The Conversation -- November 17, 2024

Zolan Kanno-Youngs & Alexandra Stevenson of the New York Times: “When President Biden and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, met on Saturday in Peru, they spoke directly to each other for perhaps the last time about a fierce superpower rivalry that Mr. Biden has sought to keep from spiraling into open conflict. But both men also seemed to be addressing ... Donald J. Trump.... Mr. Xi, in his opening remarks, offered what appeared to be a stern warning as U.S.-China relations enter a new period of uncertainty after the American election.... In his own opening comments, Mr. Biden seemed to try to make the case for maintaining a relationship with Beijing, as Mr. Trump talks about imposing more punishing tariffs on China and picks hard-liners for top administration posts....

“But even as Mr. Biden’s session with Mr. Xi, during a gathering of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, began with conciliatory words, it also gave the president a final chance to challenge the Chinese leader directly.... Mr. Biden pushed Mr. Xi to maintain peace in Taiwan, and pressed the Chinese leader over Beijing’s support for Russia, according to his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Mr. Biden also urged Mr. Xi to discourage North Korea from continuing to support Russia in its war in Ukraine, Mr. Sullivan said.... [Mr. X pushed back on these and other concerns.]... Even as Mr. Biden has sought to steady relations, the fierce competition between the two countries was on vivid display during the APEC meeting in Lima.”

      ~~~ Here's the White House readout of President Biden's meeting with Xi Jinping.

A Most Unserious Man. Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan of the New York Times: “Emboldened, confident in his instincts and more contemptuous than ever of Washington expertise, Mr. Trump is staffing the most important roles in his government at breakneck speed. Advisers have been stunned at how fast he is ticking through his choices, filling the government’s most important positions roughly a month sooner than he did in 2016. Much of the action has taken place under the chandelier in the tearoom at Mar-a-Lago, where Mr. Trump surveys his potential Cabinet nominees on giant video screens. He flicks through shortlists that his transition team, led by the billionaire Howard Lutnick, has drafted over the past months. If Mr. Trump shows an interest in a candidate, the presentation is designed to allow him to immediately watch videos of the potential nominee’s TV appearances — essential for any would-be Trump cabinet official.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: It is tempting to compare Trump to a casting director, except I believe most casting directors take their jobs more seriously than Trump takes his role of filling administrative jobs. As for his being “contemptuous of Washington expertise,” he is contemptuous of all expertise, and he is contemptuous of elites everywhere, especially in Manhattan, where the upper crust is equally contemptuous of him.

With the nomination of Chris Wright, Trump is following through on the $1 billion offer he made to Big Oil at a dinner this spring. -- Tiernan Sittenfeld of the League of Conservation Voters ~~~

~~~ Trump Picks Another Dangerous Crackpot. Evan Halper, et al., of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he has selected Chris Wright, the head of fracking company Liberty Energy and a skeptic of mainstream climate science, to lead the Department of Energy and to serve on a new National Energy Council.... In Wright, Trump has chosen a skeptic of the scientific consensus on global warming who argues the 'climate crisis' is a myth. The fracking executive runs a foundation focused on dispelling the conventional wisdom on climate change and promoting expanded fossil fuel production as a solution to many of the world’s problems, an approach others say would drive dangerous levels of warming.... [Wright's] assertions conflict sharply with the conclusions of the world’s leading climate scientists affiliated with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change....

“Wright emerged as a front-runner for the role of energy secretary at the behest of oil tycoon Harold Hamm, one of Trump’s closest allies.... Like Hamm, Wright ranked as a major donor to the Trump campaign.... Wright’s antipathy toward clean-energy subsidies and rules that penalize fossil fuel emissions contrasts with positions taken by [North Dakota Gov. Doug] Burgum[, whom Trump has tapped to be his interior secretary and 'energy czar.']” Politico's story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: We'll see how this works out. According to Michael Gold of the New York Times, Trump claimed Wright “had worked for years with Doug Burgum.” Another reason Wright is such an awful choice: he (1) has no government experience, according to Gold, and (2) he “would be in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, and he would oversee the domestic nuclear energy industry when the sector is seeking to extend the lives of existing reactors and bring new reactor technologies to market,” write the WashPo reporters.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: “... Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, paid a woman who had accused him of sexual assault as part of a settlement agreement with a confidentiality clause, but Mr. Hegseth insists it was a consensual encounter, his lawyer said on Saturday.... According to [a Monterey, California,] police statement, the complaint was filed four days after the encounter [in October 2017], and the complainant had bruises to her thigh. The police report itself was not released.” ~~~

     ~~~ Michael Kranish, et al., of the Washington Post broke the story: “Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, said that Hegseth was 'visibly intoxicated' at the time of the incident, and maintained that police who were contacted a few days after the encounter by the woman concluded that 'the Complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter.' Police have not confirmed that assertion.... The [attorney's] statement came after a detailed memo was sent to the Trump transition team this week by a woman who said she is a friend of the accuser. The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, alleged he raped the then-30-year-old conservative group staffer in his room after drinking at a hotel bar.... After [the woman] threatened litigation in 2020, Hegseth made the payment and she signed the nondisclosure agreement, his attorney said.” The story has more details. ~~~

     ~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "In addition to what he is credibly accused of, your reminder that Hegseth definitely favors pardoning particularly appalling war criminals.... [Lemieux cites a Time report detailing the convicted or accused war criminals Hegseth advocated for.] Since we’re dealing with the Republican Party in 2024, the extensive evidence that Hegseth is a moral degenerate in addition to being entirely unqualified to be Secretary of Defense is presumably a positive factor for his likelihood of being confirmed." MB: You do have to keep in mind that Trumpworld mindset that killing "the enemy" -- even if the "enemy" is a civilian or a child and especially if the "enemy" is non-white -- is considered to be an admirable act of machoismo. The Trumpists are the cartoonish characters of B-grade action movies. On the other hand, there's this: ~~~

~~~ Courtney Kube, et al., of NBC News: "The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan. Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the U.S. official and person with knowledge of the plan said.... A 2022 independent review by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction blamed both the Trump and Biden administrations for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2021."

Ian Millhiser of Vox: “Trump chose Todd Blanche, the criminal defense lawyer in his New York hush money trial..., to be deputy attorney general.... The DAG, as this position is known within the department, wields tremendous power over federal criminal prosecutions. If successfully appointed, Blanche will supervise the 93 regional US attorneys who bring the bulk of all federal prosecutions in the United States.... Meanwhile, Trump wants John Sauer, the lawyer who represented him in the Supreme Court case holding that Trump is allowed to use the powers of the president to commit crimes, to serve as solicitor general. The role oversees the Justice Department’s legal strategy in the Supreme Court....

“Another one of Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyers, Emil Bove, will serve as principal associate deputy attorney general, and will hold the DAG spot on an acting basis until Blanche or some other Trump nominee is confirmed or otherwise formally appointed to the job.... Bove’s new role does not require Senate confirmation. So he will be able to move into this job on the first day of Trump’s second presidency.... Blanche, Sauer, and Bove’s conventional résumés also mean that, if they use their DOJ posts to pursue Trump’s personal campaign of vengeance, they are likely to be fairly effective in doing so.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Marie: In Friday Comments, RAS argued that “Team Trump’s most human failings may thwart some of their most evil plans....” As one of several ferinstances, RAS asked rhetorically, “Do you think Matt Gaetz is going to work the hours necessary to not just learn DoJ but run it in detail?” My answer to that would be, no, but the meatheads of Trump's choosing will have underlings to do their bidding. And Millhiser proves my point with specifics: both Blanche & Bove were federal prosecutors for nine years, and Sauer, who clerked for Antonin Scalia, was Missouri's attorney general. Millhiser acknowledges that “Gaetz may struggle to navigate the department’s internal bureaucracy or to resist its internal culture, which seeks to insulate prosecutorial decisions from the White House.... But if Trump gets his way, his ultraloyalist attorney general will now be backed by people who know the Justice Department and the culture of elite federal lawyers quite well.”

“Apparently Some People Think It Makes Us Look Like Nazis.” digby: “Yes, they will be building concentration camps. There's money in it.” digby cites an ABC News report that the private prison industry is delighted with the windfall Trump's need for deportation camps promise the industry. She also cites a Rolling Stone report that shows “that Stephen Miller and Trump himself have often referred to the need to build 'camps.' Trump says he doesn’t think they’ll have to build too many though because they’ll be 'moving them out' so fast. No need for due process or anything like that. [According to Rolling Stone,] '... Some top Trump advisers get so annoyed when the media refers to his publicly detailed immigration-crackdown plans as including “camps” that they’ve cautioned the president-elect’s allies and surrogates to stop using the word “camps” during the current presidential transition, according to two sources familiar with the situation. “I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” says one close Trump ally. “Apparently some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”'”

Jacqueline Alemany, et al., of the Washington Post: “Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire who has become ... Donald Trump’s 'first buddy,' appeared to publicly pressure Trump on economic policy and a key Cabinet appointment Saturday. In a Saturday morning post on X..., Musk praised a foreign leader’s decision to cut tariffs — the same import taxes that Trump wants to raise to the highest level in a century. Several hours later, Musk posted that Howard Lutnick, Trump’s co-transition chair, would be a better choice than hedge fund executive Scott Bessent for treasury secretary.... He encouraged his nearly 205 million followers to weigh in, too.... Several people in Trump’s circle expressed astonishment Saturday that Musk would publicly push for his choice for a crucial economic role while the president-elect was still weighing his decision.... Bessent and Lutnick have been jockeying for the role of treasury secretary over the past week, with allies of each candidate potshotting the other to transition officials.” Politico's story is here.

Joe Kucinski of Road & Track: "Tesla's vehicles have the highest fatal accident rate among all car brands in America, according to a recent iSeeCars study that analyzed data from the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). The study was conducted on model year 2018–2022 vehicles, and focused on crashes between 2017 and 2022 that resulted in occupant fatalities. Tesla vehicles have a fatal crash rate of 5.6 per billion miles driven, according to the study; Kia is second with a rate of 5.5, and Buick rounds out the top three with a 4.8 rate. The average fatal crash rate for all cars in the United States is 2.8 per billion vehicle miles driven."

Another Job Merrick the Unready Didn't Do. David Nakamura & Mark Berman of the Washington Post: “President Joe Biden took office promising greater police accountability, and during his tenure the Justice Department launched a dozen investigations into state and local law enforcement agencies. Nearly four years later, his administration has yet to lock in reform agreements with any of them, putting a major civil rights initiative in jeopardy as Biden prepares to yield the White House to ... Donald Trump.... The race to formalize police accountability plans comes as Trump is vowing to empower local law enforcement to use more aggressive tactics to fight violent crime and potentially dispatch the National Guard, or even the U.S. military, to help patrol some U.S. cities.” MB: “The race”? Oh, there's a “race” now? Try to picture Merrick racing. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: One thing we're looking at here is the downside to the policy of keeping "a wall of separation" between the White House and the Justice Department. Cabinet officers, like any subordinates in any settings, must be accountable to their bosses. But if the president can't call on the attorney general to give an accounting of his or her activities, then the AG can be as irresponsible as, say, Merrick Garland. The buck should stop with the POTUS, but it cannot if a subordinate is effectively untouchable, short of firing.

Hurubie Meko of the New York Times: “Nearly 60 years after Malcolm X’s assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, his family filed a federal lawsuit on Friday claiming that the New York Police Department, C.I.A. and F.B.I. played a role in his killing. The suit, filed in Manhattan, claims that the agencies knew about threats against the civil rights leader, but 'failed to intervene on his behalf.' It says that they had 'intentionally removed their officers from inside the ballroom' before he was shot and left him even more exposed by arresting his security detail in the days before the event. The family also claims that the agencies engaged in 'fraudulent concealment and cover-up' after Malcolm X’s death by keeping information from his family and hamstringing efforts to identify his killers.”

Tom Winter & Tim Stelloh of NBC News: “Federal law enforcement officials said Thursday that they stopped a Texas man from carrying out a possible terrorist attack in Houston.... Anas Said, 28, was charged last month with attempting to provide material support to the terrorist group ISIS, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Texas. Said was arrested last week at the Houston apartment complex where he is alleged to have planned the attack, said the FBI, which accused him of bragging that he would commit "a 9/11-style" attack if he had the resources.” (Also linked yesterday.) 

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