The Commentariat -- July 22, 2016
Coming up on Reality Chex: Trump-free Sunday. Unless Trump announces he's going to quit and release his voters to Bernie Sanders, I'm skipping all the Trump news and commentary here Sunday. So get your last blast tomorrow. I'm sure I'll have to post some retro-links in Monday's Commentariat. -- Constant Weader
Afternoon Update:
Nick Gass of Politico: "President Barack Obama wasted no time Friday delivering another implicit rebuke of Donald Trump on Mexico and immigration, hours after the Republican nominee officially claimed the party mantle to take on ... Hillary Clinton in November. 'Let me start by saying something that is too often overlooked, but bears repeating -- especially given some of the heated rhetoric that we sometimes hear. The United States values tremendously our enduring partnership with Mexico and our extraordinary ties of family and friendship with the Mexican people,' Obama said at the start of a joint press conference with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto." -- CW ...
Frank Rich on the Republican convention, the Roger Ailes scandal & the future of the Republican party: "... the only defense we have against Trump is his opponent. She must make sure that the other America, the America that is appalled, victimized, and scandalized by Trump and what he represents, goes to the polls to vote "no." Is Hillary Clinton up to it? I don't know." -- CW
Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "After bragging that he had unified the party in one of the most 'love-filled' conventions in political history [this morning], Mr. Trump went on an extended diatribe against Mr. Cruz, who declined to endorse him during his own convention speech on Wednesday night and urged people to vote with their conscience. The speech embarrassed Mr. Trump and cast a shadow of discord over the convention." -- CW ...
... Dan Spinelli of Politico: "A day after accepting the Republican Party's nomination for president, Donald Trump rehashed a conspiracy theory that claims the man who killed President John F. Kennedy once cavorted with Ted Cruz's father. -- CW ...
... Nick Gass has more on Trump's remarks about Cruz. -- CW
Philip Bump of the Washington Post can't figure out who Ivanka Trump was endorsing inasmuch as her claims about his support for equality opportunity for women is pretty much nonexistent beyond his claim to be "the best for women" & a promise to "look into [equal pay] very strongly." (CW: whatever that means).
*****
GOP Convention & Presidential Race
I alone can fix it. -- Donald Trump, acceptance speech
The Demiurge. Patrick Healy & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times on Trump's acceptance speech: "With dark imagery and an almost angry tone, Mr. Trump portrayed the United States as a diminished and even humiliated nation, and offered himself as an all-powerful savior who could resurrect the country's standing in the eyes of both enemies and law-abiding Americans." -- CW ...
... Philip Rucker & David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "Rather than pivoting to the political middle with an uplifting address, Trump ... focused intensively on the alleged dangers posed by immigrants and refugees, showing that on the biggest stage of his campaign he would not shy away from rhetoric that many minority voters find repulsive.... Trump spoke with so much gusto it sounded much of the time as though he were screaming, and by the end his face was notably red and glistening with sweat. The address lasted an extraordinary 76 minutes...." -- CW ...
... Glenn Kessler & Michelle Lee of the Washington Post: "The dark portrait of America that ... Trump sketched .. is a compendium of doomsday stats that fall apart upon close scrutiny. Numbers are taken out of context, data is manipulated, and sometimes the facts are wrong. When facts are inconveniently positive -- such as rising incomes and an unemployment rate under 5 percent -- Trump simply declines to mention them.... In his speech, Trump promised to present 'the plain facts that have been edited out of your nightly news and your morning newspaper.' But he relies on statistics that are ripe for manipulation.: Kessler & Lee provide "a rundown of 25 of Trump's key claims -- and how they differ from reality...." -- CW ...
... Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "In the most consequential speech of his life..., Mr. Trump sounded much like the unreflective man who had started it with an escalator ride in the lobby of Trump Tower: He conjured up chaos and promised overnight solutions.... He portrayed himself, over and over, as an almost messianic figure prepared to rescue the country from the ills of urban crime, illegal immigration and global terrorism.... But Mr. Trump made no real case for his qualifications to lead the world's largest largest economy and strongest military.... Speechwriters from both parties were stupefied." -- CW ...
The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon -- and I mean soon -- come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored. -- Donald Trump, acceptance speech ...
... Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "'I am the law and order candidate,' Donald Trump declared.... Despite a small uptick this year, crime in America has been in steep decline since 1992 and is currently near a four-decade low.... For Trump..., crime links together the various strands of Trump's politics that might otherwise be diffuse: immigration (enforcing the law at the border), racial resentment (supporting police in the age of Black Lives Matter), foreign affairs (a tough military stance being a form of international crime control), and partisan politics ('Crooked Hillary' being an imagined criminal).... Trump is running to be a strong man, and as such it's in his interest to stir up fear and anxiety about a world spinning out of control, which only he can bring order to.... Even if the crime and violence issue isn't a sure bet, it's something that has paid off for Trump before and just might again." -- CW ...
... BUT. Matt Yglesias of Vox: "For a candidate who just delivered an entire high-profile speech on the supposedly sky-high crime rates in the US, he doesn't seem to have very many ideas about fixing them.... The reason Trump doesn't have anything to say about [crime-abatement policy] is that he's too lazy to look into it and come up with anything." -- CW ...
... CW: I'll disagree with Yglesias on the cause of Trump's vagueness. I think Trump does have plans to quash what he thinks of as crime. The problem is that they're all extra-Constitutional. He would ignore all of the guarantees of the First Amendment, not to mention the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh & Eighth. Trump may not know or care about this, but at least his speechwriter or other vetters knew better than to let him spell them out. ...
... ** Greg Sargent: Donald Trump "has explicitly said he is modeling his campaign on Nixon's 1968 effort.... If Trump set out to emulate Nixon, and to draw a link between our times and the tumultuous late 1960s, Trump ended up proving to be more divisive, demagogic, hateful, xenophobic, ethno-nationalist, and overtly authoritarian than Nixon ever was." -- CW ...
... Make America White Again. Jonathan Chait: "What makes his acceptance speech new and different is that he offers more than just himself as the solution. He offers his supporters a restoration of the social order Obama inverted. Trump's election will not only make Trump the president, it will represent white America attaining the necessary level of collective consciousness, rising as one." -- CW ...
... David Fahrenthold, et al., of the Washington Post: "The prepared text of Trump's remarks, released ahead of his speech, shows he will paint a dire and frightening vision of an America besieged by hostile forces abroad and unrest at home -- and cast Hillary Clinton, his presumptive Democratic opponent, as unfit to face those dire times." -- CW ...
... Philip Bump & Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump's prepared remarks accepting the Republican nomination in Cleveland on Thursday night were provided on an embargoed basis. The embargo was broken by other news organizations; therefore we are posting them here. A note: These remarks can and likely will change before Trump delivers them Thursday night. We will update them as necessary, and note what changed." -- CW ...
... A Mole in the Trump Campaign. Ken Vogel & Julia Ioffe in Politico: "A super PAC backing Hillary Clinton on Thursday night mysteriously obtained and leaked drafts of Donald Trump's nomination speech -- and those of several other convention speakers -- hours before the night's proceedings were set to kick off, sending the Trump campaign scrambling on the final night of what has been a chaotic convention.... Correct the Record [-- founded by Clinton ally David Brock --] sent the text of Trump's draft speech to its press list a little after 6 p.m., gloating 'as if this convention hasn't been enough of a failure for Trump, somehow he let US get a hold of his full remarks before the speech.'" -- CW ...
... The Washington Post's liveblog of tonight's convention is here. The New York Times' liveblog, which is usually funnier, is here. ...
... Maureen Dowd: Ivanka Trump "was glossy, both in how she looked and how she spoke. She glossed over all of her father's ugly rhetoric and incitements, his erratic behavior and lack of any policy depth or even any policy, and offered a gauzy, idealized vision of a Bobby Kennedy-style figure as her father channeled Richard Nixon in '68." -- CW ...
... Tony Romm of Politico: "Technology investor [CW: and obsessed Gawker avenger] Peter Thiel implored Republicans from the convention stage on Thursday against waging 'culture wars' on lesbian, gay and transgender communities, mere days after the GOP approved a national platform that defines marriage as between 'one man and one woman.'... He said attempts to require transgender Americans to use particular bathrooms is a 'distraction from our real problem.' And in a first for a GOP convention, the Facebook board member and PayPal co-founder drew attention to his own sexuality: 'I am proud to be gay, I am proud to be a Republican, but most of all, I am proud to be an American,' he said." ...
... CW: For some reason, there weren't any speakers imploring Republicans not to wage "cultural wars" against non-Christian religions or against non-white people.
Ezra Klein: [Thursday] night, Donald J. Trump will accept the Republican Party's nomination for president of the United States. And I am, for the first time since I began covering American politics, genuinely afraid.... Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he's a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he's also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it's hard to know if he even realizes he's lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.... He has continued to retweet white supremacists, make racist comments, pick unnecessary fights, contradict himself on the stump, and show an almost gleeful disinterest in building a real campaign or learning about policy." ...
... CW: My fear is that Trump will be elected for the same reason motorists slow down to gawk at car accidents. Shocking, messy, gruesome -- these are entertaining. The hope is that more Americans than not will realize that in voting for Trump, they're not just driving by; they will be the victims of the car wreck, their lives forever diminished by a momentary lapse. ...
... Tim Egan: "The man who couldn't manage his own convention, the creator of a 'university' built on fraud, bet his shot at the top job in the world on a panicked public and collective amnesia of his serial misdeeds. 'I will restore law and order to our country, believe me, believe me,' he said. And the instigator of four corporate bankruptcies, the man who stiffed plumbers and carpenters, the failed casino owner, promised to use his dark arts to 'make our country rich again.'" -- CW ...
... ** Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg: "Trump's convention has been a fiasco.... leaving the rationales for [his] candidacy in tatters.... Incompetence is everywhere. Seats throughout the arena are empty in prime time. The schedule has run late, causing key speakers to miss valuable television slots.... And, of course, there was the epic plagiarism in Melania Trump's speech. The series of blatant untruths the campaign produced to try to quell the controversy was amateurish even for this group. Worse, the speech plagiarized Michelle Obama of all people. Worse again, it plagiarized a passage on the Obama family values -- which Donald Trump had gone to great lengths to portray as alien and un-American. ('There's something going on there.') -- CW
Trump's Idea of a Charm Offensive. Alex Isenstadt, et al., of Politico: "Just hours before accepting the Republican Party's presidential nomination, Donald Trump taunted his party on Thursday, ripping into his rivals and joking that, had he run as an independent, he could have defeated the GOP.... Trump said the way the audience reacted to [Ted] Cruz showed the party is united, lambasting the media for suggesting otherwise.... He also continued his assault on Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has refused to endorse Trump or appear at this week's convention...." -- CW
Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says Donald Trump was wrong to suggest the U.S. wouldn't defend a NATO ally if they are attacked. '... I thought what he said about NATO yesterday was ... not accurate,' McConnell said Thursday during a Facebook Live interview with The New York Times. 'I'm willing to kind of chalk that up to a rookie mistake.'" ...
... CW: Sorry, Mitch, a "rookie mistake" is something like thinking you're speaking in private & saying "they cling to their guns and religion," not telling the NYT the U.S must "always be prepared to walk" out on NATO. ...
... Nahal Toosi of Politico: "The comments [on NATO] drew scorn not only from American allies but also from several top Republicans, undermining the party's efforts to project unity during its national convention.... The international blowback was swift.... Trump's comments were especially unnerving to smaller NATO countries, such as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who in recent years have begun to fear Russia's military aims.... 'Ronald Reagan would be ashamed. Harry Truman would be ashamed. Republicans, Democrats and Independents who help build NATO into the most successful military alliance in history would all come to the same conclusion: Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit and fundamentally ill-prepared to be our commander in chief,' [Hillary] Clinton senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in the statement." -- CW ...
... David Corn of Mother Jones: "Trump's remarks [about NATO] were so potentially damaging to his campaign that when I asked Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, about the interview, he falsely claimed that the Times reporters -- David Sanger and Maggie Haberman — had made up the damning quotes. Trump's majordomo was trying to BS his way through another Trump controversy." -- CW ...
... Washington Post Editors: "Trump would wreck, not restore, America's standing in the world.... What's astonishing about Mr. Trump ... is the obvious casualness with which he muses about such matters [as abandoning NATO] -- as if the words of even a potential commander in chief do not influence world affairs the moment they are uttered." -- CW ...
... Steve M.: "Trump wants to destabilize NATO and doesn't care if World War III starts. Hillary Clinton wants to appoint left-centrist judges to the Supreme Court. Verdict from the vast majority of Very Serious Republicans: 'The choice is clear! Hillary's too dangerous!'" -- CW ...
... "The Siberian Candidate." Paul Krugman: "... the Trump campaign's recent behavior has quite a few foreign policy experts wondering just what kind of hold Mr. Putin has over the Republican nominee, and whether that influence will continue if he wins." CW: Krugman's column echoes conspiracy theorist language, and the evidence he piles up is a bit sketchy. But it's a big enough pile that the aggregate makes the theory look highly plausible.
On the Menu: Green Eggs & A Ham. Matt Flegenheimer & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Facing jeers even from many of his own constituents, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas on Thursday defended his non-endorsement of Donald J. Trump, talking down hecklers at a fractious breakfast forum the morning after his performance onstage upended the Republican National Convention. In an extraordinary display of party division -- at a typically staid Texas state delegation breakfast that is held with the intentions of exemplifying convention-week harmony -- Mr. Cruz strained to manage the vitriol directed his way, stressing that he had not said a cross word about Mr. Trump.... 'I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,' he said...." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... David Brooks' column is almost worth reading today: "I'm not a Cruz fan, but his naked ambition does fuel amazing courage. As the Republican Party is slouching off on a suicide march, at least Cruz is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!' When the Trump train implodes, the docile followers who are now booing and denouncing Ted Cruz will claim they were on his side all along." -- CW
... Tony Cook of the Indianapolis Star: "Sen. Dan Coats [R-Ind.] issued a blistering rebuke Thursday of fellow Sen. Ted Cruz... Coats told IndyStar, 'He only thinks of himself, he doesn't think about party. He's a wrecking ball.... He's the most self-centered, narcissistic, pathological liar I've ever seen -- and you can quote me on that,' he said." ...
... CW: Well, yeah, that's true enough, but the description fits Donald Trump even better.
"Make American Afraid Again." David Maraniss in the Washington Post on how the GOP convention is going: "More talk about who and what they wanted to undo, dismantle, destroy, obliterate or send off to the clink than create and build and empower. More boilerplate speeches in a half-empty hall by third-rate celebs and second-tier pols than the showbiz glitz and glam promised by the man who hates to be bored.... And most noticeable of all, more disharmony than unity." -- CW
Joon Suh of Third Way: "'My tax plan is going to cost me a fortune,' Donald Trump said at press conference in Trump Tower last September. It won't. One lesser-noticed section of Trump's tax plan would bestow a $7.1 billion tax cut on the Trump family dynasty. That's just through his proposed elimination of the federal estate tax -- not counting breaks on capital gains and income that would also disproportionately favor the wealthy and, altogether, increase the national debt by $9.5 trillion in just 10 years." -- CW
Are You a "Real American"? CW: I'm Not. Nate Silver: Republican "politicians, implicitly and often explicitly, usually have certain people in mind when they refer to 'real Americans.' They often mean white people without college degrees.... They usually mean practicing Christians. Their examples usually refer to people in the South or the Midwest — not East Coast elites or West Coast hippies.... To be a 'real American' means that a lot of people are left out. Overall, 'real Americans' made up only 20 percent of the electorate in 2012. And 'real American' men were just 9 percent of it." -- CW ...
... Transitional Family Values. The Geisha & the Businesswoman. Jill Filipovic in a New York Times op-ed: "Convention-goers ... [will] witness how the Trump family embodies a very old sexist hypocrisy: Men who want one thing for their wives and another for their children.... Mr. Trump ... blames giving his wife too much responsibility in his business for his first divorce, and his wife's wanting him to spend too much time at home with her and their daughter for his second.... Melania Trump ... emphasizes that her role as a mother comes before all else; Mr. Trump has spoken disparagingly of working women, does little in the way of child care, and expects women to be more aesthetically appealing than intellectually substantive.... By contrast, Mr. Trump took out a campaign ad featuring Ivanka, and said of her: 'I am so proud of Ivanka. She is a terrific person, a devoted mother and an exceptional entrepreneur.'" -- CW
Eric Levitz of New York: Tim Kaine, reportedly the Clintons' favorite for veep, has given liberals quite a few reasons not to like him. "This week, Kaine provided left Democrats with two fresh reasons to see his selection as a repudiation of their agenda. On Monday, the senator added his name to two letters urging the federal government to scale back regulations on community and regional banks.... According to the Intercept's David Dayen, the rule Kaine proposes 'could allow community banks and credit unions to sell high-risk mortgages or personal loans without the disclosure and ability to pay rules in place across the industry.' Such bad loans may not take down our financial system, but they could ruin the lives of the families that receive them." ...
... CW: Kaine is very much Bill Clinton-style. He reminds me of Bill's choosing Al & Al's choosing that whiney prick Joe Lieberman. We'll see if Hillary is wearing the pants in the Clinton family or just the pantsuit when we learn her veep pick. If she chooses Kaine, we can pretty much count on Clinton II being just that. ...
... Amy Chozick of the New York Times has more on the many reasons liberals will be disappointed if Clinton chooses Kaine. ...
... CW Update: Here's the disheartening new lede to Chozick's story: "Democrats close to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign signaled strongly Thursday that she would choose Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate, rounding out the ticket with a popular politician from a battleground state." So it's Clinton II: Change You Can Forget About. Bank deregulation? Check. TPP? Check. Reproductive rights? Meh. ...
... Daniel Strauss & Zachary Warmbrodt of Politico: "A few days before Hillary Clinton is expected to unveil her running mate, a group of progressives are lashing out at Sen. Tim Kaine, widely seen as the frontrunner for the spot, over his support for loosening bank regulations." -- CW
Other News & Views
** Adios, Mo-Fo. John Koblin, et al., of the New York Times: "Roger Ailes stepped down on Thursday as chairman and chief executive of Fox News after a sexual harassment scandal, ending a 20-year reign as head of the cable network he built into a ratings juggernaut and an influential platform for Republican politics. Rupert Murdoch, the 85-year-old media mogul who started Fox News with Mr. Ailes, will assume the role of chairman and will be an interim chief executive of Fox News channel and Fox Business Network until a permanent replacement for Mr. Ailes is found. Mr. Ailes will receive about $40 million as part of a settlement agreement, according to two people briefed on the matter, which essentially amounts to the remainder of his existing employment contract through 2018." -- CW ...
... Here's 21st Century Fox's lawyer-crafted statement. -- CW ...
... Jim Rutenberg, et al., of the New York Times: "Executives at 21st Century Fox decided to end the tenure of Roger Ailes after lawyers they hired to investigate an allegation of sexual harassment against him took statements from at least six other women who described inappropriate behavior from Mr. Ailes, two people briefed on the inquiry said Wednesday.... In interviews, several current and former Fox News employees said inappropriate comments about a woman’s appearance and her sex life were frequent in the newsroom." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... BFFs. Brian Stelter of CNN: "Even as he was negotiating the end of his time leading Fox News, Roger Ailes was still talking with ... Donald Trump. The two counseled each other in multiple phone calls this week, two Trump aides told CNNMoney." -- CW
Beyond the Beltway
Scott Cacciola of the New York Times: "The National Basketball Association announced on Thursday that it would not hold the 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte, N.C., the most significant fallout yet from state legislation that eliminated specific anti-discrimination protections for lesbians, gays and bisexuals." -- CW
We're Incompetent & Trigger-Happy But Not Racist! Alex Harris, et al., of the Miami Herald: "The North Miami police officer who shot an unarmed, black mental health worker caring for a patient actually took aim at the autistic man next to him, but missed, the head of the police union said Thursday." Both the supposedly intended victim & the shooter are Hispanic, so it's all okay. The police union claims the cops couldn't hear the victim repeatedly shouting that all the autistic man had was a toy truck. -- CW
Way Beyond
Dom Phillips of the Washington Post: "Brazilian police have arrested 10 people suspected of planning terrorist attacks during the Rio Olympics, Brazilian prosecutors in the southern state of Parana said Thursday. The 10, all Brazilians, had declared loyalty to the Islamic State and were communicating via cellphone messenger services Telegram and WhatsApp to plan attacks during the Summer Games, which open Aug. 5, Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes told reporters in the capital, Brasilia." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Elaine Ganley & Thomas Adamson of the AP: "The truck driver who killed 84 people on a Nice beachfront had accomplices and appears to have been plotting his attack for months, the Paris prosecutor said Thursday. Prosecutor Francois Molins said five suspects currently in custody are facing preliminary terrorism charges for their alleged roles in helping 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel in the July 14 attack...." -- CW (Also linked yesterday.)
Max Bearak of the Washington Post: Air strikes on Tuesday -- which may have been led by the U.S. coalition -- killed dozens of Syrians fleeing ISIS, but no ISIS fighters. "If Tuesday's airstrikes were indeed by coalition jets, and not Russian or Syrian government warplanes, this would easily be the highest civilian toll from any action by the coalition since it formed in 2014. Faced with the likelihood of a grave error by the coalition, U.S. officials responded cautiously, emphasizing the need to verify what had happened." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)