The Commentariat -- December 27, 2019

Asawin Suebsang of the Daily Beast: "On Thursday evening, Donald Trump pushed out on Twitter the name of the alleged whistleblower whose complaint led to the president's impeachment. Trump's personal Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, retweeted a post by the re-election campaign's official 'war room' account that was aimed at the whistleblower's attorney Mark Zaid.... As The Daily Beast reported last month, Trump had gossiped for weeks about this alleged whistleblower with various friends, media figures, and senior administration officials, and had asked some people if they thought it was a good idea for him to publicly announce or tweet the name."

Allan Smith of NBC News: "... Donald Trump fired off a stream of post-Christmas tweets Thursday blasting Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her San Francisco congressional district amid the impeachment impasse. 'The Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats said they wanted to RUSH everything through to the Senate because "President Trump is a threat to National Security" (they are vicious, will say anything!), but now they don't want to go fast anymore, they want to go very slowly,' Trump tweeted. 'Liars!' The president attacked Pelosi's congressional district as 'filthy dirty' and 'one of the worst anywhere in the U.S.' Calling Pelosi 'crazy,' Trump also suggested she should face a 2020 primary challenge. The president then lamented how 'much more difficult' it is 'to deal with foreign leaders (and others) amid impeachment." ~~~

~~~ The problem you have with foreign leaders, @realDonaldTrump, is that they think you are a deranged idiot. -- George Conway, in a tweet ~~~

~~~ Apparently, ordinary people in other countries agree: ~~~

~~~ Worst POTUS* Ever. Ursual Perano of Axios: "41% of Germans believe President Trump is more of a threat to world peace than North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping or Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a YouGov survey reported by DW [Deutsche Welle].... The results show the degree to which trust in U.S. leadership has eroded under Trump, even among countries like Germany that are traditionally viewed as close allies." ~~~

~~~ MEANWHILE, more Americans are thinking impeachment is a good idea: ~~~

~~~ Zoe Tidman of the [U.K.] Independent, via Yahoo! News: "Public support for Donald Trump's removal from office is the highest it has ever been, according to a new poll. Fifty-five per cent of those asked said they were in favour of the US president's conviction by the Senate, a figure which has shot up from 48 per cent the week before. Meanwhile, the number of people against Mr Trump's removal has dropped to an all-time low, according to the MSN poll." ~~~

~~~ AND somehow Trump's attacks don't go all that well with his Christmas message calling for unity and respect among Americans." (Also linked yesterday.)

Mehdi Hasan of The Intercept: "On Wednesday evening, Donald Trump became the third president of the United States to be impeached.... It was a major moment in this car crash of a presidency -- and a major achievement for House Democrats. Still, I couldn't help but be disappointed that there were only two articles of impeachment passed against the president.... The harsh reality, of course, is that Trump commits impeachable offenses on nearly a weekly basis. So here is an A to Z of such offenses -- by issue and/or by crime -- that were inexplicably overlooked or ignored by the House of Representatives." --s

Alex Pareene of the New Republic: "The one problem with the Founders' vision is that they never anticipated the type of hyperpartisanship we see today. Recent statements from leading Republican senators were therefore particularly ominous. 'I'm not an impartial juror,' said Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. 'I have clearly made up my mind,' said Lindsey Graham. The notion that senators would abdicate their responsibility to check the presidency -- indeed, even directly coordinate their efforts with an impeached president -- would have shocked the Founding generation to its core. Who could have expected that a branch of government would willingly disempower itself? History will not judge these senators well." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Even though the Founders didn't anticipate the way political parties would dominate our government systems, surely they were familiar with some version of "He's a jerk, but he's our jerk."

Natasha Bertrand of Politico: "The prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to examine the origins of the Russia investigation is focusing much of his attention on the CIA, placing the agency's director, Gina Haspel, at the center of a politically toxic tug-of-war between the Justice Department and the intelligence community. The prosecutor, John Durham, has reportedly asked the CIA for former director John Brennan's communications.... [I]ntelligence community veterans say the Durham probe could force Haspel to choose between protecting her agency from Trump's wrath and bowing to Barr's wishes" --s

Trump Winds up on the Cutting Room Floor. Rebecca Klar of the Hill: "President Trump's cameo scene in the holiday classic 'Home Alone 2: Lost In New York' was reportedly cut from showings of the movie on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) this month.... CBC told ComicBook.com, which first reported the backlash to the edit, that the movie was edited not for political purposes but to allow for commercials.... CBC later confirmed on Twitter that the edit was made for time in 2014, before Trump was elected.... Trump mentioned his 'Home Alone 2 cameo on Christmas Eve while speaking to military service members in a teleconference." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Kevin Breuninger & Sarah Whitten of CNBC: "The Trump-free version of the 1992 film, which aired on the CBC this month, stoked outrage among conservative and pro-Trump media sources -- including the popular Fox News morning show 'Fox & Friends,' from which Trump regularly quotes guests.... Trump himself weighed in later Thursday, appearing to blame Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his removal from the TV cut of the film. 'I guess Justin T doesn't much like my making him pay up on NATO or Trade!' [Trump tweeted.]"

Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "The list of challenges still facing Mr. Trump's 'big, beautiful' wall include an investigation into construction contracts, funding delays and a recent legal decision blocking emergency access to Defense Department funds to build it. The nationwide injunction has, for now, curtailed wall work on 175 miles in Laredo and El Paso, Texas; in Yuma, Ariz.; and in El Centro, Calif. But access to private land ... may be the tallest barrier standing between the president and his wall. The administration has thus far built only 93 miles of the new wall, nearly all of it on federal land where dilapidated barriers existed or vehicle barriers once stood, according to Customs and Border Protection. The border wall's final path is not yet set, but 162 miles of it will run through Southern Texas, and 144 miles of that is privately owned, according to the border agency. The Trump administration has acquired just three miles since 2017.... As the sense of urgency has grown, Mr. Trump -- no stranger to the powers of eminent domain -- has suggested during meetings to 'take the land' of private landowners."

Jonathan Landay, et al., of Reuters: "In the weeks before ... Donald Trump's declaration this month that he would forge ahead with designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, Cabinet members and top aides from across the government recommended against it.... The recommendations, which some of the sources described as unanimous, have not been reported previously. They were driven in part by concerns that such designations could harm U.S.-Mexico ties.... Another key concern was that the designations could make it easier for migrants to win asylum in the United States by claiming they were fleeing terrorism[.]" --s

Dave Philipps of the New York Times: "Video recordings of the interviews [of Navy SEALs who turned in Edward Gallagher] obtained by The New York Times, which have not been shown publicly before, were part of a trove of Navy investigative materials about the prosecution of Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher on war crimes charges including murder.... [The] dire descriptions of Chief Gallagher, who had eight combat deployments..., are in marked contrast to Mr. Trump's portrayal of him at a recent political rally in Florida as one of 'our great fighters.'" Mrs. McC: The story is really gruesome reading. The Guardian has a summary report here.

Patricio Zenklussen, et al. in TPM: "It's been clear for a while that political satire in the U.S. has a Trump problem. The jokes are getting redundant, but even worse, the president seems immune to them.... But perhaps American political satire is too focused on the president himself. As NYU Journalism graduate students from the U.S., Pakistan, Argentina, and Chile, we thought we could bring an interesting perspective to this question by examining how satire is handled in countries where a history of authoritarian(ish) leadership has forced comedians into alternative plans of 'attack.'... Rather than coming straight at the heads of state or impersonating them, we've observed that satirists in Pakistan, Argentina, and Chile critique elements of the government and the systems that enabled leaders' rise to power.... In the spirit of examining ways to satirize that 'other stuff,' we talked to Pakistani and South American comedians about the techniques they employ -- and how they fit within the American political comedy landscape." --s

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Last week we dropped our collective jaws upon learning that the Poynter Institute, which many regard as a serious journalistic organization, selected Chuck Todd as "Media Personality of the Year." We were not alone: ~~~

~~~ Tom Boggioni of the Raw Story (Dec. 21): "An announcement from the Poynter Institute naming NBC's Chuck Todd the 'media personality of the year' calling his Meet the Press the 'gold standard' was met with derision and laughter on the internet which has long hammered the NBC host for his failures to push back at guests making ridiculous assertions as well as his habit of not asking follow-up questions." ~~~

~~~ Jay Rosen of PressThink: "'Round midnight on Christmas eve, Rolling Stone posted a short interview with Chuck Todd.... Its contents were explosive, embarrassing, enraging, and just plain weird. Three years after Kellyanne Conway introduced the doctrine of 'alternative facts' on his own program, a light went on for Chuck Todd. Republican strategy, he now realized, was to make stuff up, spread it on social media, repeat it in your answers to journalists -- even when you know it's a lie with crumbs of truth mixed in -- and then convert whatever controversy arises into go-get-em points with the base, while pocketing for the party a juicy dividend: additional mistrust of the news media to help insulate President Trump.... Todd repeatedly called himself naive for not recognizing the pattern, itself an astounding statement.... It took him three years to understand a fact about American politics that was there on the surface.... Many, many interpreters had described it for him during those lost years when he could not bring himself to believe it. (I am one.) You cannot call that an oversight. It's a strategic blindness that he superintended. By 'strategic blindness' I mean what people mean when they quote Upton Sinclair: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.'" The Rolling Stone interview is here.

** Elections 2020, ff. Kim Zetter of Politico: "On November 6, 2016, the Sunday before the presidential election that sent Donald Trump to the White House, a worker in the elections office in Durham County, North Carolina, encountered a problem.... [T]he county worker contacted VR Systems, the Florida company that made the software used on the county's computer and on the poll book laptops.... [O]ne of the company's employees accessed the county's computer remotely to troubleshoot.... Almost immediately ... a number of [laptops] exhibited problems.... To this day, no one knows definitively what happened with Durham's poll books.... VR Systems had been targeted by Russian hackers in a phishing campaign three months before the election.... No one has attempted to pull together, in public view, all the available information about what happened with VR Systems during the 2016 election cycle until now.... [T]he following represents as complete a narrative as currently possible about the events around VR Systems and the 2016 elections -- and raises many questions not only about America's ability to secure the national elections less than a year away but the country's ability to have trust in their integrity." --s

John Bowden of the Hill: "A federal database tracking pollution in the United States was retired earlier this month, drawing criticism from environmental advocates. TOXMAP, an interactive map hosted by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and accessible to the public, allowed users to track pollution-producing factories and other environmental concerns such as superfund cleanup sites. However, on Dec. 16, all links to the application on the NLM's website were deprecated[.]" --s

Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "Microplastic pollution is raining down on city dwellers, with research revealing that London has the highest levels yet recorded.... Recent research shows the whole planet appears to be contaminated with microplastic pollution.... About 335m tonnes of new plastic is produced each year and much leaks into the environment.... The serious health damage caused by the pollution particles emitted by traffic and industry are well known. A comprehensive global review earlier in 2019 concluded that air pollution may be damaging every organ and virtually every cell in the human body. But the potential health impacts of inhaling plastic particles from the air, or consuming them via food and water, are unknown. People eat at least 50,000 microplastic particles per year, according to one study." --s

Beyond the Beltway

Iowa. Hannah Knowles & Michael Brice-Saddler of the Washington Post: "A woman accused of driving into a teenager because she believed the girl was Mexican had struck another child with her car less than an hour earlier, authorities say. Police in Iowa say Nicole Marie Poole Franklin struck a 12-year-old black boy as he walked home from school earlier this month. The 42-year-old Des Moines woman has not discussed her motive in that incident...." The same day, Franklin allegedly also spewed racist remarks at the clerk in a Des Moines convenience store and at black customers in the store.

Missouri. Sarah Okeson of DC Report: "Missouri regulators are using fishy science to write water quality standards for its lakes. Missouri based its regulations -- approved by Trump's Environmental Protection Agency -- the health of sport fish like the bass favored by Trump donor Johnny Morris, not the health of the state's children who swim in or get their drinking water from lakes.... Missouri regulators adopted water standards based on what's best for fish after groups like Associated Industries of Missouri and Regulatory Environmental Group for Missouri, opposed adopting EPA standards that benefit human health." --s

Way Beyond

Israel. Isabel Kershner of the New York Times: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel easily brushed off a challenge for the leadership of the conservative Likud party early Friday, a crucial victory for Israel's longest-serving leader but one that may only harden the country's yearlong political standoff. For Mr. Netanyahu, the landslide in a party primary on Thursday reaffirmed his political prowess and staying power despite his indictment last month on corruption charges, and it gives a jolt of fresh energy to his campaign for Israel's next general election in March." The Guardian's story is here.

Russia. Andrew Osborn of Reuters: "Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said on Wednesday that the forcible military conscription of one of his allies to a remote air base in the Arctic amounted to kidnapping and illegal imprisonment. Ruslan Shaveddinov, a project manager at Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, was detained at his Moscow flat on Monday after the door was broken down, the electricity cut, and the SIM card on his mobile phone remotely disabled. On Tuesday evening, Shaveddinov resurfaced at a remote military base on Novaya Zemlya, a freezing archipelago in the Arctic Ocean some 2,000 km (1240 miles) north of Moscow and the location of a missile air defense unit." --s

U.A.E. Joel Schectman & Christopher Bing of Reuters: "In the years after 9/11, former U.S. counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke warned Congress that the country needed more expansive spying powers to prevent another catastrophe.... In 2008, Clarke went to work as a consultant guiding the United Arab Emirates as it created a cyber surveillance capability that would utilize top American intelligence contractors to help monitor threats against the tiny nation.... In the years that followed, the UAE unit expanded its hunt far beyond suspected extremists to include a Saudi women's rights activist, diplomats at the United Nations and personnel at FIFA, the world soccer body.... American operatives ... were able to sidestep the few guardrails against foreign espionage work that existed, including restrictions on the hacking of U.S. computer systems.... Eventually, the expanding surveillance dragnet even swept up other American citizens[.]" --s

News Lede

Washington Post: "Don Imus, who spent more than half a century in radio and television skating along the edge of propriety and occasionally falling into the abyss of the unacceptable, died Dec. 27 at a hospital in College Station, Tex. He was 79." The Hollywood Reporter report is here.

Comments

[Bobby Lee]

Bibi won the party primary and Likud will definitely be one of the top parties in the next election. However, his presence atop the ticket virtually assures another failed attempt to form a government.