The Commentariat -- August 10, 2016
Afternoon Update:
** Paul Waldman: "If you're arguing to your angry, heavily armed supporters, who already think the federal government is tyrannical, that there's a conspiracy afoot to steal the election and that your opponent will be sending jackbooted government thugs to confiscate their guns, you don't get to pretend that when you say that the 'Second Amendment people' might be able to stop the next president's judges from subverting their gun rights that it's all innocent and you would never contemplate something as irresponsible as encouraging violence.... It doesn't matter whether Trump really believes that people should use their guns against the federal government if it enacts policies they don't like. What matters is that he's encouraging them to think they should, just like he's encouraging them not to accept the results of the election if their favored candidate doesn't win. That's what so malignant...." -- CW
Tim Darragh of NJ.com: "A former aide to Gov. Chris Christie said in a text that the governor 'flat out lied' about senior staff members not being involved in the Bridgegate scandal, according to court filings released early Wednesday." ...
... Matt Friedman & Ryan Hutchins of Politico do a better job of explaining the significance of the text exchange, which was a real-time critique of Christie's remarks during a press conference. A lawyer for one of the Bridgegates defendants filed a court brief alleging that the aide "deleted the texts after the Democrat-led Legislature began issuing subpoenas in the case, and never told lawmakers about them. The filing claims she 'testified under oath before the Legislature in a manner not consistent with the existence and deletion of those texts.'" See also Akhilleus's comment in today's thread. -- CW
Tami Luhby and Jim Sciutto of CNN: Secret Service chatted with Trump: "A US Secret Service official confirms to CNN that the USSS has spoken to the Trump campaign regarding his Second Amendment comments. 'There has been more than one conversation' on the topic, the official told CNN. The campaign told USSS Donald Trump did not intend to incite violence."
... Akhilleus: Of course, given the virulent antipathy so many Secret Service agents have for the president and Hillary Clinton, it's likely that the conversation drifted into "Gee, Mr. Trump, we're with you all the way. We'd like to shoot the bitch too, but you just can't say it out loud, dude, okay?
Surprise, surprise! Juliet Linderman and Eric Tucker of the AP: "With startling statistics, a federal investigation of the Baltimore Police Department documents in 164 single-spaced pages what black residents have been saying for years: They are routinely singled out, roughed up or otherwise mistreated by officers, often for no reason...Among other findings: Blacks account for 63 percent of the city's population and roughly 84 percent of all police stops. From 2010 to 2015, officers stopped 34 black residents 20 times, and seven African-Americans 30 times or more.... The direction often came from the top: In one instance, a police supervisor told a subordinate to 'make something up' after the officer protested an order to stop and question a group of young black men for no reason."
... Akhilleus: Abject apologies forthcoming from Confederate politicians and winger pundits who blamed Baltimore's black community for all the problems they outlined and questioned their honesty about police interactions. Any day now...waiting, waiting....
Rem Reider of USA Today: "Time after time, Trump creates widespread fallout with his latest outrage, whose fault is it? Yep, the media. Remember the flap over a Trump tweet that many considered anti-Semitic, featuring a Star of David, $100 bills and Hillary Clinton? That wasn't on him. 'Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star,' he tweeted. That time he said Sen. John McCain wasn't a war hero? The media's fault. His racist remarks about the judge in the Trump U. case? The media again. The ejection of the crying baby? You guessed it.
Akhilleus: The Party of Personal Responsibility has another winner!
Regulation works? Unpossible! Ryan Miller of USA Today: "... the rate of earthquakes in [Oklahoma] in 2016 is down from last year. The state has been shaken by 448 magnitude-3.0 and greater quakes so far this year, down from the 558 it experienced in the same time frame in 2015. Increased regulation on wastewater disposal related to oil and gas extraction could be one reason behind the decline, said Robert Williams, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey. Wastewater disposal is linked to quakes in Oklahoma and other states.... In March, a USGS report linked activities related to oil and gas extraction, notably wastewater disposal, to seismic activity. The report found that Oklahoma along with five other states -- Kansas, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Arkansas -- faced the highest potential for earthquake hazards."
Akhilleus: Must be Obama's fault! Oh, wait....no...we didn't mean that...
*****
Presidential Race
Nick Corasaniti & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump on Tuesday appeared to raise the possibility that gun rights supporters could take matters into their own hands if Hillary Clinton is elected president and appoints judges who favor stricter gun control measures. Repeating his contention that Mrs. Clinton wanted to abolish the right to bear arms, Mr. Trump warned at a rally [in Wilmington, N.C.,] that it would be 'a horrible day' if Mrs. Clinton were elected and got to appoint a tiebreaking Supreme Court justice. 'If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,' Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: 'Although the Second Amendment people -- maybe there is, I don't know.'... Mr. Trump and his campaign ... insisted he was merely urging gun rights supporters to vote as a bloc against Mrs. Clinton in November.... But at his rally..., Mr. Trump had actually been discussing what could happen once Mrs. Clinton was president, not before the election." -- CW ...
... Isaac Stanley-Becker & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "The denouncements came swiftly from Clinton's campaign and her allies -- and from outside politics. The insinuation, critics said, was that Trump was inciting his followers to bear arms against a sitting president. And Trump's response was just as swift: He'd said nothing of the sort but was merely encouraging gun rights advocates to be politically involved. The pattern has repeated itself again and again. First come Trump's attention-getting expressions. Then come the outraged reactions. The headlines follow. Finally, Trump, his aides and his supporters lash out at the media, accusing journalists of twisting his words or missing the joke.... And with each new example, Trump's rhetorical asides grow more alarming to many who hear them.... One common thread linking many of Trump's more controversial comments and actions is that he denies having said or done them.... The Secret Service acknowledged Tuesday in a tweet that agents were 'aware' of the episode." -- CW ...
Nobody who is seeking a leadership position -- especially the presidency, the leadership of the country -- should do anything to countenance violence, and that's what he was saying.... I think Donald Trump revealed again, many other statements have revealed the same thing, it just revealed a complete temperamental misfit with the character that is required to do the job. I don't find the attempt to row it backward persuasive at all. -- Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va), Clinton's running mate, in Austin, Texas
Don't treat this as a political misstep. It's an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis. -- Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), in a tweet ...
... Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "Jokes about socially unacceptable things aren't just 'jokes.' They serve a function of normalizing that unacceptable thing, of telling the people who agree with you that, yes, this is an okay thing to talk about. Trump is signaling that assassinating Hillary Clinton and/or her Supreme Court nominees is an okay thing to talk about. He's normalizing the unacceptable." -- CW ...
... CW: One of the reasons "joking" about assassinating Hillary Clinton is so "funny" is that jokes about violence against women are delightful. ...
My favorite part [of 'Pulp Fiction'] is when Sam has his gun out in the diner and he tells the guy to tell his girlfriend to shut up. Tell that bitch to be cool. Say: 'Bitch be cool.' I love those lines. -- TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald, 2005 ...
... New York Times Editors: "... one day after his running mate promised 'specific policy proposals for how we rebuild this country...,' Americans find themselves asking whether Donald Trump has called for the assassination of Hillary Clinton.... Was it a threat? Mr. Trump's campaign has been marked by extraordinarily combative rhetoric. At another rally, he said he would like to punch a protester in the face and see him leave 'on a stretcher.' His supporters have shouted 'kill her' when he mentions Mrs. Clinton.... A New Hampshire delegate, Al Baldasaro, called for Mrs. Clinton to 'be put in the firing line and shot for treason.' That comment wound up on the Secret Service's radar. Mr. Trump's comment should as well. Seldom, if ever, have Americans been exposed to a candidate so willing to descend to the depths of bigotry and intolerance as Mr. Trump.... The time has come for Republicans ... to repudiate Mr. Trump once and for all." -- CW ...
... Washington Post Editors: "By seeming to encourage armed insurrection against a Hillary Clinton administration, Mr. Trump has recklessly magnified the danger of his previous claim that the election is being 'rigged' against him. And encouraging armed resistance against the federal government is not the most worrisome of possible meanings. Other listeners assumed that Mr. Trump was encouraging supporters to train their weapons on Ms. Clinton herself. As is often the case, Mr. Trump was incoherent enough to permit more than one plausible interpretation of his words.... A spokesman’s after-the-fact explanation did not clear the bar of plausibility." -- CW ...
... New York Daily News Editors: "Donald Trump must end his campaign for the White House in a reckoning with his own madness, while praying that nothing comes of his musing about an assassination of Hillary Clinton. In the event that Trump fails to abandon his candidacy -- as he seems determined to -- the Republican Party, including vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, must instead abandon Trump for toying with political bloodshed." -- CW ...
... Charles Pierce: "Is that The Line? You know, The Line, the one that He, Trump has to cross before the entire Republican Party, not to mention a good portion of the human race, finds him too revolting for their delicate stomachs? What say you, Paul Ryan? Is that the line? John McCain? Mitch McConnell? All you clowns in the tricorns and the Watering The Tree Of Liberty tank tops? What say you all? Do you stand by this?" -- CW ...
... Dan Rather on Facebook: "No trying-to-be objective and fair journalist, no citizen who cares about the country and its future can ignore what Donald Trump said [Tuesday]. When he suggested that 'The Second Amendment People' can stop Hillary Clinton he crossed a line with dangerous potential. By any objective analysis, this is a new low and unprecedented in the history of American presidential politics.... This is a direct threat of violence against a political rival. It is not just against the norms of American politics, it raises a serious question of whether it is against the law." -- CW ...
... Steve M.: "Today, Donald Trump was talking about shooting (or threatening to shoot) somebody. The only question is whether it was Hillary Clinton or judges she'll appoint as president." Steve doesn't think Republican "leaders" have the fortitude to repudiate Trump. -- CW ...
... Tom Friedman: "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated. His right-wing opponents just kept delegitimizing him as a 'traitor' and 'a Nazi' for wanting to make peace with the Palestinians and give back part of the Land of Israel.... A U.S.-based columnist for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Chemi Shalev, wrote: 'Like the extreme right in Israel, many Republicans conveniently ignore the fact that words can kill. There are enough people with a tendency for violence that cannot distinguish between political stagecraft and practical exhortations to rescue the country by any available means. If anyone has doubts, they could use a short session with Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin's assassin, who was inspired by the rabid rhetoric hurled at the Israeli prime minister in the wake of the Oslo accords.'" -- CW ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... even as they condemn the shocking utterance, a lot of observers seem to be missing the fact that Trump is adapting a dangerously common right-wing claim. It's that the most important purpose of the Second Amendment is ... to create a heavily armed populace prepared to undertake revolutionary violence if the government tries to impose 'tyranny.'... The most common use of this 'right to revolution' argument, however, is to threaten anyone who doesn't bend the knee to the Second Amendment itself. So it makes even the blandest support for gun-safety legislation self-evident proof of 'tyranny' justifying even more stockpiling of lethal weapons to be used against 'government.'" ...
... CW: And, as Stanley-Becker & Sullivan of the WashPo point out (linked above), "Clinton has never said she wants to eliminate the Second Amendment. Even if she did, neither the president nor the Supreme Court nor lower-level federal judges have the power to do so."
... Kevin Drum: "This is yet another example of Trump stepping all over his own message. Yesterday's big economic speech was supposed to be the latest of his endlessly promised turning points toward greater seriousness, which would allow the news cycle to move off of Trump's latest gaffe-of-the-day.... But within 24 hours of being unchained from his teleprompter, all that was toast. Nobody cares about his economic policies anymore. They just want to know why Trump thinks it's OK to rally his supporters in favor of murdering Hillary Clinton." -- CW
Alex Altman & Zeke Miller of Time: "Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will commit to three debates this fall with ... Hillary Clinton, but may try to re-negotiate the terms that have been agreed upon by a bipartisan commission. 'I will absolutely do three debates,' Trump told Time in a phone interview. 'I want to debate very badly. But I have to see the conditions.'... The [Commission on Presidential Debates] ... has already ... set ... the format of each 90-minute debate. But ... [Trump] noted that he had haggled with television networks over the terms of debates held during the GOP primary and might do so again.... Trump said he reserved the right to object to the commission's choice of moderators, which have not yet been announced." -- CW ...
... David Graham of the Atlantic: "Trump's approach to the debates so far suggests that he either does not understand the difference between the structures of primary and general-election debates, or he believes he can bend the general debates to his will just as he did the primaries.... For Trump, the danger is that he could look cowardly for refusing to debate Clinton, especially if he's already trailing in the polls. Given the tough-guy image he's worked to cultivate, that would be particularly embarrassing." -- CW
Ezra Klein: "Donald Trump's big economic speech ... clarified the precarious place his campaign has come to rest. Trump has merged the weaknesses of an unqualified, outsider candidacy with the unpopular, plutocratic tilt of the conservative billionaire class's policy preferences. It's a worst-of-both-worlds campaign.... What Trump has done is crib the basic structure of the House GOP's tax plan, which is one of the single most unpopular policy documents that exists in American politics.... Trump's health care plan follows the same grooves.... Meanwhile, his polls show that he's a singularly poor messenger for any kind of policy plan, because he's managed to position himself as the kind of outsider who Americans think can't understand the political system, rather than the kind of outsider who can fix it." -- CW
CW: I don't pay much attention to polls till close to an election, but Eric Levitz of New York points to an interesting one: "Nearly one-fifth of registered Republicans wish they hadn't invited Donald Trump to this party and are praying he'll just leave now, before embarrassing them further. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday, 19 percent of GOP voters say they want Trump to drop out of the presidential race, while another 10 percent say they don't know whether or not their standard-bearer should take the unprecedented step of ending his campaign four months early. Among all registered voters, 44 percent would like Trump to go fire himself. Until recently, the Republican rank and file has been (relatively) unified behind their party's nominee." -- CW
Mark Murray of NBC News: "Nearly $100 million has been spent on general-election TV advertisements in the presidential race since the primary season ended, but Donald Trump's campaign still hasn't spent a single cent on one of them. This lack of advertising is all more striking given Trump's deficit in the polls -- as well as the recent influx of campaign contributions he's reportedly raked in." -- CW
Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "A new batch of State Department emails released Tuesday showed the close and sometimes overlapping interests between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. The documents raised new questions about whether the charitable foundation worked to reward its donors with access and influence at the State Department, a charge that Mrs. Clinton has faced in the past and has always denied. In one email exchange, for instance, an executive at the Clinton Foundation in 2009 sought to put a billionaire donor in touch with the United States ambassador to Lebanon because of the donor's interests there. In another email, the foundation appeared to push aides to Mrs. Clinton to help find a job for a foundation associate. Her aides indicated that the department was working on the request." -- CW
... Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post: The papers of Diane Blair, Hillary Clinton's long-time friend, provide "one of the most comprehensive portraits" of Clinton. -- CW ...
... Amy Chozick of the New York Times: Hillary was long the breadwinner in the Clinton family & took responsibility for domestic matters while Bill was concerned onlyabout himself. The article focuses on the period after Bill Clinton lost his 1980 race for re-election.
CW: If anyone's eyebrows were raised by yesterday's story that Seddique Mateen, the father of the Orlando mass murderer, was seated behind Hillary Clinton at her Orlando-area rally Monday (I wasn't; I ignored the story), Adam Kelsey of ABC News explains how that happened.
Congressional Races
Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "House Speaker Paul Ryan routed political newcomer Paul Nehlen Tuesday in a lopsided GOP primary that was overtaken in its closing days by the endless drama and discord around Republican nominee Donald Trump. Ryan was leading Nehlen by almost 70 points in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District with most of the ballots counted. He will face Ryan Solen, who won the Democratic primary over Tom Breu." -- CW
Brian Early of SeacoastOnline: "Sen. Kelly Ayotte affirmed her decision to support Donald Trump a day after fellow Republican and Maine Sen. Susan Collins wrote in an op-ed that she could not support the party's presidential nominee." Thanks to MAG for the link. -- CW ...
... CW: New Hampshire doesn't have a Senate candidate with guts. Last November, Gov. Maggie Hassan (D), who is challenging Ayotte, "call[ed] for a complete freeze of Syrian refugees entering the United States until the government can 'ensure robust refugee screening.'" -- CW
Other News & Views
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) & Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), in a Washington Post op-ed: "For years, ExxonMobil actively advanced the notion that its products had little or no impact on the Earth's environment.... Now the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York are investigating whether ExxonMobil violated state laws by knowingly misleading their residents and shareholders about climate change.... House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) and his fellow committee Republicans have issued subpoenas demanding that the state officials fork over all materials relating to their investigations. They also targeted eight organizations ... with similar subpoenas.... So far, both AGs and all eight organizations have refused to comply. We say, good for them.... Smith has received nearly $685,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry during his career. Now he is using his committee to harass the investigators and bully [others]...." -- CW
Peter Hermann, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Baltimore Police Department has engaged in years of racially discriminatory policing that targeted black residents, illegally detaining and searching people and using excessive force, the Justice Department concludes in a report released Tuesday." -- CW
Peter Hermann & Clarence Richards of the Washington Post: "On Tuesday, WikiLeaks shoved ... conspiracy theories into the mainstream when it announced on Twitter a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in" [the murder of Seth Rich]..., a staffer with the Democratic National Committee.... D.C. police believe [he] was [killed in] an attempted robbery.... The editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, said in a statement issued through an intermediary that he would not confirm or deny whether Rich or any person was a source for the organization...." -- CW
Beyond the Beltway
Charlotte, Florida Sun: "A Punta Gorda police officer accidentally shot and killed a woman during a Citizens Academy on Tuesday evening. Mary Knowlton, 73, was shot during a roleplay scenario in which the officer was playing a 'bad guy' and fired several times at the woman who was supposed to be playing the victim, according to ... a photographer who was covering the event for the Sun and witnessed the incident." The Washington Post story, by Katie Mettler, is here. CW: You are never safe from the cops.
Lauren McGaughy of the Dallas Morning News: "Three professors duking it out in court for the right to ban guns in their classrooms were told Monday they will be punished if they do.... 'Faculty members are aware that state law provides that guns can be carried on campus, and that the president has not made a rule excluding them from classrooms,' attorneys representing the University of Texas at Austin and Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in a legal brief filed Monday. 'As a result, any individual professor who attempts to establish such prohibition is subject to discipline.'" -- CW
Share Article 
