact witnesses” the White House refuses to allow to testify.

Wednesday’s national news, of course, was the House Judiciary Committee’s first hearing on the impeachment of President Donald Trump. But is news yesterday from far outside the Beltway evidence the president’s welcome is wearing thin with his own party?

Stanford Law School professor Pamela S. Karlan came in scorching with her opening statement during Wednesday’s House Judiciary hearing on the Trump impeachment. She quickly made what might have been an academic discussion a polemical one:

Karlan emerged Wednesday as a new hero for liberal law professors across the country for her ability to joust with House members all the while ticking off why she believes Donald Trump should be impeached, making complicated legal philosophies understandable, and raising the ire of supporters of the President. Her testimony also evoked a rare tweet from first lady Melania Trump castigating her for a comment she made that invoked the Trumps’ 13-year-old son, for which Karlan later apologized.

Karlan clearly made a splash in her opening statement, first among many noteworthy moments. Democrats hammered away at Trump’s perfidies while Republicans, lacking any defense for them, attacked the process or tried to change the subject.

Republicans whined about the lack of “fact witnesses” with direct knowledge of Trump’s actions, then demanded to hear from Ukraine-connected witnesses with no direct knowledge of Trump’s actions. No Republicans asked the president to allow over a dozen executive branch officials with direct involvement to testify. (Image at top.)

Comments in the last hour of the nine-hour hearing are worth attention for the broader picture they paint of the Trump presidency. Broader, that is, than Trump pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations of potential 2020 rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) pointed out that during the Clinton impeachment, members of that White House testified before Congress and Clinton provided answers to 81 written interrogatories. Conversely, Trump has refused. He has intimidated witnesses and issued a blanket order that none of his subpoenaed executive branch officials testify. Trump praised others for refusing to cooperate with the House inquiry. He has refused to produce subpoenaed documents. Both Nixon and Clinton allowed the White House counsel and chief of staff to testify, Neguse observed. Trump has not.

Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) offered that Trump has not only refused to cooperate with normal congressional oversight, but with its constitutional obligation to oversee impeachment.

Noah Feldman, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, responded:

For the president to refuse to participate in any way in the House’s constitutional obligation of supervising him to impeach him breaks the Constitution. It basically says, nobody can oversee me. Nobody can impeach me. First, I’ll block witnesses from appearing. Then, I’ll refuse to participate in any way. And then I’ll say you don’t have enough evidence to impeach me. And ultimately, the effect of that is to guarantee that the president is above the law and can’t be checked. And since we know the framers put impeachment in the constitution to check the president, if the president can’t be checked he is no longer subject to the law.

Stanton asked Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina’s law school about the president’s refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas. Isn’t that the framers’ worst nightmare?

Gerhardt replied:

One way in which to understand that is to put all of his arguments together and then see what the ramifications are. He says he’s entitled not to comply with all subpoenas. He says he’s not subject to any kind of criminal investigation while he’s President of the United States. He’s immune to that. He’s entitled to keep all information confidential from Congress. Doesn’t even have to give a reason. Well, when you put all those things together, he’s blocked off every way in which to hold himself accountable except for elections. And the critical thing to understand here is that is precisely what he was trying to undermine in the Ukraine situation.

Trump holds himself above any legal constraints on his actions. That is clear from his history both in business and in public office. He refuses to recognize the legislative branch’s constitutionally defined oversight authority. He refuses to comply with legal subpoenas. Those actions themselves, aside from the Ukraine affair, demonstrate the need to end his presidency and his efforts to undermine the rule of law.

At the end of the day, this item from the heart of Rep. Mark Meadows’ NC-11 (home to your truly) came over the transom: Three County Commissioners Leave GOP – Transylvania County, NC:

“This is not an action we do happily, and it is not a choice we take lightly,” the announcement said. “It comes after much prayer, reflection and discussion among us and with our loved ones. In leaving, we are ending a long association that is deeply personal. Between us, we have won 20 different elections as Republicans in Transylvania County.”

The announcement noted three “broad areas” for their decision to leave the party: “First, we have clear notions of conservatism. To be conservative is to honor and preserve the fundamental institutions, processes, structures and rule of law, which have enabled the United States to be history’s greatest success story. To be conservative is to be financially prudent while also investing in common ground works that support individual success for all citizens. To be conservative is to be welcoming and inclusive, understanding that all of us share the same human aspirations; conservative tenets of self-determination cannot be exclusive. To be conservative is to have a strong moral compass and the willingness to challenge wrong regardless of its source. We believe all of these are not merely conservative principles but American principles.

Their statement does not mention Donald Trump by name. But the trio must find it difficult to square those principles with the actions of their leaders in Washington, D.C. and in Raleigh. Their leaving the Republican Party was obviously a long time coming. They left in a coordinated fashion for cover. (New state and federal district lines won’t affect officials at this level in this county.)

It is far too early to know if these officials abandoning the Party of Trump as a group is an isolated event or a sea change. But it won’t reflect well on Meadows who faces reelection in a district more like the one Heath Shuler won from a Republican in 2006 before the post-2011 gerrymander pushed it to R+14. What may make this announcement from a rural red county disquieting for national Republicans is the template it sets for Republicans elsewhere to follow.

Rudy’s still at it

by digby

Trump got angry about the “insurance” comment and had him banned on Fox.  But that’s not stopping him. He just went to OAN:

Even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny this week of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s role in the pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Giuliani has been in Europe continuing his efforts to shift the focus to purported wrongdoing by President Trump’s political rivals.

Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort.

The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played some role in promoting claims about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a former United States ambassador to Ukraine and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in 2016.

Those claims — some baseless and others with key disputed elements — have been the foundations of the effort by Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani to pressure the Ukrainian government to commit itself to investigations that would benefit Mr. Trump heading into his re-election campaign. That effort in turn has led to the impeachment proceedings in the House against the president.

Mr. Giuliani is using the trip, which has not been previously reported, to help prepare more episodes of a documentary series for a conservative television outlet promoting his pro-Trump, anti-impeachment narrative. His latest moves to advance the theories propounded by the prosecutors amount to an audacious effort to give the president’s supporters new material to undercut the House impeachment proceedings and an eventual Senate trial.

It was Mr. Giuliani’s earlier interactions with some of the same Ukrainian characters that set the stage for the impeachment inquiry in the first place, and also led to an investigation by federal prosecutors into whether Mr. Giuliani violated federal lobbying laws.

Mr. Giuliani’s trip has generated concern in some quarters of the State Department, coming amid scrutiny of his work with American diplomats earlier this year on the pressure campaign. His trip to Budapest and Kyiv suggests that he is unbowed by the intense scrutiny that has enveloped him and his associates, including revelations from the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday of frequent calls from Mr. Giuliani to the White House and other figures in the pressure campaign at key moments this year.

The European trip was organized around the filming of a multipart television series featuring Mr. Giuliani that is being produced and aired by a conservative cable channel, One America News, or OAN.

The series, the first two installments of which have already aired, is being promoted as a Republican alternative to the impeachment hearings, including Ukrainian “witnesses” whom House Democrats running the inquiry declined to call. Some of the Ukrainians interviewed by Mr. Giuliani were sworn in on camera to “testify under oath” in a manner that the network claims “debunks the impeachment hoax.”

Mr. Giuliani was joined in Budapest by an OAN crew, including the reporter hosting the series, Chanel Rion, who conducted an interview in the Hungarian capital with Mr. Lutsenko, according to someone familiar with the interview.

Earlier this year, Mr. Lutsenko played a formative role in what became Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign, meeting with Mr. Giuliani in New York, where he made claims about a gas company that paid Mr. Biden’s son as a board member and the dissemination of a secret ledger listing slush payments from a Russia-aligned Ukrainian political party earmarked to Mr. Manafort and others. When The New York Times revealed the payments earmarked to Mr. Manafort in August 2016, it forced him to resign under pressure from the Trump campaign.

Mr. Lutsenko, whom Mr. Giuliani considered representing as a client, is facing allegations in Ukraine of abuse of power during his years as a prosecutor and was characterized by some American officials in the impeachment inquiry as untrustworthy. But his office moved to pursue investigations sought by Mr. Trump, and he was praised by the president as a “very good prosecutor” during a July 25 phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
[…]
Mr. Giuliani rejected any notion that it was audacious or risky for him to continue pursuing the Ukrainian mission, given the scrutiny of him by impeachment investigators and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, or S.D.N.Y.

“If S.D.N.Y. leaks and Democrats’ threats stopped me, then I should find a new profession,” he wrote in a text message on Wednesday.

Asked about his interview with Mr. Lutsenko and efforts to interview other Ukrainian prosecutors, he responded that “like a good lawyer, I am gathering evidence to defend my client against the false charges being leveled against him” by the news media and Democrats.

He accused Representative Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which conducted impeachment hearings last month, of preventing testimony that could help Mr. Trump. “I am hoping that the evidence concealed by Schiff will be available to the public as they evaluate his outrageous, unconstitutional behavior.”

He did not respond to a question about whether he briefed Mr. Trump on his trip or his involvement in the OAN series, but he has said that he keeps Mr. Trump apprised of his efforts related to Ukraine.

In a news release Tuesday, OAN indicated that the third installment of its series with Mr. Giuliani was “currently in the works with OAN investigative staff outside the United States conducting key interviews at undisclosed safe houses.” It said the network would release additional details “upon return of OAN staff to U.S. soil.”

In Budapest, Mr. Giuliani had dinner on Tuesday night at the residence of the United States ambassador to Hungary, David B. Cornstein, a longtime friend and associate of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani.

A businessman who made a fortune operating jewelry counters inside department stores and worked in Mr. Giuliani’s New York mayoral administration, Mr. Cornstein has courted Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, who in turn has provided fodder for Mr. Trump’s critical view of Ukraine.[…] 

Some State Department officials said they were tracking Mr. Giuliani’s continued efforts to engage the Ukrainians with concern. One department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive topic, called it “shocking” that, in the face of scrutiny of his prior efforts related to Ukraine, Mr. Giuliani was traveling internationally in continued pursuit of information from Ukrainians.

I just don’t know what to say…

He’s insane. 

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He must have rushed back to his TIVO to self-soothe

by digby

He must have been glued to the screen all morning.

The 2018 midterm elections and their aftermath, explained for Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/Fagefe4RyB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 4, 2019

The White House refused to send lawyers to defend his position in the hearing today. They were invited.

He is a pathological liar and clearly suffering from serious delusions as well so maybe he’s persuaded himself that this is true. His base seems to think that this sniveling and complaining is extremely attractive so maybe this works for him.

But I have to assume that most people still think that acting like a spoiled five year old is a strange way for the leader of the most powerful country on earth to behave.

He’s no puppet, no puppet



by digby

Greg Sargent makes an interesting observation that I think is probably correct. He challenges the broadly held view that Trump is “dupe” of Vladimir Putin:

On one level, the problem with the “Trump as Russian dupe” formulation is that it implicitly but dramatically downplays the severity of Trump’s corruption and the threat it poses to the country. 

The new House report vividly dramatizes why Trump undertook his corrupt plot to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do his political bidding and what that says about Trump’s intentions toward our government and democracy going forward.
For Trump, the utility of getting Zelensky to announce an investigation validating the lie that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in 2016 wasn’t simply that it would salve his bruised ego over his need for Russian help to win.

This false narrative would also help Trump confuse the U.S. electorate with disinformation obscuring his own corrupt efforts to coordinate with and benefit from that sabotage of our political system. This in turn could facilitate benefiting from the next round of such sabotage, which he has openly invited. 

In short, the report demonstrates that Trump’s profiting off Russian sabotage last time, and his efforts to extort Ukraine into helping him again, are the same story — one that will continue. 

Trump was emboldened by getting away with the first installment, and when the second installment was unmasked, Trump blithely said in reporters’ faces that Ukraine — and China — absolutely should launch an investigation of potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden, his other extortive demand. 

On top of this, the report demonstrates how numerous cabinet officials and extensive government resources — and the conditioning of multiple official acts — were placed at the disposal of the whole corrupt scheme.

I continue to wonder about this question myself and I think Sargent’s conclusions are reasonable even as I look at Trump every day and see someone so far in over his head that he is struggling just to get up in the morning and remember to breathe. It’s very hard to believe that he’s operating on anything more than base instinct.  But then, maybe that’s all it takes.

Anyway, Greg continues with this, which is very thought-provoking:

We now know that the lie about Ukrainian interference has been a mainstay of self-absolving Russian propaganda for years. But Trump hasn’t been duped into spreading it. He explicitly recognizes an alliance of his own interests with those of Russia in doing so (and in procuring whatever other outside help he can) in corrupting U.S. liberal democracy for his own malevolent self-interested purposes.

This has implications for impeachment. As Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman will argue to the Judiciary Committee, impeachment binds the president to the rule of law, as a remedy against abuses of power to advance nakedly corrupt self interest.

Which leads to the bigger point. 

This has broader consequences

The Post reports that much of the GOP has now adopted the false narrative about Ukraine, in league with Trump. But many quoted ask too narrow a question: Whether this means the GOP is dropping its previously “hawkish” posture toward Russia.

It’s worth asking whether something more consequential is happening.

A broader approach was suggested to me by foreign policy scholar David Rothkopf, who argues that we should think about “Putinism” as a “worldwide movement” that allies various ethno-nationalist and illiberal authoritarian leaders against Western liberal democracy, the rule of law, international institutions and the commitment to empiricism in the face of disinformation.

“Trump, his administration and the GOP have made a conscious choice to align themselves with Putinism,” Rothkopf told me. “It is not unwitting.”

It’s not easy to say how committed Trump is to these tendencies. He yearns to operate more fully as other illiberal authoritarians do. But for all his bluster about our current alliances, it’s unclear how much damage he will do to them in the long run.

Still, it’s obvious that Trump — and, increasingly, many of his GOP defenders — are to some untold degree operating in sync with Putinism and are acting against the interests of our liberal democracy.

This also has ramifications for Democrats. The Post piece reports that some strategists “see a possible opening” for the eventual nominee to win over “hawkish Republicans and independents who are wary of the Republican drift on Russia.”

But Democrats need to go bigger. As Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg suggested to me, party leaders must argue that the GOP’s “embrace of the Ukraine fiction” is not merely a matter of domestic political expediency. Rather, it’s time to ask whether we’re seeing the beginnings of a “realignment” with this global right wing movement against the values and even the interests of “the United States and the West.”

“Democrats must step up here and explain to the country the gravity of the moment,” Rosenberg says.

Trump’s degradations have forced us to grapple with the correct language to describe the moment in all kinds of ways. It’s time to do away with the “dupe” formulation as well.

I would suggest that the GOP has been going in this direction for a very long time and long before Trump came on the scene. Starting with their commitment to anti-communism leading to McCarthyism, Watergate, Iran Contra, the bogus Clinton impeachment, the election in 2000, the Iraq war and now this. Underlying all of it is a form of illiberal authoritarianism.

What’s different about Trump is that they’ve cast off any pretense of conservative ideology and are now just using their power to maintain power. The ethno-nationalism provides the political means to do that but the true motive appears to be kleptocracy. That’s Putinism without the expansionism. Of course, the US doesn’t need that. It’s already the dominant military and economic power .

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Rudy’s in the dog house. And Trump hates dogs.

 by digby

 Trump didn’t like that “insurance” comment, not one little bit:

For more than a year, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have been part of a chorus of West Wing advisers telling Donald Trump that he needs to fire Rudy Giuliani. “Most people around Trump have tried to say Rudy is not a positive,” a former West Wing official recently told me. Trump ignored their criticism and stood by his personal lawyer, even when Guiliani gave erratic interviews that often required messy walkbacks. “He liked him on television,” the official said.

But as Giuliani’s legal woes mount, Trump is coming around to his advisers’ view that Giuliani is a liability, three Republicans close to the White House told me. The relationship has grown so strained that Trump has even directed Giuliani not to appear on Fox News, a Republican briefed on the conversations said. (A Fox source said Giuliani has declined producers’ requests to appear on the network in recent days). “Rudy is cut off from Fox News,” the Republican told me. One Republican close to Trump put it this way: “We had to do something, we don’t want Rudy out there. Every time he talks it’s bad for Trump.”

The turning point seems to be Giuliani’s Fox News interview on November 23 in which he claimed to have an “insurance policy” in case Trump throws him overboard. “Trump was pissed,” a source told me. Giuliani tweeted that his comment was “sarcastic” and later called Trump to apologize. The next day, the news broke that Giuliani associate Lev Parnas had turned over tape recordings of Trump and Giuliani to Congress. Then, on November 27, the New York Times reported that Giuliani tried to land business deals in Ukraine at the same time Trump assigned him to conduct a shadow foreign policy campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Trump, sources said, was furious. “Trump hates when people make money off working for him,” a second former West Wing official said. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

You have to love the fact that Trump, of all people, takes exception to people grifting off of him. But he thinks he should have all the money, no matter what.

I don’t know how this spat with Rudy will go. Rudy is not going to allow himself to go to prison like Michael Cohen. He’s put too many mobsters in jail. So, he needs to keep the president happy in order to get a pardon if the worst should happen. But he also knows that Trump is an untrustworthy imbecile whom he cannot count on to do the smart thing. Who knows what Trump is thinking?
So this dynamic is quite interesting. It’s clear that Giuliani is in trouble. The question is whether or not he can continue to protect Trump and save himself and whether Trump is sophisticated enough to understand how to finesse this in a way that doesn’t hurt himself.

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