;)
The Commentariat -- August 20, 2016
Afternoon Update:
Susanne Craig of the New York Times: "... an investigation by The New York Times into the financial maze of Mr. Trump's real estate holdings in the United States reveals that companies he owns have at least $650 million in debt -- twice the amount that can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House. The Times's inquiry also found that Mr. Trump's fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including ... the Bank of China .... and Goldman Sachs.... A substantial portion of his wealth is tied up in three passive partnerships that owe an additional $2 billion to a string of lenders.... He is ... quick to stress that these days his companies have very little debt." ...
... CW: This puts Hillary Clinton's conflict of interest re: the Clinton Foundation in perspective. A President Trump could not sign anything other than Mothers' Day proclamations without affecting his financial interests.
Maureen Dowd thinks up a bunch of things Donald Trump is sorry for. Droll. -- CW
*****
Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Emboldened by their electoral prospects in November, Democrats are planning to redouble their efforts to make the fate of the Supreme Court a signature election issue, with the Democratic leader in the Senate threatening to stall Republican legislative priorities if no action is taken on the confirmation of Judge Merrick B. Garland. The Senate has been stuck in a stalemate since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February.... Republicans have refused to hold confirmation hearings on President Obama's nominee, insisting that the next president should make the choice. But with Donald J. Trump's poll numbers sliding, the Democratic leadership sees an opening to derail Republicans who are facing re-election by blaming them for the delay." -- CW
Emma Brown & Sarah Netter of the Washington Post: "The first attempt to assess the scope of damage from the past week's historic flooding in Louisiana has produced staggering numbers. Approximately 280,000 people live in the areas that flooded, according to an analysis released Friday by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber. In those flood-affected areas are 110,000 homes worth a combined $20.7 billion and more than 7,000 businesses -- about one in every five businesses in the region -- that together employ more than 73,000 people...." -- CW
Lizette Alvarez & Pam Belluck of the New York Times: "Federal health authorities suggested Friday that pregnant women and their partners consider postponing travel to all of Miami-Dade County after Florida identified a second zone of local Zika transmission, a swath of Miami Beach that includes the popular tourist magnet of South Beach." -- CW
Ouch. Christopher Drew of the New York Times: "Matt Bissonnette, a former member of Navy SEAL Team 6 who wrote an account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, agreed on Friday to forfeit $6.8 million in book royalties and speaking fees and apologized for failing to clear his disclosures with the Pentagon, according to federal court documents.... If approved by a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., the royalty settlement would bring an end to more than two years of civil and criminal investigations into Mr. Bissonnette, who won several awards for valor in Iraq and Afghanistan...." -- CW
Presidential Race
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A federal judge has rejected a request to force Hillary Clinton to submit to a sworn deposition in a suit related to her private email server, ruling instead that she must respond in writing to questions about the issue. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan said the conservative group Judicial Watch had not demonstrated that an in-person deposition of Clinton was necessary to attempt to clarify whether the former secretary of state set up the system in order to avoid complying with the Freedom of Information Act." -- CW ...
... Steven Myers of the New York Times: Judge Sullivan's ruling ensures "that the issue will continue to dog her presidential campaign until the eve of the election.... In addition to requiring her testimony in writing, the judge allowed the group to depose a senior State Department aide [John Bentel] who had warned two subordinates not to question her email practices.... [Clinton] could delay her answers until after the election. The deposition of the senior aide, however, will take place by Oct. 31." -- CW
Nick Gass of Politico: "Former Secretary of State Colin Powell 'has no recollection of the dinner conversation' recounted by Hillary Clinton to FBI agents, as documented by journalist Joe Conason in a forthcoming book. Conason's anecdote, reported Thursday night by The New York Times, recounts a small dinner party at Clinton's Georgetown home toward the beginning of her time as secretary of state, with former secretaries Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice also in attendance.... 'Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer,' Conason wrote...." CW: Could be something like that Bosnian sniper fire thing.
** Jonathan Chait: Hillary Clinton's "inadequate response to the conflicts of interest inherent in the Clinton Foundation show that she ... has not fully grasped the severity of her reputational problem. The purpose of the Clinton Foundation is to leverage Clinton fame into charitable donations.... The Clinton Foundation is a stand-in for the Clintons' sloppy ethics in general.... [The Clintons'] venality is rather ordinary. There's a reason the term politician is synonymous with lying, calculation, and ambition -- these are common qualities for politicians. The Clintons are common politicians, motivated in general by a desire to implement policy changes they think will make the world a better place, but not immune to trimming and getting rich in the process.... The risk that Clinton's tainted image will defeat her is small but real enough to merit concern. The much larger risk is that her lax approach to rule-following and ethical conflicts will sink her presidency." ...
... CW: What Chait points out is something Clinton's fan-base doesn't get. Trump is 100 percent phony (and malevolent & stupid to boot). But Hillary Clinton is half-phony, and to pretend otherwise is to exhibit the kind of thoughtless tribalism we see in Trumpbots.
We have a divided country. It's totally divided. The era of division will be replaced with a future of unity, total unity. We will love each other. We will have one country. Everybody will work together. In my administration, every American will be treated equally, protected equally and honored equally. We will reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all of its forms and seek a new future built on our common culture and values as one American people. -- Donald Trump, Friday, in Michigan
And you'll never have to poop again. Tiny Trumpbots will come in the night and carry away your shit. (Also, they might check your citizenship, so keep your papers on the night table.) ...
... Louis Nelson of Politico: "Donald Trump promised Friday night that if elected president, he will win 95 percent of the African-American vote in his reelection bid. Renewing his effort to reach out to black voters at a rally Friday evening, Trump suggested that Democratic politicians that overwhelmingly govern in America's inner cities have failed African-Americans. Trump told the Dimondale, Michigan, crowd that 'we can never fix our problems by relying on the same politicians who created our problems in the first place. A new future requires brand-new leadership.'... The former reality TV star's 95 percent pledge was an ad-libbed moment in a speech that was scripted and delivered with the help of teleprompters.... Trump has struggled thus far with black voters in the election, polling as low as 0 percent and 1 percent at times...." -- CW
... "'My goal is to get every single vote of every single African American' Trump says to an almost entirely white crowd in Lansing." -- Katy Tur of NBC News, in a tweet -- CW
Matthew Teague of the Guardian: "The post-disaster politicking got under way in earnest on Friday, as Donald Trump appeared in flood-stricken Louisiana to give his image a presidential burnish, and as the White House announced Barack Obama would tour the area next Tuesday. A day earlier Louisiana's governor, John Bel Edwards, had warned Trump not to show up in Louisiana 'for a photo op'. Instead, he said, Trump should volunteer and make donations.... Trump put his own spin on [the photo-op], traveling with an 18-wheel transfer truck full of supplies to hand out to crowds. Wherever he went, he created his own television-ready crowds. In St Amant, one of the hardest-hit areas between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Trump's convoy set up in a parking lot, and droves of people turned out to watch him hand out water bottles and diapers.... Joyce Humphries said that Trump's visit was good enough to win her vote. 'We will take any help we can get,' she said." ...
... CW: Really, Joyce? Trump hands you a water bottle (metaphorically -- I don't think Joyce got even that, and I'm not sure about the bottles of water, either -- see link to Tommy Christopher's story below) and that gets your vote? Teague reports that "60,000 local people [already] have applied for relief from" FEMA. The federal government will help most of those applicants, & they'll all get a lot more than a bottle of water. (And let's not even get into the climate change thing, which your hero there says is a hoax, but probably caused the rains & flooding in the first place.) If you're going to say something this stupid again, Joyce, you might not want to put your name on it. ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "During a stop at a church,Trump made clear that this was partially a political trip for him. 'The president says he doesn't want to come; he is trying to get out of a golf game,' Trump told volunteers in the area.... Then, late Friday afternoon, the Trump campaign issued a blistering statement ... highlighting Obama's absence.... 'Today, Donald Trump acted more presidential than the president himself, by immediately going to Louisiana while President Obama chose to continue playing golf and Hillary Clinton phoned in her views," said Rudy Giuliani...." -- CW ...
... CW: Blake applauds Trump's visit to Louisiana as a positive campaign moment when Trump acted "presidential." I prefer Tommy Christopher's take:
... The Play-Doh Presidency. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "On Friday morning, freshly-minted Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told ABC News that Trump and running mate Mike Pence would be traveling to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to 'help people on the ground' in a 'decidedly nonpolitical event' with 'no press allowed.' As it turns out, though, there actually were members of the press allowed, and the candidate did use the occasion to attack his political opponent, and there were opportunities for photographs, but true to his word, Trump did 'help out.' Pool cameras trailed Trump for his entire visit, and over the course of those several hours, Trump 'helped out' by unloading a truckload of toys for 49 seconds....":
... CW: Notice how Trump, who says he's "just here to help," doesn't actually unload the boxes of Play-Doh or hand it to real people; instead he passes the toys from the the guy unloading them to pence, who gives the boxes to flood victims whose main need right now is Play-Doh. ...
... Mark Berman & Jose DelReal of the Washington Post: "Trump ... knocked the president during a campaign event Friday evening in Dimondale, Mich. 'Honestly, Obama ought to get off the golf course and get down there,' Trump said.... Obama administration officials have stressed that the federal government is deeply invested in helping Louisiana through the response and recovery. Both W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson visited the region this week and emphasized that point." -- CW ...
... CW: If Trump & his surrogates (and Joyce there) actually gave a flying fuck about what President Obama and his administration were doing to aid flood victims, instead of just making stupid ad hominem attacks, they could find out easily enough by going to Whitehouse.gov, where splashed across the main page is a link to a detailed report. It's a massive response. But no Play-Doh, as far as I could tell.
Declan Walsh of the New York Times: "For [West Virginia coal miners], this season's presidential campaign boils down to a single choice. 'I'm for Trump,' said Dwayne Riston, 27, his face smeared in dust. 'Way I see it, if he wins, we might at least stand a chance of surviving.' Few places in America offer such a simple electoral calculus as the rolling, tree-studded hills of West Virginia." ...
... CW: Of course, this too is stupid. Coal mining is one of the most dangerous jobs out there, and what Democrats, and Hillary Clinton specifically, propose is to convert dirty energy jobs to clean energy jobs, most of which presumably will be safer for individual workers. Those laid off from the mines will receive benefits, access to other jobs & retraining. Clinton offers them a better, more satisfying way of life. They choose poverty, hard labor and a short life. Voting for Trump is like saying, "I keep banging my head against the wall because I know how to do it. It might be too hard to do something useful & less painful." Read this from Walsh's story: "'I kind of feel that people are looking down on us,' said Neil Hanshew, a miner, voicing a common sentiment. 'They're looking at us like we're a bunch of dumb hillbillies who can't do anything else.'" But, dude, you are saying you can't do anything else if you vote for Trump. That's the dumb part.
CW: Yesterday I wrote that Paul Manafort resigned in a way that threw mud in the face of the campaign, which two days earlier had claimed that Trump was just adding top staff, not "shaking up" his campaign. Why, here's Pam Key of Breitbart "News": "Wednesday on Fox News..., new campaign manager to ... Donald Trump Kellyanne Conway said the changes in Trump's staff are not a shake-up, just an attempt to expand the senior team that allows us to meet the needs." Surely Steve Bannon -- who owns Breitbart -- & Conway would not report some kind of embarrassing fiction about the campaign. ...
... Well, ha ha ha, yes they would. ...
... Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Donald Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said former campaign chair Paul Manafort was asked to resign on Friday. She noted that the decision was mutual, but said the last couple weeks on the Trump campaign had been tumultuous." ...
... So it wasn't Manafort who undercut the Trump campaign's story du jour; it was Trump. These people have no idea what they're doing from day-to-day. No idea.
Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that, and I regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues. But one thing I can promise you is this: I will always tell you the truth. -- Donald Trump, full non-apology apology, Thursday ...
... James Hohmann of the Washington Post: "After more than a year of refusing to budge as he moved from one firestorm to the next..., [Donald Trump] surprised everyone Thursday night by declaring that he lives with some 'regret.' But while he expressed remorse for the first time since getting into the presidential race 14 months ago, he steered clear of the S-word: 'sorry.' Parsing the speech, which was read from a teleprompter, veteran campaign strategists and historians noted that Trump [was] following a path of rhetorical evasion that has been well trod by candidates in both parties. Linguists and relationship experts, meanwhile, said Trump's comments were ineffective and that his words cannot accurately be described as an 'apology.' In fact, the GOP nominee did not specify exactly who or what he was talking about." ...
... CW: As contributor Gloria wrote yesterday, "I thought he was apologising for the clap trap he spews causing 'personal pain' to himself." ...
... Philip Bump of the Washington Post wonders what-all it is Trump is non-apologizing for: "Most of the statements Trump has made that got him into trouble didn't come from the heat of debate.... It's odd because on so many occasions Trump has said he didn't regret making his statements." A typical Trump response to questions about his outrageous remarks: "There's no apology because what I said is right. I mean, what I said is a 100 percent right." Bump runs down a laundry list of similar refusals to apologize & "I was 100 percent right" assertions. ...
... CW: I sure wish Trump would sink deeper in the polls (I think he'll tick upward, at least for a while), because absent my real fear & loathing of a Trump presidency, laughing at a bloviating buffoon who would despise me if he knew me is a real pleasure. There's a certain symmetry to Trump's hiring a campaign Manager-of-the-Month who made a bundle on "Seinfeld" rerun rights when Trump himself is a character even more over-the-top than the George & Kramer characters. Bump's list, if viewed in the context of Trump as sitcom, is amusing.
** Matt Yglesias of Vox: "... Trump is opting for the self-flattering theory that what's needed is to let Trump be Trump.... As Trump aims to become the Trumpiest Trump that he can be, he's increasingly surrounding himself with media figures [like Steve Bannon & Roger Ailes, not with businessmen].... Trump really was a businessman for a while, a real estate developer and then a casino mogul, but he was bad at it.... Instead of a business all-star team [advising his campaign], Trump is giving us retreats from far-right media. It all comes as a reminder of a fundamental truth of this campaign: Trump isn't really a businessman in the conventional sense anymore, and hasn't been for some time. He's a television star.... " -- CW
Hackable Trump. Brian Feldman of New York: "While Donald Trump pleads with Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's email accounts, the GOP candidate narrowly avoided his own cybersecurity fiasco. As engineer Shu Uesugi pointed out, Trump's donation page was susceptible to an injection attack (until yesterday; Uesugi's post brought about a quick fix).... In fact, after the exploit was publicized, someone submitted an 'URGENT FIX' which would have changed the background of the page to an image of Trump and Putin making out. In the grand scheme of possible hacks, that's not so bad." ...
... CW: In other words, Trump's site was so easily hackable that someone hacked it within minutes of learning of its vulnerability. And notice that what was vulnerable was donor information. It might or might not have hurt Trump, but a greedy hacker likely could have accessed the credit accounts of the unsuspecting dimwits who contributed to his campaign. MEANWHILE, one of Trump's major raisons de running is that he will "make America safe again." Yet his staff of "the best people" can't even keep his fans safe from Trump himself.
Beyond the Beltway
Megan Cassidy of the Arizona Republic: "A federal judge on Friday referred Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and three of his aides to the U.S. Attorney's Office, requesting that they be prosecuted for criminal contempt of court. The landmark decision comes after U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow found that Arpaio intentionally violated various orders rooted in an 8-year-old racial-profiling case. The judge's order also refers Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, Arpaio's former defense attorney Michele Iafrate, and Capt. Steve Bailey for prosecutors to consider criminal contempt charges against them as well.... Criminal contempt could result in incarceration." -- CW
Reuters: "The Texas court of criminal appeals on Friday halted an execution planned for next week of a man convicted as an accomplice to a murder he did not commit in a case that raised questions about how the state applies the death penalty. Jeffery Wood, 43, was scheduled to be executed on 24August by lethal injection. He was convicted of taking part in a 1996 convenience store robbery during which clerk Kriss Keeran was fatally shot. In its decision, the appeals court asked a lower court to review his sentence and claims from Wood's lawyer that it was obtained in violation of due process because it was based on false testimony and false scientific evidence." -- CW
Jeremy Stahl of Slate: "Ryan Lochte apologized on Friday 'for not being more careful and candid' in describing what he called a robbery and police have called a drunken confrontation with gas station security guards.... We accept and appreciate his apology,' said Mario Andrada, spokesman for the local organizers of the Rio Games.... Lochte ... does not address how much and what elements of his story ... he wasn't fully 'candid' about.... Lochte does not confess to having misstated anything, which it's now clear that he did." -- CW ...
... The Ugly Americans, Ctd. ... Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post: "The worst part of this is that Lochte's tone comes straight from the American top. Oh, USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun issued his own well-meaning apology, and so did USA Swimming Executive Director Chuck Wielgus. But they, like Lochte, seem to think his ultimate offense was stealing attention from other Olympians.... None of them gets it.... Here is what is missing from Lochte's apology. Any sign of manners. Any sign of humility. Any sign of real regret." CW: If you want to know why I try to dress like a local when I travel abroad, and why I'm super-polite & apologetic for my piss-poor language skills, one big reason is because too many Americans act like Lochte, et al. when they're away from home.
Share Article 
