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The Commentariat -- January 21, 2019
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Trump Knocks Himself out to Honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Louis Nelson of Politico: "... Donald Trump made a brief appearance Monday at Washington's Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, honoring the civil rights icon with a wreath on the federal holiday bearing his name. The president, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence and acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, spent roughly two minutes at the memorial."
Astead Herndon of the New York Times: "Senator Kamala Harris, the California Democrat and barrier-breaking prosecutor who became the second black woman to serve in the United States Senate, declared her candidacy for president on Monday, joining an increasingly crowded and diverse field in what promises to be a wide-open nomination process.... Ms. Harris chose to enter the race on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, an overt nod to the historic nature of her candidacy, and her timing was also meant to evoke Shirley Chisholm, the New York congresswoman who became the first woman to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for president 47 years ago this week. In addition, Ms. Harris will hold her first campaign event on Friday in South Carolina, where black voters are the dominant force in the Democratic primary, rather than start off by visiting Iowa and New Hampshire, the two predominantly white states that hold their nomination contests first. She will hold a kickoff rally Sunday in Oakland, Calif., her hometown."
Luke Barnes of ThinkProgress: "Two years ago, President Donald Trump stood before an inauguration crowd in Washington, D.C. and warned of 'American carnage,' claiming he alone could stop it.... Now, midway through his presidency, it has become increasingly clear that the real danger is one Trump himself has both fomented and chosen to ignore: far-right extremism.... Meanwhile, both the president and the Republican Party have emboldened violent far-right extremists through their inaction; over the last two years, Trump has barely acknowledged the explosion of far-right activity, much less done anything to combat it." --s
Team of Vipers. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "John F. Kelly, as White House chief of staff, presented himself as the man leading a charge of 'country first, president second.' The attorney general suggested administering lie-detector tests to the small group of people with access to transcripts of the president'calls with foreign leaders. And President Trump sought a list of 'enemies' working in the White House communications shop. Those are some of the portraits of the Trump White House sprinkled throughout 'Team of Vipers,' an inside account of working there written by Cliff Sims, a former communications staff member and Trump loyalist who worked on the campaign.... The book ... describes a nest of back-stabbing and duplicity within the West Wing, a narrative by now familiar from other books and news media reports. But Mr. Sims, who left last year after clashing with Mr. Kelly, is one of the few people to attach his name to descriptions of goings-on at the White House that are not always flattering to Mr. Trump, and many of the scenes are not particularly flattering to anyone, including himself."
Sam Fulwood of ThinkProgress: "In a largely overlooked August 18, 2016 speech, then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump extemporaneously cited a litany of problems plaguing black Americans. Speaking broadly, as if to encompass nearly every black person in the nation, Trump rattled off a list of shopworn stereotypes on black pathology.... And turning to squarely face reporters' cameras, Trump declared for the first time in his campaign that only he could make life better for African Americans. He then asked for their votes with a haunting and memorable question. 'What the hell do you have to lose?'... Now, two years into his disastrous presidency, black Americans have the same answer as when Trump initially asked the question: Plenty." --s
Lemmings of the Senate Unite! Seung Min Kim & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "One month into a historic government shutdown, Republican senators are standing staunchly behind President Trump's demand for money to build a border wall, even as the GOP bears the brunt of the blame for a standoff few in the party agitated for, according to interviews this past week with more than 40 Republican senators and aides. Under pressure from conservatives to help Trump deliver on a signature campaign promise and unable to persuade him to avert the partial government shutdown, these lawmakers have all but surrendered to the president's will. Their comments show how the cracks in the 53-member Republican majority that emerged at the outset of the shutdown have not spread beyond a handful of lawmakers."
Update on Another Trump Campaign Scam. Aidan McLaughlin of Mediaite: "Michael Cohen called CNBC to threaten legal action after his attempt to rig an online poll in Donald Trump's favor failed, according to a new report. The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen called CNBC in 2014 and threatened that Trump would sue if the network didn't place the then-businessman higher on its list of the top business leaders, arguing it was 'ignoring the will of the people.' Per the Journal, CNBC never responded and Cohen never sued. It was reported last week that Cohen paid tens of thousands to a tech firm to rig online polls in Trump's favor, including the 2014 CNBC poll and a 2015 Drudge Report poll on presidential candidates. Both efforts failed.... Trump made public efforts to drive his supporters to the CNBC poll too. 'Honored to be named as one of business's "Top Leaders, Icons and Rebels" by @CNBC,' he tweeted after making the shortlist. 'Vote Trump!' And then, when he didn't make the official list: 'Stupid poll should be canceled -- no credibility.'" ...
... Corruption in Plain Sight. Josh Marshall puts one of Rudy's latest admissions into perspective: "During the time Trump was singing Putin's praises on the campaign trail and getting Putin's help with hacking and information campaigns, Putin was dangling a few hundred million dollars in front of Trump." ...
... John Marshall: "[The Trump Moscow Tower] deal was with sanctioned individuals and sanctioned banks. Whether it was even legal to be entering into the negotiations is not clear to me. But certainly the post-2014 sanctions against Russia had to be lifted before the deal could be finalized. That is the central issue. It's not simply that Trump had 'business' with Russia and deceived the public about it during the campaign and after. It's more specific and direct. Why was Trump so solicitous of Russia and Vladimir Putin during the campaign? Well, a lot of possible reasons. But a major and likely the major reason was because Putin was dangling a multi-hundreds of millions of dollars payday in front of him. That's a big incentive, especially for Donald Trump." --s
Pamela Constable of the Washington Post: "Scores of Afghan security forces were killed Monday when a suicide bomber in a Humvee rammed a training compound of the national intelligence agency in Wardak Province, officials there said. Taliban insurgents immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Security officials in Kabul, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told news agencies that the death toll could reach higher than 120, with a large number wounded. The massive bombing destroyed most of the building in the provincial capital where about 150 counterinsurgency troops are based, officials there said. The bombing was followed by gunmen who entered the compound in a truck and began shooting."
Adam Satariano of the New York Times: "After European policymakers adopted a sweeping new data privacy law last year, the big question has been how regulators would use their new powers against the world's most powerful technology companies. The first major example came on Monday, when the French data protection authority announced that it had fined Google 50 million euros, or about $57 million, for not properly disclosing to users how data is collected across its services, including its search engine, Google Maps and YouTube, in order to present personalized advertisements. The penalty is the largest to date under the European Union privacy law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, that went into effect last May, and it shows that regulators are following through on a pledge to use the new rules to push back against internet companies whose businesses depend on collecting data. Facebook is also the subject of a number of investigations by the data protection authorities in Europe."
*****
How Not to Remember Martin Luther King, Jr. ... the hearts and minds of the American people are thinking a lot today about [this] being the weekend we remember the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. One of my favorite quotes from Dr. King was, 'Now is the time to make real the promises of Democracy,' You think of how he changed America, he inspired us to change through the legislative process, to become a more perfect union. That's exactly what President Trump is calling on the Congress to do, come to the table in a spirit of good faith. -- mike pence
The comments made by Pence -- who works at the top of an administration that promotes policies that directly contradict King's message -- fly directly in the face of Martin Luther King's legacy.... In a stark contrast to what King stood for, the Trump administration has repeatedly sent encouraging signals to the forces of white nationalism.... Martin Luther King Jr. spent every day of his life trying to tear down the walls that separated us.... There is no justification for Vice President Pence to use King's memory to support the administration's policies. Doing so is a perversion of the work of one of the greatest social activists of modern times. -- Julian Zelizer, in a CNN opinion piece
The Trump Shutdown, Ctd.
People saw him as some sort of business wizard. That's all disintegrating. It's like McDonald's not being able to make a hamburger. -- Mike Murphy, GOP strategist
Old McDonald can' even make a hamberder. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...
... Philip Rucker & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump was elected president partly by assuring the American people that 'I alone can fix it.' But precisely two years into his presidency, the government is not simply broken -- it is in crisis.... Trump's management of the partial government shutdown -- his first foray in divided government -- has exposed as never before his shortcomings as a dealmaker. The shutdown also has accentuated several fundamental traits of Trump's presidency: his apparent shortage of empathy, in this case for furloughed workers; his difficulty accepting responsibility, this time for a crisis he had said he would be proud to instigate; his tendency for revenge when it comes to one-upping political foes; and his seeming misunderstanding of Democrats' motivations.... Trump has approached the shutdown primarily as a public relations challenge.... But ... one month into the shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, a preponderance of public polls show Trump is losing the political fight.... Trump's management of the impasse has also drawn criticism about his competence as an executive. The administration this past month has been playing a game of whack-a-mole, with West Wing aides saying they did no contingency planning for a shutdown this long and have been learning of problems from agencies and press reports in real time." ...
... Alex Shephard of the New Republic: "'We are getting crushed!' So exclaimed President Trump to his chief of staff in response to media coverage of the government shutdown.... But if Trump thinks he's getting crushed now, he ought to peek around the corner. The outlook for the remainder of his term is grim -- not just for his political prospects, but the country itself. Economists, Wall Street analysts, and even the White House's own experts are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the economy, which Trump is doing his best to hobble. And the now-divided Congress can't even manage to fund the government, boding ill for its ability to accomplish much else. Trump has brought this on himself. He had ample evidence that immigration was not the winning issue that he continues to think it is.... Trump is consoling himself by suggesting that he will only take a short-term hit because of the shutdown.... The shutdown is also having an impact on one of the few bright spots of this administration: the economy.... Trump himself is dragging down the economy.... Two years is a long time in politics, and it's an even longer time in the Trump era. Truly anything can happen. Right now, though, it looks more likely that nothing will happen. That could crush not just Trump, but us all."
Home Alone. Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump rung in Day 30 of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, as well as the two-year anniversary of his tenure in the Oval Office, with a mammoth 40 posts to his Twitter feed over the course of Sunday."
Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "President Trump lashed out Sunday at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over stalled negotiations to end the partial government shutdown while rejecting conservative claims that his offer of temporary deportation protections for young immigrants amounts to amnesty. In a morning tweet, Trump claimed that Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats 'turned down my offer yesterday before I even got up to speak.'... 'Nancy Pelosi has behaved so irrationally & has gone so far to the left that she has now officially become a Radical Democrat,' Trump said. 'She is so petrified of the "lefties" in her party that she has lost control ... And by the way, clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting!'... 'They don't see crime & drugs, they only see 2020 -- which they are not going to win. Best economy! They should do the right thing for the Country & allow people to go back to work,' he said.... Pelosi fired back on Twitter with a reminder to Trump that '800,000 Americans are going without pay.' 'Re-open the government, let workers get their paychecks and then we can discuss how we can come together to protect the border,' she said.... The president sought to rebut that [confederate] critique[s] on Sunday, maintaining in a tweet that 'No, Amnesty is not a part of my offer.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
Quint Forgey: "... Donald Trump teased Sunday he is 'still thinking about the State of the Union speech,' tweeting that 'there are so many options' to deliver his remarks after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked him to postpone the address as long as the federal government remains closed. 'Nancy, I am still thinking about the State of the Union speech, there are so many options - including doing it as per your written offer (made during the Shutdown, security is no problem), and my written acceptance,' the president wrote online. 'While a contract is a contract, I'll get back to you soon!'" (Also linked yesterday.)
Trump's Wall B.S. Calvin Woodward of the AP: "... Donald Trump made an untenable case Saturday that a Mexican border wall would be a magic bullet for America's drug problem. Drugs from Mexico are primarily smuggled into the U.S. at official border crossings, not remote lands that can be walled off. His proposal to end the government shutdown implicitly recognizes that reality by proposing money to improve drug-detection technology specifically at land ports of entry.... The Drug Enforcement Administration says 'only a small percentage' of heroin seized by U.S. authorities comes across on territory between ports of entry. It says the same is true of drugs overall.... Even if a wall could stop all drugs from Mexico, America's drug problem would be far from over. The U.S. Centers on Disease Control and Prevention says about 40 percent of opioid deaths in 2016 involved prescription painkillers. Those drugs are made by pharmaceutical companies.... Moreover, illicit versions of powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl have come to the U.S. from China.... As well, many researchers have found that people in the U.S. illegally are less likely to commit crime than U.S. citizens and legal immigrants -- except, that is, for the crime of being illegally in the country."
David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "The grass-roots progressive movement known as the resistance has had a very good two years.... But the government shutdown has shown the limits of this new progressive movement. The resistance has had virtually no effect on the politics of the shutdown -- and a stronger movement could have a big effect.... If this were happening in Europe, as Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago told me, people would be pouring into the streets. And yet in the United States, there has been nothing but a few small, scattered rallies. Instead of lining up to protest, hundreds of federal workers in Washington lined up last week to eat at makeshift soup kitchens. The photos of them doing so were a study in powerlessness.... The celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr. will include a lot of pap about peace and equality. But King didn't think that peace and equality just happened. He thought people had to struggle for them."
This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.
Peter Baker of the New York Times: Donald Trump "regularly tries to dispel suspicions [about his ties to Russia] by declaring that he has done more to counter Russian aggression than other recent presidents have. 'I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton,' he wrote on Twitter a week ago. Yet in at least some ... cases, according to current and former administration officials, Mr. Trump has gone along with [retaliatory] actions only reluctantly or under pressure from advisers or Congress. He has left it to subordinates to publicly criticize Russian actions while personally expressing admiration for Mr. Putin and eagerness to be friends. His recent decision to pull out of Syria was seen as a victory for Russia. And as in the latest Ukraine confrontation, he has for now at least given Moscow a pass.... Critics argue that Mr. Trump undercuts his administration's actions by seeming to accept Mr. Putin's denials of election interference over the reports of his own intelligence agencies. They say he effectively parrots Kremlin talking points by denigrating NATO and endorsing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.... Analysts said American policy remains bifurcated by the disparity of Mr. Trump's statements and his administration's actions."
Rudy Still Suffering from Foot-in-Mouth Disease. No Known Cure. Maggie Haberman & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, said on Sunday that discussions about building a Trump Tower in Moscow lasted through the November 2016 election, months longer than previously confirmed. Mr. Giuliani said in an interview with The New York Times that Mr. Trump 'recalls a series of conversations' with his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, about the project during the campaign. 'He can't tell you the date' that it ended, Mr. Giuliani said. 'There are no entries or phone logs' that indicated specifics, he added. 'The best he could do is, "We talked about it, I knew he was running with it, I honestly didn't pay much attention to it,"' Mr. Giuliani said, characterizing Mr. Trump's memory. He added that Mr. Trump recalled, '"It was all going from the day I announced to the day I won."' The comments further extended an already growing timeline for the discussions. Mr. Cohen had told Congress that the negotiations ended in January 2016, before the first presidential primaries, but later in a plea agreement, he said they continued as late as June 2016.... Mr. Giuliani had then indicated in an interview with ABC News last month that the talks had lasted possibly until Election Day, although he was less specific than he was on Sunday." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Gee, that doesn't quite jibe with this NYT Report from November 2018: "On at least 23 occasions since the summer of 2016, Mr. Trump has said either that he had 'nothing' to do with Russia, or that he has 'no deals,' no investments and no 'business' in Russia." You might think Trump was flagrantly lying to voters in order to win the election. ...
... "So What?" Paige Cunningham of the Washington Post: "Rudolph W. Giuliani vehemently denied Sunday that President Trump asked his former attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, speaking during a fiery CNN interview in which he also said BuzzFeed News should be sued for reporting such allegations this past week. Giuliani acknowledged that Trump might have spoken to Cohen about his testimony, but he shrugged it off, saying that would have been 'perfectly normal.' 'So what?' Giuliani, who serves as Trump's personal attorney, said to CNN's Jake Tapper on 'State of the Union' on Sunday morning. 'As far as I know, President Trump did not have discussions with him. Certainly no discussions with him in which he told him or counseled him to lie.'... Giuliani told NBC's [Chuck] Todd he was '100 percent certain' the president never asked Cohen to do anything but tell the truth to Congress.... Cohen signed a plea deal with the special counsel in November, after pleading guilty to lying to Congress about plans to build the tower. Although he'd previously said the conversations about the tower ended in January 2016, he later acknowledged they were still occurring in June 2016.... Giuliani said Sunday that the conversations about the tower could have extended even further -- up to the November 2016 election." Giuliani said that signing a non-binding letter of intent to build a Moscow tower "isn't the same as doing business." ...
... "Give Me a Break." Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "Rudy Giuliani ... said in an interview on CNN's 'State of the Union' that the accidental revelation by [Paul] Manafort's attorneys that he shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked with Manafort as a political consultant in the Ukraine, was being overblown by people eager to accuse the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia to swing the 2016 election in the president's favor. The former Trump campaign chairman likely shared the data with Kilimnik because 'he wanted to get paid,' Giuliani said, adding that Manafort had 'a personal relationship with them, independent of the campaign.... Should he have done it? Absolutely not. Bad judgment? Yes. A crime? Sharing polling data? Give me a break. No way,' Giuliani said. 'People give out that internal polling data to impress people. They give it out for fundraising, just to have people on your side. They give it out to affect you guys in the press.'" ...
... Jonathan Swan of Axios: "Top Washington criminal defense lawyers, both Democrats and Republicans, told me they couldn't understand what Giuliani was trying to achieve with his TV appearance. 'Any defense lawyer would advise their client in an investigation not to discuss testimony with other people involved in the investigation in order to avoid the risk of obstruction or suborning perjury charges,' said a Republican attorney who ... works with the Trump administration.... Giuliani texted back: 'If there is a joint defense agreement it is safe to do it through your lawyers. I can't believe your [sic] still pursuing this after the malicious BuzzFeed blowup. President has not advised anyone to do anything but tell the truth as that [sic] recall it[.]'" ...
... Chas Danner of New York has a very good summation of "Rudy's Busy Day," including not only Rudy's revelations & admissions but also Rudy's inconsistent assertions.
Biggest Liar Ever. Glenn Kessler, et al., of the Washington Post: "Two years after taking the oath of office, President Trump has made 8,158 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker's database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. That includes an astonishing 6,000-plus such claims in the president's second year. Put another way: The president averaged nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in his first year in office. But he hit nearly 16.5 a day in his second year, almost triple the pace."
Biggest Failure Ever. Jonathan Chait: "The first two years of the Trump administration have mostly combined ethical calamities large (the separation of migrant children from their parents) and small (petty graft ranging from lavish office expenses to making staff procure high-end hand cream) with a succession of pratfalls. Trump has proved unable to do the large things (like repeal and replace, or even just repeal, Obamacare) or the small things (staff his administration, produce correctly spelled official documents). But against this shambolic backdrop, there stands in bright shining succession the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.... Yet it has not sunk in how completely this project is failing.... Tax revenue in general, and corporate tax revenue in particular, have dropped -- an unusual event for an economy running at full capacity.... And as for that spike in corporate investment last year? Alexander Arnon suggests the entire thing was caused by higher oil prices.... The Trump tax cuts are of a piece with the endemic corruption that has tied the party's political class to its buffoonish president.... By the public-facing standards set out for it, as opposed to the private venal reasons, the Trump tax cuts have failed as miserably as everything else."
Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "Based on the [confirmation] hearing [of William Barr], one might think that supervision of the special counsel is the Attorney General's main responsibility. But that's far from true, and it's regarding the other work of the Justice Department, particularly its central mission of protecting the civil rights of all Americans, that the prospect of Barr's service appears dismaying. By and large, he seemed prepared to sustain the work of his predecessors in the Administration: the belligerently right-wing Jeff Sessions and the comically unqualified Matthew Whitaker, the acting Attorney General.... Barr is sure to continue the defense of the citizenship question [on the 2020 Census questionnaire] (in the hearing, he punted on the matter of birthright citizenship), and his views on immigration appear substantively similar to the Administration's.... When it comes to criminal justice, the department has mirrored Trump's reflexive solicitude for law enforcement.... Like virtually every Republican in Congress, he seems willing to uphold the policies of the Administration while choosing not to see -- or, at least, not to confront -- its ignorance and its recklessness."
Adam Forrest of the Independent: "The mother of a boy filmed harassing a Native American man along with his friends at a rally in Washington DC has blamed 'black Muslims' for the confrontation, without providing any evidence for the claim. The teenager was among a group of students wearing Make America Great Again (Maga hats who were criticised for taunting the musician Nathan Phillips, surrounding him and jeering and chanting 'build the wall, build the wall'. But his mother claimed 'black Muslims' had been harassing the group of Donald Trump supporters from the private, all-male Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Let's just assume Mom there is right & some "black Muslims" picked on her darling boy. So exactly why would said darling boy bully another person, of another race, for something the supposed "black Muslims" did? Mom's claims are not only likely untrue, they're racist on racism. What a lovely family unit. ...
... UPDATE. Sarah Mervosh & Emily Rueb of the New York Times: "Early video excerpts from the encounter obscured the larger context, inflaming outrage. Leading up to the encounter on Friday, a rally for Native Americans and other Indigenous people was wrapping up. Dozens of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, who had been in Washington for the anti-abortion March for Life rally, were standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, many of them white and wearing apparel bearing the slogan of President Trump. There were also black men who identified themselves as Hebrew Israelites, preaching their beliefs and shouting racially combative comments at the Native Americans and the students, according to witnesses and video on social media."
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