A story in four parts pic.twitter.com/9M85K9o4JQ
— Pointless Letters (@pointlesslettrs) November 19, 2016
Vewwy wude
Nov 21st, 2016 11:29 am | By Ophelia BensonNo reset button
Nov 21st, 2016 11:03 am | By Ophelia BensonJim Rutenberg at the Times on Megyn Kelly’s book.
On Tuesday, she was in her office at the Fox News headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, taking stock, preparing for the next phase — a Trump presidency — and warning fellow journalists to look at her experience during the campaign as a potential cautionary tale.
“The relentless campaign that Trump unleashed on me and Fox News to try to get coverage the way he liked it was unprecedented and potentially very dangerous,” she said, casual but animated behind her translucent desk. If he were to repeat the same behavior from the White House, she said, “it would be quite chilling for many reporters.”
He has been railing at the Times in recent days.
Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, declined to comment on Ms. Kelly or her book.
But speaking broadly about Mr. Trump’s expectations for his relationship with the press as president, Ms. Hicks said that he would abide by “standard press protocols that are in place now, the traditions,” and that he saw his presidency as “a fresh start” for his relationship with the news media.
No.
No, he does not get a “fresh start” after being such a complete shit. It doesn’t work like that. The perp doesn’t get to say “let’s have a fresh start now” after a long career of abuse. He’s still the same cruel bully, so he’s not the one who gets to declare a fresh start. Being elected president doesn’t magically transform a cruel bully into a decent human being.
During the interview, Ms. Kelly said she feared the election sent a troubling message to women.
“There were a few themes that came out of 2016, and one of them is, as women, we have a long way to go, a long way to go,” she told me. Emphasizing that she takes “no position on the election,” she said the campaign showed “there is a tolerance for some considerable level of sexism and in some corners — let me underscore I’m not referring to Trump specifically, just what we saw this year — even misogyny.”
I am referring to Trump specifically: the garbage that has come out of his mouth about women is indeed misogyny. He is a misogynist. Nobody who wasn’t a misogynist could talk about women the way he does.
“Let’s gut her”
Nov 21st, 2016 10:18 am | By Ophelia BensonSlate had a piece about Trump and his team a few days ago that’s so horrifying I had to pause in reading it. It’s about how they echoed threats against Megyn Kelly to the point that a Fox executive had to explain to them that it wouldn’t help their campaign if she were murdered.
Donald Trump’s feud with Megyn Kelly was way darker than any of us knew. Kelly received so many death threats and so much harassment from Trump supporters after confronting him at the first Republican debate with a challenging question about his many, many misogynistic statements that she needed a special security detail for a year.
The Trump campaign stoked the flames of the Kelly hate, the Fox News host told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview on Wednesday, to the point that one of the top executives at Fox News had to explain to one of Trump’s top employees why if she “gets killed” it might be bad for their campaign.
“Michael Cohen, who is Trump’s top lawyer and executive vice president with the Trump Organization had retweeted ‘let’s gut her,’ about me,” Kelly said. “At a time when the threat level was very high, which he knew. And Bill Shine, an executive vice president of Fox, called him up to say, ‘You got to stop this. We understand you are angry but she’s got three kids and is walking around New York.’ ”
The “let’s gut her” made me gasp.
This is why this new regime is not legitimate and never will be. Their chief selling point is bullying and cruelty. We know where bullying and cruelty lead when they are fostered and encouraged, as Trump fosters and encourages them as well as modelling them himself. This is what makes the comparison to Hitler entirely apt. Hitler didn’t campaign on a platform of killing millions of people because he hated them. He campaigned on a platform of hating millions of people, and then went on to the genocide later. People who love bullying and cruelty the way Trump does cannot be trusted not to put them into action.
We’ve never had a president like this before. We’ve had plenty of bad ones, but never ones who would stand up in front of crowds and mock a disabled reporter, mock a woman who tottered because she had pneumonia, mock a woman reporter for menstruating. He’s a mean bastard all the way through, and mean bastards are not safe. He’d kill us all if he felt like it and had the power.
And – we already know this, sadly – even if he doesn’t organize a few genocides, his presence in the job is valorizing and encouraging mean bastards everywhere. Bullying has been given a veneer of legitimacy by the election of this evil piece of shit. That’s why we’re all so plunged in despair.
Cohen is no stranger to elaborate threats against journalists. When the Daily Beast republished an account of a sworn deposition from Trump’s first wife Ivana in which she had used the word rape to describe something Trump did to her, Cohen said “you cannot rape your spouse” and then threatened the reporters.
“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen told the Daily Beast at the time. “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”
“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up … for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet … you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.
He’s Trump’s consigliere.
As ABC News reported in 2011, Cohen is a fan of violent metaphors, if not violence itself:
Cohen, 44, is known around the office—and around New York—as Trump’s “pit bull.” Some have even nicknamed him “Tom,” a reference to Tom Hagen, the consigliore to Vito Corleone in the “Godfather” movies.
“It means that if somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit,” Cohen said in an interview with ABC News. “If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.”
Yeah that’s really what we want in the White House.
In an interview with the New York Times, Kelly said her experience should be troubling to anyone worried about how a free press might be treated and might operate under President-elect Trump’s incoming administration:
“The relentless campaign that Trump unleashed on me and Fox News to try to get coverage the way he liked it was unprecedented and potentially very dangerous,” she said … If he were to repeat the same behavior from the White House, she said, “it would be quite chilling for many reporters.”
Just a tad.
We are given an obscene Gehenna
Nov 20th, 2016 5:26 pm | By Ophelia BensonA few years ago Stephen Fry drove around the US in a London cab with a tv crew. I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the resulting tv series, and liked them. One of the places he visited was Atlantic City…
Would it not have been better to let the home of Monopoly, this seedy resort town and remnant of another way of holidaying, simply fall into the sea? Instead we are given an obscene Gehenna, a place of such tawdry, tacky, tinselly, tasteless and trumpery tat that the desire to run away clutching my hand to my mouth is overwhelming. But no, I must brave the interior of the most tawdry and literally trumpery tower of them all … The Trump Taj Mahal.
For taking the name of the priceless mausoleum of Agra, one of the beauties and wonders of the world, for that alone Donald Trump should be stripped naked and whipped with scorpions all along the boardwalk. It is as if a giant toad has raped a butterfly. I am not an enemy of developers, per se; I know that people must make money from construction and development projects, I know that there is a demand and that casinos will be built. I can pardon Trump all his vanities and shady junk-bonded dealings and financial brinkmanship, I would even forgive him his hair, were it not that everything he does is done with such poisonously atrocious taste, such false glamour, such shallow grandeur, such cynical vulgarity. At least Las Vegas developments, preposterous as they are, have a kind of joy and wit to them … oh well, it is no good putting off the moment, Stephen. In you go.
He’s exactly right, isn’t he – such poisonously atrocious taste, such false glamour, such shallow grandeur, such cynical vulgarity. That living room in Trump Tower…
Here’s another image of that living room, the one that inspired me to go looking for more:
It is repellent. It would be less hideous if he had simply constructed the whole thing out of blocks of cash.
He goes in.
All you need is here: mini-streets complete with Starbucks for people who hate coffee and KFC for people who can’t abide food; there is even a shop devoted entirely to the personality of Donald Trump himself, with quotes from the great man all over the walls: ‘You’ve got to think anyway, so why not think big?’ and similar comforting and illuminating insights that enrich and nourish the hungry human soul.
There’s a lot of horrible tat for sale.
There is nothing here that I would not be ashamed to be seen owning. Not a thing. Oh, must we stay here one minute longer?
Then he goes on into the casino.
Above my head glitter the chandeliers that for some reason Trump is so proud of.
‘$14 million worth of German crystal chandeliers, including 245,000 piece chandeliers in the casino alone, each valued at a cost of $250,000, and taking over 20 hours to hang,’ trumpets the publicity.
‘An entire two-year output of Northern Italy’s Carrera marble quarries – the marble of choice for all of Michelangelo’s art – adorn the hotel’s lobby, guest rooms, casino, hallways and public areas.’
And there you have it. It’s expensive. The end. That’s his entire aesthetic: it’s expensive.
Writing in the present (or rather, last April), Stephen Fry sums up:
Do please believe that to decry such offences against taste is emphatically not a kind of snobbery. Doubtless Trump and his supporters would see any attack on him on aesthetic grounds as sneering metropolitan elitism because they would choose not to understand the moral dimension at play here. It must be understood that bad taste on the monstrous scale that Trump disseminates and embodies is the most brutal crime against the human spirit – a snobbery that looks down with contempt.
If you don’t know Peter York’s book Dictators’ Homes you really should try to get hold of it. It demonstrates quite wonderfully and hilariously how a gross, shatteringly greedy appetite for power and gross, shatteringly vulgar taste go hand in hand. The ‘ruthless, ill-educated, ignorant and trashily vainglorious’ who want to rule us at any price can be read through their bedrooms, dining-rooms and studies.
And, leafing through the book, whose execrable, vomitous taste do you think is shown most exactly to match that of Trump and his towers and foul resort hotels? Why Saddam Hussein’s of course. Indistinguishable.
Maek you think.
H/t Emily
Not only unpatriotic and servile
Nov 20th, 2016 4:33 pm | By Ophelia BensonI don’t much admire Theodore Roosevelt, apart from the National Parks thing (which admittedly is a lot), but he said a good thing about our current issues.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
From an editorial he wrote for the “Kansas City Star” during World War I…when he was no longer president, of course.
H/t Steve Watson
El Dorado
Nov 20th, 2016 4:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe vulgarity of Trump Palace is breathtaking. US Magazine did a piece on it a year ago, so we can see how hideous it really is.
Compare the White House.
You don’t need eye protection in the second place.
Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream?
Nov 20th, 2016 12:03 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump’s national security guy is a conspiracy-monger. Business Insider reports:
The retired general whom President-elect Donald Trump tapped to advise him on matters of national security has promoted stories involving conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn shared two thinly sourced articles on his Twitter account alleging that Clinton was involved in everything from “money laundering” to “sex crimes with children” just days before the election.
On November 2, the general tweeted a link to a website called True Pundit, which claimed to have spoken with “NYPD sources” involved in the investigation of Anthony Weiner. Flynn called it a “must read” — which many supporters likely did, since it was favorited and retweeted more than 12,000 times.
In other words he tweeted the link with a strong recommendation.
The fabricated news story originated on a number of right-wing blogs that were reporting little more than anonymous postings on internet message boards. As PolitiFact pointed out, the conspiracy theory that implicated Clinton in a “political pedophile sex ring” being investigated by the NYPD and FBI had no basis in fact.
Spokesmen for both agencies denied any investigation, according to PolitiFact.
So he’s precisely the wrong kind of person for that job, isn’t he. He’s another Jack D. Ripper, and we don’t want those as national security honcho.
Flynn headed the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014 before he was reportedly forced out for mismanagement of the agency. Flynn has repeatedly claimed his firing came because of his views on radical Islam.
Measure the headlines
Nov 20th, 2016 11:16 am | By Ophelia BensonA drawback to getting news online is that one doesn’t necessarily see how the news is presented and ordered – what is above the fold in huge headlines and what is below it in ordinary headlines. Jamison Foser has shown me what I’ve been missing.
Reminder: The entire @NYTimes front page above the fold was devoted to … possible existence of new email. pic.twitter.com/T0mv0ZVQv7
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) November 19, 2016
Big headlines right at the top of the page, the whole entire above the fold occupied by Clinton email news.
On the other hand…
Today, @NYTimes gives news of the apparent president-elect paying $25 million to settle a fraud lawsuit more subdued treatment. pic.twitter.com/rbGatOSoEr
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) November 19, 2016
See there? The “email news” was empty bullshit, calculated to damage Clinton and help Trump. The Trump Not-University fraud suit is not empty bullshit – it’s about real fraud, in which Trump – the president-elect – cheated gullible people out of a lot of money. A hugely rich man cheated people with little money (if they had much money they wouldn’t bother with any real-estate “university”) out of a big chunk of money – yet that gets muffled treatment, while Clinton’s mistake with emails gets reported like high treason.
The email story was before the election and the fraud story was after, but that’s not a sufficient reason for such disproportionate coverage.
Just looked at the @nytimes and HAMILTON BOOS PENCE is huge headline, while TRUMP SETTLES FRAUD SUIT is THIRD story, small font. Wow. https://t.co/z4ti2PDDmh
— Melissa de la Cruz (@MelissadelaCruz) November 19, 2016
The fraud suit is a very important story. The guy who will be president in under 9 weeks settled a lawsuit over his cheating a bunch of people out of thousands of dollars each. Our next president is a rich guy who preys on poor people and steals what little money they have. That is a major story.
Recall the Clinton Foundation stories then read this, which doesn't mention conflict of interest until paragraph 12. https://t.co/OVOTYQ9SHn
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) November 19, 2016
I guess we should look on the bright side? He doesn’t roast and eat babies, that we know of?
Other issues
Nov 20th, 2016 9:55 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Times suggests Trump’s imbecilic tweeting may be an intentional diversionary tactic.
But even as Mr. Trump’s transition team appeared eager to embrace a more disciplined approach to the process of building out his administration, the president-elect’s Twitter complaints about “Hamilton” and “Saturday Night Live” provided a distraction.
That may have been the intention. Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts diverted attention from other issues, including a $25 million settlement in a lawsuit against Trump University, concerns about conflicts of interest involving the president-elect’s business dealings, and questions about the propriety of potentially appointing his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to a White House post.
Not around here they didn’t. I posted about both.
That’s the thing about Trump, as I keep saying – he’s so horrible on so many fronts, it’s very difficult to keep track of them all. But it’s not impossible. His childish tweets aren’t going to prevent me from pointing out his fraud and corruption and nepotism, along with his racism and misogyny and fascism.
He may succeed in trashing everything, but we will keep the records.
Trump v Saturday Night Live
Nov 20th, 2016 9:46 am | By Ophelia BensonOur petulant imbecile of a president-elect is still whining and complaining on Twitter, along with trying to tell us all what to do. He is so confused. He seems to think the president (and even the pres-elect) can just bark out orders and have them obeyed. That’s not how this works.
The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2016
God he’s stupid. He really is like a child, a very young and very spoiled child. That interpolated “which I hear is highly overrated” – that’s so transparent and so goofy. No he doesn’t hear that, except from people who are sucking up to him, which they’re doing because he’s rich and tragically powerful. How can he be dense enough to take that at face value? And dense enough to say it in public in aid of his pissy resentment? How can he not notice what a fucking fool it makes him look?
I know; he’s always looked like a fucking fool and he got elected as such. I know. But the election is over now – he shouldn’t still be performing the fucking fool routine.
Numerous patriots will be coming to Bedminster today as I continue to fill out the various positions necessary to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2016
Spoken like a true fascist. (Seriously. That’s what fascists say, apart from “Bedminster” and “America.”)
I watched parts of @nbcsnl Saturday Night Live last night. It is a totally one-sided, biased show – nothing funny at all. Equal time for us?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2016
Again – he shows himself up. “Nothing funny at all” – because it made fun of him. Not presidential, Donnie from Queens. And the suggestion of “equal time” is ludicrous. It’s a satirical show, and it gets to choose its own subjects.
General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who is being considered for Secretary of Defense, was very impressive yesterday. A true General's General!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2016
Uncomplicated disgust. He’s rejoicing in a Defense Secretary nicknamed “Mad Dog” – as if frenzied rage is what the job calls for.
Tee hee
Nov 19th, 2016 5:58 pm | By Ophelia BensonOh look, Milo Yiannopoulos being oh so amusingly “provocative” at Breitbart a few weeks ago – women should have stayed home hawhaw, they were better off there hawhawhaw, having babies is all they’re good for hahahaha.
Feminist propaganda shoved in the faces of previously-content housewives told ladies they would be less happy if they weren’t working a gruelling job like their husbands were. This sort of thinking was designed to make women feel strong and empowered. But the fact is, women have become far more unhappy in the last 35 years.
…
The role of the housewife has been thoroughly and ritually humiliated by successive waves of feminism — as if raising well-adjusted children, keeping a beautiful home and marrying a loving husband is worthy of derision and ridicule. In fact, it’s one of the most important things a woman can do with her life and may be one of the only things women can actually do better than men.
No offense! I mean, sure, if men could bear children we’d have the process streamlined and pain-free by now, but for now, women are the only gender capable of bringing another life into existence. That is a genuinely beautiful thing that should be respected and celebrated, not looked down upon by menopausal, droopy-eyed office drones who spend their nights at home with a wine bottle, wondering where the stench of cat piss is coming from. (It’s coming from them.)
Isn’t he a card? I just love people who say vicious shit on purpose to annoy the people they say it about, don’t you? They’re such fun. Their hair may look like the icing on a party cake, but they’re fun fun fun.
Birth control makes you fat, and as we all know being fat is disgusting and should never be allowed in a civilised society. A 2009 study from the University of Texas found that women using DMPA gain an average of 11 pounds over three years, a 3-4 per cent increase. Ladies: are you really so desperate to get laid that you’d willingly fatten yourself up like a prize-winning sow?
Healthy, fertile women seek out men who are genetically different to them. Women on the Pill do the opposite, seeking out men who are closer to their own tribe. This perhaps is an explanation for the rise of feminized males, so desperate to get laid that they mimic the behaviour and mannerisms of women.
Now at the heart of the executive branch of the US government. Such drollery.
Step right up, rent a bed in Trump’s new hotel, Ambassador
Nov 19th, 2016 5:21 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is completely astounding.
Friday evening, the Washington Post reported that about 100 foreign diplomats gathered at President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC to “to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.” The tour included a look at the hotel’s $20,000 a night “town house” suite. The Post also quoted some of the diplomats saying they intended to stay at the hotel in order to ingratiate themselves to the incoming president.
ARE YOU SERIOUS???
He is marketing his new hotel to foreign diplomats?
I’m out of swears, out of facial expressions, out of anything that can express my disgust.
“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’” said one diplomat from an Asian nation. “Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’”
No. No no no no no. No no no. What’s rude, and corrupt beyond belief, is for a new president to flog his new hotel to visiting diplomats.
The incoming president, in other words, is actively soliciting business from agents of foreign governments. Many of these agents, in turn, said that they will accept the president-elect’s offer to do business because they want to win favor with the new leader of the United States.
There’s a word for that. The word is “bribery.” Can you say “bribery”? I thought you could.
Trump should set up a catering business in the White House kitchen and make all visitors pay him for their meals. That would be dignified.
Read, my child
Nov 19th, 2016 4:52 pm | By Ophelia BensonJohn Lewis won a National Book Award on Wednesday.
Watch him accept it.
He’s trying to project strength
Nov 19th, 2016 4:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe Times does a story on Trump’s temper tantrum about the “Hamilton” rebellion.
The clash between the “Hamilton” actors and Mr. Trump captured the sharply divergent feelings of many American voters 11 days after the election: a showdown between the values of multiculturalism on the left, including the racially diverse “Hamilton” cast and the world of entertainment, and the conservative principles of the incoming Trump administration, which was backed strongly by working-class white voters and traditional Republicans.
Actually no. It’s not “the conservative principles” that have so many of us fighting back. It’s the noisy racism, the venom, the bullying, the sneering, the insults. It’s the calling a senator “Pocahontas” and the many years as a birther and the refusal to acknowledge that the Central Park 5 were innocent. It’s shit like that. It’s the open racism. That’s not any kind of principle, including conservative. Many conservatives are also racists, yes, but that doesn’t make racism a principle. I think the cast was appealing to Pence to get Trump to be less horrible.
His maneuver, in two posts to Twitter on Saturday morning, stunned the cast members and, judging by social media, jolted many Americans who are worried about the President-elect’s tolerance for dissent after a campaign in which he was criticized for inflaming racial tensions.
I’m not worried about Trump’s total lack of tolerance for dissent. That’s one thing I think he has no power to put into practice. He can’t make us shut up. Ironically, making himself president means anyone can say almost anything about him with impunity, since he’s about as public a figure as we can have in this country. The idea of suing us for libel is laughable. I’m disgusted by his intolerance of dissent, but not worried about it.
The values and politics championed by the cast are in sharp relief to remarks and actions by Mr. Trump, who has called for deporting undocumented immigrants, declined to forcefully denounce expressions of bigotry among his allies, and so far has appointed only white men to major cabinet positions. He has also pledged to change libel laws and sue news media organizations whose coverage he does not like, and has demonized street protesters who have criticized him.
He can pledge until his comb-over flies upward, but it won’t do him any good. He can’t change the libel laws, and if he sues media organizations he will lose bigly.
Mr. Trump lashed out at the show, the most acclaimed Broadway production in years, at a time of demonstrations against his coming presidency. Those include frequent street protests outside Trump Tower along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which is less than a mile from the theater showing “Hamilton.” The president-elect has both castigated the protesters and, after being chided for those remarks, praised them for their passion. Advisers, however, say he has been frustrated by the suspicion and hostility that the demonstrators and other Americans continue to hold about his election.
Good. Good good good. I want him to be frustrated. I want him to be miserable with it. Yes, I’m that vindictive.
Some Republican strategists said they were not surprised that Mr. Trump chose to attack “Hamilton,” noting that the president-elect believed deeply in trying to project strength in the face of any kind of opposition.
That is to say, noting that the president-elect is a bully and an asshole.
“Even though many are unhappy with his election and might show disrespect, his victory is legitimate and he will demand respect for his presidency and those that he chose to serve with him,” said Ed Rollins, a veteran adviser to Ronald Reagan and many other Republicans. “This is how he will govern with strength.”
He can demand all he likes, but we don’t have to obey him. That’s not how this works. He’s not god, he’s not The King, he’s not an absolute dictator, and he can’t make us submit to him. I’m not going to respect his presidency. He attained it by relentlessly lying, just for one thing – why should I respect the outcome?
Nope. He’s going to wreck the country, but he can’t make us shut up. Get used to it, Donnie from Queens.
The Voting Rights Act
Nov 19th, 2016 12:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonAri Berman points out in a Times op-ed that the Trump Supreme Court appointments will very likely kill the Voting Rights Act.
The ruling in Shelby was bad enough. What was the result of Shelby?
Fourteen states had new voting restrictions in effect in 2016, including strict voter ID laws, fewer opportunities for early voting and reductions in the number of polling places. These restrictions depressed turnout in key states like Wisconsin, particularly among black voters.
Now it will get much worse.
A grave danger comes from the Supreme Court. If Donald J. Trump appoints a justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia to fill the current vacancy, as he has pledged to do, there could be five votes to further gut the Voting Rights Act. Conservatives will target Section 2 of the law, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race or color. (This provision was successfully used to challenge voting restrictions in North Carolina and Texas this year.)
When the current chief justice of the Supreme Court, John G. Roberts Jr., was a lawyer in the Justice Department in the early 1980s, he led a charge against Section 2. He argued in a 1981 memo that the provision should block only those voting laws that were found to be intentionally discriminatory. This was a much higher standard (and in practice, much more difficult to establish) than showing that a voting law had a discriminatory outcome. “Violations of Section 2 should not be made too easy to prove,” Mr. Roberts wrote. If the Supreme Court were to adopt Mr. Roberts’s 1981 position today, the country’s most important civil rights law would be effectively dead.
We would go back to pre-1964. That would be horrific.
Mr. Trump’s Justice Department will also present a severe threat to voting rights. It could choose not to vigorously enforce the Voting Rights Act, instead pressing states to take more aggressive action to combat alleged voter fraud. This could include purging voter rolls and starting investigations into voter-registration organizations. As a United States attorney in the 1980s, Jeff Sessions, Mr. Trump’s choice for attorney general, charged black civil rights activists in Alabama with voter fraud. (They were acquitted.) He has called the Voting Rights Act “a piece of intrusive legislation,” and supported the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision, saying “if you go to Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, people aren’t being denied the vote because of the color of their skin.”
Things will be bad in the states, too. And then there’s Congress.
Republicans in Congress could also jump into the fray. Senator Ted Cruz has introduced legislation to require proof of citizenship such as a passport or a birth certificate to vote in federal elections. Mandating a government-issued photo ID for federal elections — which disproportionately burdens low-income voters and minorities — is another top conservative priority. Kevin D. Williamson of National Review has called on Congress to repeal the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which allows voters to register at the Department of Motor Vehicles and other public agencies.
…
The Voting Rights Act once enjoyed bipartisan support, but that consensus has collapsed. Recent elections illustrate that when more people vote, Democrats tend to do better, which is why Republicans want to restrict access to the ballot. After this year, the party that claimed the election was rigged will be the one doing the real rigging.
People who know Trump say he’s a lifelong jerk so why stop now?
Nov 19th, 2016 11:45 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Times reports on how President Pussygrabber is adjusting to his new job. The first sentence is not a confidence-builder.
Donald J. Trump sits high in Trump Tower in New York, spending hours on the phone with friends, television personalities and donors to ask if they know people to recommend for his cabinet.
Very deadpan. ARE YOU SERIOUS? The man is asking tv personalities to recommend people for the cabinet???
Jesus h fucking christ.
He does a transition meeting early but then he goes back to his morning routine of reading the NY Times and Post and watching “Morning Joe” on the television machine.
He gets angry when members of his inner circle get too much of the spotlight, as Rudolph W. Giuliani did when headlines about his millions of dollars in speaking fees appeared as the former New York mayor was publicly promoting himself to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of state.
And Mr. Trump has happily resumed control of his Twitter feed, using it to bash targets in the news media and criticize the cast of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” for imploring Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was in the audience Friday night, to govern on behalf of all Americans.
Because that’s what presidents do – they ask random people if they know anyone to appoint to the cabinet, and tweet their fury when anyone dares to talk back.
As a parade of job seekers, TV talking heads and statesmen like Henry Kissinger paraded through the lobby of Trump Tower this past week, Mr. Trump ran his presidential transition from his triplex on the 58th floor much the way he ran his campaign and his business before that — schmoozing, rewarding loyalty, fomenting infighting among advisers and moving confidently forward through a series of fits and starts.
Great last item – so Trump – confidently jerking back and forth like a wind-up toy.
President Obama, who met with Mr. Trump two days after the election, has held out hope that the gravity of the presidency will change the former reality show star. But people close to the 70-year-old president-elect say that he has such long-held habits formed by fame, wealth and the freedom to have done whatever he wanted that they remain skeptical, at least for now, that he will transform to fit the constraints of the White House.
Well quite. Also, add to “fame, wealth and the freedom to have done whatever he wanted” stupidity and obstinacy and shallowness. His lacks are not only contingent, not only the product of money and tv stardom – they’re also part of his character. He’s a bad human being who has never been forced or persuaded or inspired to learn to be a better one.
People close to Mr. Trump nonetheless say he is more focused now than he was in the first few days after his surprise victory. He was nervous and jolted, they said, by the 90-minute Oval Office meeting with Mr. Obama, and for the first time appeared to take in the enormousness of the job.
That’s a perfect example of how shallow and stupid he is. What kind of lox runs for the presidency without ever bothering to find out what it entails??
He is proud, they say, that he has so rapidly named people for his cabinet and senior staff…
Jesus. Is he proud when he pees in the toilet? Is he proud when he eats all his din-din?
There were initial reports from senior officials within Mr. Trump’s orbit that Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporter in the campaign’s final weeks, was the leading candidate for secretary of state. But the headlines about Mr. Giuliani’s business interests bothered Mr. Trump, who was urged by several business leaders and some media hosts to reconsider the option. Suddenly, he arranged a Saturday meeting with one of his fiercest critics, Mitt Romney, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.
And you know why he’s interested in Romney? It’s because he looks the part. He looks like an actor who could play a Secretary of State on the television machine.
Transition officials say the meeting with Mr. Romney, a moderate Republican who was the party’s nominee for president in 2012, may not have been simply for show. They say that Mr. Trump believes that Mr. Romney, with his patrician bearing, looks the part of a top diplomat right out of “central casting” — the same phrase Mr. Trump used to describe Mike Pence before choosing him as his running mate.
(So does Trump ever worry about his own explosion-in-a-pimp-factory appearance?)
Yet Mr. Trump loves the tension and drama of a selection process, and has sought to stoke it. A senior adviser described the meeting, in part, as Mr. Romney simply coming to pay his respects to the president-elect and “kiss his ring.”
Yeah. This is why we have to refuse the normalization. We have to refuse to kiss his ring. We have to refuse his Twitter orders to apologize and shut up. We have to keep pointing out, as with the underdressed emperor, how fucking naked he really is.
He doesn’t like it when people do that, or even edge too close to doing it.
Mr. Trump was angered when Mr. Christie did not defend him after 11-year-old audio emerged of the candidate boasting about committing sexual assaults.
Yeah. Christie should have been out there saying how admirable and presidential it is to go around bragging about grabbing women by the pussy.
Showmanship remains central to Mr. Trump, who on Thursday held his first meeting as president-elect with a foreign leader, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. The setting was Mr. Trump’s marble and gold, Louis XIV-style residence on the 58th floor, with sweeping views of New York and Central Park. Mr. Trump, with General Flynn at his side, sat next to Mr. Abe under an enormous crystal chandelier as Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, looked on.
The vulgarity of the setting was striking. I have no doubt it all cost billions, but that doesn’t make it not vulgar.
He is worried, his aides say, that he will not be able to keep his Android phone once he gets to the White House and wonders aloud how isolated he will become — and whether he will be able to keep in touch with his friends — without it as president. He continues to discuss with the Secret Service how much he can return on weekends to Trump Tower, and still expects to use the Bedminister golf club and his private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., as vacation retreats.
Again – he should have taken all this on board before deciding to campaign for the presidency.
A surprisingly sharp rebuke from Mr. Trump
Nov 19th, 2016 10:50 am | By Ophelia BensonWhat happened at last night’s performance of “Hamilton.”
With Vice President-elect Mike Pence attending the show, the cast used the opportunity to make a statement emphasizing the need for the new administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, a Republican, to work on behalf of all Americans.
It was a deeply felt and altogether rare appeal from the stage of a Broadway show — and it drew a surprisingly sharp rebuke from Mr. Trump on Saturday morning. The president-elect tweeted that the “Hamilton” cast had “harassed” Mr. Pence by making the statement and had been “very rude.”
“Apologize!” Mr. Trump wrote at the end of one of two tweets on the matter.
“Surprisingly” sharp? Hardly. “Surprisingly” compared to what one would expect of an adult, reasonable, civic-minded president-elect, but not “surprisingly” at all from the belligerent sadistic narcissistic bully that is Trump. Trump considers his own rudeness the very best rudeness, and rudeness directed at him or his an offense against the universe.
As the play ended, the actor who played Aaron Burr, Brandon Victor Dixon, acknowledged that Mr. Pence was in the audience, thanked him for attending and added, “We hope you will hear us out.”
“We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” he said. “We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”
The audience applauded and cheered. Pence was already in the hall but stopped to listen.
The statement that Mr. Dixon read was written by the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, its director, Thomas Kail, and the lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, with input from cast members, Mr. Seller said.
“We had to ask ourselves, how do we cope with this?” Mr. Seller said. “Our cast could barely go on stage the day after the election. The election was painful and crushing to all of us here. We all struggled with what was the appropriate and respectful and proper response. We are honored that Mr. Pence attended the show, and we had to use this opportunity to express our feelings.”
Mr. Seller said that there was some discussion about whether it was appropriate to inject a political statement into the night, and that those involved decided to wait until the end of the performance. He said no cast members had skipped the performance to protest Mr. Pence’s appearance.
In normal circumstances I think I would probably consider it inappropriate, if only because we don’t want political speeches from all sides at the end of every play…but probably more because it would look like self-righteous preening, as things like that so often do. But these circumstances? Not normal.
Trump objects to all this outrageous rudeness
Nov 19th, 2016 10:04 am | By Ophelia BensonTwitter Trump tweets again.
Will be working all weekend in choosing the great men and women who will be helping to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2016
He thinks it’s noteworthy that he will be working all weekend. Dude. That’s the job. It’s the job he signed up for, it’s the job he trampled all over people to get, yet he’s bragging/complaining about working over the weekend.
Then he tells us how happy he is that he succeeded in cheating people out of as much as $35k with his laughable fake “university” with only a token payout to settle the lawsuit.
I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016
The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U. Too bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016
The cheating fraud gets away with it again – and he’s president! Is this a great country or what?
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016
The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016
Trump complaining about people being rude. Trump complaining about people being rude. The mind reels.
Also, of course, Trump demanding a safe place…the jokes write themselves.
Milo agrees he does like offending people
Nov 18th, 2016 5:52 pm | By Ophelia BensonChannel 4 News (the UK one):
This is the moment Milo Yiannopoulos is challenged on Breitbart’s headlines and so-called “post-fact era.”
The news outlet’s former chairman Steve Bannon has been appointed as Donald Trump’s chief strategist – and there’s speculation that Yiannopoulos himself could find his own way into the White House.
Go there to see their excerpt, or here is the full interview:
He says himself he’s a troll:
You know perfectly well that it is a provocation designed to make people think and perhaps to make them laugh.
In other words, trolling.
At about 4:40 he’s even more explicit:
I do like offending people. I think that the grievance brigade, victimhood, you know the idea that hurt feelings are some kind of special currency, I think that’s come to an end, and America agrees.
It’s classic bully-speak, that. People are hurt by insults, therefore it’s important to insult them incessantly so that they will stop objecting to being insulted. People are hurt by insults, therefore it’s important to insult them incessantly to make them shut up and go away and let you run the show.
It’s wrong. It’s evil, and wrong. Sure, ideally, it’s useful for people to be tough and resilient – but those aren’t actual virtues or good qualities. They’re just useful. Yes people who melt down over every tiny thing are maddening, and should learn to do better. But people not liking to be insulted? There’s nothing unreasonable about that, and it’s revolting to watch smug Yiannopoulos boasting of doing it on purpose because he likes offending people.
But no doubt Trump will make him Labor Secretary or something.
