442 search results for "Rumsfeld"

Oh, henny penny, Donald Rumsfeld died today at 88. I wrote a whole lot about him here back in the day. The Villagers just loved him to pieces and treated him like a rock star. And the right wingers and neocons thought he was just dreamy. They actually called him “Rumstud.”

I’m reminded of this by Midge Dector, the wife of Norman Podhoretz, the Godfather of neoconservatism. It still makes me groan to read it all these years later:

Midge Decter’s lovelorn paean to Don Rumsfeld may stand as the most unintentionally funny of all the over-the-top Bush years hagiography:

“He works standing up at a tall writing table, as if energy, or perhaps determination, might begin to leak away from too much sitting down”

This one never fails to make me laugh out loud:

Decter: What Rumsfeld’s having become an American sex symbol seems to say about American culture today is that the assault on men leveled by the women’s movement, having poisoned the normally delicate relations between men and women and thereby left a generation of younger women with a load of anxiety they are only now beginning to throw off, is happily almost over. It’s hard to overestimate the significance of the term “stud” being applied to a man who has reached the age of 70 and will not too long from now be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary.

It’s hard to overestimate it all right.

The Podhoretz’s are America’s first family of neoconservatism, dysfunctional masculinity and world domination. It’s quite an achievement.

He was a menace for many, many years going all the way back to the Nixon years. The passing of that generation of Neocons, Kissingerian/Nixonian “realists” and right wing imperialists cannot come too soon. No, they weren’t like crazy MAGAs. They knew what they were doing and it was very bad.

This report about how the Party is hiding negative information about Trump’s support even from their own members is fascinating. I have to imagine they are doing it because they know one of Dear Leader’s minions will run to tell him who mentioned it so they are simply putting their heads in the sand and pretending it isn’t true.

Rep. Liz Cheney had been arguing for months that Republicans had to face the truth about former president Donald Trump — that he had lied about the 2020 election result and bore responsibility for the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — when the Wyoming Republican sat down at a party retreat in April to listen to a polling briefing.

The refusal to accept reality, she realized, went much deeper.

When staff from the National Republican Congressional Committee rose to explain the party’s latest polling in core battleground districts, they left out a key finding about Trump’s weakness, declining to divulge the information even when directly questioned about Trump’s support by a member of Congress, according to two people familiar with what transpired.

Trump’s unfavorable ratings were 15 points higher than his favorable ones in the core districts, according to the full polling results, which were later obtained by The Washington Post. Nearly twice as many voters had a strongly unfavorable view of the former president as had a strongly favorable one.

Cheney was alarmed, she later told others, in part because Republican campaign officials had also left out bad Trump polling news at a March retreat for ranking committee chairs. Both instances, she concluded, demonstrated that party leadership was willing to hide information from their own members to avoid the truth about Trump and the possible damage he could do to Republican House members, even though the NRCC denied any such agenda.

Those behind-the-scenes episodes were part of a months-long dispute over Republican principles that has raged among House leaders and across the broader GOP landscape. That dispute is expected to culminate next week with a vote to remove Cheney from her position as the third-ranking House Republican.

At issue: Should the Republican Party continue to defend Trump’s actions and parrot his falsehoods, given his overwhelming support among GOP voters? Or does the party and its leaders need to directly confront the damage he has done?

“She just believes he’s disqualified himself by his conduct, more than it’s any kind of political analysis,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). “If you look at a political analysis, there’s no way this party is going to stay together without President Trump and his supporters. There is no construct where the party can be successful without him.”

Cheney and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had come down on opposite sides of the divide, undermining the party’s efforts to put on a united front. Even before the riot, when McCarthy was calling on Republicans to “not back down” after the election, Cheney had quietly organized an essay by 10 former defense secretaries declaring the election results settled and warning the military not to be involved in Trump’s election protest.

She was shocked when McCarthy signed on to an amicus brief in a Texas case seeking to overturn the election, after he’d told her in a private conversation that he did not plan to, according to a person familiar with the conversation. More recently, she has sought to undermine McCarthy’s efforts to dilute the potency of a congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 riot. McCarthy wants to broaden the inquiry’s scope to include antifa and Black Lives Matter violence, as well as the slaying of a Capitol Hill police officer in April.

McCarthy and many of his House colleagues, who don’t see a clear path to victory without Trump’s support in 2022, reached a breaking point in recent days.

Finally, someone acknowledges what I’ve been saying for weeks. This is Cheney’s political strategy. She’s playing a longer game than just being the number three leader in the House GOP minority. She sees this as a way to vault her into the national spotlight as the leader of the anti-Trump right. Is that a real constituency? Not by a long shot. But she’s betting that constituency will exist in the future and she will be there to reap the rewards:

At the root of the collapse in relations, according to interviews with more than a dozen people involved, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, was a fundamental misunderstanding of Cheney’s position. Her determination to name, shame and banish Trump — and her refusal to follow McCarthy’s pleas to move on and display unity — had become fundamental to her political purpose, not just a position she could compartmentalize.

Even if she is cast out of power in the House, she has made clear that she will not stop, promising to take her argument against Trump to the campaign trail in Wyoming, where he garnered 70 percent of the vote in 2020. She has told others that blocking Trump from leading the party is a fight she sees as just beginning, no matter how Wednesday’s vote goes.

“The Republican Party is at a turning point,” Cheney wrote Wednesday in a Washington Post op-ed, “and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution.”

That is a remarkable statement from a Republican conference chairwoman, whose job description requires her to develop, coordinate and elevate the party’s communications strategy against Democrats, which she has continued to do at times with far less fanfare. Cheney and McCarthy declined to speak for this story.

Even before the Jan. 6 riot, she had been working to stem the threat she saw in Trump.

“She called me and said, ‘You know, I’m really worried about this. What should we do?’ ” said former U.S. Ambassador Eric Edelman, who worked with her to write the essay by the former defense secretaries. “Liz was a prime mover of the whole thing, really.”https://dc4c7e684077180486f863f17df95b25.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Working closely with her father, former vice president Richard B. Cheney, the congresswoman volunteered to recruit Jim Mattis, the former Marine general who had served as Trump’s first defense secretary; Leon Panetta, who served as defense secretary in the Obama administration; and Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was defense secretary while her father was vice president, Edelman said.

The opinion piece also warned the military that any involvement in election disputes was dangerous. Richard B. Cheney’s role in organizing the defense secretaries soon became public, but the congresswoman’s role was kept quiet at the time.

She also bet that Trump would lose, which was also risky. But you’ll note she waited very, very late in the game. She could have been Justin Amash and stood up much earlier. It’s not as if that Ukraine mess was anything but Trump and Rudy’s clumsy attempt to corruptly rig the 2020 election. She certainly knew that.

Meanwhile, it’s reported that McCarthy’s main goal is to keep Trump from forming a 3rd party? That’s news to me, but I suppose he might have started out that way. Now, it’s clear that he is totally on board the Trump train. And what’s curious about that is this other information about that polling info they are hiding even from themselves:

[…]

Weeks later, Cheney traveled to Orlando for an event designed to showcase the party’s strategy for taking out Democrats in 2022, but the story soon shifted to internal division. Before the conference even began, she announced to laughter from reporters that she had not invited the former president, even though she did not plan the speaker slates.

That really brings home to me that Liz wanted to be pushed out of the leadership. That was gratuitous, designed to get attention without any larger purpose.

This stuff about the polling is fascinating, though. If their internals are true, it would appear that the party establishment has now morphed entirely into vacant Trump clones even if it means their own demise:

The debate over Trump’s potentially negative impact on swing districts is likely to escalate in the coming months, as vulnerable Republicans try to position themselves for reelection.

The internal NRCC poll partially shared with lawmakers in April found that President Biden was perilously popular in core battleground districts, with 54 percent favorability. Vice President Harris was also more popular than Trump, the poll showed. Biden’s $1.9 trillion covid stimulus plan and his $2.3 trillion jobs and infrastructure package both polled higher than the former president’s favorability, which was at 41 percent, compared to 42 percent in February.

A person familiar with the polling presentation said many details from the battleground poll did not make it into the NRCC’s 30-minute address in Orlando.

Go for it, Republicans. Suck up to the MAGA cult and its Dear Leader. Those numbers are lying. He’s telling the truth. Maybe it will work out for you.

I don’t know what they’ve heard that made them think this was necessary but it’s unnerving. The following is a statement by the 10 living Secretaries of Defense, Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld.

As former secretaries of defense, we hold a common view of the solemn obligations of the U.S. armed forces and the Defense Department. Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party.

American elections and the peaceful transfers of power that result are hallmarks of our democracy. With one singular and tragic exception that cost the lives of more Americans than all of our other wars combined, the United States has had an unbroken record of such transitions since 1789, including in times of partisan strife, war, epidemics and economic depression. This year should be no exception.

Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived.

As senior Defense Department leaders have noted, “there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.” Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory. Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.

Transitions, which all of us have experienced, are a crucial part of the successful transfer of power. They often occur at times of international uncertainty about U.S. national security policy and posture. They can be a moment when the nation is vulnerable to actions by adversaries seeking to take advantage of the situation.

Given these factors, particularly at a time when U.S. forces are engaged in active operations around the world, it is all the more imperative that the transition at the Defense Department be carried out fully, cooperatively and transparently. Acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and his subordinates — political appointees, officers and civil servants — are each bound by oath, law and precedent to facilitate the entry into office of the incoming administration, and to do so wholeheartedly. They must also refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the election or hinder the success of the new team.

We call upon them, in the strongest terms, to do as so many generations of Americans have done before them. This final action is in keeping with the highest traditions and professionalism of the U.S. armed forces, and the history of democratic transition in our great country.

You sure get the feeling that people in the defense sector are worried about something.

Spencer Ackerman takes a little trip down memory lane to the glory days of the Bush administration when Don Rumsfeld was confronted with the fact that the troops in Iraq were dying for lack of life-saving equipment.

He points out that Defense Secretary Mark Esper just had his Rumsfeld moment:

Capt. Brett Crozier has a coronavirus outbreak aboard the aircraft carrier he commanded, the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. It’s so intense that servicemembers in Guam scrambling to aid their shipmates have broken their own quarantines, set up sickbays in areas —like the ship itself—that can’t follow social-distancing guidelines, and feared that, in the words of one, “we’re fucked.” 

On Monday, Crozier requested what he called an “extraordinary measure.” He needed to offload his crew except for the most essential personnel needed to maintain the ship’s nuclear reactor and the safety of its weapons systems; isolate his 4,800 sailors, and treat the 93 sailors (and counting) infected with COVID-19; and disinfect the entire ship before it can resume operations. Doing otherwise, Crozier wrote, “is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care. … Sailors do not need to die.”We’ve already lost more people in America than the whole Iraq war and it’s only been a month.— Josh Manning, former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst

Crozier’s plea was a watershed. Aircraft carriers are the most tangible symbol of American power in existence. Stopping their operations concedes that COVID-19 has overwhelmed the military. And what Crozier said has resonance beyond the deck of the Theodore Roosevelt. He tacitly called the Pentagon into question for prioritizing readiness— that is, placing soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen into training exercises and, when deployed, operations—before the novel coronavirus is contained.

“We’ve already lost more people in America than the whole Iraq war and it’s only been a month,” said Josh Manning, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst and Iraq war veteran. Pentagon leaders are “in denial of the severity of the problem that faces them, so they try to diminish it, undersell it and make themselves less culpable for these unspeakable acts against the people who signed up to serve this country. That’s not what leadership is supposed to be.”

[…]

Esper’s response was dismissive. In a Tuesday interview hours after Crozier’s letter surfaced in the San Francisco Chronicle, Esper told CBS that he hadn’t “had a chance to read that letter, read in detail.” Still, he said, “I don’t think we’re at that point” of needing to evacuate the ship as Crozier urged. Esper simultaneously conceded that U.S. adversaries were “not at this time” taking advantage of coronavirus. 

Acting Secretary Thomas Modly fired Crozier the next day offering a Trumpian defense:“I can assure that no one cares more than I do about [sailors] safety and welfare,” he told reporters, blaming Crozier for a “breakdown in the chain of command.”  He admitted that they were having “discussions” about pausing operations in order to prevent more outbreaks.

But before that, they have a ridiculous Trump distraction mission to carry out:

. Yet hours later, Esper stood beside President Trump to endorse a new Navy-centric mission. Destroyers, close-to-shore Littoral Combat Ships, surveillance aircraft and other military assets will now accelerate maritime narcotics interdictions off the coast of northern South America. “Transnational criminal organizations continue to threaten our security,” Esper said, contradicting his comments to CBS the day before.

In an indignant tone that Rumsfeld would have recognized, Esper derided “this narrative out there” holding that “we should just shut down the entire United States military and address the problem that way. That’s not feasible. We have a mission.” 

[…]

For some post-9/11 veterans, Esper’s position was reminiscent of the disregard they remembered their old leadership displaying toward them. Trump has likened the response to coronavirus to a “war,” and they recognize this kind of war intimately. 

“Rummy and Esper seemingly have a direct connection of indifference,” said Joe Kassabian, an Afghanistan war veteran, author and co-host of the Lions Led By Donkeys military podcast. “Like who the fuck are we prepping for war with that makes having a goddamn plague ship at sea a good idea? The captain of that ship clearly was worried about the health and welfare of his crewmates but the military doesn’t give a shit.” 

Kassabian observed that on Army installations, leadership was still making time for drug tests, physical training, and other routines that jeopardized social distancing. Amidst the routines, Army leadership has been improvising against coronavirus as its base commanders struggle to impose quarantines for returning servicemembers who, in early cases especially, were treated with disregard that Esper himself resolved to fix. Last week, the Army halted most training—only to reverse course. At the same time, Esper said pausing those routines would come at commanders’ discretion, rather than his own direction. His directives during March reluctantly put more and more military activity on ice, and all after the curve swelled: military rates of infection now exceed civilian rates. 

“It’s always galling to see military leaders put party before their duty. Rumsfeld did that back in 2004 and Esper seems to be doing the same thing now. There’s a raw vileness to it when it comes from someone who wore the uniform, as Rumsfeld and Esper did,” said Matt Gallagher, an Iraq veteran and writer whose second novel, Empire City, will be released next month. “It’s one thing when a political suit does it, Republican and Democrat, you come to expect it, but when they’re veterans themselves, it brings the old term blue falcon to mind.” 

Esper’s response to the outbreak on the Roosevelt was a microcosm of “the broader parallel between 9/11 and America’s response to the coronavirus,” Gallagher continued: “It’s part of a long and undistinguished tradition of our political leaders reacting to a crisis instead of anticipating one, and not being careful and deliberate in the aftermath of one, instead of reactionary and loud.” 

Bush faced a crisis and he screwed it up in grand fashion, on many levels. Obama faced a crisis and did a pretty good job, at least compared to the rest of the world. And now there’s Trump. Can you see the pattern here?

If there has ever been a more corrupt, dysfunctional, chaotic, back-biting administration in history I don’t know what it is.

Recall that “Anonymous” op-ed and the book that came out recently by the same author. Apparently, people inside and outside the White House are using the anonymity of the author to target a true Trumper they don’t like for her policy positions.

Evidently, she’s a Middle East “expert” on the National Security Council who is actually an art historian. Ok. The publisher of the book has been forced to come forward and deny that she is the author because all the “whispering” about her identity has her on the verge of losing her job:

The literary agents for the senior Trump administration official who penned an anonymous New York Times op-ed and best-selling book are breaking their silence to swat down a whisper campaign pinning the unnamed writings on a top National Security Council aide — citing “truly bizarre circumstances” that forced their hand.

“Over the past weeks and months, there has been continual speculation as to the identity of the author known as Anonymous,” Javelin co-founder Matt Latimer, who brokered the book deal for “A Warning,” plans to say in a forthcoming statement obtained by POLITICO. “We have heard various theories and conclusions based on ‘solid reporting.’ We have politely declined to confirm or deny them. That was a decision we made in deference to our author and we had intended to stick by it. Now truly bizarre circumstances have forced us to change that position.”

Old timers will know what I’m talking about when I say that everyone on the right is a kerning expert. Their amateur detective work on this one is really something:

The Trump White House has been a hotbed of palace intrigue since its earliest days, and the whispers against Coates are only the latest in a string of similar campaigns. National Security Council officials have watched in horror as pro-Trump commentators outside the administration have channeled gossip and innuendo purporting to come from inside the White House. Many of the people targeted were career government staffers detailed to the NSC from other agencies, whereas Coates is a political appointee who joined the administration early on.

The purported identity of the unnamed author has been a potent weapon in the White House’s endless internal battles. At times, some have claimed to out their colleagues as Anonymous, who claimed in the op-ed to be part of a “resistance” of like-minded individuals inside the Trump administration. But the official’s name remains a closely guarded secret, and it’s not even clear whether he or she remains in government.

Coates, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), is a Middle East specialist with a nontraditional background for a top foreign policy hand. She’s an art historian and the author of a 2016 book on the Western canon, David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art. In a review, the Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada called it “an unusual book, enjoyable in its visuals and prose, even if not fully persuasive in its arguments.” Coates, who once taught at the University of Pennsylvania, has a doctorate in Italian Renaissance art. She declined to comment.

Latimer and his co-founder, Keith Urbahn, are former aides to Donald Rumsfeld, and some allies of the president had pointed out that Coates helped the defense secretary write his memoirs, Known and Unknown. She also once blogged under a pseudonym for Redstate, a conservative website whose leading figures have at times been critical of the president, and published her book with Javelin’s help.

That’s the “evidence” they have for their claim.

The publisher’s response is unequivocal. If they’re lying, they’ve ruined their reputations:

“This ‘investigation’ is based on innuendo, the irrelevant fact that she once worked with this agency on an art history book, and otherwise unprovable allegations — which are unprovable because they are not true,” Latimer will say. “The fact that there is no real evidence has not stopped a whisper campaign against her to members of the press in the hope that someone would write a story. Nor has it stopped uninformed idiots from trying to out her on Twitter on Pavlovian command. As a result, her career is now at risk.”

Latimer’s expected statement on Anonymous describes his decision to come forward as motivated by a need not to allow “people of ill will to frame Dr. Coates or assign views to her that she has never expressed to us.”

“To be very clear so there is no chance of any misunderstanding: Dr. Coates is not Anonymous,” Latimer will say. “She does not know who Anonymous is. We have never discussed Anonymous or the book, A WARNING, with her prior to its publication. She did not write it, edit it, see it in advance, know anything about it, or as far we know ever read it.”

“We all have arrived at a truly dark and disturbing point in politics,” the statement continues. “A time when lies and conspiracy theories substitute for truth while those who know better say nothing out of fear of reprisals. And it is ironic if unsurprising that those who constantly whine about witch hunts are currently pursuing yet another one — without a single care for an innocent woman’s reputation, family, or wellbeing.”

Yes. That’s very true. Maybe Anonymous should come forward then, as should every other person in the White House who has a conscience.

Unfortunately, the US Senate has just endorsed Trump’s deviant, toxic administration because they got some judges and some tax cuts. If those people, who represent a separate co-equal branch of government don’t have any integrity, why should anyone else in Trump’s government?

Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires

by tristero

In the first days after 9/11, I emailed other New Yorkers that I was opposed to any invasion of Afghanistan. I said that the last thing any country should do is what their enemy clearly wants them to do. And it was obvious, at least to me, that bin Laden was doing everything possible to provoke Bush to invade Afghanistan? Why? Because bin Laden thought it would spark an Islamist revolution against the US and other Western governments.*

Bush, of course, was too incompetent and bloodthirsty to resist bin Laden’s bait. So sure enough, he invaded Afghanistan. This is the result:

All told, the cost of nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan will amount to more than $2 trillion. Was the money well spent? 

There is little to show for it. 

Could an American president, after 9/11, not invaded Afghanistan? That is, was it politically feasible to do so? In my opinion, yes, but it would have taken a great statesman to make the non-invasion case to the American people.

But assuming an Afghanistan invasion to be inevitable (as stupid as it would be), there were surely ways to avoid the catastrophe Bush, Cheney Rumsfeld, and the rest of that sick crew created. But incompetence was rampant in foreign and military policy under Bush. And here, $2 trillion dollars later, we are.

*By the way, many of the New Yorkers I was in contact with agreed that invading Afghanistan was the height of stupidity back in September 2001. They included people who lived less than 10 blocks from the World Trade Center.

The right has always railed against State and CIA

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

Transcripts of testimony in the impeachment inquiry have been coming fast and furious this week and they have been electrifying. EU ambassador Gordon Sondland even made a late addendum in which he admitted to presenting the Ukrainians with the quid-pro-quo deal that Donald Trump denies ever happened.

But after first demanding to see the transcripts and complaining they’ve been left out of the process, Republicans have now decided to hold their breath until they turn blue.

Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he won’t read any of the transcripts, and dismissed Sondland’s reversal.

“I’ve written the whole process off … I think this is a bunch of B.S.”

Per @alanhe

— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) November 5, 2019

One of the most important revelations in these depositions is the fact that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General Bill Barr are up to their necks in this mess. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent notes, this story shows the remarkable “degree to which this whole scheme is corrupting multiple government agencies and effectively placing them at the disposal of Trump’s reelection effort.”

The New York Times took a long look at Pompeo’s involvement, making the important point that he had accepted the CIA’s conclusion on Russian interference when he was the director of that agency, but since he became secretary of state he’s acted as an accomplice to Trump and Giuliani’s addled conspiracy theory and has thrown one career State Department employee after another under the bus. As Sargent puts it, Pompeo is “a secretary of state who is essentially perverting the State Department and subverting the national interest to carry out Trump’s sordid political project.”

Meanwhile, we have Barr running all over the world also trying to prove Trump’s daft Ukraine conspiracy theory and show that the FBI and intelligence agencies went rogue and infiltrated the Trump campaign without good reason. One would have thought the Mueller report had dispatched such concerns, but Barr is apparently determined to prove that investigation was tainted as well.

Many people are wringing their hands and scratching their heads, wondering how the once staunch defenders of law and order in the GOP have suddenly turned into bleeding-heart libertarians, railing against the Deep State, standing up for the rights of the poor lone individual, Donald J. Trump. What happened to the Republican Party?

Well, as with everything else in this strange political era, the truth is that none of this is exactly unprecedented. Much of what is happening is just a funhouse-mirror version of Republican politics over the past 50 years.

Take, for instance, Mike Pompeo’s obvious disregard for the career diplomats and foreign service personnel at the State Department. I wrote the other day about Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on Gen. George Marshall and his hearings about alleged Soviet infiltration of the U.S. military. But the opening salvo of his Red Scare was against the State Department. In his famous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy said that he had a list with the names of more than 200 members of the Department of State who were “known communists.”

In fact, Cold War hawks were always suspicious of the State Department because they saw diplomacy as soft at best and traitorous at worst, and often took the opportunity to blame that department for foreign policy failures, periodically purging the department of people they suspected of not holding “Americanist” values. (Today they are accused of being “globalists.”) As recently as the Bush administration there was a move to “reform” the State Department in the wake of 9/11, led by none other than Newt Gingrich. He gave speeches and wrote articles in 2003 attacking “The Rogue State Department” for having produced honest intelligence assessments in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

That attitude also explains a strange dichotomy with respect to how the right and left view the CIA. A couple of weeks ago Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir wrote a piece reminding people on the left about the CIA’s history of undemocratic and underhanded activities over the years, so we don’t lose perspective as we watch this Trump debacle unfold. He was right, of course. The left has traditionally been rightfully skeptical of CIA activities, particularly after the revelations of the 1970s showing that it had essentially operated as a shadow government, carrying out assassinations and interfering in domestic political matters. Along with the FBI, the CIA was shown to have operated illegally and unethically for decades, behavior that hawks in both parties endorsed as necessary to fight “the evil empire.” The reforms of the Church Commission in the 1970s, among others, were enacted to rein in the agency. But our experience with Central America in the 1980s and the torture, black sites and rendition programs of the War on Terror made clear that those reforms were only as good as a government that believed in them.

But there was another side to that story. During the 1970s, the CIA was also producing analysis showing that the Soviet military was a much less formidable threat than was being portrayed. This information was rejected by Cold War hawks who persuaded Gerald Ford to bring in “outside experts,” including people like two-time Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who naturally found that the CIA’s estimates were all wrong and the Soviets were on the verge of taking over the world. For years the hawks created a series of “alternate” analyses under the auspices of groups with names like “Team B” and Committee on the Present Danger. History has shown that the CIA analysis was much closer to the truth.

The right’s unwillingness to accept the findings of actual intelligence continued all the way to the Iraq war, when Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director George Tenet refused to accept the conclusion that Saddam Hussein likely did not possess weapons of mass destruction, and almost certainly had no nuclear weapons. Instead, they “stovepiped” only the intelligence that would back up their desired goal to invade Iraq. We know how that worked out too.

All the way back to the 1970s, even as the left was rightly skeptical of CIA covert activity, it has accepted that the CIA’s analysis of various threats was far more reliable, if imperfect, than anything that came out of the right-wing hawks’ mouths. We find ourselves in a similar position today. The intelligence community’s analysis of the 2016 election interference appears to be backed up by many foreign allies, press accounts and personal testimony, while the right’s absurd counter-narrative is once again made up out of whole cloth.

So supposed pillars of the GOP establishment, like Mike Pompeo trashing his own State Department and Bill Barr running around the world trying to discredit intelligence analysis is not nearly as strange as people think. They are following a well-worn path. The only difference is that this time they’re not doing it for any recognizable ideological or geopolitical purpose. They are doing what they always do, they’re just putting it in service of Donald Trump’s massive ego.

.

Real men go to Tehran

by digby

My depressing Salon column today:

Back in August of 2015, Donald Trump told Chuck Todd of “Meet the Press” that Iran is “going to be such a wealthy, such a powerful nation. They are going to have nuclear weapons. They are going to take over parts of the world that you wouldn’t believe. And I think it’s going to lead to nuclear holocaust.” However, he also said that as president he would not violate the nonproliferation agreement because “it’s very hard to say, ‘We’re ripping it up.’”

Trump went on to explain that had he been asked to use his masterful negotiating skills, the whole thing would have turned out differently. He would have never allowed Iran access to its money that had been frozen in Western banks for decades, he would have demanded the return off all prisoners before even agreeing to talk and he would have “doubled up” on the sanctions to really make them hurt. The logic seems to be that once the Iranians felt the lash of the mighty Trump, they would come crawling to him and beg for mercy. Only then would he “negotiate” and America would win and they would lose, which is how it must be.

He was asked who he turns to for foreign policy advice and he famously replied, “Well, I watch the shows. You know, when you watch your show and all of the other shows and you have the generals.” When pressed to name someone specific, the first person he mentioned was Fox News analyst and former UN ambassador John Bolton.

We all laughed at his silliness back then. We aren’t laughing now. President Trump announced on Tuesday that he was instructing the government to violate the Iran deal and reinstitute the economic sanctions (and add some more). He issued one of his patented bellicose threats, saying that despite the U.S. imposing renewed sanctions and tearing up the agreement, Iran is still expected to comply with its terms. He said that if the Iranian regime “continues its nuclear aspirations, it will have bigger problems than it has ever had before.” He didn’t say he would rain down fire and fury, but it was certainly implied.

Trump seems to believe that his angry tweets at “little Rocket Man” have brought Kim Jong-un to his knees, and it is a foregone conclusion that the North Korean dictator will surrender his nuclear weapons. Indeed, in Trump’s mind this has already happened. He’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, after all. So naturally, the Iranian government is terrified and will scurry to ingratiate itself with him too.

Despite his feeble protestations early on of not “just tearing up” the Iran deal, it’s obvious that he’s been dying to do it for quite some time, if only to complete his primary task: Erasing Barack Obama’s legacy. This deal was Obama’s biggest foreign policy achievement, so naturally it had to go. Furthermore, Trump had managed to fire virtually everyone who had argued in favor of America keeping its word and is back to being advised by Bolton, the man he always liked on “the shows.” Mind you, Bolton doesn’t just want to tear up the Iran deal, he wants to set it aflame with a hellfire missile.

Maybe Trump really is the colossus astride the globe who will bring world peace through bombastic tweeting and crude personal insults. But if that doesn’t work, nobody is really sure what comes next. The president certainly can’t articulate it. He couldn’t even explain why he believes this will make America safer:

Back in April of 2003, soon after the statues came down in Baghdad, David Remnick of The New Yorker wrote this:

There is little doubt that some of the most hawkish ideologues in and around the Bush Administration entertain dreams of a kind of endless war. James Woolsey, a former director of Central Intelligence who has been proposed as a Minister of Information in Iraq by Donald Rumsfeld, forecasts a Fourth World War (the third, of course, having been the Cold War), which will last “considerably longer” than either of the first two. One senior British official dryly told Newsweek before the invasion, “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.” And then, presumably, to Damascus, Beirut, Khartoum, Sanaa, Pyongyang. Richard Perle, one of the most influential advisers to the Pentagon, told an audience not long ago that, with a successful invasion of Iraq, “we could deliver a short message, a two-word message: ‘You’re next.’”

That’s even better than “You’re fired.”

John Bolton was a true believer in that idea, and there’s little reason to believe he has changed. He’s certainly for regime change in Iran. According to this article by Robert Mackey of The Intercept, a few months ago Bolton gave a big speech before the Iranian exile group known as the Mujahedeen Khalq, MEK or People’s Mujahedeen:

“The outcome of the president’s policy review should be to determine that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution will not last until its 40th birthday,” Bolton said. (The 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution will be on February 11, 2019.) “The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran,” Bolton added. “The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself.”’ 

As the Iranian expatriate journalist Bahman Kalbasi noted, Bolton concluded his address to the exiles with a rousing promise: “And that’s why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran!”

Trump didn’t mention regime change in his speech announcing that the U.S. planned to violate the terms of the JCPOA (as the Iran deal is officially known). But his legal adviser and unofficial foreign policy spokesman, Rudy Giuliani, recently appeared before the same group and assured it that the president is committed to overthrow as well, even leading the crowd to chant, “Regime change! Regime change!” He repeated that commitment just this past weekend:

“We have a president who is tough,” Giuliani said Saturday at a conference organized in Washington by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities. “We have a president who is as committed to regime change as we are.”

Trump is often understood as an old-time isolationist who just wants the U.S. to withdraw from the world so he can concentrate on mass deportations and graft. But that does not describe Bolton or Giuliani or anti-Muslim zealot Mike Pompeo, now the secretary of state, or any of the other hawks Trump has surrounded himself with. They are looking for a war. They are always looking for a war.

Really, Trump is too. He’s a bully. It’s his nature.

Chatting with his bff back in the day

by digby

For some reason I missed this interview with Trump from 2008 with his BFF Piers Morgan. It’s interesting to see how he adjusted his talking points in the ensuring decade.This was particularly interesting I thought:

I am the greatest hawk who ever lived, a far greater hawk even than Bush. I am the most militant military human being who ever lived. I’d rebuild our military arsenal, and make sure we had the finest weapons in the world. Because countries such as Russia have no respect for us, they laugh at us. Look at what happened in Georgia, a place we were supposed to be protecting

What do you suppose happened between 2008 and 2016 that made him so lovey-dovey with Russia?

Does the way China behaved in the Olympics show how they might behave on the global stage?

All that stuff with them fielding 14-year-old girls and lying about their ages shows China is a country prepared to bend the rules, whereas America is so politically correct it is hard for us to compete. We are going against people who don’t understand the meaning of political correctness. And at a time when we should be sending our best and brightest to take them on, we have Condoleezza Rice negotiating for us. A woman who has done nothing, made not one deal in eight years. She goes to countries, shakes hands with lots of people and comes home with nothing. It’s incredible. We need our best people to deal with countries such as China, Russia and India as they get bigger and better. Instead we send average people.

Whether you like Clinton or don’t like Clinton, we had no deficit for the first time in many years, and were doing well economically.

And then Bush came in, and wrecked it. After 11 September, America had the chance to be the most popular country in the world, instead, in a matter of weeks, that man destroyed it. We are no longer respected like we used to be, no longer the place where people want to invest to the extent they did before. We have been seriously hurt by Bush and his cronies. I think he will go down as the worst president in history.

You’ve been very outspoken about the Iraq war.

Right. The main problem I have is that Iraq did not blow up the World Trade Center. The terrorists who did it came out of Saudi Arabia, and other places, but not Iraq.

How many Americans really understand that Saddam Hussein didn’t do it, do you think?

The interesting thing about Saddam is he hated terrorists, he killed terrorists. He knew they represented a liability to his country and to him. But now Iraq is a breeding ground for terrorists, it’s where they are trained. It’s inconceivable what Bush has done. He invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, absolutely zero. He purposely lied, and his lies got us into a war. But he wasn’t impeached. Clinton was impeached for something that wasn’t one millionth as important.

Having a fling with an intern versus launching an illegal war – not a difficult choice to make as to comparative significance, is it?

Incredible, truly. We’ve lost 4,000 young servicemen and women, and at least a million Iraqis were killed, and for what? Bush should be impeached, but the Democrats have let him get away with it. It makes me so angry.

Do you know Bush? 

I’ve met him once or twice, but I don’t want to know him.

Same with his cronies. One of my people rang me the other day to say Donald Rumsfeld was in Trump Tower in New York, and asked if I wanted to meet him. I said, “absolutely not”. What he and Bush did to this country is unforgivable.

This interview is going to be published a few days before the presidential election. What is your view of Barack Obama?

I think he would have had a much easier chance of winning if he had chosen Hillary Clinton as his running mate, definitely. But obviously he doesn’t like her, and I don’t believe the Clintons like him.

What about John McCain?

I know John well, and I like him. We had dinner together recently.

Who would you vote for, then?

McCain, because his tax policies are better. But I wish he would promise to get us out of Iraq faster. I am not in love with that aspect of what he represents. What irks me most about Iraq is that there is $100bn of oil money sitting in their banks and we don’t get anything out of it. That country is now worse off than it ever was under Saddam.

Are you a natural Republican person?

No, I am a natural good-person person. Look, nobody has been stronger against Bush than me. And Bush doesn’t have the intellect to be president. When he said he reads 60 books a year… give me a break. Of course he doesn’t. And then he said he never watches TV, which I don’t believe either. Everyone does. Nothing he says is the truth.

Is America ready to vote for a black president?

Nobody knows. That is what makes it so fascinating. I have a great relationship with blacks. Russell Simmons [a leading black American entrepreneur] told me I was the most popular white man in America!

I like blacks and they like me. But in numerous elections where a black candidate has been leading substantially, they either didn’t win or it was a much closer “squeaker” than predicted. Race is a huge factor.

If you were president, how would you quick-fix the country?

First, I’d get out of Iraq right now. And by the way, I am the greatest hawk who ever lived, a far greater hawk even than Bush. I am the most militant military human being who ever lived. I’d rebuild our military arsenal, and make sure we had the finest weapons in the world. Because countries such as Russia have no respect for us, they laugh at us. Look at what happened in Georgia, a place we were supposed to be protecting.

Vladimir Putin is now perceived to be stronger than Bush.

That’s because when they started out together, Putin played Bush like a fiddle. Bush went around saying what a nice guy he was, and thought he was his friend. And since then, Russia has gone up like a rocket and this country has gone down like a not so successful rocket. It’s booming, and we’re the opposite.

How are you dealing with all the big money Russian competition?

It’s great for me, because I have the stuff they want to buy. I bought a house for $40m in Palm Beach and just sold it to a Russian for $100m. They’re smart, cunning business people. They know great assets when they see them. And they know exactly what they’re doing when they hand me a big fat cheque. Russia’s been unleashed. Everyone was worried about China and India, but it’s Russia that is flying and that is down to Putin.

What advice would you give to people suffering in the current global economic credit crunch?

Look, the last time this happened in the early Nineties, I owed billions and billions of dollars, and nearly went under. Many of my friends went under. It was a very tough time. But I reacted positively. I went forward quite bravely, I’d say, given that so many people were going out of business. My theme was “survive till ’95” and that turned out to be about right, because those who survived until then were OK.

What did you learn from that?


A lot. No.1: I could handle pressure. A lot of my friends couldn’t and just took the gas. I knew tough guys, or people who I thought were tough but who crawled into a corner, put their thumbs in their mouths and cried, “Mummy, I want to go home.” I didn’t lose sleep, I never, ever gave up, and I fought hard to survive. The biggest thing I learnt is that economic cycles don’t last forever, they go up and they go down. And whatever you try to do to keep a cycle going, they end. Period. If you study the financial charts from 1900 to now, it’s almost a perfect roller-coaster graph, it’s amazing.

I studied your book Think Big And Kick Ass! carefully before doing The Celebrity Apprentice…

Ah… did you? That’s probably why you won.

Yes, probably. But you have often renamed it in interviews as “Think Big, Be Paranoid”.

Yes, that’s right. Paranoia means, to me, as the boxers would say, “Keep your left up.” Never let your guard down. A lot of people rely on people, trust people who betray them and take advantage of them.

How do you avoid that happening to you?

By hiring good people, and then watching them.

Do you actually fully trust anybody who works for you?

Very few, I don’t want to trust people.

Is there anyone?

Look, we are worse than the lions in the jungle. Worse than any predator. Lions hunt for food, to live. We hunt for sport. Our hunting involves doing lots of bad things to other people, whether it’s stealing their money or whatever. People are bad, they really are! They’re evil in many cases! So you have to keep your left up.

People have to respect you, if they don’t respect you then, even if they are fairly honest, they will start to steal from you. That’s the way it is. Pretty sad, but true.

Do you think you’re ruthless?

No, I think I’m intelligent. I went to the Wharton School of Finance, which is the best. I had great marks, which a lot of people don’t know about me. I come from smart genes.

And your father always lavished you with unstinting praise?

My father was incredible. He was an untrusting guy too, though.

Except when it came to me. He totally trusted me. And you know why?

Because I did something, and it worked. I did another thing, it worked. After you do 20 things in a row that work, your father starts to trust you, right..

Do you have the same trust in your kids?

I can’t tell you yet, because they’re too young. I think they have the potential to be very successful and very talented. I have three of my five children working for me now, and they are very smart.

They were all great students. So far, great.

Having watched you interact with Ivanka, 27, and Donald Jr, 30, on The Apprentice, I could tell there’s a lot of of respect and love on both sides. But how important is their success to you? Could you love and respect them as much if they turn out to be business failures?

If I didn’t think they were good, I wouldn’t want them in the business. It’s tough and ruthless in the real estate game, and if I didn’t think they were up to it then I would let them go. It just wouldn’t work at all.

You’ve never touched alcohol?

No.

Not one drop?

No. Never.

That amazes me. Why not?

Because I had a brother who died of alcoholism. He was called Fred, and he was a very handsome guy; had the best personality. But he got into drinking at college and became an alcoholic, and I watched him disintegrate with alcohol. And he did something to me.

He was 11 years older, and he told me never to drink or smoke.

Drugs weren’t really in vogue then or he would have added “don’t take drugs either”. He’d smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. And he hated smoking and drinking, but he couldn’t stop it. He knew he had a problem, and didn’t want me having it. It’s a sad thing about alcoholism. I know a lot of alcoholics, and you know they never really stop. They talk about stopping, they talk about going to the Betty Ford clinic, they go back and back and back. But they never stop. It’s a terrible drug. I’ve heard it’s harder to stop drinking alcohol than stop taking drugs.

You don’t even drink coffee either, is that right?

Yeah, but I love women…

We’re coming to that! 

We all like something! [Laughs]

Are you not curious?

No, I’ve seen it destroy people. I was with someone the other day who was a very respected banker. We had to carry him out of the dinner because he was so drunk. And you lose respect for people when that happens. He is a smart, tough guy but he can’t stop drinking. I’ve seen too many people like that, men and women. The reason they can stop drugs easier than alcohol is that drugs are a no-no. You can’t go out to bars and openly shoot heroin into your arm. But you can drink anywhere. Society encourages it. I preach to people in speeches not to start drinking. One friend of mine when we were very young at the Wharton School of Finance said to me, “I hate the taste of Scotch but I’m trying to get used to it.” Can you believe that? But he’s a major alcoholic now and he drinks so much Scotch it’s incredible. And this is a guy who didn’t like the taste! I mean, try something else – try milk.

Are you a woman-holic? 

[Laughs] Well, I love women, that’s for sure. But I have a great wife, Melania, who is a spectacular mother. And we have a great relationship. But I do love women, definitely. I respect them, I think they’re magnificent. And I don’t just mean their physical beauty.

I have noticed that women behave in a weird, very adoring way, around you – do you think it’s because they know you love them so much?

I don’t know. But I do know this, I get all these things written about me, and they say what a great financial genius I am, and then they always have to add “but we hate his hairpiece”. Now, I don’t wear a hairpiece. It’s mine, you know that.

I do know that. I’ve studied it at very close quarters and I can see it’s definitely your hair. But people do seem to be obsessed with it. When I won The Apprentice, all people back home in Britain wanted to know was, “What’s his hair like?” 

I know. And it means I can’t even send these otherwise great articles around, because there’s always this stuff about a hairpiece I don’t have! But I’ve never had a problem with it.

Your wives have got progressively more beautiful…

Melania is a great beauty, that’s for sure. Ivana and Marla were both great beauties too.

I saw Ivana and her new husband recently at the Monaco Red Cross Ball, and he is, to put it mildly, not quite what she had before… 

Well I hope it works out, I really do.

I don’t think I’d put much money on it. 

Well, I hope it does. I let them use my Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach for their wedding, and she is a good woman and he’s a nice guy. I don’t think he’s a bad person, and remember it’s not easy for her, it’s a different life for her these days. She had a great life with me.

He looked very scruffy to me, chewing gum and stuff. 

Really? I don’t want to comment 

Are you a good husband? 

I think I’m a great father.

That wasn’t the question.

[Laughs] I answered a much easier question! I think I’m a good husband now. It’s not easy for someone competing with my business.

What have you loved more – your business or your wives? 

I remember seeing John Paul Getty interviewed on TV years ago. They asked him a version of that question. They asked him if he had his time again whether he would rather be John Paul Getty the great financial genius, or would he rather have a great marriage. And he said he’d rather be John Paul Getty because many people have great marriages, but there is only one John Paul Getty.

Do you agree with that?

I do agree with that, but maybe you can have both.

What has brought you more happiness, women or money?

I know a lot of rich people who can’t get a date. I read an article not so long ago that said women aren’t just attracted to money, there has to be an attraction to the man as well. And I think that’s true. I know rich, smart, cunning guys who just can’t get a woman to go out with them.

Why?

Because they’re missing something. I’ll tell you a great story. A rich friend of mine calls me recently because he knows I know a lot of great-looking women because I own Miss Universe and run a hot model agency. And he knows I have a good understanding with women.

So he says he wants to go out with the particular woman, who I know very well. And this guy’s got his beautiful houses, his cars – he’s got everything money can buy. So I call this woman, and she’s a top model, and she has no interest in going out with him. So I said, “Look, do me a favour, this guy’s breaking my ass, is it such a big favour to ask you to go out with him once?” And eventually she agrees to go on one date. And they go out, and she calls me afterwards and says, “Do me a favour now, never make me do that again. Just don’t waste my time with guys like this.” This is a guy who eats financial geniuses for a living, he beats up guys with his head. And he’s got so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it. But in front of a beautiful woman he gets lockjaw. Anyway, he calls me the next day and says, “Donald, that was the greatest woman I ever had dinner with. Would you call her and ask if she will go out with me again.” Think about that. I can understand why I have to do it for the first date, but if I have to do it for the second one too then there’s something wrong, right? And I know a lot of very rich guys who can’t go out with a girl twice because they’re so boring.

If I said to you now that you can have a cheque for $10bn, but the proviso is you can’t have sex for five years, would you take it?

No, I wouldn’t. Because ten million dollars isn’t a lot of money to me.

Ten billion.

Oh, ten billion. I might think about taking that!

And you could go five years without sex?

For ten billion dollars, sure. You can do a lot of things with ten billion dollars. You double up my net worth just by not having sex, sure. That’s pretty good. I could do that.

So you’re worth ten billion dollars already?

I think I’m worth around that neighbourhood, yeah.


That makes you one of the richest men in the world.

I live nicely, definitely. [Smiles]


What is the secret to being good in bed?

I think there are a lot of secrets. A lot of it is down to the Look. Don King, the boxing promoter, is a friend of mine, and he is a believer in the Look. He doesn’t mean you have to look like Cary Grant, he means you have to have a certain way about you, a stature. I see successful guys who just don’t have the Look. And they are never going to go out with great women. The Look is important. I don’t really like to talk about it because it sounds very conceited… but it matters.

I think part of your success with women is that although you appear to be very arrogant, you actually have a very natural charm as well.

I understand how life works, it’s very fragile. I was lucky, born with good things. But I’ve seen people go up and down, and get sick and so on. I know the game, I have a good sense of the street. The people who like me most are not necessarily rich people, in fact many of them don’t like me.

Because they’re jealous?

Because whatever. Lots of rich people hate me. I’ll tell you the names later… but the people who like me are the workers. They’re the ones I get along with best. They love me and I love them.

That’s because they see you as a champion of the underdog and of the American dream. I’ve often heard you talk up the working-class people in your country.

Every time I see one of my workers, I give them a hundred bucks, and people are amazed by that, but some of them have worked for me for a long time, they do a fantastic job for me. And I love giving them a hundred bucks to take their wives out for dinner or something, and it’s a big thing for them, beyond the money it’s a big thing for them. So I have a very good relationship with the workers.


You’re the perfect person to ask this question: can money buy happiness or not?

I couldn’t live without money, not because I need the money so much, because I don’t need to live in lots of great places. I couldn’t live without it because it’s a game. I wouldn’t be the same person without money.

Do you live for the money itself, or for the deal?

Both. Money is the scorecard. If I didn’t have money then it would mean that I am not very good at what I do. Does that make sense?

You’re motivated by success.

I am, I like success. And I like being successful. I am very competitive. I like winning when I study, when I play sport, when I’m in business. I like to win.


You said once that golf is a great judge of a businessman’s character. 

I did yes. I love golf. I’m a three handicapper now. I was off scratch, but time erodes that. Over my lifetime, I’ve played a lot of very good golf, people are surprised by that.

Do you think if a man cheats at golf, he’ll cheat in business? 

Yes. I’ve seen it many times. They move the ball an inch and hope nobody sees them, but I always see them. Then I don’t trust them. If you cheat in golf you do it in business.

Have you played with Bill Clinton, because he’s supposed to be a notorious golf cheat isn’t he? 

He’s a member of my club actually, and he’s a much better golfer than people understand. He doesn’t cheat. What he does, because he doesn’t get to play very often, is he’ll hit a ball off the tee, and if he doesn’t hit it well then he’ll play another one, in full sight of everyone. That’s not the same as secretly moving a ball.


Does he play three when he does that though, or two?

I don’t know. I don’t check his card. But he’s open about it, so I don’t have a problem with it. It’s the ones who do it secretly who I have a problem with.


I love Clinton. I watched him make an incredible speech at the Labour party conference once. He was amazing.

Bill’s one strong guy. And he will go down as a great president. I have a lot of respect for him.

Who do you genuinely respect in business? 

I think Jeff Immelt at General Electric is doing a fantastic job following a legend in Jack Welch. And Terry Lundgren, who runs Macy’s, is doing a great job in a tough business. There are a lot of good people out there. But we don’t use them properly.

It’s people like those guys who we should use to negotiate with countries like China, Russia and India. Instead we use diplomats and politicians. And that’s a shame.

Sir Alan Sugar’s version of The Apprentice is about to show in America. What do you think of that?

I’m happy, I helped choose Alan to do The Apprentice, because I co-own the format to the show. And I think he’s done a very good job. What do you think of him?

I like him a lot. He’s abrasive, but underneath it a great guy. 

How successful is he? Very, or just modestly?

Very.

Right. Anyway, I’m really happy with him because it’s my show.

If his version gets great ratings in America, how will you feel? 

They asked me that question about Martha Stewart, who did a copy of my show and it failed badly. People said, “Would you rather she failed, or had been successful?” And I found that a very… [laughs]… a very tough question! But no, I’d like to see Alan succeed here because I’d rather my show was successful generally.


How would you like to be remembered? 

As someone who gave good quality. I always try to provide the highest quality, and as a result I get prices for my properties nobody else can get.

How much of that is your name?

A lot of it is my name and a lot of it is my quality. I get the right locations, the right architecture and so on. But people tend to follow me and my name. I was very well-known before I did The Apprentice, to put it mildly, and the TV stuff is a very small part of my life. What I do is real estate. And I am very successful at it.

So what would your tombstone say?

I put a lot of people into work, I have done a lot of really good jobs, and I really believe that in terms of the word “quality” there is nobody who tops me.


And personally?

Good father, sometimes good husband [laughs], a loyal friend. I’m a loyal guy; I’ll give you an example. Choosing you as my Celebrity Apprentice was tough. You’re a smart, tough guy, but you’re abrasive too and everyone loved Trace Adkins [my 6’7″ country-singing Mr Nice Guy opponent in the final], and the easiest thing to do would have been to let him win. I had so many people telling me to do that. But I did what was right, you deserved to win. And you had some pretty high-powered friends telling me I should choose you, too! I was surprised by that. I did the right thing because I chose a winner.

Why, thank you Mr Trump. I liked the way you described me in the final as “ruthless, arrogant, evil and obnoxious”, but then chose me as your apprentice anyway. 

I also said you were talented! But a funny thing happened, from the day after the finale, everyone started saying, “Hey, you did the right thing choosing Piers.”

That’s because America loves winners, period. And you, more than possibly anyone else in the country, personify the word “winner”.

You’ve gotta win. That’s what it’s all about. You know,

Muhammad Ali used to talk and talk, but he won. If you talk and talk but you lose, the act doesn’t play. I gotta go.

He’s certainly much more brittle now, more edgy, more stressed out.  He was always a 100% full of shit, used car salesman, cheapskate con man. But it’s interesting to see how he’s played the room at different times in his life.

Of course he’s a racist. Why do you ask?by digby

We knew Donald Trump was a full blown racist. It’s just that we don’t usually hear him talking like George Wallace. He’s usually spouting bullshit about how “they” (Mexicans, Muslims, African Americans) are all criminals and promising to restore “law and order” as his cover.
Here he is talking in private:

According to six officials who attended or were briefed about the meeting, Mr. Trump then began reading aloud from the document, which his domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.

More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.

Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.

Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.

As the meeting continued, John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security, and Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, tried to interject, explaining that many were short-term travelers making one-time visits. But as the president continued, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller turned their ire on Mr. Tillerson, blaming him for the influx of foreigners and prompting the secretary of state to throw up his arms in frustration. If he was so bad at his job, maybe he should stop issuing visas altogether, Mr. Tillerson fired back.

Tempers flared and Mr. Kelly asked that the room be cleared of staff members. But even after the door to the Oval Office was closed, aides could still hear the president berating his most senior advisers.

He’s the guy who called for the Central Park Five to be executed and when they were all exonerated said they were guilty anyway.

It’s who he is. We knew that. And, by the way, it’s the main reason Trump voters like him so much.

What this story shows is that Trump wants to cut off immigration for anyone Trump doesn’t like. Which means anyone who isn’t white and/or rich. Trump, like his voters, wants an America that only looks like him.

Update: Little reminder of the way the man who serves as Trump’s model for the presidency spoke about racial and ethnic minorities, Richard Nixon:

‘In his private roll calls of perceived enemies, African Americans never ranked as high as liberal Jews, but in his rants about race and ethnicity (Jews were obnoxious, the Irish were mean drunks, Mexicans were thieves) he stirred in theories of black inferiority. “Most of them basically are just out of the trees”, he told appointee, Donald Rumsfeld’, the author writes. 

‘I have the greatest affection for them, but I know they ain’t going to make it for five hundred years’, Nixon told Ehrlichman and Haldeman. ‘The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they’re dishonest…[but] they do have some concept of family life, at least. They don’t live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.’

Peas in a pod. 

As always I’m immensely grateful for all of you who drop by to read this creaky old blog. It’s what keeps me going. Together we will get through this.

Happy Hollandaise everyone! Keep the faith.

cheers — digby

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