;)
The Commentariat -- April 17, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Julie Turkewitz & Jack Healy of the New York Times: "A Florida high school student was found dead on Wednesday after she had made threats that prompted hundreds of schools to close across the Denver area, according to law enforcement officials. Identified as Sol Pais, 18, the woman had traveled to Denver and bought a firearm ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting, officials said. Sheriff Jeff Shrader of Jefferson County, Colo., said Ms. Pais was found dead from an 'apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.'"
** David Rothkopf in the Daily Beast: "Something broke in America in the past week or two. We have been spiraling downward since Trump's election, but in these early days of spring 2019, we have crossed a line. The president and his men began asserting that they were above the law -- and effectively no one in our system did anything to stop them. Attorney General Bill Barr sneered at the Congress and placed himself imperiously above its questions.... At the same time, also last week, the secretary of the treasury [Steve Mnuchin] and the head of the IRS determined to violate a law that required in no uncertain terms for them to provide the president's tax returns to the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Simultaneously, a massive leadership purge at the Department of Homeland Security took place, and it became quickly clear it was because the president and his team were frustrated that officials would not act in violation of the law."
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Peter Baker of the New York Times: "The old-fashioned idea that a president, once reaching office, should at least pretend to be the leader of all the people these days seems so, well, old-fashioned. Mr. Trump does not bother with the pretense. He is speaking to his people, not the people. He has become, or so it often seems, the president of the United Base of America. Mr. Trump travels nearly five times as often to states that were in his column in 2016 as to those that supported Hillary Clinton. He has given several times more interviews to Fox News than to all the other major networks combined. His social media advertising is aimed disproportionately at older Americans who were the superstructure of his victory in the Electoral College in 2016. His messaging is permeated with divisive language that galvanizes core supporters more than it persuades anyone on the fence, much less on the other side.... Mr. Trump is the only president in the history of Gallup polling never to earn the support of a majority of Americans even for a single day of his term." ...
... Trump A-OK with Violence against Democrats. William Saletan of Slate: "... Donald Trump has a plan to intimidate voters who disagree with him. His plan is to send violent criminals to their neighborhoods. The plan won't work, because the people Trump wants to send -- undocumented immigrants -- aren't actually violent criminals.... But Trump thinks they're dangerous. And that makes them, in his mind, a useful weapon against his domestic opponents. One of Trump's goals in promoting this plan is to smear undocumented immigrants.... So although his plan tells us nothing about immigrants, it tells us a lot about Trump. It exposes the extent of his malice. And it confirms that he's willing to use violence as a political weapon.... Trump framed the proposal as a threat against Democrats.... Trump ... is promoting a plan whose purpose, as he sees it, is to inflict criminal violence on Americans he doesn't like. It's not the migrants who want to hurt you. It's the president of the United States."
White-Supremacist-in-Chief Makes Another Move against Latinos. Peter Baker: "President Trump has approved a move intended to further choke off foreign investment in Cuba by lifting longstanding limits on American citizens seeking to sue over property confiscated by the Havana government going back to Fidel Castro's revolution six decades ago, a senior administration official said on Tuesday. The decision, a sharp departure from the policy of the last three presidents, could open the floodgates to thousands of lawsuits against foreign companies and individuals accused of 'trafficking' in seized property. By doing so, Mr. Trump hopes to raise the pressure on Cuba, but risks another rupture with American allies in Europe and Canada that scrambled in vain in recent days to head off the change."
Trump A-OK with Humanitarian Catastrophes. Felicia Sonmez, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Tuesday vetoed a resolution that would have ended U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. The move, which had been expected, marks the second veto of Trump's presidency. 'This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future,' Trump said in a statement. The measure had passed the House on a 247-to-175 vote this month and was approved by the Senate last month with the support of seven Republicans.... The Saudi-led effort, which has targeted civilian facilities and prevented aid shipments from getting to Yemenis, has been faulted by human rights organizations for exacerbating what the United Nations has deemed the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe."
Julian Barnes & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "As she approaches her first full year on the job, [CIA Director Gina] Haspel has proved an adept tactician, charming the president with small gestures and talking to him with a blend of a hardheaded realism and appeals to emotion. A career case officer trained to handle informants, she has relied on the skills of a spy -- good listening, empathy and an ability to connect -- to make sure her voice is heard at the White House. But ... for all of Ms. Haspel's ability to stay in Mr. Trump's good graces, there is little evidence she has changed his mind on major issues, underscoring the limits of her approach.... Unusually for a president, Mr. Trump has publicly rejected not only intelligence agencies' analysis, but also the facts they have gathered. And that has created a perilous situation for the C.I.A." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Trump A-OK with Assassinations. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "One detail in paragraph 15 [of the NYT report] stands out: 'Last March, top national security officials gathered inside the White House to discuss with Mr. Trump how to respond to the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian intelligence agent. London was pushing for the White House to expel dozens of suspected Russian operatives, but Mr. Trump was skeptical. He had initially written off the poisoning as part of legitimate spy games.... Some officials said they thought that Mr. Trump, who has frequently criticized 'rats' and other turncoats, had some sympathy for the Russian government's going after someone viewed as a traitor.' The story goes on to say Haspel was able to prevail upon President Trump to offer a tough response, after showing him images of children [Mrs. McC: and dead ducks!] who had come into contact with the same nerve agent.... Put plainly: Trump's default mode seems to border on indifference toward strongmen and their political assassinations." Blake goes on to cite numerous other instances in which Trump downplayed assassinations carried out by subordinates of dictators. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Trump A-OK with Inciting Violence against a Muslim Woman. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "... Donald Trump has no regrets about posting a video that spliced together footage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with Rep. Ilhan Omar, telling a Minneapolis ABC affiliate that the congresswoman is 'extremely unpatriotic and disrespectful to our country. She is somebody that doesn't really understand, I think, life, real life, what it's all about. It's unfortunate -- she's got a way about her that's very, very bad, I think, for our country,' he told local TV station KSTP during a visit to Minnesota on Monday.... Trump tore into [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi on Monday for her continued support of Omar, imploring her in a tweet to 'look at the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and ungrateful U.S. HATE statements Omar has made.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
The Trump Scandals, Ctd.
The Founders Would Have Impeached Trump in a New York Minute. Jeffrey Engel in the Washington Post (April 15): "The group that created our nation's founding document would already have judged Donald Trump unfit for office -- and removed him -- because he's repeatedly shown a dearth of the quality they considered paramount in a president: a willingness to put national interest above his own.... 'The first man put at the helm will be a good one,' Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin assured the convention.... 'Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.' So delegates designed a mechanism for removing a dangerous president, one who did what [George] Washington never would: impeachment for 'treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.'... The Constitution's authors understood that impeachable treachery need not, in fact, be a literal crime at all, but rather a demonstration that a president's presence harmed the body politic, the people, either through maliciousness or selfishness. For example, any president 'who has practiced corruption' to win election, a Pennsylvania delegate argued, should be impeached. So, too, in the eyes of Virginia's James Madison, should any president who 'might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression,' or any who 'betray[ed] his trust to foreign powers.... If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person,' who schemed against the republic, Madison argued during ratification debates, 'and there be grounds to believe he [the president] will shelter him,' impeachment should follow.... Trump has been accused of each of the aforementioned misdeeds."
Paul Waldman of the Washington Post: "Trump's greatest fear: His underlings told Mueller the truth.... As one former White House official said, 'They got asked questions and told the truth, and now they're worried the wrath will follow.' The fact that they're so concerned tells us two important things. First, it tells us that they revealed damaging information to Mueller. If Trump's version of events were true -- nobody did anything wrong, there was no obstruction, there was no collusion, everything was completely appropriate -- then Trump staffers would have no reason to fear their boss's wrath.... Second, it tells us that Trump expected them to lie under oath. Or, at the very least, to conceal things." NBC story also linked here yesterday.
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Attorney General William Barr has created public distrust about whether the Justice Department is committed to sharing as much as possible about the Russia probe's findings, a federal judge said on Tuesday. 'The attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public ... to be concerned about whether or not there is full transparency,' U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton [-- a George W. Bush appointee --] said during a hearing Tuesday afternoon on a Freedom of Information Act suit demanding access to a report detailing the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller.... Despite Walton's criticism, he denied a request from BuzzFeed to issue a preliminary injunction requiring the Justice Department to release Mueller's report by Thursday.... However, the judge said Tuesday that he plans to 'fast track' the issue of the report and what information in it must be disclosed, then deal with other records from Mueller's probe." ...
... Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "Federal District Judge Reggie Walton expressed uncertainty about the redactions Attorney General William Barr is making to special counsel Robert Mueller's report and suggested he may want to review the Justice Department's redactions for himself once versions of it are made public. 'Obviously there is a real concern as to whether there is full transparency,' Walton said at a Tuesday court hearing in Washington about a request from BuzzFeed News to have the Justice Department release the report quickly under the Freedom of Information Act. 'The attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the American public to be concerned' about the redactions."
David Kris & Michael Morell in a Washington Post op-ed: "Americans rightly expect their law enforcement and intelligence leaders to follow the president's policies while avoiding the extremes of partisan politics, particularly with respect to individual cases and investigations.... Against the background of President Trump's relentless efforts to politicize law enforcement and intelligence, Attorney General William P. Barr's recent statements that he believes spying did occur' on the Trump campaign in 2016 were problematic, for at least three reasons. First, Barr's statements supported a narrative that the FBI and intelligence community were acting improperly and illegally when they investigated links between the Trump campaign and Russian election interference.... Second..., the reference to 'spying' created the impression that Barr was pandering to the president, succumbing to Trump's relentless pressure to shade the truth (or worse) in service of his own narrow, personal interests.... Third..., Barr's statements also resonated with prior presidential attacks on the agency and the intelligence community as a whole."
Bill Barr Joins the White House Supremacists Club. Michael Shear & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "In an effort to deliver on President Trump's promise to end 'catch and release' at the border, Attorney General William P. Barr's order directed immigration judges to no longer allow some migrants who have sought asylum to post bail. The order will not go into effect for 90 days, and is all but certain to be challenged in federal court. But immigrant rights lawyers said it could undermine the basic rights of people seeking safety in the United States.... A federal judge in Washington State this month affirmed the rights of individuals with a bona fide claim for asylum, saying they must be given the opportunity to seek bail within seven days of a request." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Barr is like his predecessor Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, but classier and sneakier. So even worse.
Caitlin Dickerson of the New York Times: "There is a long history of wrongful deportations that span several administrations and they are only rarely reversed, according to immigration lawyers. In one recent case, Muneer Subaihani, an Iraqi immigrant who had lived in the United States for 25 years, was deported in 2017, in spite of a court order prohibiting the deportation of about 1,400 Iraqis. But he was only allowed back into the country in January -- and it was the first time that anyone from Iraq who had been erroneously expelled had been allowed back in, the American Civil Liberties Union said. Last year, another man identified in court documents only as W.G.A. was brought back to the United States after being wrongfully deported to El Salvador while his asylum case was under appeal -- a situation that should have triggered an automatic temporary stay."
Foxes Guarding Hen House. Eric Katz of Government Executive: "The Veterans Affairs Department's watchdog is investigating a new office created by President Trump early in his administration that was designed to protect whistleblowers from reprisal but is now facing allegations of aiding retaliation against them.... The new [VA] IG office is looking into activities at the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection as part of an ongoing review of the implementation of the 2017 law that created OAWP.... Government Executive spoke to several VA employees who expressed frustration or anger toward OAWP, three of whom have already been interviewed by IG investigators. They described feeling betrayed or neglected by an office they believed was going to help them but ended up doing the opposite. They said they have shared information with the investigators, including documentation of alleged reprisal.... 'It's a crooked system where literally the fox is guarding the hen house, said Jay DeNofrio..., an administrative officer at a VA facility in Altoona, Pa...." Katz describes reprisals to which the OAWP allegedly subjected VA whistleblowers. Mrs. McC: Setting up a "whistleblower protection" office for the purpose of taking down whistleblowers is so Trumpy. ...
... Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times in the NYT Magazine: "When [Mick] Mulvaney took over [the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau], the fledgling C.F.P.B. was perhaps Washington's most feared financial regulator: It announced dozens of cases annually against abusive debt collectors, sloppy credit agencies and predatory lenders, and it was poised to force sweeping changes on the $30 billion payday-loan industry, one of the few corners of the financial world that operates free of federal regulation. What he left behind is an agency whose very mission is now a matter of bitter dispute. 'The bureau was constructed really deliberately to protect ordinary people,' says Lisa Donner, the head of Americans for Financial Reform. 'He's taken it apart -- dismantled it, piece by piece, brick by brick.' Mulvaney's careful campaign of deconstruction offers a case study in the Trump administration's approach to transforming Washington, one in which strategic neglect and bureaucratic self-sabotage create versions of agencies that seem to run contrary to their basic premises. According to one person who speaks with Mulvaney often, his smooth subdual of the C.F.P.B. was part of his pitch to Trump for his promotion to White House chief of staff...."
Marianne Levine of Politico: "Rick Scott campaigned on standing up for Puerto Rico. But with ... Donald Trump warning senators not to provide more aid to the island, the Florida Republican is caught between his party and his promises. And Democrats are eager to exploit that tension -- blasting Scott for sticking with the president on a critical disaster relief bill and throwing the freshman senator into the middle of a broader fight over stalled assistance for millions of Americans devastated by wildfires, flooding and hurricanes. Scott, meanwhile, is lashing out at his Democratic critics, feuding in particular with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in increasingly personal terms.... Schumer responded [in a tweet]..., 'How can you say you're Puerto Rico's voice in the Senate while supporting a disaster bill that strips needed help from the island and is opposed by PR's Governor? Why not stand up for both PR & Florida, and have the courage to tell realDonaldTrump to leave no community behind?'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race 2020
Mediaite: "Fox News' town hall featuring presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) marked the top-rated such event in the 2020 election so far, per data accumulated by Nielsen Media Research.... Most of the declared 2020 candidates have already held similar events on CNN, with more to follow. South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg is reportedly in talks to participate in a Fox News town hall of his own." Mrs. McC: You know most FoxBot viewers were hoping for a Bernie smackdown. It didn't work out that way. ...
... Michael Burke of the Hill: "President Trump on Tuesday claimed that his supporters were kept out of a Fox News town hall with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday night. Without evidence, Trump said in a tweet that 'many Trump Fans & Signs were outside of the @FoxNews Studio last night' and that there were 'big complaints about not being let in.'"
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Speaking at the funeral of [former Senator Ernest 'Fritz'] Hollings, the former South Carolina senator who died this month at 97, [Joe] Biden hailed his longtime friend and former colleague, a one-time segregationist, as the embodiment of this state's growth. 'People can change,' Mr. Biden said of Mr. Hollings..., adding, 'We can learn from the past and build a better future.' Mr. Biden's trip here marked his first visit to an early nominating state this year and came just a week before he is expected to make his long-anticipated entry into the Democratic presidential primary." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... if Biden is not careful in completing his own 'evolution' on matters of urgent concern to today's Democratic coalition, he could discover he is burying his own career when he says good-bye to the survivors of traditions that few today will find worthy of nostalgia -- or even relevant."
Senate Race 2020. Reid Wilson of the Hill: "Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore leads the field of potential Republicans vying for the chance to challenge Sen. Doug Jones (D), a year and a half after Moore lost what was supposed to be an easy election in a deep-red state. A new poll shows Moore leading a still-evolving field of Alabama Republicans competing for the nomination. He is the top choice of 27 percent of Alabama Republican voters, according to the Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy Inc. survey. The state's three Republican members of Congress finish well behind Moore...." Mrs. McC: Admittedly at this stage, the poll is primarily a name-recognition test. But it does show us something extremely unpleasant about Alabama Republican voters.
Russian Oligarch Knows Capitalism Is Awesome. Cristina Maza of Newsweek: "Rusal, the aluminum company partially owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, announced plans to invest around $200 million to build a new aluminum plant in Kentucky just months after the Trump administration removed it from the U.S. sanctions list. The new aluminum plant, slated to be built in the home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, will be the biggest new aluminum plant constructed in the U.S. in decades. Rusal will have a 40 percent stake in the facility.... McConnell was among the advocates for lifting sanctions on Rusal...." Mrs. McC: Nobody knows better than a Russian oligarch that bribing politicians is part of the cost of doing business. Congratulations, Mitch!
Spontaneous Bigotry. Talia Lavin of the Washington Post: "... conspiracy theorizing [on social media about the Notre Dame fire] began almost as soon as the blaze did, right when people saw the shocking, transfixing video of the cathedral's spire toppling. While French authorities began to assert almost immediately that the fire was apparently accidental, the brief gap between the startling images' generation and their explication was enough for far-right figures to exploit with their own sinister insinuations. Thei prevailing view was nearly identical and, apparently, completely false: that the fire was deliberate and most probably set by Muslims.... Blogger David Futrelle, an expert on the worst of the Web, gathered dozens of tweets claiming that [Rep. Ilhan] Omar [D-Minn.] was either celebrating the fire (variously 'smiling inside,' 'happy as a muslim terrorist,' 'giddy and laughing') or, somehow, had caused it." ...
... Eugene Scott of the Washington Post: “President Trump tweeted about the fire twice[.]... Vice President Pence also shared his thoughts and prayers. He tweeted that 'it is heartbreaking to see a house of God in flames.' But neither man had responded to the recent fires that destroyed three predominantly African American churches in Louisiana. After the publication of this piece, Alyssa Farah, a spokeswoman for Pence, reached out to the Fix with a statement from the vice president. 'When tragedy strikes in places of worship, people of all faiths unite. Our hearts go out to the members of the congregations of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, St. Mary's Baptist Church, and Greater Union Baptist Church who were victims of arson...." Mrs. McC: It's still possible to shame Pence. Trump has no shame. ...
... Merci, Mais Non Merci, Imbécile. Isabelle Tourn & Olivier Lucazeau of AFP: "As Notre-Dame in Paris burned..., Donald Trump tweeted some advice to French firefighters. 'Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!' But doing that would have brought the ancient cathedral crashing down, French fire chiefs told AFP Tuesday. 'Everything would have collapsed," said Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Bernier, a fire chief who speaks for the national civil defence organisation and who described the suggestion as 'risible'. Releasing even one load from a Canadair water bomber used to fight forest fires on Notre-Dame would be 'the equivalent of dropping three tonnes of concrete at 250 kilometres per hour (155mph)' on the ancient monument. 'It would have been like bowling with the cathedral... the two towers might have fallen.'... In fact, dropping a 6,300-litre (1,664-gallon) load from a Canadair water bomber would have put the lives of firefighters and anyone in the area at risk, he added. 'Neighbouring buildings would have been hit by flying blocks of hot stone, and the whole area would have had to be evacuated.'" ...
... Karen Zraick & Niraj Chokshi of the New York Times: "The fire at Notre-Dame cathedral on Monday prompted immediate pledges of millions of euros to help rebuild it. On Tuesday, it spurred donations to do the same for much smaller places of worship thousands of miles away that were recently destroyed by arson. A crowdfunding campaign for three fire-ravaged black churches in Louisiana received nearly $500,000 after it was widely shared on social media on Tuesday. Many users noted that while hundreds of millions of euros had already been pledged to rebuild the famous cathedral, the small churches in Louisiana were still struggling.... Those who shared the campaign on Twitter included Hillary Clinton...; the journalist Yashar Ali; and Jake Tapper, the CNN anchor." ...
... Kayla Epstein, et al., of the Washington Post: "... the man who stands accused of setting the fires has not only been charged with arson, he is facing three hate-crime charges, too. The St. Landry Parish district attorney, Earl Taylor, filed the charges against Holden Matthews on Monday. In Louisiana, hate crimes include offenses perpetrated against an individual because of their race, sexual orientation, national origin, disability or other protected status. Taylor declined to comment on the charges. Last week, Matthews, the 21-year-old son of a local sheriff's deputy, was arrested and charged with three counts of arson for setting fires at St. Mary Baptist Church on March 26, Greater Union Baptist Church on April 2 and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church on April 4."
Annals of Journalism, Ctd. New York Times Editors: "Brent Staples of The Times's editorial board has sought to correct the parts of the national narrative on race that have been sanitized and distorted, to remind Americans that the devaluation of black lives that led to slavery still haunts the country. His editorials on American racial justice and culture were honored today with the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. A selection of those editorials follows."
Julie Brown of the Miami Herald: "A new victim has gone public in the Jeffrey Epstein case, filing a sworn affidavit in federal court in New York Tuesday, saying that she was sexually assaulted and her then-15-year-old sister molested by Epstein and his companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 1996. Maria Farmer, then 26, claims that she was employed by Epstein, a multimillionaire financier who lived in a vast mansion on New York's Upper East Side, and that she frequently saw 'school-age girls' wearing uniforms come into the mansion and go upstairs. She was told that the girls were auditioning for modeling work, according to her affidavit. Then an art student in New York, Farmer said she reported her assault to New York police and the FBI in 1996. FBI documents released April 1 make a reference to Farmer having been interviewed in 2006 or 2007. However, Farmer, now 49, said the FBI did not take any action against Epstein and Maxwell." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In case you are mystified as to why Bob Mueller & his team did not file charges against Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Donald Junior, etc., bear in mind that officials often ignore malfeasance -- even like something as disgusting as sexual assault -- if the perps are rich & white. I don't think these are presumptions of innocence; I think the agents & officers believe it's "bad form" to "ruin" the lives of elite white men. The tradition of droit du seigneur dies hard.
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Peter Baker in the NYT and William Saletan in Slate both illustrate why this president* is NOT the president of the whole U.S. (see above)
And here is a Supercut video that exposes the Fox News double standard. They are referring to Obama but his name is never mentioned yet everything they say refers to Trump.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-news-obama-trump-double-standard_n_5cb6a8c0e4b0ffefe3b8ce3e
David Macaulay's beautifully illustrated book "Cathedral" describes the construction of a gothic stone cathedral, more or less in the shape of Notre Dame. It shows how, underneath the wood roof structure, there is a stone vaulted ceiling that starts below the exterior wall tops. Pouring water on the burning wooden roof structure while the stone vaulting was intact would have caused the space above the vaulting to fill with water, surely over-stressing the flying buttresses and bringing the whole thing down. Dropping airplane-fulls of water? Unbelievable.
This book taught me that immense, beautiful, complex things can be built by groups of ordinary people, performing doable tasks in concert to produce awe-inspiring testaments to human achievement.
Trump's "plan" to save Notre Dame is all of a piece with the way he plans everything else.
His approach is not just scattershot, not just poorly designed, not just wildly inappropriate and lacking in either experience or general knowledge, it typically creates situations completely inimical and, in fact, antithetical to the professed goal.
Someone lacking in competence or skill might come up with a bad plan, but Trump's plans for almost everything are almost always far worse than bad. They're the direct opposite of what one would hope. In the case of the burning cathedral, Trump's plan wouldn't just be a shot in the dark that didn't work, it would make the situation infinitely worse. It might have destroyed the entire structure and inflicted additional damage to firefighters and buildings nearby.
Take healthcare. His "plan" would immediately retract medical treatment and care from millions with nothing to replace it. That wouldn't just be a bad idea that didn't work, it would be catastrophic, causing who knows how many people to suffer and die.
The border situation is another textbook example of Trump-style planning. Here we have a problem. And a big part of the problem has to do with the terrible conditions in the countries many asylum seekers are fleeing. So what does he do? He takes away foreign aid to a number of those countries. But if people do make it here, what does he do? He takes children from their families, making a bad situation much worse. Then he decides the next best thing to do is to encourage government agents to break the law to deny any and all seekers of asylum, a perfectly legal mechanism under US Federal law, the right to even apply for asylum.
In many cases, the Trump Plan is meant to destroy whatever it touches: education, the environment, justice, human services, assistance to veterans. Pretty much no cabinet member currently in place is qualified to do their job, and in most cases, their job as originally envisioned by congress. But, according to Trump, their new job is to dismantle whatever protections and goals the departments were initially created to achieve.
And to go back for a moment to the Notre Dame situation, Nisky Guy makes an excellent point about the ability of humans, when working in concert according to a well designed plan, to accomplish great things. Just imagine Trump as the overseer of the construction of a cathedral in 1125. First he'd make sure to sow as much chaos as possible. He'd criticize the primary architects and planners for not making enough room for his name over every door.
He'd demand complete revisions on a monthly basis, further demanding that the builders use inadequate materials that he has found from some fly by night suppliers, making sure to take his kickback and his cut. He'd have the stonecutters and the carpenters at each other's throats, and he'd fire the chiefs of each construction department on a regular basis if they didn't make sure to sing his praises loudly to everyone who stopped by to look at the construction progress. When an entourage from the Pope visited making suggestions for moving things along, he'd call them all losers and demand more money from Rome, most of which would go straight into his pockets.
After 20 or 30 years, all they'd have would be a hole in the ground with piles of rubble and warped planks sitting off to the side, and everyone hating everyone else.
And there would sit Trump, a beatific smile on his puss, as he implored, yet again, the designers to make sure to enlarge his name over the altar, assuring all that only he could finish the cathedral.
I wonder who many overpriced condos that veto pen cost the Saudis? And how much needless suffering just so Ivanka can go skiing in Aspen again with her spawn, fully financed by Yemen blood money.
The lives of the rich and feckless.
When I told my husband that Notre Dame was burning, I forgot to
say "Cathedral". Oh no, he says, I'm supposed to go for the nephews
graduation in May. (I wasn't invited. That part of the family doesn't
approve of same sex marriage). But they approve of graduation gifts,
I guess.
@Akhilleus: Thanks for accurately describing the Trump-supervised "construction" of a cathedral. I'm sure the reason various Trump edifices are still standing today is that those damned regulators -- i.e., building inspectors -- would not let him get away with his preferred "plans."
Remember that fire in Trump Tower last year? "[The tower] opened in 1983 at a time when building codes did not require the residential section to have sprinklers. Subsequent updates to the codes required commercial skyscrapers to install sprinklers retroactively, but owners of older residential high-rises are not required to install them unless the building undergoes major renovations. Some fire safety advocates pushed for a requirement that older apartment buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers when the city passed a law requiring them in new residential high-rises in 1999, but officials in the administration of then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that would be too expensive. President Trump was among the developers who spoke out against the retrofitting as unnecessary and expensive."
I rest my case.
Marie,
First, and not for nothin', but what moron thought that sprinklers in the residential section of a high-rise was a bad idea? But beside that, I can picture Medieval Donald insisting that fire prevention methods were completely unnecessary in HIS cathedral. Unless, of course, he got a cut of the profits from Almaricus et Fils, suppliers of water wheel powered sprinkler systems.
But back to the present. It takes a certain kind of person to advocate for the deletion of life-saving systems in order to keep his personal profit margin high. It's not like he was going to pay out of pocket for installation of sprinklers, the company would end up charging the tenants anyway. Whatever is best for Donald, even if people have to suffer and die, is the only way to go. And this is the way the country is going.
Thanks, Republicans! And a great big thanks to the ever supine--ridiculously supine--media which continue to treat Trump as not very different from any other garden variety pol and which refuse to acknowledge, on an existential level, the terrible danger of not calling this fraud out at every opportunity and holding his supporters accountable for the destruction of democracy and the dismantling of hard-won protections from fascists and authoritarians.
The other day Trump blasted AOC as being unpatriotic and bad for America.
More projection of his own status onto others. There IS no more unpatriotic or damaging political figure.
And his shills and apparatchiks are turning off the water supplying our Constitutional sprinkler system, letting the Trumpfires rage.
So, tomorrow's the day for the second Barr report. Journalists have seemed surprised that the first try did not move the public's opinion in Trump's favor. Of course it didn't. We have already gotten much of the evidence of collusion and obstruction. We've already seen Junior's emails telling the Russian's that he would love to work with them and that if they could pencil in a summer release of the dirt he'd love it. Then they actually did have the meeting with the Russian representatives in Trump tower. We know that Manafort gave polling data to a Russian. We know the campaign lied about a hundred meetings with Russians. Trump is coming up on ten thousand public lies himself. We know that Trump lied about working on a Moscow building deal that needed Putin's approval during the campaign. Putin has practically admitted he helped Trump during the election and said that he wanted Trump to win. Mueller indicted a dozen Russians for their interference in our election. We heard Trump ask for Russia's help hacking Hillary and told everyone that he was serious when asked about it afterwards. We heard Trump dismiss the investigation as a hoax, a witch hunt and illegal. He has tried to undermine the US intelligence findings and said repeatedly that he believes Putin's weak denials. We've seen Trump slow walk sanctions on Russia. And watched his Treasury give special treatment to Putin's buddy. We've seen Trump kissing Putin's ass in Helsinki. We heard him praise wikileaks. We found out that Junior was in contact with Assange during the election. And Roger Stone was in contact with Guccifer 2.0, who hacked the DNC. We heard Trump echo Kremlin talking points about their war in Afghanistan and in Crimea. Trump has excused Kremlin murders and laughed it up with Russians in the Oval Office. This is just some of the publicly reported findings in the Russia investigation. And despite all the evidence this is apparently the weaker of the two investigations of Trump by Mueller. Most people's opinions of the case against Trump are already locked in. They have seen much of the evidence and most know that he is guilty. Now the hard part is figuring how to get out of this mess with the best possible outcome for our future.