Tag: Trump

  • There might be some coal under there

    Demon Trump is going ahead with giving part of Bears Ears National Monument to industry to develop.

    U.S. President Donald Trump will shrink the size of two national monuments in Utah, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah said on Friday, a change that will open the areas to drilling and mining but which Democrats, environmental groups and Native Americans are vowing to fight.

    The two Utah sites, Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument are among several that U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended reducing in size in order to make way for more industrial activity on the land they occupy.

    Former President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears as a national monument during his final days in office.

    So naturally Trump is doing the opposite.

    Sadly for Trump, it won’t do any good – he’ll still be an ignorant hateful toad of a man, and Obama will still be better than he is in pretty much every way you can think of.

    Industry groups like the oil lobbying organization the American Petroleum Institute have said in the past that both monuments were unfairly designated and needed to be reviewed.

    Green groups and scientists condemned the move to reduce their size.

    “Despite demands from millions of Americans, Native American Tribes, elected officials across the nation, scientists and legal scholars, President Trump continues to move down a path that puts the future of America’s treasured lands at risk,” said Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society, in a statement on Friday. “Any efforts to take away protections for America’s lands and waters will be met by deep opposition and with the law on our side.”

    The Navajo Nation’s top lawyer said in September the tribe would sue the Trump administration for violating the Antiquities Act, a century-old law that protects sacred sites, cultural artifacts and other historical objects, if it tried to reduce the size of Bears Ears, which the Navajo consider sacred ground.

    In an email to Reuters on Friday, the lawyer, Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch, said: “The Navajo Nation stands ready to defend the Bears Ears National Monument. We have a complaint ready to file upon official action by the President.”

    Good luck to them.

  • A deadly singularity

    Charles Blow points out that the Republicans are caught in a rage spiral.

    Flake wasn’t only excoriating Trump, he was also excoriating his fellow elected officials, particularly Republicans, and the Republican Party, which finds itself caught in a perpetual rage spiral, in which no one but extremists are pure enough. The circle of inclusion is being drawn smaller and tighter around an electorally deadly singularity: White people who espouse Christianity, accept patriarchy and misogyny, and turn a blind eye to (or sometimes openly encourage) white supremacy.

    They also hate fags and furriners.

    I’m growing increasingly angry with Republican lawmakers expressing grave concerns about Trump in private and on background, but biting their tongues in public.

    It is no coincidence that the Republican legislators in Washington who have been most critical of Trump — Flake, Bob Corker and John McCain — are those who are definitely not seeking another term, or are unlikely to do so. Even George W. Bush criticized Trump (without saying his name), but he too has nothing to lose electorally.

    It’s easy to see why no one wants to give up the chance to be in Congress…except that it’s hard to see why all that isn’t ruined for them by the Buffoon in the White House.

    It is understandable for Trump to assume Republican senators adore him if, in public, they shower him with adoration. Three times, Trump has referred to getting a standing ovation at a lunch he had Tuesday with Republican senators.

    When you bend to lick a boot you relinquish the posture required to stand and tell the truth.

    Why did they do that? We know that at least some of them despise him, because Corker and others have told us so – so what did they do it for?

    What has happened is that the ground keeps lurching more rightward beneath Flake’s feet, toward fundamentalism and fanaticism. Indeed, Flake was a Tea Party darling who got scalped by Steve Bannon-ism.

    Trump-era Republicans have accepted depravity and vitriol as the price they’re willing to pay to have a person willing to fight the people and institutions they distrust and detest. Encouraging violence isn’t disqualifying. Defaming Mexicans and Muslims is not disqualifying. Bragging about sexual assault is not disqualifying. Being a pathological liar is not disqualifying. Coddling white supremacists is not disqualifying. Attacking Gold Star families is not disqualifying.

    None of it is disqualifying. To the contrary, it is supremely satisfying. the Moral Majority has become the iniquitous minority.

    It’s a spiral of iniquity.

  • Smith decided she had to speak out

    The Post offers us a history lesson today. Jeff Flake’s speech yesterday reminded Kevin Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton, of Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” address to the Senate on June 1, 1950.

    Like Flake, Smith (R-Maine) spoke to denounce a demagogue in her own party and to announce her refusal to stand quietly by as he did damage to the nation’s institutions. Smith’s target — unnamed in her speech, much as Trump was unnamed in Flake’s — was none other than the junior Republican senator from Wisconsin: Joseph R. McCarthy.

    A few months earlier, in February, McCarthy had set the political world on fire with his stunning accusation that there were 205 “known communists” working in the Truman State Department. Challenged on his charges, McCarthy repeatedly refused to offer any proof; indeed, in later versions of the speech, he even changed the alleged number several times over. But no matter. McCarthy’s charges made for spectacular headlines and, as he discovered, fame brought with it a rise in his political fortunes.

    Fame and lying. Very Trump. No wonder Roy Cohn was Trump’s mentor.

    For his Republican colleagues in the Senate, McCarthy posed a bit of a problem. The GOP had been wandering in the political wilderness for the previous two decades, cast away by voters who blamed them for the Great Depression and rallied to the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the New Deal and World War II. At long last, McCarthy had provided a popular cause that might let them tear down the Democrats and build themselves up instead.

    Some of them were delighted; others were unhappy about the evidence-free accusations.

    Though she was a freshman senator, and the only woman in a male-dominated body, Smith decided she had to speak out. (As she made her way to the chamber, she ran into McCarthy himself on the Senate subway. “Margaret, you look very serious,” he joked. “Are you going to make a speech?” “Yes,” she shot back, “and you will not like it!”)

    With McCarthy and their colleagues arrayed around her, Smith noted with sadness that the Senate had been “debased” in recent months by a new politics of “hate and character assassination.” “I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul-searching — for us to weigh our consciences — on the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America,” she announced.

    Smith was, as she noted in her remarks, a loyal Republican and a proud partisan, one who had criticized Democrats repeatedly in the past and would continue to do so in the future. But partisanship had its limits, she insisted: “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

    There’s also lying. McCarthy lied; Trump lies.

    Speaking out against McCarthyism was a patriotic duty for all good Republicans, Smith asserted, in part because McCarthy had presented his own actions as patriotic. “Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations,” she said, “are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought.”

    Those are also of course basic principles of liberalism, in the classic sense that Republicans can defend just as passionately as Democrats can. They are among the founding principles of the United States (with the tragic stipulation that they didn’t apply to slaves or Native Americans or, mostly, women), but they are also principles of many other countries now and of the UN at least on paper.

    The Senate was largely stunned by the speech. Most expected McCarthy to return the attack with his usual ferocity, but he glared at the back of Smith’s head for a while and then abruptly stormed out of the chamber. A few colleagues muttered comments of support, but the Republican leadership largely looked the other way.

    No Twitter then. No way for McCarthy to tell his millions of followers what a loser Smith was.

    Pundits like Lippmann and Baruch praised her speech, but it made no difference.

    But despite the widespread praise, Smith’s declaration did nothing to stop McCarthy. Publicly, the Wisconsin Republican continued to ignore her. When pressed, he responded, “I don’t fight with women senators.” Privately, McCarthy mocked Smith and her supporters as “Snow White and the Six Dwarfs.” One of the men who signed Smith’s Declaration, he joked, had been caught “speaking through a petticoat.” Within weeks, the debate over the Declaration of Conscience was swept aside by the outbreak of the Korean War. With a new Cold War crisis abroad, McCarthy and McCarthyism grew steadily stronger at home. Emboldened by his reelection that fall and the electoral success of his supporters, too, McCarthy finally had his revenge in 1951. He kicked Smith off the prized permanent investigations subcommittee he chaired, replacing her with a Republican rising star who shared his anti-communist commitments: Richard M. Nixon, then a senator from California.

    That worked out well.

    McCarthy was able to do a lot of damage from then on, until he made the beginner’s mistake of going after the Army; at that point the Senate finally censured him.

    Today, Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” stands as a piece of stirring rhetoric, but also a stark reminder that words can only do so much. It is not enough to speak out against threats to the nation, to give voice to one’s conscience. Convictions ultimately mean little, if there are no actions to match them.

    Flake’s words echo Smith’s, but they ultimately ring even more hollow. Though Flake has spoken out against Trump consistently, he has also regularly voted to support the president’s agenda on issues ranging from health care repeal to the budget to the Supreme Court. Indeed, only hours after his principled stand in the Senate, Flake fell back in line that same night, providing a crucial vote against a consumer protection measure that brought the Senate to a 50-50 tie, and a tiebreaker by Vice President Pence. For all his valiant words, he’s only given the president another victory.

    Oh yes?

    Yes. That’s for another post.

  • There are hundreds more

    It’s odd the way choice and liberty and autonomy and making one’s own decisions are usually core values for Republicans and conservatives. Of course those values are often in tension with other core Republican / conservative values that come from the goddy wing, like obedience and deference and respect for tradition / hierarchy / the sacred…but they are core values nevertheless.

    Or maybe they’re really core values only for men, while the goddy ones are more suited to women. Real Men™ make their own decisions while Real Women™ obey Real Men™ and clerics and Mr God.

    But even so, it’s a little odd for a political orientation that is so strongly libertarian, often at the expense of concern for the general welfare, to be so adamantly indifferent to such a complete violation of personal autonomy as forced pregnancy. Imagine being told that a state employee was going to inject you with a fetus that you were required to carry to term and then push painfully out. Major violation of human rights, no? But once the state employee with the needle is out of the picture, that becomes no longer clear.

    But it should be clear. We have to live in our bodies; we have no choice. Pregnancy is a major disruption of a body that someone lives in, so if she decides she doesn’t want to do that with her body, that should be decisive.

    Anyway. Jane Doe got her abortion at last.

    An undocumented teen in federal custody ended her pregnancy Wednesday morning less than a day after a judge’s order forced the government to allow the 17-year-old to be promptly transferred to an abortion facility.

    The announcement from the teenager’s attorneys puts an end to a case that raised difficult political questions and highlighted the Trump administration’s new policy of refusing to “facilitate” abortions for unaccompanied minors.

    The Trump administration’s evil new policy of torturing undocumented girls and women who need abortions.

    “Justice prevailed today for Jane Doe. But make no mistake about it, the administration’s efforts to interfere in women’s decisions won’t stop with Jane,” said Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project which represented the teen.

    The ACLU is continuing its broader challenge to the administration’s new policy on behalf of what the organization says are hundreds of undocumented pregnant teenagers in federal custody.

    The administration of President Pussygrabber who is accused of sexual assault by multiple women. He’s getting his revenge.

  • Unable to rise to the occasion

    If Corker thinks all this, is he talking impeachment? If not, why not?

    If they all think this, or if most of them think this, are they talking impeachment? If not, why not?

    Sen. Bob Corker said a lot of things about President Trumpon Tuesday morning. The Tennessee Republican warned that Trump’s itchy Twitter finger could set off another world war. He suggested Trump is a liar. He said Trump’s legacy will be “debasing” America. He said Trump is not a role model for children. He declined to say whether Trump should be trusted with the nuclear codes. He said Trump’s conduct is “very sad for our nation.” He said Trump has “proven himself unable to rise to the occasion.”

    …

    Later on — and perhaps most damningly — he said there were “multiple occasions where [White House] staff has asked me to please intervene; he was getting ready to do something that was really off the tracks.”

    This was always obvious. It’s a great pity Republicans didn’t do everything they could to prevent his election a year ago.

    The senator is describing Trump as an imminent threat to American government and American lives. He’s suggesting Trump is damaging American society. He says Trump isn’t only failing, but that he’s “unable to rise to the occasion.” He suggests Trump was ready to do crazy things before Corker intervened and put a stop to it. He’s basically arguing that Trump is derelict in his duties as president, or unfit for the office.

    So is he going to act on it? Probably not.

    This thing isn’t working.

  • The chief doesn’t just get up and run his mouth

    John McWhorter is hilarious.

    Brian Williams: He’s quick to remind us that he went to the best schools.

    John McWhorter: Umhm and he learned nothing in them.

  • Who is the real lightweight?

    I guess Trump was feeling bored this morning? I don’t know why else he would decide to pick another fight with a Republican senator in full public view.

    Corker fired back.

    The protracted Tuesday-morning brawl quickly spread from taxes and debt to foreign policy and the president’s fitness for office.

    Mr. Corker said Mr. Trump was “absolutely not” a role model for the children in America.

    “I don’t know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and is debasing our country,” Mr. Corker said in a CNN interview, suggesting that he will soon convene hearings to examine the ways Mr. Trump “purposely has been breaking down relationships around the world.”

    “It’s unfortunate that our nation finds itself in this place,” he added.

    It’s too bad Corker didn’t say all this a year ago.

    Another exciting morning at the Adult Day Care Center.

  • A substantial process

    The check was in the mail! It was in the mail, I tell you! Ok it was in the mail after the story broke in the Post, but all the same it was in the mail.

    The family of a slain US soldier has received their $25,000 personal check from President Donald Trump months after receiving a condolence call from Trump and being offered the money, according to an ABC11 reporteron Monday.

    A letter signed by Trump was also sent with condolences to Chris Baldridge, the father of Sgt. Dillon Baldridge, who was one of three US soldiers killed in Afghanistan when an Afghan police officer fired on them. The Taliban have since claimed responsibility.

    “I am glad my legal counsel has been able to finally approve this contribution to you,” the letter reportedly said.

    Oh, nice, a condolence letter complete with flagrant steaming lie. What a coincidence that his legal counsel finally approved the check minutes after the story broke in the news. How odd that his legal counsel has to approve a personal check for 25k but doesn’t have to approve the steady ongoing violation of the Emoluments Clause to name just one item.

    The check’s reported date, October 18, is the same date as that of a Washington Post report that first revealed Trump’s phone call to the Baldridges. Trump had reportedly offered $25,000 to the family and proposed to help establish an online fundraiser several weeks after Dillon’s death. The Post, however, said that as of the report’s publication, Trump had done neither.

    But surely the date is pure coincidence.

    After The Post’s report, a White House official said that there was a “substantial process that can involve multiple agencies any time the president interacts with the public, especially when transmitting personal funds” and that “the check has been in the pipeline since the president’s initial call with the father.”

    Do we believe that? No we do not, not for a second.

    The Baldridges expressed gratitude upon finally receiving the check.

    “I’m still speechless,” Dillon Baldridge’s mother, Jessie, told ABC11. “We are so moved and grateful, and we promise to use the money to honor Dillon’s legacy.”

    “We just thought he was saying something nice,” she continued. “We got a condolence letter from him (a few weeks later) and there was no check, and we kind of joked about it.”

    Oh yes, very nice, to say I’ll send you 25k and then not do it. Heart of gold, that guy has.

  • Trump almost immediately replied

    You know, if Trump actually intended his phone call to Myeshia Johnson to be consoling, as opposed to intending it as the performance of an irksome duty, then he would not now be brawling with her. He just wouldn’t. The intention to console or attempt to console or send a heartfelt message of intending to console would make subsequent brawling simply out of the question. Her grief would blot out his ego concerns, and that would be that.

    So from his behavior now we can conclude that he never meant any genuine sympathy or kindness by the call, and that he was simply ticking off another presidential task that he doesn’t relish.

    Chris Cillizza makes a similar point.

    As difficult as it is emotionally, it is just as simple politically speaking. You call — or write — expressing deepest sympathies and condolences. You offer any assistance you can. The end.
    Which makes what President Donald Trump has done — and is doing — with Myeshia Johnson (and Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson) all the more appalling.
    On Monday, in an interview with “Good Morning America,” Johnson, the widow of slain Sgt. La David Johnson, spoke for the first time in public about her phone call with Trump. She confirmed Wilson’s account that Trump had told her that her husband “knew what he was getting into” and added: “It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it. He couldn’t remember my husband’s name.”

    To which Trump almost immediately replied via Twitter: “I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!”

    It’s staggering to consider what Trump is doing here.

    After spending the weekend attacking Wilson for allegedly lying about the nature of the call between himself and Johnson — even though White House chief of staff John Kelly confirmed last week the basics of Wilson’s account of the words Trump used — the President is now suggesting that the widow of a soldier killed in action is lying.

    And why? Because his attention is all on himself, and not at all on Johnson.

    Here’s the thing: It is absolutely possible that, at root, this is all one big misunderstanding. Trump, awkward and unfamiliar with the empathy required to make this sort of call, came across as callous and uncaring to Johnson and Wilson in an entirely unintentional way. They were offended.

    At that point, Trump could have made much — maybe all — of this go away by simply calling Myeshia Johnson back and saying something along these lines: “I’m so sorry our previous call made you upset. I struggle with every death of an American soldier and I simply am not great all the time at conveying how much your loss means to me and the country.”

    Could have, but never would have in a million years. It’s not in him.

    Maybe we should all be sending him letters of condolence. “We’re so sorry – it must be a nightmare having no empathy for any other human beings at all. It must be so stifling and empty to be stuck with only your own ego for your whole life. We can’t imagine anything worse, ourselves.”

  • But if Harvey, why not Donald?

    It ruined Harvey Weinstein (for the moment at least) but it hasn’t ruined Trump. Why is that?

    As the aftershocks from Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct spread to other powerful men in Hollywood and media, a group of women for whom the allegations are “gross but familiar” are wondering if the fallout will reach an even more powerful man – the one in the White House.

    During the course of his presidential campaign, more than 10 women came forward with accusations that Donald Trump had touched or kissed them without consent – something he bragged about on the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape when he said stars like him could “grab them by the pussy”.

    A number of other women accused Trump of unwanted sexual advances. And like so many of the Weinstein stories to come out this month, their claims have remarkable consistency.

    And yet there he sits just the same – insulting women from his Top Platform while he’s at it.

    Three of them spoke with the Guardian after the allegations against Weinstein – who denies the claims against him – came to light, to revisit their accusations against Trump.

    Although they are glad women have spoken up against the Hollywood producer and feel the culture may finally change, they are worried the relative silence of men will continue to allow abusers to rise to power.

    They are Cathy Heller, who told the Guardian last year that in the late 1990s Trump forcibly kissed her on the lips the first time they had ever met; Kari Wells, a former model and Bravo Actress, who said Trump aggressively propositioned her in 1992 while he was dating her friend; and Jessica Leeds, who said Trump assaulted her on a plane in the early 1980s when he allegedly groped her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.

    They are just a fraction of the women who have said Trump attacked them.

    Trump has denied all allegations, at various points threatening to sue his accusers and calling their accounts “total fabrication” and “pure fiction”. He also suggested some of the accusers were not attractive enough for him to have assaulted them, saying of Leeds: “Believe me: She would not be my first choice. That I can tell you.”

    Of the ongoing legal case against him, he has said: “It’s totally fake news. It’s just fake. It’s fake. It’s made-up stuff, and it’s disgraceful.”

    But by now we have a long and detailed record of Trump brazenly lying, so his denials might as well be his used kleenex.

    For Leeds, one of the first women to come forward with her story last year, her frustration revolves around just how little effect the renewed attention on sexual assault seems to be having on the man occupying the White House.

    “Mr Trump was able to slough off the whole thing and that was very disappointing,” Leeds told the Guardian last week. “I think perhaps without the Weinstein stories I probably would have slipped more and more into the background.”

    The pussy tape should have destroyed his public career once and for all. Instead he was elected president. It’s a punch in the face to all women.

    And men needed to make it clear that Trump’s brand of “locker-room talk” is unacceptable, she said. “It would be nice at this point if we started hearing from men on this issue, because it’s not one-sided.”

    For example, Leeds referred to Gwyneth Paltrow’s story in which, after Weinstein allegedly made a move on her, she confided in her boyfriend at the time, Brad Pitt. Paltrow came forward with her story this month, Leeds noted, but we have not heard from Pitt.

    “Some of these men, it would be helpful if they could speak out. And until they do, maybe we’ll get it off our chests and feel better about ourselves, but I don’t think it’s going to change,” she said.

    That should be as true for men in Washington as for those in Hollywood, said Leeds.

    I don’t see it happening though, because for far too many men it just is not the case that Trump’s brand of “locker-room talk” is unacceptable. For far too many men it’s entirely acceptable, though maybe not something they want to say to their own daughters. Examining why it’s not ok to say to or about My Daughter™ but is ok to say in the locker room is too much to ask. These guys are busy.

  • Respect for the office

    Three times now.

    The president of the United States.

  • What military discipline in the White House sounds like

    We worried from the start about Trump’s penchant for hiring military people for his top jobs. We were wary about the excitement when Kelly took over as chief of staff…but we were also so sick of Trump’s rages and tantrums and explosions that we perhaps hoped it was worth the risk.

    It wasn’t. Masha Gessen does a great job of saying why. She argues that Kelly’s press briefing was like a preview of what a military coup here would look like.

    First Kelly argued that people who criticize Trump don’t know what they’re talking about because they haven’t served in the military.

    Fallen soldiers, Kelly said, join “the best one per cent this country produces.” Here, the chief of staff again reminded his audience of its ignorance: “Most of you, as Americans, don’t know them. Many of you don’t know anyone who knows any of them. But they are the very best this country produces.”

    Yes well they should have gotten a gardener up there to tell us gardeners are the best one per cent, or how about a fashion marketer or a real estate tycoon?

    No, soldiers aren’t the best one per cent. A strong military is an unhappy necessity (or not), but they don’t become as gods.

    Workers in construction and farming risk death too.

    A total of 4,836 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States in 2015, a slight increase from the 4,821 fatal injuries reported in 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

    Also I don’t believe Kelly’s claim that soldiers are all doing exactly what they wanted to do. The military is also a job with some good benefits; that’s part of the motivation too.

    Kelly also argued that Trump did the right thing because he did exactly what his general told him to do.

    A week earlier, Kelly had taken over the White House press briefing in an attempt to quash another scandal and ended up using the phrase “I was sent in,” twice, in reference to his job in the White House. Now he seemed to be saying that, since he was sent in to control the President and the President had, this time, more or less carried out his instructions, the President should not be criticized.

    It’s just foolish to think that telling Trump what he should do is adequate. Trump is not equipped to make that kind of phone call, not equipped in any way.

    It was his last argument that was the worst.

    At the end of the briefing, he said that he would take questions only from those members of the press who had a personal connection to a fallen soldier, followed by those who knew a Gold Star family. Considering that, a few minutes earlier, Kelly had said most Americans didn’t even know anyone who knew anyone who belonged to the “one per cent,” he was now explicitly denying a majority of Americans—or the journalists representing them—the right to ask questions. This was a new twist on the Trump Administration’s technique of shunning and shaming unfriendly members of the news media, except this time, it was framed explicitly in terms of national loyalty. As if on cue, the first reporter allowed to speak inserted the phrase “Semper Fi”—a literal loyalty oath—into his question.

    Before walking off the stage, Kelly told Americans who haven’t served in the military that he pities them. “We don’t look down upon those of you who haven’t served,” he said. “In fact, in a way we are a little bit sorry because you’ll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our servicemen and women do—not for any other reason than that they love this country.”

    Nonsense. They are bound to have other reasons. Loving the country may be the overriding reason for many or most, but it can’t be the only reason for all of them. Kelly is talking as if they all do become a Higher kind of human by joining the military, and yes, that is a bordering-on-fascist way of thinking.

    When Kelly replaced the ineffectual Reince Priebus as the chief of staff, a sigh of relief emerged: at least the general would impose some discipline on the Administration. Now we have a sense of what military discipline in the White House sounds like.

    Discipline is necessary but not sufficient. So not sufficient.

  • Character

    Trump last week put out a proclamation declaring October 15 through October 21 National Character Counts Week.

    The first, tone-setting paragraph:

    We celebrate National Character Counts Week because few things are more important than cultivating strong character in all our citizens, especially our young people.  The grit and integrity of our people, visible throughout our history, defines the soul of our Nation.  This week, we reflect on the character of determination, resolve, and honor that makes us proud to be American.

    Note the impoverished idea of “character.” Note how militaryesque it is. Note how easily it can be adopted by bullies. Strength, grit, integrity, determination, resolve, and honor. Those are all useful qualities, to be sure, but only used for the right purposes, only combined with better, more generous, more other-regarding qualities. They’re useful qualities for bullies and fascists and criminals, too.

    As President Reagan declared, “There is no institution more vital to our Nation’s survival than the American family.  Here the seeds of personal character are planted, the roots of public virtue first nourished.”  Character is built slowly.  Our actions — often done first out of duty — become habits ingrained in the way we treat others and ourselves.  As parents, educators, and civic and church leaders, we must always work to cultivate strength of character in our Nation’s youth.

    Emphasis added. That’s the only mention so far of what should be the core of character: treating others decently.

    Character can be hard to define, but we see it in every day acts — raising and providing for a family with loving devotion, working hard to make the most of an education, and giving back to devastated communities.  These and so many other acts big and small constitute the moral fiber of American culture.  Character is forged around kitchen tables, built in civic organizations, and developed in houses of worship.  It is refined by our choices, large and small, and manifested in what we do when we think no one is paying attention.

    As we strive every day to improve our character and that of our Nation, we pause and thank those individuals whose strength of character has inspired us and who have provided a supporting hand during times of need.  In particular, we applaud families as they perform the often thankless task of raising men and women of character.

    Emphasis added. Those three bolded bits are the only mentions of altruism as character.

    Maybe it had to be this vague and empty because of the guy who was signing it. Trump has a gruesomely selfish and belligerent character, so maybe his speech people were trying to keep the ironies to a minimum.

    Anyway, this past week was National Character Counts Week. That went well.

  • Interviews

    Of course he did.

    Trump personally interviewed 3 people for US attorney jobs…ones that just happened, in a startling coincidence that means nothing at all, to be in districts where Trump has an interest.

    Trump has interviewed Geoffrey Berman, who is currently at the law firm Greenberg Traurig for the job of U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Ed McNally of the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres for the Eastern District post, according to the sources.

    (One wonders what that can have been like. On the one hand an educated grownup with specialized professional training and experience, on the other hand a guy who can’t utter a coherent sentence and knows nothing about anything – and the latter is interviewing the former.)

    The White House did not deny that Trump had personally conducted the interviews with those two candidates. A White House official noted: “These are individuals that the president nominates and the Senate confirms under Article II of the Constitution.”

    “We realize Senate Democrats would like to reduce this President’s constitutional powers,” the White House official said. “But he and other presidents before him and after may talk to individuals nominated to positions within the executive branch.”

    They may, apparently, but it’s far from routine, and then when there’s a glaring conflict of interest – are we really so sure they may?

    The Southern District of New York is an especially notable position since it has jurisdiction over Trump Tower. Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney there, has said he had been told that Trump would keep him on despite the change in administrations. Yet he was among those abruptly fired by Trump in March.

    “It is neither normal nor advisable for Trump to personally interview candidates for US Attorney positions, especially the one in Manhattan,” Bharara tweeted Wednesday.

    It’s unusual for presidents to interview candidates for US attorney jobs. Obama never did.

    But documents submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year showed Trump met with Jessie Liu, the candidate for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, earlier this spring as she was being interviewed for the federal prosecutor post.

    Liu has since been confirmed, but not without questions from Democrats. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein raised concerns that she had personally met with Trump before she was nominated to the position that would be in charge of investigating the Trump administration.

    “To be very blunt, these three jurisdictions will have authority to bring indictments over the ongoing special counsel investigation into Trump campaign collusion with the Russians and potential obstruction of justice by the president of the United States,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview Thursday. “For him to be interviewing candidates for that prosecutor who may in turn consider whether to bring indictments involving him and his administration seems to smack of political interference.”

    Which Trump has a known history of trying to do.

    Also…why else would he be interviewing them? How would he be interviewing them? What would he be asking them? What would he want to discuss with them? He’s pig-ignorant of the law and has no apparent interest in it, apart from deploying the enforcement branch to terrorize people he dislikes. What would he or could he talk about in such interviews? Other than himself and how the candidate could be expected to treat that sanctified personage?

    Other U.S. attorneys who have been nominated to posts around the country do not appear to have had similar interviews with Trump, according to Democrats who have been asking that of all nominees.

    “The U.S. attorney for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York — like the U.S. attorney for Washington D.C. — would have jurisdiction over many important cases, including those involving President Trump’s personal and family business interests,” Feinstein said in a statement Thursday.

    She added: “There’s no reason for President Trump to be meeting with candidates for these positions, which create the appearance that he may be trying to influence or elicit inappropriate commitments from potential U.S. attorneys. U.S. attorneys must be loyal to the Constitution — not the president.”

    Well that’s why he needs to interview them: so that he can ask if they will be loyal to him, just as he persistently asked Comey.

  • Base in his motives and cruel in his targets

    Richard Cohen at the Post explains Trump.

    Trump does not possess an ounce of compassion. He is reptilian, knowing only to show his fangs, hiss and attack. This is why he mocked a physically disabled reporter for the New York Times, why he derided the heroism of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and why he dismissed the authenticity of the Khans, who had lost their son in Iraq.

    This inability to feel the pain of others — even to acknowledge it — is not a minor tick in an otherwise good man. It is the salient characteristic of a sadist, of someone so wrapped up in himself that he has contempt for victims. Trump’s name for them is “losers.” They are the poor and the unlucky. They deserve what they get.

    This is the heart of it. If it weren’t for this, the rest of it – the incompetence and stupidity and ignorance, the corruption and greed, the vulgar trashy crassitude – would still be horrendous, but not agonizing in the same way. It’s his hideous brutal meanness and cruelty and contempt for all other human beings that make us feel so degraded.

    Trump is not a conservative nor a nationalist nor some reality show creation. He is a mean S.O.B., base in his motives and cruel in his targets and, until he won in November, unthinkable in American history — a brat in the Oval Office. He’s not man enough to throw an arm around a grieving widow. He disgraces his office and will be remembered by history as a lout. It is now a fate he cannot escape. Sorry, but he knew what he was signing up for.

    But so did we. So did we.

  • Sing “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” instead

    Trump again demonstrates that he has no idea how to value anything.

    He thinks singing a patriotic song is what “real pride in our country” is all about. That’s a ridiculous thing to think.

    I’m sure it’s an expression of pride for many people – but it has to be freely chosen to be genuinely that, surely. Trump’s bullying about it just turns it into a meaningless exercise at best and a punishment at worst. Anyway it’s not an expression of pride for all of us – for many it’s just an empty ritual, and for some it’s an insult. We’re allowed to think both of those thoughts and we’re allowed to refuse to sing the damn thing, at least as far as the government is concerned.

    Real pride in one’s country has to be thicker and more meaningful than singing a song at a sports game. It has more to do with holding that country to high standards than with observing empty rituals. Flags and songs are symbols, and right now all the patriotic ones symbolize is the sullen brooding presence of the worst man in the world.

  • Sorrow and value

    At CNN. Chris Cillizza – who did his bit to swing the election by keeping “Her Emails” constantly in the headlines – offers a best-case interpretation of how Trump messed up that phone call.

    Don’t get me wrong: he starts with reasons to believe he messed it up badly and is lying about it now.

    For those who are taking Trump’s side in all of this — alleging that Wilson is simply trying to score political points against a president the Democratic base hates — it’s important to remember a few things we know about Trump.

    1. In the summer of 2016, he engaged in an extended back and forth with Khizr Khan, the father of an American soldier killed in Iraq, following Khan’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. Responding to Khan, who suggested Trump didn’t know the meaning of real sacrifice, Trump said: “Who wrote that? Did Hillary’s script writers write it? I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard.”2. Trump has not told the truth about lots of things. LOTS of things. The count maintained by the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog was more than 1,300 lies or mistruths from Trump in his first 263 days as president. In a press conference with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday, Trump said at least 9 things that were either debatable or simply false.

    3. Trump has claimed he has “proof” many times. He has shown that “proof” almost never. As documented by Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere, here are other things Trump has said he had “proof” about: President Obama wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, that the women accusing him of sexually inappropriate behavior were lying, Obama being born in a foreign country, Obama’s college transcript, alleged crimes by UN Ambassador Susan Rice and that former FBI Director James Comey was lying about their personal conversations. [Narrator voice: He didn’t have proof of any of this.]

    But that still leaves room for interpretation of the phone call.

    Short of Wilson totally lying about the nature of the conversation, the best possible explanation for Trump is that what he said was misinterpreted. Calling a recently widowed woman of a soldier killed in action is an incredibly difficult thing to do. That’s especially true for Trump who, as a businessman prior to running for office in 2016, never had to do anything remotely like this.

    Given that inexperience, it’s absolutely plausible that Trump expressed a real sorrow somewhat inarticulately, leaving Johnson’s widow and Wilson upset. And that Trump did so entirely unintentionally.

    Well, no, it’s not absolutely plausible that Trump expressed a real sorrow, because he’s not capable of feeling sorrow on behalf of other people. We’ve seen that over and over and over again – with the Khans, as Cillizza said, with the people in Houston after the hurricane, with the people in Puerto Rico after that hurricane, with people he talks to on camera, with all of us, with anyone and everyone. He doesn’t feel it. At all. He never has. He doesn’t know what it’s like.

    No, all that’s plausible is that he dimly understood that he was supposed to convey sorrow and sympathy. Once you grasp that it is of course not surprising that he failed so badly. He has no idea how to do that kind of thing. He can do anger and contempt and hatred all over the shop, but sorrow or compassion or empathy he can’t get near.

    I suppose we should feel sorry for him, in a way. If you can’t feel sorrow or compassion no matter what – you have a terribly weakened grip on life. The sorrow and compassion are the other side of knowing what’s at stake – of valuing anything. If you don’t know how to properly value anything, what does life even mean to you?

  • “I guess it hurts anyway”

    Oh goddddd reading this has made me feel sick. It may seem small in the scheme of things, but just the cold narcissistic callousness behind it is nauseating. Trump’s way of condoling the families of soldiers killed in action: he tells them they signed up for it but he guesses it hurts anyway.

    In his call with Sgt. La David T. Johnson’s widow, Myeshia Johnson, Trump told her, “He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway,” according to the account of Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.), who was riding in a limousine with Johnson when the president called and heard the conversation on speakerphone.

    Wilson recalled in an interview with The Washington Post that Johnson broke down in tears. “He made her cry,” Wilson said. The congresswoman said she wanted to take the phone and “curse him out,” but that the Army sergeant holding the phone would not let her speak to the president.

    On the one hand it’s unbelievable, but on the other hand it sounds exactly like Trump. Exactly like him. We’ve all seen what deranged things he says when speaking off the cuff – he tells black journalists to make appointments with black Congressional Representatives for him, he tells the Russian ambassador that the FBI director is a showboat, he says he and Mitch McConnell are closer than ever. I can hear him saying that disgusting thing.

    Peter Wehner, an adviser and speechwriter in President George W. Bush’s White House, said communicating empathy and compassion has been for Trump like speaking “a foreign language.”

    “Part of being a president is at moments being pastor in chief, dispensing grace and understanding and giving voice to sorrow, tragedy and loss,” Wehner said. “But he’s a person who’s missing an empathy gene.”

    Exactly. That’s what makes it so easy to hear him saying that.

    Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist and former adviser to Bush and McCain, said he was surprised by Trump’s 12-day silence on the Niger attack.

    “There is no issue too small for him to comment on,” Schmidt said. “He tweets at all hours of the morning and night on every conceivable subject. He has time to insult, to degrade, to demean always. But once again, you see this moral obtusity in the performance of his duties as commander in chief.”

    “Ok ok ok ok I’ll call them, jeezus. ‘Well he knew what he was getting into, but it still hurts I guess. Bye.’”

    He’s denying it today.

    President Trump in a tweet Wednesday denied that he had told the widow of a soldier killed in an ambush in Africa this month that her husband “must have known what he signed up for.”

    But the mother of the fallen soldier stood behind the account, saying that Trump “did disrespect” the family with his comments during a phone call.

    …

    Wilson told MSNBC on Wednesday that Johnson’s widow, Myeshia, was shaken by the exchange.

    “She was crying the whole time, and when she hung up the phone, she looked at me and said, ‘He didn’t even remember his name.’ That’s the hurting part.”

    Wilson went on to say Trump “was almost like joking. He said, ‘Well, I guess you knew’ — something to the effect that ‘he knew what he was getting into when he signed up, but I guess it hurts anyway.’ You know, just matter-of-factly, that this is what happens, anyone who is signing up for military duty is signing up to die. That’s the way we interpreted it. It was horrible. It was insensitive. It was absolutely crazy, unnecessary. I was livid.”

    That’s who he is. That’s why we’re living in a nightmare.

  • Do they have standing?

    The emoluments case starts tomorrow.

    On Wednesday morning, a federal judge in Manhattan will hear preliminary arguments in a case that claims President Trump is violating the Constitution’s ban on accepting foreign payments, or emoluments.

    Here is what is at stake: The Founding Fathers wrote a clause into the Constitution saying U.S. officials cannot accept “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title” from foreign governments without the consent of Congress. Trump’s critics say that by refusing to sell off his global businesses, the president is failing to uphold the Constitution.

    But before that issue can be debated, the court first has to decide whether the plaintiffs even have standing to bring their Emoluments Clause case. And that first step is what is happening in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

    This is yet another example of why the phrase “checks and balances” is such an empty bit of verbiage. The Constitution says, but on the other hand, nobody has “standing” to get it enforced. If the other branches are all standing around with their thumbs up their asses, then it doesn’t matter what the Constitution says and these crooked weasels get to go right on filling their bank accounts while destroying the country.

    CREW’s co-plaintiffs include the owner of several hotels and restaurants in New York City, an association of restaurants and restaurant workers and an events booker in D.C.

    They say they’ve lost business to Trump establishments — not because of fair competition, but because many foreign officials take their business to Trump properties to curry favor with the president. That is a claim that Trump’s Justice Department argues against.

    Even in its preliminary stages, the case could have impact. If the plaintiffs win on the standing question, Bookbinder said, “the next phase of the case would be discovery.”

    And if they lose, then Trump and his Trumplets go right on feathering their own nests at our civic and moral expense.

    Vermont Law School professor Jennifer Taub said that if the case fails, it would set a “terrible precedent.”

    Taub, who helped to organize a campaign last winter for disclosure of Trump’s tax returns, said, “We cannot have a representative democracy if the president takes office with the purpose of personal gain and essentially influence-peddling.”

    I expect it to fail. We seem to be doomed to be destroyed by this monstrosity.

  • Loud and clear

    Trump, naturally, goes even uglier in trying to argue away his lie about Obama yesterday.

    President Donald Trump on Tuesday invoked the death of the son of his chief of staff, John Kelly, as he defended his claim from a day before that Barack Obama and other past presidents didn’t always call the families of slain service members.

    “For the most part, to the best of my knowledge, I think I’ve called every family of somebody that’s died, and it’s the hardest call to make, and I said it very loud and clear yesterday. The hardest thing for me to do is do that,” Trump said Tuesday morning during an interview with Fox News radio host Brian Kilmeade.

    I guess he thinks if he says it “loud and clear” that makes it not a lie? I guess he’s that stupid?

    “Now, as far as other representatives, I don’t know,” he continued. “I mean, you could ask General Kelly did he get a call from Obama. You could ask other people. I don’t know what Obama’s policy was. I write letters, and I also call.”

    He doesn’t know, but yesterday he said Obama didn’t call the families of soldiers killed in action. So to distract attention from his lie, he evokes the death of Kelly’s son. That’s ugly.

    Trump has faced an onslaught of criticism — most notably from former Obama aides — since making the accusation against Obama on Monday afternoon in a Rose Garden news conference when asked about his silence regarding the death of four Green Berets related to an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger.

    …

    Trump, however, said Tuesday that he doesn’t feel a need to clarify his remarks.

    “There’s nothing to clarify,” he said, blaming CNN for first broaching the subject at his news conference. “This was, again, fake news CNN. I mean, they’re just a bunch of fakers.”

    Fake news? But there’s video of him saying it. He said it at a news conference. How can it be fake?

    I leave it to your wisdom to determine.