The Commentariat -- December 28, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Greg Robb of MarketWatch: "... Donald Trump's strategy to use import tariffs to protect and boost U.S. manufacturers backfired and led to job losses and higher prices, according to a Federal Reserve study released this week.... While the tariffs did reduce competition for some industries in the domestic U.S. market, this was more than offset by the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs, the study found."

Deborah Pearlstein in the Atlantic: "In his efforts to mask the seriousness of his actions around Russia and Ukraine..., Donald Trump has taken aim at one essential democratic institution after another -- questioning the legitimacy of the press, the intelligence community, the courts, and, most recently, the House of Representatives itself. But he has so far mostly held his fire against both 'his generals' and 'our boys' in America's military.... The military's generally steadying reactions to the president's worst moments of volatility have given members of Congress on both sides of the aisle reason to hope that the Pentagon at least will remain a check on presidential impulse that might really compromise national security, should other checking institutions fail. But hoping that a president will defer to the judgment of the professional military is a sign that something has gone very wrong in America's constitutional infrastructure." Read on.

Vanity Cameo. About That "Home Alone 2" Trump Cameo that the CBC Cut. Theresa Braine of the New York Daily News: In the clip, "Trump directs [Macauley] Culkin's character to a pay phone in the Plaza Hotel, which the not-yet-president owned at the time.... In truth, the scene was never meant to be part of [the film]. Trump routinely mandates that in return for filming at one of his properties, he has to be in a scene, according to many in the movie industry. 'The deal was that if you wanted to shoot in one of his buildings, you had to write him in a part,' Matt Damon told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. '[Director] Martin Brest had to write something in "Scent of a Woman" -- and the whole crew was in on it. You have to waste an hour of your day with a bulls--t shot: Donald Trump walks in and Al Pacino's like, "Hello, Mr. Trump!" -- you had to call him by name -- and then he exits. You waste a little time so that you can get the permit, and then you can cut the scene out. But I guess in "Home Alone 2" they left it in.'"

David Frum of the Atlantic: "... in the early hours of Friday morning, December 27, Trump retweeted a supporter who named the presumed whistleblower in the text of the tweet. This is a step the president has been building toward for some time.... Lawyers debate whether the naming of the federal whistleblower is in itself illegal. Federal law forbids inspectors general to disclose the names of whistleblowers, but the law isn't explicit about disclosure by anybody else in government. What the law does forbid is retaliation against a whistleblower. And a coordinated campaign of vilification by the president's allies -- and the president himself -- surely amounts to' retaliation' by any reasonable understanding.... Trump is organizing from the White House a conspiracy to revenge himself on the person who first alerted the country that Trump was extorting Ukraine to help his re-election: more lawbreaking to punish the revelation of past law-breaking.... He is a president with the mind of a gangster, and as long as he is in office, he will head a gangster White House."

Senate Race 2020. Bruce Schreiner of the AP: "Calling her party's victory in the Kentucky governor's race a jolt of momentum for her own bid to unseat a Republican incumbent, Democrat Amy McGrath on Friday officially filed to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in what looms as a bruising, big-spending campaign next year.McGrath, a retired Marine combat pilot, touted many of the same issues -- health care and good-paying jobs -- that Andy Beshear highlighted in ousting Republican incumbent Matt Bevin in last month's election for governor.... McGrath became the latest in a crowded field of candidates from both parties to file for McConnell's seat. McGrath, who lost a hotly contested congressional race last year, has shown her mettle as a fundraiser, raking in nearly $11 million in her first few months as a Senate candidate, giving her a huge advantage over other Democratic candidates. McConnell has his own bulging campaign fund."

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Nick Coltrain of the Des Moines Register: "Former Vice President Joe Biden confirmed Friday he would not comply with a subpoena to testify in a Senate trial of ... Donald Trump.... Biden said in early December he wouldn't comply with a subpoena by the Senate, and confirmed that statement Friday in an interview with the Des Moines Register's editorial board. He has not been subpoenaed, but Trump's allies have floated the idea. Testifying before the Senate on the matter would take attention away from Trump and the allegations against him, Biden said. Not even 'that thug' Rudy Giuliani ... has accused Biden of doing anything but his job, the former vice president said. Biden also said any attempt to subpoena him would be on 'specious' grounds, and he predicted it wouldn't come to that."

Steve Benen of MSNBC (Dec. 26): "For nearly three years, Donald Trump has ignored his own country's intelligence community and believed that Ukraine intervened in the U.S. elections in 2016 in the hopes of undermining his candidacy.... A Washington Post report last week ... [claimed] Trump's embrace of the falsehood appears to have come directly from Russian President Vladimir Putin." But when a reporter asked Trump, "... what did President Putin say to you that convinced you that the Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?" Trump evaded answering. His eventual response, Benen points out, had "Abbott-and-Costello-like qualities": "You're putting words in somebody's mouth. Who are you referring to? Me? I never said anything about it. I never said a thing about it. All right, any other questions?" Benen: "The connections between Trump's conversations with his Russian benefactor and his willingness to promote Ukraine conspiracy theories are well documented, and they reinforce concerns about the American president serving as Putin's puppet."

Melissa Lemieux of Newsweek: During a panel discussion [about the Senate impeachment trial] on CNN, Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer who worked under George W. Bush..., said, 'For Mitch McConnell to say he's working with the White House, coordinating with the defendant in this trial before the trial has even begun is atrocious. He may think he's a judge impaneling an all-white jury for a Klansman trial in Mississippi in 1965. That's not the kind of trial we have.'..."

Caitlin Oprysko of Politico (Dec. 26): "... Donald Trump on Thursday issued a warning to allies of the Syrian government waging a military offensive to regain rebel-held territory that relief groups say has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians since last month. 'Russia, Syria, and Iran are killing, or on their way to killing, thousands of innocent civilians in Idlib Province,' he tweeted. 'Don't do it! Turkey is working hard to stop this carnage.' According to The Associated Press, Syrian government forces allied with Russia and Iran have been shelling parts of Syria's Idlib province since late last month in an attempt to retake one of the last strongholds of the U.S.-allied rebels. The unrest has sent more than 216,000 civilians fleeing from their homes, relief group Syrian Response Coordination Group told the AP."

** Eric Levitz of New York: "Throughout the ... decades, [Donald Trump has] expressed an ecumenical respect for governments that privilege their own power above the rule of law.... By the same token, nothing offends the president's moral sensibilities (such as they are) than those who place adherence to the law above loyalty to their superiors. Trump has forgiven many of his appointees' trespasses. But Jeff Sessions's decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department's investigation of the Trump campaign -- and thus, privilege his profession's code of ethics above his president's legal interests -- was simply beyond the pale.... In pardoning [Edward] Gallagher, Trump did not put support for the troops above fidelity to the Geneva Convention, but rather, support for a war criminal above respect for the law-abiding service members he tormented.... The war criminal is Trumpism's perfect patriot; the whistle-blower, it's quintessential villain.... That the U.S. president venerates lawlessness in the pursuit (or maintenance) of power is alarming; that the party he leads increasingly shares that ideal is even more so." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Levitz, like others, argues that the one thing Trump "believes in" is power, and since he has this one "belief," Trump is not a nihilist. Levitz describes Trump's one "belief" as "power for a cause," but the "cause" Levitz uses as an example -- the Chinese putting down the Tiananmen Square revolt -- really is nothing but the maintenance of power itself. A "belief" in brute force, IMO, is no belief at all. It is an expression of nihilism.

Edward Wong & Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "In a rare show of bipartisan unity, Republicans and Democrats are planning to try to force President Trump to take a more active stand on human rights in China, preparing veto-proof legislation that would punish top Chinese officials for detaining more than one million Muslims in internment camps. effort comes amid growing congressional frustration with Mr. Trump's unwillingness to challenge China over human rights abuses, despite vivid news reports this year outlining atrocities, or to confront such issues globally. To press Mr. Trump into action on China, lawmakers plan to move ahead with legislation that would punish Beijing for its repression of ethnic Uighur Muslims, with enough supporters to compel the president to sign or risk being overruled by Congress ahead of the 2020 election. A version of the legislation, known as the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act, passed both the House and Senate this year, but its path to the White House was stalled this month by a procedural process."

Adam Raymond of New York: "The world's richest people had a good year in 2019, increasing their wealth by a staggering 25 percent. A new analysis of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index found that the 500 richest people on the planet increased their vast wealth by $1.2 trillion in the past year, bringing their total wealth to $5.9 trillion."

Earth. The Apocalypse Is Now. Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "On land, Australia's rising heat is 'apocalyptic.' In the ocean, it's worse.... Over recent decades, the rate of ocean warming off Tasmania, Australia's southernmost state and a gateway to the South Pole, has climbed to nearly four times the global average, oceanographers say. More than 95 percent of the giant kelp -- a living high-rise of 30-foot stalks that served as a habitat for some of the rarest marine creatures in the world -- died.... Nearly a tenth of the planet has already warmed 2 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, and the abrupt rise in temperature related to human activity has transformed parts of the Earth in radical ways." ~~~

~~~ OR Apocalypse Soon. Michiko Kakutani, in a long New York Times op-ed: "Apocalypse is not yet upon our world as the 2010s draw to an end, but there are portents of disorder. The hopes nourished during the opening years of the decade -- hopes that America was on a progressive path toward growing equality and freedom, hopes that technology held answers to some of our most pressing problems -- have given way, with what feels like head-swiveling speed, to a dark and divisive new era. Fear and distrust are ascendant now. At home, hate-crime violence reached a 16-year high in 2018, the F.B.I. reported. Abroad, there were big geopolitical shifts. With the rise of nationalist movements and a backlash against globalization on both sides of the Atlantic, the liberal post-World War II order -- based on economic integration and international institutions -- began to unravel, and since 2017, the United States has not only abdicated its role as a stabilizing leader on the global stage, but is also sowing unpredictability and chaos abroad.... Many of these troubling developments didn't happen overnight. Even today's poisonous political partisanship has been brewing for decades -- dating back at least to Newt Gingrich's insurgency -- but President Trump has blown any idea of 'normal' to smithereens, brazenly trampling constitutional rules, America's founding ideals and virtually every norm of common decency and civil discourse."

Claudia Lauer & Meghan Hoyer of the AP: "Victims advocates had long criticized the Roman Catholic Church for not making public the names of [priests] credibly accused [of child sex abuse]. Now, despite the dioceses' release of nearly 5,300 names, most in the last two years, critics say the lists are far from complete. An AP analysis found more than 900 clergy members accused of child sexual abuse who were missing from lists released by the dioceses and religious orders where they served." Mrs. McC: It is not clear from the report, but in context it seems that the list refers only to clergy members in diocese within the U.S.

Beyond the Beltway

North Carolina. Travis Fain of WRAL Raleigh: "A federal judge said late Thursday that she will, at least temporarily, block North Carolina from requiring photo identification from voters at the polls next year. An order explaining the decision and its full breadth will come next week, but this week's announcement was timed to delay a planned statewide mailing explaining the state's new voter ID rules. Public notice came via a short note appended to an online case file Thursday in NAACP et al v. Cooper, one of at least two ongoing lawsuits challenging voter ID in the state."

Way Beyond

Mexico. Elisabeth Malkin of the New York Times: "The police chief of a small town near Mexico's border with the United States has been arrested on suspicion that he was involved in the massacre of nine women and children of a Mormon family last month, the Mexican authorities said Friday. The federal authorities arrested Fidel Alejandro Villegas, the police chief in the town of Janos in the state of Chihuahua, as part of their investigation into the Nov. 4 attack in a remote region in neighboring state of Sonora."