The Commentariat -- June 22, 2019
The news stories linked in today's Commentariat alone paint a particularly devastating portrait of Donald Trump. By day, he's too ignorant, dense, careless, narcissistic, intemperate & generally incompetent to do his job. By evening, he's a rapist. In the meantime, he permits & encourages gross child abuse & other crimes against humanity. He's corrupt, and his "friends" -- people who cultivate him for their own purposes -- are corrupt. He lies all the time and blames others for his own acts of depravity & greed. Not surprisingly, he can't keep the help. The lies are understandable. You'd lie about yourself too if you were the kind of person Donald Trump is. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
Trump the Unready
** Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "The president's description of his decision-making process, unorthodox for previous presidents, was part of a day of shifting stories and contradictory statements that made it difficult to resolve outstanding questions about how the confrontation unfolded.... President Trump said Friday morning [in a series of tweets] that the United States military had been 'cocked and loaded' for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would probably die in the attack.... Mr. Trump said in an NBC interview later on Friday that news reports that he had called off the mission while it was underway were inaccurate. But two senior United States officials said again on Friday that the military had received the president's go-ahead and that jets were headed toward targets in Iran when the mission was aborted. Thursday's on-again, off-again episode was another chaotic moment on the world stage for a president whose credibility with allies is already strained from two and a half years of delivering bellicose threats, sometimes without following through. But a person familiar with Mr. Trump's thinking said that the president, for one, was pleased with Thursday night's events because he liked the 'command' of approving the strike, but also the decisiveness of calling it off.... A senior Trump administration official said there was concern inside the United States government about whether the [U.S.] drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, or even the P-8A manned aircraft flown by a military aircrew, actually did violate Iranian airspace at some point. The official said the doubt was one of the reasons Mr. Trump called off the strike." Emphasis added. Read on. What a mess. See also the AP & Daily Beast stories linked below, which controvert Trump's saving-Iranians tall tale. ...
... Here's the latest version of the evolving Trump-Changes-His-Mind story:
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Get that? These generals are so stupid & careless ("Great people, these generals," Trump says facetiously) that they have given no consideration to and have no idea of what the body count is projected to be. The "generals" (no "admirals"??) have to leave the room & phone for an answer from some functionary in the Pentagon basement. Then they come back, and for the first time, tell Trump that the strikes are likely to kill 150 people. Up till 10 minutes before missiles are to be launched, no top aides or military leaders have weighed in on "collateral damage." It's up to Our Hero Donald Trump to bring up the issue at liftoff-minus-ten. Unbelievable? Youbetcha. More likely, Trump has turned the real story on its head. I suspect "these generals" were the ones making a last-ditch effort to persuade Trump to reconsider his decision to choose such a lethal option, causing Trump to say at the last minute, "WTF, let's call the whole thing off." Speaking to Chuck, Trump struggles with the word "proportionate." It's not a Trump word. It's a general's word. ...
... Deb Reichmann, et al., of the AP: "Trump's assertion that he learned only at the last minute of his military advisers’ casualty estimate does not align with the usual way a president is briefed on military attack options. An assessment of the likelihood of casualties, whether civilian or military, and a broad estimate of the number, normally are a major element of each option provided to the commander in chief.... Asked how he was weighing his options, Trump said in a meeting with congressional leaders Thursday, 'My gut,' according to a person familiar with the exchange.... Although top congressional leaders met with Trump at the White House on Thursday to discuss Iran, he apparently did not tell them an attack was imminent." Mrs. McC: Jonathan Lamire of the AP said on MSNBC that the AP's reporting indicated that Trump had received casualty estimated hours before the planned strike. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... ** Asawin Suebsaeng & Erin Banco of the Daily Beast: "... Donald Trump approved preparations for military strikes against Iran -- fully aware that dozens of more Iranians might die as a result, two senior Trump administration officials and another source familiar with the situation tell The Daily Beast.... as The Washington Post first reported[,] Trump was initially briefed on Thursday for military options to retaliate against Iran for downing a U.S. surveillance drone. One of the things his advisers discussed with him was the potential for a high Iranian body count. With the possible death toll made clear, the president approved the preparations for striking Iran.... 'The military has a standard in which the president is briefed on a potential strike -- the battle damage assessment is included in that,' [said] a former national security official involved in past briefings. 'It's always part of the package. And that includes possible military and civilian casualties.'" Emphasis added. ...
... Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been 'cocked and loaded' for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would likely die in the attack.... The president said in a series of tweets just after 9 a.m. that he was prepared to retaliate against three sites in Iran for that country's shooting down an American drone, but that he was 'in no hurry.' He indicated that the death of 150 Iranians would not be 'proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.' It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... David Graham of the Atlantic: "There's no shame in calling back the strike.... Yet the story of how it happened, by Trump's own account, is chilling. There seem to be three possibilities. One is that Trump was railroaded by advisers who are reportedly far more hawkish on Iran than he is, and only at the last minute realized what was happening, in which case he's being ill-served by his aides. A second is that Trump was given other, more proportionate options, and estimates of the casualties each would produce, and only stopped to consider these questions as the planes were in the air -- not the sign of the sort of careful, measured decision-making one wants in national-security decisions. A third is that Trump knew exactly what he was doing and it was all a big performance. That possibility is perhaps most supported by Trump's own account and by his past history of using the military as a prop. That's also what a source told Maggie Haberman[.]" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: See also my comment in yesterday's thread. I still think the not-paying-attention explanation is possible. ...
... Conservative Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner: "... , it makes sense how [Trump] ... decid[ed] against striking Iran. What doesn't make sense is what prompted him to order the strike in the first place. Again, there is an argument for strategic patience. But indecisiveness, especially when exhibited so publicly, never works well on the world stage." ...
... A Lesson from 1987. Christopher Dickey of the Daily Beast: "Could American policy toward Iran look any more reckless, feckless, or just plain nuts? One is tempted to ask: What happens when your actions are based on a madman theory, but conducted by an actual madman?... The president may be a warmonger, but his weapon of preference is the dollar, using tariffs and sanctions to try to bring other leaders to their knees. He dreads the idea of conventional wars in far away places. Trump is also the man who paid $94,801 in 1987 to place ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe attacking President Ronald Reagan's naval deployment in the Persian Gulf to defend oil tankers from Iranian attacks (yes, this history is redundant). Trump's full page advertisements said the world was laughing at American politicians for protecting 'ships we don't own, carrying oil we don't need for allies who won't help.' One might say the same thing today, and Trump knows it." ...
... Roger Cohen of the New York Times: "President Trump has been all over the place on Iran, which is what happens when you take a serious subject, treat it with farcical superficiality, believe braggadocio will sway a proud and ancient civilization, approach foreign policy like a real estate deal, defer to advisers with Iran Derangement Syndrome, refuse to read any briefing papers and confuse the American national interest with the Saudi or Israeli. This American slouching toward another Middle East war has been a disgrace, shot through with the twisting of truth or outright lies.... Now, in a real crisis, and one of the administration's own making, the cavalier ineptitude and absence of anything resembling process is on full public view."
... Wonkette's Five Dollar Feminist has some thoughts. ...
... Jack Crosbie of Splinter also is worried about the influence of the "Fox & Friends" National Security Council. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Connor Mannion of Mediaite: "Trump tweeted out the phrasing ['cocked and loaded'], a deviation from the usual term 'locked and loaded,' while tweeting out an explanation about why he abruptly called off a major military strike against Iran that would have been in retaliation for a shot-down drone aircraft. Twitter quickly caught on and joked about the phrasing.... Tina Dupuy[:] '"Cocked and loaded" sounds like the porn version of a John Wayne film.'" Thanks to Ken W. for the link. (Also linked yesterday.)
The Trump Scandals, Ctd.
Hannity Was Trump-Manafort Cutout. Dan Berman & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "Paul Manafort told Sean Hannity that he would never give up information on ... Donald Trump or senior White House adviser and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to newly unsealed texts between the two men in 2017 and 2018. A court unsealed more than 50 pages of texts that show Manafort was scared and defiant and did not think special counsel Robert Mueller would cut a cooperation deal with him because Manafort wouldn't give up Trump or his family." Here are the texts the court has released. ...
... Ken Vogel & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "Mr. Hannity ... advised Mr. Manafort on how to fight his prosecution in the court of public opinion, and also pressed for confidential details about the case, according to a compilation of hundreds of text messages exchanged between the men, made public as part of the winding down of the case. Mr. Hannity at times appeared to try to gauge whether Mr. Manafort ... might be poised to cooperate with investigators, and, if so, what he might tell them about Mr. Trump and his inner circle.... The messages underscore the outsize role Mr. Hannity has played in Mr. Trump's orbit." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Obviously, Hannity -- who reportedly speaks with Trump almost daily -- provided another conduit between Trump & Manafort in their longstanding obstruction project. AND Manafort is promising Trump, through Hannity, that he won't flip while Manafort is under a court-ordered gag order. And it's not as if Manafort accidentally forgot about the gag order; he mentions it four times in the texts to Hannity. ...
... Update: Former prosecutor Barbara McQuade pointed out on MSNBC that Manafort also was attempting to influence the jury pool by feeding information to Hannity & encouraging Hannity to speak favorably of him on Fox "News."
Andrew Desiderio & Natasha Bertrand of Politico: "The House Intelligence Committee will issue a subpoena to Felix Sater, a former business associate of ... Donald Trump who was the chief negotiator for the failed Trump Tower Moscow project, after he failed to show up for a voluntary interview Friday morning. 'The committee had scheduled a voluntary staff-level interview with Mr. Sater, but he did not show up this morning as agreed,' said Patrick Boland, a spokesman for Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). 'As a result, the committee is issuing a subpoena to compel his testimony.' Sater told Politico that the interview is 'being rescheduled.' His attorney, Robert Wolff, said in a statement that Sater couldn't attend Friday's interview 'due to health reasons' but looks forward to voluntarily appearing once it's rescheduled."Mrs. McC: Right. (Also linked yesterday.)
** Sarah Jones of New York: "The cover story New York published [Friday] details an encounter the writer E. Jean Carroll had over two decades ago with Donald J. Trump, in which the then-real-estate mogul allegedly assaulted her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in midtown Manhattan. The episode is one of six incidents Carroll details in the article of attacks on her by men over the course of her life. Another episode involves the disgraced former CEO of CBS, Les Moonves. The cover story is an excerpt from her newest book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, which will be published on July 2.... In Carroll's account, Trump shoves her against a wall inside a dressing room, pulls down her tights, and, 'forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway -- or completely, I'm not certain — inside me.'... New York has verified that Carroll did disclose the attack to [two journalist] friends at the time, and has confirmed that Bergdorf Goodman kept no security footage that would prove or disprove Carroll's story.... In a statement released to the White House Press Pool, Donald Trump denied Carroll's allegation, saying that 'I've never met this person in my life.' The full statement is [published with Jones' story]. "
... Carroll's account is here. In the New York cover picture of Carroll, she is wearing the coatdress, "unworn and unlaundered since that evening" Trump assaulted her. Hmm, DNA? Trump's claim Friday that "I've never met this person in my life" is ever-so-slightly undercut by the picture of Trump, Carroll & others chatting at an NBC party in about 1987. ...
... Laura McGann of Vox: "Donald Trump deployed half a dozen tactics in a press release on Friday that any abuser would recognize. Trump's goal was to get us to question our own eyes and discredit columnist E. Jean Carroll, who described an encounter with Trump in the 1990s that ended in rape.... Tactic #1: Inject doubt. I've never met this person in my life.' ... Even if Trump didn't remember Carroll, he certainly read the article and would have seen the photo of himself with her. It's just not true that he never met her -- and he knows it.... Tactic #2: Misdirect. 'Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves, or sell a book, or carry out a political agenda -- like Julie Swetnick who falsely accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh.... Trump is attempting to make us forget that [Christine] Ford was at the center of the Kavanaugh controversy, instead bringing up a woman named Julie Swetnick ... [whose] account was far less specific and detailed [than] ... Ford's account.... Tactic #6: Cryptic threat of violence. 'The world should know what's really going on. It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.' He's ... not just warning Carroll. He says 'people should pay dearly' -- as in, anyone who might come forward in the future." ...
... Madison Pauly of Mother Jones: "This is an unequivocal description of first-degree rape, according to Roger Canaff, a former sex crimes prosecutor in the Bronx.... But the statute of limitations for first-degree rape was just five years in New York in the mid-1990s, when the incident is alleged to have occurred. (Carroll claims the attack took place in either the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996.) New York changed its statute in 2006 to give prosecutors unlimited time to bring first degree rape-charges, but the new law doesn't apply to cases in which the statute of limitations has already expired."
Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "President Trump plans to nominate Mark T. Esper, the secretary of the Army and former West Point classmate of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to be the next defense secretary, administration officials said on Friday. They said that Mr. Trump would send the nomination to lawmakers on Capitol Hill in the next few days. If confirmed, Mr. Esper, an Army infantryman who fought in the gulf war before becoming a lobbyist for Raytheon, would succeed Jim Mattis, who resigned in December during a dispute over pulling American troops out of Syria. Mr. Esper is set to become acting defense secretary on Sunday, following the abrupt resignation of Patrick M. Shanahan, who also was nominated by Mr. Trump to the top Pentagon job. Mr. Shanahan withdrew on Tuesday amid news reports about his 2011 divorce." (Also linked yesterday.)
Priscilla Alvarez, et al., of CNN: "Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pressing forward to arrest and deport families with court-ordered removals in 10 cities beginning Sunday, according to a senior immigration official, after ... Donald Trump's tweet revealing an operation was imminent. But acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan has been hesitant about elements of the operation, according to two sources familiar with his thinking.... A senior administration official told CNN the operation had been planned for some time, but said the tweet [claiming ICE would deport "millions" of undocumented immigrants next week] had put the operation at the forefront." ...
... Angelina Chapin of the Huffington Post: "Four toddlers were so severely ill and neglected at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, that lawyers forced the government to hospitalize them last week. The children, all under age 3 with teenage mothers or guardians, were feverish, coughing, vomiting and had diarrhea, immigration attorneys told HuffPost on Friday. Some of the toddlers and infants were refusing to eat or drink. One 2-year-old's eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was 'completely unresponsive' and limp, according to Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney." ...
When I became president, President Obama had a separation policy. I didn't have it. He had it. -- Donald Trump, Thursday, in a Telemundo interview
Immigration experts have told us that family separations were relatively rare under Obama and other past administrations. They did not happen at nearly the scale that they did under the Trump administration.... The controversial family separations under Trump's watch happened as a result of a new policy introduced in April 2018 by Trump's then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.... In March 2017, then-DHS Secretary John Kelly told CNN he was considering separating children from parents to deter illegal immigration.... Amid growing backlash and criticism of family separations, Trump issued an executive order to keep families together, even if a parent faced prosecution.... Before issuing the order, Trump had claimed that family separations could not be stopped through an executive order. That wasn't true, either. -- Miriam Valvalde of PolitiFact
Funny how Trump tells a completely different story to Telemundo than his does to Trumpbots. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
Juan Cole: "US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt has stated that next week's Bahrain economic workshop is the first part of the United State's peace plan known as 'Deal of the Century.' Greenblatt has also emphasized to the Israeli news agency 'i24NEWS' that the workshop will be concidsered [sic] as 'apolitical' due to the Palestinian Authority's decision to boycott the conference. Subsequently, no Israeli government officials would be invited nor any other foreign leaders or ministers.... [T]he current focus is on attracting investors and looking for donors to build up the Palestinian economy while garnering feedback." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "A white Mississippi prosecutor violated the Constitution by excluding black jurors from the sixth trial of Curtis Flowers, a black man who was convicted of murdering four people in 1996 in a furniture store, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday. Justice \Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for a seven-justice majority, said the prosecutor, Doug Evans, had run afoul of the court's 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky. 'Equal justice under law requires a criminal trial free of racial discrimination in the jury selection process,' Justice Kavanaugh wrote. 'Enforcing that constitutional principle, Batson ended the widespread practice in which prosecutors could (and often would) routinely strike all black prospective jurors in cases involving black defendants. Chief Justice John G. Roberts's decision to assign the majority opinion in a high-profile case to the court's newest member may have been prompted by Justice Kavanaugh's longstanding interest in race discrimination in jury selection. When he was a law student at Yale, Justice Kavanaugh wrote an article in Yale Law Journal calling for vigorous enforcement of the Batson decision.... Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.... Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined most of Justice Thomas's dissent. In a passage in which Justice Thomas spoke only for himself, he wrote that he had profound doubts about whether the Batson decision had been correctly decided in the first place." Mrs. McC: Yeah, Neil, that figures. (Also linked yesterday.)
Kyla Mandel of ThinkProgress: "It is going to cost the United States at least $400 billion over the next 20 years to protect the nation's public infrastructure -- everything from roads and rail lines to bridges, airports, and sewage treatment systems -- to withstand the impacts of sea level rise.... The price tag is almost as much as it took to build the original interstate highway system, which cost $114 billion at the time ($521 billion when accounting for inflation) over 36 years and now spans over 48,000 miles.... Moreover, all of this vital work would need to be done in half the amount of time it took to build the nation's highway system." --safari: You think D.C. is up to the task? (Also linked yesterday.)
Presidential Race 2020
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Nearly every Democratic presidential candidate converged in South Carolina on Friday to pay homage to the state party's most powerful political kingmaker [-- Rep. James Clyburn --] and court black voters and women — two of its crucial voting blocs.... Mr. Clyburn is the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, an influential figure in this state's Democratic primaries and, most recently, has perhaps been Mr. Biden's most important ally."
** Frank Rich: Joe Biden's "Trump-like refusal to apologize for his tone-deaf remarks about the civility he enjoyed with segregationist colleagues in the Senate shows that he really is clueless. He keeps protesting that he's not a bigot and that he (mostly) supported civil-rights legislation. True, but that's changing the subject. His behavior this week reminds us that there are fundamental failures of empathy and historical sophistication that explain why he was flummoxed by the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings and why he championed the 1994 'tough on crime' law that contributed to the rise of mass incarceration. It's why, in 2019, he actually considers it an accolade that a viciously racist senator called him 'son' instead of 'boy.' Biden's tipping of his hat to the Senators James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia for their 'civility' in getting 'the job done' in the Senate suggests he has no idea of who they were beyond their staunch support of racial segregation. Their adamant opposition to civil rights, toxic as it was, doesn't begin to describe what they believed and what they did in public office." (Also linked yesterday.)
Danny Hakim of the New York Times recounts the story of Jane O'Meara Sanders' ill-fated attempt to create a campus for a small alternative college in Burlington, Vermont. In 2016, "the top Trump campaign official in Vermont filed a complaint, leading to a federal inquiry that examined whether Ms. Sanders -- the wife & close political advisor of Sen. Bernie Sanders -- had inflated donor commitments to secure a bank loan for the property, and whether her husband had pressured the bank to make the loan.... Federal prosecutors have not spoken publicly about their investigation, though late last year, Ms. Sanders's lead lawyer said he had been told it had been closed" without bringing charges against O'Meara Sanders.
Beyond the Beltway
Alaska. Owen Daugherty of The Hill: "Several attendees at a government meeting open to the public in Alaska walked out in protest after an opening prayer praised Satan. The Associated Press reports the prayer, where a woman declared 'Hail Satan,' was given by Satanic Temple member Iris Fontana, who won the right to open the meeting with an invocation of her choice." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Georgia. Elham Katami of ThinkProgress: "Georgia state officials said Tuesday that 30,000 residents will lose their Medicaid coverage for failing to respond to renewal notices. But lawyers of many of the recipients affected say their clients were dropped from coverage without ever having received those notices.... According to the [Atlanta Journal Constitution], the [Department of Community Health] admitted that some beneficiaries did not receive renewal notices, but added that the number is small, approximately 70 people. Lawyers, however, claim that the number is in the thousands." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
North Carolina. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "[On election day in 2016]..., the electronic poll books -- records of who's eligible to vote, to be manned by workers with laptops -- had crashed, and Durham County [a democratic stronghold in North Carolina] soon took the whole system off-line. The hasty switch to printed poll books ... was a comedy of errors.... In the end ... Trump won [the state] by 173,000 votes.... Just days before the 2016 voting ... [Susan Greenhalgh, the executive director of an alliance called the National Election Defense Coalition] first reports that Russian operatives had tried to hack into an election technology company called VR Systems. She wondered that day if VR Systems was Durham's vendor. It was. Incredibly, it is just now -- 32 long months after ... that officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have finally launched a serious probe into the possibility that Russian hackers crashed the computers or altered data that caused those crushing lines.... North Carolina's problems have experts worried that the real interference could come from crashing the poll books or altering addresses or voting histories to cause mass chaos on Election Day." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Wisconsin. Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld lame-duck laws Friday that limit the power of the state's new Democratic governor, handing Republicans a victory in one of several legal fights over the laws. Two other lawsuits over the lame-duck laws are ongoing. The state Supreme Court is considering one and a federal judge the other. In Friday's 4-3 decision, conservatives on the state's high court found lawmakers were allowed to bring themselves into session in December to trim the authority of Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul just before they took office." (Also linked yesterday.)
Way Beyond
U.K. Jim Waterson of the Guardian: "Police were called to the home of Boris Johnson and his partner, Carrie Symonds, in the early hours of Friday morning after neighbours heard a loud altercation involving screaming, shouting and banging. The argument could be heard outside the property where the potential future prime minister is living with Symonds, a former Conservative party head of press. A neighbour told the Guardian they heard a woman screaming followed by 'slamming and banging'. At one point Symonds could be heard telling Johnson to 'get off me' and 'get out of my flat'.... Johnson and Symonds have increasingly appeared together at public events in recent weeks. The former mayor of London topped Thursday's ballot of Conservative MPs in the party leadership contest and is now the favourite against Jeremy Hunt to be the next prime minister."