Tag: Trump

Tom Gjelten at NPR notes that Trump’s choice of god-botherers for his inauguration shows what his values are.

Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, who leads Great Faith Ministries in Detroit, played a key role during the presidential campaign by inviting candidate Trump to visit his church. For Trump, it was a rare appearance before a black congregation.

Jackson is rich.

Jackson lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion in Detroit and drives luxury cars. He preaches that being rich is not bad and that Trump’s wealth shows he is “blessed by God.”

Such teachings exemplify the “prosperity gospel,” which holds that God rewards faithful Christians with financial success. It is a faith tradition with which Trump long has been associated. His “spiritual adviser” is Paula White, who as the leader of New Destiny Christian Center near Orlando, Fla., is perhaps the best known prosperity preacher in the country.

“Every day you’re [living] your destiny, designed by God and discovered by you,” White said in a recent sermon. “You’re either in a position of abundance, you’re in a position of prosperity, or you’re in a position of poverty. Now that’s in every area of your life. … You’re living abundant in your affairs of life — and that includes your financial conditions — or you’re living in poverty.”

Ah. So rich people are good people, and rewarded by Mr God, and poor people are bad and punished. That’s a convenient doctrine. No wonder Trump and his friends want to repeal the Affordable Care Act – if you can’t afford health insurance it’s because you’re a bad person and Mr God is punishing you. The money squandered on subsidizing health insurance for poor people should obviously all go to rich people, to reward them more.

The least surprising prayer leader choice is Cardinal Dolan. Most U.S. presidents in recent years have asked a prominent Catholic bishop or theologian to pray at their inaugurations, and as fellow New Yorkers, Dolan and Trump have known each other for a long time.

No doubt. The fact remains, however, that Dolan is a very bad man. He’s the guy who moved those funds when he was archbishop of Milwaukee so that they wouldn’t be available to pay victims of priestly abuse who won law suits.

A classicist, Andrew James Sillett, explains on Twitter a possible (indeed highly likely) Trump’s shamelessness.

Seeing a few tweets in which folk are debating whether Trump “has no shame” or whether he acts as he does because he feels shame intensely.

Worth noting, I think, that the Romans had 2 words that we translate as ‘shame’; the difference between them somewhat resolves the paradox.

The two words are Pudor and Verecundia. They both describe that combination of regret and sorrow one feels when doing something shameful.

The difference between them is simple: pudor is inward-facing, and verecundia is outward-facing.

And there you go. Trump has none of the inward-facing kind, but a heightened version of the outward-facing.

There are extra steps after that, I think, to do with how his complete lack of pudor translates to having very limited (yet heightened) verecundia. We can’t make him feel shame for being a lying corrupt pussy-grabbing bully because he has such a massively high opinion of himself that it insulates him from believing those charges, and/or because he’s such a moral wasteland that he doesn’t agree they’re bad things to be – yet some charges do hit home, and we know that because they cause him to erupt.

Elizabeth Warren asks Ben Carson if he can assure us that no money spent on HUD projects will go into Trump’s pockets…and after he tap dances for awhile, explains why he can’t: it’s because no one can, and that’s because no one knows what Trump’s holdings are except Trump, so we simply have no way to tell whether or not Project X has any connection to President Monster.

Guest post by Stewart of Gnu Atheism.

It would be foolish to attempt to lay down the law about what is true regarding the Trump dossier attributed to Christopher Steele, who is reported to be in hiding. Nonetheless, one ought to exercise one’s critical faculties (and that is intended to mean one’s own critical faculties, not those belonging to any third party) in examining the evidence either jostling or not jostling for our attention.

Firstly, it seems that the media so disdained by Trump is racing, at breakneck speed, to normalise him and the story of Steele and the dossier is already being pushed down almost out of sight among other headlines regarding Trump and his incoming administration. It would seem there are enormous pressures pulling both ways in terms of how much to rock the boat before the inauguration, i.e. many are trying not to grapple at all with the question of whether a derailing of the inauguration is a possibility. From the moment he is inaugurated, Trump will be able to use excecutive powers to influence what is and is not said about him for public consumption; it only looks so uncomfortable for him right now because he is still a few days away from possessing them. He knows exactly what he means when he tweets about the intelligence agencies having “one last shot” at him; they are about to come under his thumb.

Nobody can read everything being written and doing so would not help much; discernment is required. Perhaps a brief comparison of one serious pro and one serious con piece could help highlight certain salient points.

Seth Abramson’s HuffPo piece is not above criticism. To start at the beginning, his assertion that the BBC is the gold standard in international journalism is still a subjective one – it’s more or less an argument from authority. Abramson, the BBC and all the sources used by both still have the potential to be flawed. Two points stand out here, though. One is Steele’s flight. If true, it does not lend weight to the idea that the dossier is some frivolous concoction. And nobody seems to be disputing a previous connection of Steele’s to Litvinenko. The other is the analysis of how Trump has been behaving. To take, for a moment, a tack quite different to Abramson’s dissection based on legal experience, why does Trump even bother rebutting these allegations? Didn’t he say he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue without losing votes? Why doesn’t he just say “Hell, I did it all – don’t you just love me for it?” Trump’s alarmingly radical switch of attitudes ought to be telling us something. After all, it’s not as if he’s suddenly become presidential. We’ve seen that he hasn’t and it really is faintly amusing to see the man who made the whole world look up the word “schlonging” get tough with CNN and threaten “Don’t be rude!”

While there’s a limited amount one can do to back up Abramson’s point of view, dismissing Paul Roderick Gregory’s take in the opposite direction in Forbes is actually pretty easy. Note, at the outset, that Gregory takes care most elaborately to credential himself; you can smell an argument from authority coming. But one doesn’t even have to get very far before closing the book on Gregory. He probably assumes, quite correctly, that most of his readers either cannot or will not do their own research, so he dares to write: “This story makes no sense. In 2011, when the courtship purportedly begins, Trump was a TV personality and beauty pageant impresario. Neither in the US or Russia would anyone of authority anticipate that Trump would one day become the presidential candidate of a major US political party, making him the target of Russian intelligence.” As far back as 1987, The New York Times had written that Trump was seriously considering a presidential run and variations of the story have been circulating ever since. So even back then, before Communism had even fallen, the Russians could know that Trump had both presidential ambitions and the money to indulge his whim. Here is a case with only two possibilities: Gregory either knows this and hopes his readers don’t, or he doesn’t know it, in which case, bye-bye argument from authority.

Richard Wolffe has a few observations on Trump’s appalling press conference.

Donald Trump is not what he seems. The supposed master of media manipulation stumbled so often at his first press conference, it is hard to recall why anyone thought the TV star was good at this stuff in the first place.

That one doesn’t make me wince with embarrassment, because I never did think Trump was good at this stuff. I didn’t think about him at all until a few months ago, and when I started I certainly never thought he was good at anything.

Judging from Wednesday’s trainwreck press conference – the first since July – Trump and his handlers have no self-discipline and no strategy to deal with the Russian crisis that has been simmering for the best part of the past year.

If his handlers had any of that kind of thing they wouldn’t be his handlers. Nobody with any sense would have anything to do with him.

They also have no sense of irony or, apparently, reality. The press conference opened with Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary, condemning the media coverage of Trump’s compromised relationship with Russia as “frankly outrageous and highly irresponsible”.

It seems churlish to have to recall this tweet from Trump in the closing phase of the recent election: “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a US citizen so she could use her in the debate?”

Ah yes, that. It may be churlish but I’m glad he did recall it, because I hadn’t. He called a powerless woman “disgusting” and cited a “sex tape” that never existed – he made that up out of whole cloth. He’s an evil man.

Without any sense of shame or patriotism, the president-elect celebrated the Russian hacking of the DNC and all those leaked emails. He even bragged about his closeness to the Russian president before claiming – somehow – that Hillary Clinton was the real poodle.

“If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what folks, that is called an asset, not a liability,” Trump said. “Do you honestly believe that Hillary would be tougher on Putin than me? Give me a break.”

Yes, Mr President-elect. The intelligence reports are indeed calling you an asset in the context of Russia. You may keep using that word but, as in the Princess Bride, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Trump will never learn from his mistakes. Suspecting the recent Russia revelations are the work of the intelligence agencies, Trump continues to wage war on his own spies. He could offer no proof of such a betrayal but continued to trash the CIA in public all the same.

This kind of struggle does not end well for sitting presidents, as Richard Nixon discovered. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s biggest source, known as Deep Throat, was in fact the deputy director of the FBI.

That’s a genuinely comforting thought.

Trump provided his own cheering crowd for the press conference.

When Donald Trump gathered the press at Trump Tower 20 months ago to announce his unlikely candidacy for president, he reportedly paid actors to fill the marble lobby and cheer.

I wonder if he has a recording of people cheering him that plays while he sleeps. Poor guy – he’s so needy.

On Wednesday morning, when the president-elect once again faced hundreds of reporters from around the globe gathered in his lobby — this time for his first press conference in seven months — Trump filled the room with paid staffers who clapped and cheered as he blasted members of the media as purveyors of “fake news.”

…

The Greek chorus of loyal, paid staffers in the back of the room boosting Trump with their hoots and cheers also served as a reminder, of sorts, of the movement of Trump backers happy to take him at his word and jeer the media as the out-of-touch liars.

I guess he doesn’t even realize how desperate that shows him to be?

Sprezzatura’s not his thing.

“Fake news” became the running theme of the hour-long press conference, which peaked with Trump refusing to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta and yelling at him, “I’m not going to give you a question. You’re fake news.” CNN broke the story on Tuesday about the intelligence briefings, which implied Russia could potentially be in a position to blackmail Trump.

Twitter gasped, but his Greek chorus cheered.

“Do you honestly believe that Hillary Clinton would be tougher on Putin than me?” Trump asked at another point. Some staffers in the room responded to the rhetorical question, yelling out, “No!”

And they cheered again when Trump jeered sarcastically at a reporter who asked if he planned to release his tax returns. “Oh gee,” the president-elect said, employing a verbal eye roll, “I’ve never heard that before. The only ones who care about my tax returns are the reporters. I became president.”

But you’ll always be Donnie from Queens.

From the Washington Post yesterday:

Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., urged Congress in a letter to block the 1986 nomination of Jeff Sessions for federal judge, saying that allowing him to join the federal bench would “irreparably damage the work of my husband.” The letter, previously unavailable publicly, was obtained on Tuesday by The Washington Post.

“Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts,” King wrote in the cover page of her nine-page letter opposing Sessions’s nomination, which failed. “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.”

…

In the letter, King writes that Sessions’s ascension to the federal bench “simply cannot be allowed to happen,” arguing that as a U.S. attorney, the Alabama lawmaker pursued “politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions” and that he “lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge.” She said Sessions’s conduct in prosecuting civil rights leaders in a voting-fraud case “raises serious questions about his commitment to the protection of the voting rights of all American citizens.”

“The irony of Mr. Sessions’ nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods,” she wrote, later adding, “I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have made toward fulfilling my husband’s dream.”

The Post has whole letter, which you can read there.

During the 1986 hearing, the letter and King’s opposition became a crucial part of the argument against Sessions’s confirmation.

BuzzFeed News first reported the existence of the letter earlier Tuesday, noting that it was never entered into the congressional record by then-Judiciary Committee Chair Strom Thurmond.

This is the guy Trump chose for Attorney General. I suppose it’s payback for that lawsuit against Trump senior for racial discrimination in his apartment buildings. Welcome to the Racist Administration of the 45th president.

Trump the birther called CNN “fake news” and refused to take a question from the CNN reporter but then took one from Breitbart – yes Breitbart, that haven of non-fake genyoowine news. (What was Breitbart even doing there?)

One of the stranger moments in Wednesday’s deeply strange Donald Trump press conference came when the president-elect got into a shouting match with CNN’s Jim Acosta, who was trying to ask him a question.

Earlier in the presser — his first one since July — Trump had attacked CNN for disseminating “fake news” because it broke the story that both the sitting president and the president-elect had been briefed on allegations that Russia has “compromising personal and financial information” regarding Trump.

“Since you’re attacking us, can you give us a question?” Acosta asked during a Q&A portion of the presser. Trump replied, “Not you, not you, your organization is terrible.”

“I am not going to give you a question,” the president-elect said. “You are fake news.”

Trump is a peddler of fake news, and a fake president, a fake business success, a fake everything.

Shortly after he successfully shouted down Acosta, Trump took a question from Breitbart News — a website closely associated with the white nationalist “alt-right,” and an avid promulgator of misleading or inaccurate information that supports hard-right beliefs. Trump’s top adviser, Steve Bannon, is the former chairman of Breitbart.

Here’s the question Trump took from Breitbart: “[With] all the problems that we’ve seen throughout the media over the course of the election, what reforms do you recommend for this industry here?”

Shut it all down except for Fox and Breitbart?

The Atlantic has the best summary of the press conference I’ve seen.

Trump insisted, despite copious reporting to the contrary as well as his own son’s statements, that he did not and never had business dealings in Russia. When a reporter asked him if he would release his taxes to prove that, he once again demurred, claiming they are under audit. (He has not proven that claim, the IRS says there’s nothing to prevent him from releasing taxes that are under audit.) Yet he also seemed to suggest that having won the election, he no longer had any incentive to release the returns. “The only ones that care about my tax returns are the reporters,” he said. “I mean, I won! I became president!” (A recent Pew poll found that 60 percent of Americans would like Trump to make the documents public.)

The way I read that “I won!” exclamation was not “therefore no incentive” but “Nobody cares, I won, haha, so I don’t have to and you can’t make me, neener neener.”

Also, of course, it’s bullshit. It’s not only reporters who think he should release his tax returns.

The details of Trump’s plan to solve his conflicts of interest remain to be explored and parsed, though he made several peculiar comments during the press conference. He asserted, dubiously, that he has very little debt. He claimed to have been offered a $2 billion deal in Dubai over the weekend, but he said he’d turned it down—even though, he said, he had no obligation to do so. “I could actually run my business and run the government at the same time,” Trump said. He added, “I have a no-conflict situation because I’m president.” That’s an outrageous statement. While not all conflicts-of-interest laws apply to the president, the lack of legal constraints does not mean conflicts of interest cannot exist.

Outrageous, grandiose, entitled, narcissistic, corrupt – that statement is awful in so many ways.

Yet as much as the event was a chance for the press to address Trump, it was also a forum for Trump to address—and dress down—the press. The first speaker was incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who called the publication of the dossier “frankly shameful and disgraceful.” Next up was Mike Pence, who scolded reporters that “with freedom comes responsibility.” When Trump himself arrived at the lectern, he, too, attacked reporters.

If it’s responsibility Pence wants, he shouldn’t have accepted the VP slot. His boss isn’t into responsibility except when it’s other people who should be more responsible.

Trump has issued a public statement disputing the claims in yesterday’s news with his usual dignity and taste, as well as his usual epistemic caution. He chose Twitter as the best venue for this well-reasoned official statement.

Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is "A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE." Very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017

Russia just said it’s not true, Donnie tells us. Ah well then – case closed. There is no possible way Russia could be lying about it, so we have no choice but to take their word for it and move on.

Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017

Donnie has NOTHING TO DO with Russia, he tells us. In all caps, he tells us. Ah well then – there’s no more to be said. Obviously he would never lie about it. Obviously he has shown himself to be scrupulously honest at all times and on all subjects. Obviously he has no reason to lie about this. Obviously we should believe him and forget all about this naughty story.

I win an election easily, a great "movement" is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017

To drop the sarcasm now – “FAKE NEWS” – this terrible man has the gall to talk about fake news. He was a “birther” for years. There’s some FAKE NEWS if you like. He spent years spreading the FAKE NEWS that Obama wasn’t born in the US. He’s a bad malevolent lying piece of shit, and he has no standing to accuse anyone else of “fake news.”

Er. This seems explosive. CNN:

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.

Gee…so maybe it wasn’t a good idea after all to elect him even though he never released his tax returns? Maybe all that stuff we don’t know about him because he hid it from us while lying about his reason for hiding it…actually matters? Maybe the fact that he was hiding so much should have been a giant red flag? Just spitballing here.

One reason the nation’s intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.

These senior intelligence officials also included the synopsis to demonstrate that Russia had compiled information potentially harmful to both political parties, but only released information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Democrats. This synopsis was not an official part of the report from the intelligence community case about Russian hacks, but some officials said it augmented the evidence that Moscow intended to harm Clinton’s candidacy and help Trump’s, several officials with knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

So that they could help get Trump elected and then control him because of what they know about him. What an awesome arrangement. How clever of us to let it happen.

The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

What???????????

Sources tell CNN that these same allegations about communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians, mentioned in classified briefings for congressional leaders last year, prompted then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to send a letter to FBI Director Comey in October, in which he wrote, “It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States.”

CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs.
The Trump transition team declined repeated requests for comment.

They think they don’t have to be accountable to us. They think they can just tell us to fuck off. I hope they’re wrong.

Also…I wonder if Trump will make it to January 20th.