The Commentariat-- July 21, 2019
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Zachary Basu of Axios: "House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said on Fox News Sunday that Donald Trump has 'violated the law 6 ways from Sunday' and that he would be indicted if he were not president." With video.
Trump, desperate, sent Stephen Miller out to cover for him on "Fox 'News' Sunday":
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I can't stand to listen to 8 minutes of Stephen Miller, but I did read this summary by Josh Israel of ThinkProgress. Apparently, the interview did not go well.
Miami Herald Editors: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) "has transformed from Trump critic to a sycophantic cheerleader -- derided by former adviser and Washington Post columnist Max Boot as a 'Trump fan-boy' -- to the point that he's willing to kill Obamacare even though his own state leads the nation in enrollment. The Miami native who some, including us, thought could lead the Republican Party in finding a reasonable path on comprehensive immigration reform and help it broaden its appeal to minorities in America could not find the spine to do more than mildly criticize Trump after his blatantly racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen. Rubio, far from the Republicans' savior, seems just another slick politician with his finger in the wind -- pushing the party deeper into Trump's swamp." --s
Renuka Rayasam of Politico: "Federal inspectors visiting a California migrant detention center made a shocking discovery last year: Detainees had made nooses from bedsheets in 15 of 20 cells in the facility they visited. The inspection revealed the extent of a largely unseen mental health crisis within the growing population of migrants who are being held in detention centers in border states. President Donald Trump's 2017 decision to reverse a policy that encouraged releasing vulnerable individuals while they await deportation hearings has left U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unequipped to deal with conditions ranging from anxiety to schizophrenia. One estimate puts the number of detainees with mental illnesses between 3,000 and 6,000. Some advocates and lawyers who work with migrants in the facilities say it's probably more. Many of the migrants with mental illness are not stable enough to participate in their own legal proceedings, so they languish in detention. While treatment of immigrants has become an explosive national issue, the plight of mentally ill migrants has scarcely registered."
Holly Aguirre of Vanity Fair: Residents of St. Thomas Island "say [Jeffrey] Epstein continued to bring underage girls to the [nearby Little St. James] island as recently as this year -- a decade after he was forced to register as a convicted sex offender -- and that authorities did nothing to stop him.Two employees who worked at the local airstrip on St. Thomas tell Vanity Fair that they witnessed Epstein boarding his private plane on multiple occasions in the company of girls who appeared to be under the age of consent. According to the employees, the girls arrived with Epstein aboard one of his two Gulfstream jets.... 'On multiple occasions I saw Epstein exit his helicopter, stand on the tarmac in full view of my tower, and board his private jet with children -- female children,' says a former air traffic controller at the airstrip.... 'One incident in particular really stands out in my mind, because the girls were just so young....'" Mrs. McC: Both St. Thomas & Little St. James Islands are U.S. territories.
Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "The president stirs up racial fury in his followers. He blames it on the targets themselves, the media, and the Democrats, but he is the one doing it. Now, whipping up racist crowds to chant racist things isn't a crime (though threatening to send people 'home' does, in fact, appear to violate federal anti-discrimination laws). But the point is that millions of people admire Trump when he says explicitly racist things. His polling numbers rise, as they did this week. Which is why, even though he wants to (occasionally) claim he didn't mean to, Trump is dead set on egging them on. His supporters' intentions have never been more clear. They want to engage in a war over race, immigration, and intolerance. And Donald Trump is not stumbling. He's taking deliberate shots." --s
Joshua Eaton of ThinkProgress: "Kathy Zhu was stripped of her title as Miss Michigan on Thursday after the organization found Twitter posts that were racist and Islamaphobic.... Zhu, 20, is vice president of the University of Michigan chapter of the College Republicans and communications director for the Chinese Americans for Trump Movement." --s ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Definitely a candidate to have her ass grabbed by one Donald J. Trump.
Dom Phillips of the Guardian: "Indigenous leaders and specialists working with Brazil's nearly one million tribal people have been stunned and disconcerted by the appointment of a federal police officer [Marcelo Xavier da Silva] with strong connections to agribusiness as the new head of the country's indigenous agency.... In June, the outgoing Funai president, Gen Franklimberg de Freitas, said Garcia 'froths hate' for indigenous people and sees Funai as 'an obstacle to national development'." --s
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Swedish PM Explains Equality under the Law to Trump. Mihir Zaveri of the New York Times: "The Swedish prime minister, Stefan Lofven, told President Trump in a phone call on Saturday that the rapper ASAP Rocky, who has been detained in Sweden on an assault charge, will not get any special treatment, according to a statement from the Swedish government.Mr. Trump had sought Rocky's release after being pressed by American celebrities, including the rapper Kanye West. Toni Eriksson, Mr. Lofven's press secretary, told The Associated Press that the phone call lasted about 20 minutes and was 'friendly and respectful.' Mr. Lofven was said to have 'underlined that in Sweden everyone is equal before the law and that the government cannot and will not attempt to influence the legal proceedings,' The A.P. reported."
Devan Cole of CNN: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday slammed ... Donald Trump's policies on immigration in her latest argument against the President's handling of the situation at the southern border, saying that his signature agenda is really about 'ethnicity and racism.' 'All you need to do is hear what the President did this week to know this is not about immigration at all. Because once you start telling American citizens to quote "go back to your own countries," this tells you that this President's policies are not about immigration, it's about ethnicity and racism,' Ocasio-Cortez said during a town hall on immigration held in her district in Queens, New York, in reference to Trump's tweeted racist attacks at her and three other minority congresswomen known as 'The Squad.'" ...
... BTW, here was Ocasio-Cortez last week grilling acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan on the Border Patrol's secret Facebook page:
... Mrs. McC: Remember when the righty-rights did a remake of "Footloose" by acting all shocked & upset to discover that AOC danced with her friends when they were in college? Well, I'll bet they were even more upset to see her very politely dance that concentration camp overseer into a corner.
Justin Wise of the Hill: "President Trump on Sunday doubled down on his attacks against a group of minority congresswomen.... 'I don't believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country,' Trump said in an early-morning tweet. 'They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said. They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!'" ...
... Michael Crowley of the New York Times: “President Trump on Saturday extended the debate over a chant of 'send her back!' at his campaign rally in North Carolina this week when he retweeted a right-wing British commentator who has drawn repeated condemnation over a long history of anti-Muslim remarks and for casting blame on a Jewish leader for provoking a synagogue shooting. Sending fresh mixed signals about his view of the chant directed at a Democratic lawmaker, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Mr. Trump shared video of the episode posted by the commentator, Katie Hopkins, who has said 'Islam disgusts me' and who last year appeared to link a rabbi's pro-migrant work to the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh." Mrs. McC: Trump is throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks; eventually paranoid, aggrieved racist will prove to have the most staying power. ...
... The Company He Keeps. Tim Murphy of Mother Jones: "Per Todd Schulte, the president of the immigration advocacy group FWD.US, [Katie Hopkins is] an anti-Muslim pundit who called for a 'final solution' for Muslims in her country following a 2017 terrorist attack[.... According to the Guardian,] Hopkins also 'wrote a column for the Sun in which she compared migrants to cockroaches and suggested Europe should use gunboats to stop them crossing the Mediterranean.'... Amplifying Hopkins' voice is significant because Trump's criticism of Omar is ostensibly that he believes she's anti-semitic (because of her criticism of the Israeli government). But it was Hopkins who blamed last year's mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Jewish leaders' support for migrants. So where does Trump even find these people? Per the BBC, 'Katie Hopkins first came under the public gaze when she was a contestant on the BBC TV series The Apprentice in 2007.' Of course."
Peter Baker, et al., of the New York Times: "Long before he ignited a firestorm by telling four Democratic congresswomen of color to 'go back' to their home countries..., Mr. Trump sought to pit Americans against one another along racial lines.... Over decades in business, entertainment and now politics, Mr. Trump has approached America's racial, ethnic and religious divisions opportunistically, not as the nation's wounds to be healed but as openings to achieve his goals, whether they be ratings, fame, money o power, without regard for adverse consequences.... But the longer Mr. Trump spends on the stage, the more friends and former employees, like Michael D. Cohen, Omarosa Manigault Newman and Anthony Scaramucci, have concluded that he is more racist than they had admitted." ...
... Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker: "For the past two years, observers have been divided about whether Trump's tweets are calculated trolling, designed to keep his opponents off balance, or the sincere expressions of an unbalanced psyche. The current outburst indicates that the answer is both." ...
... Maureen Dowd: "It is a travesty that Donald Trump, 154 years after Lincoln tried to bind the wounds of the nation on race to keep the dream of America viable, is pouring salt into those wounds to keep himself viable.... [Trump] doesn't rely on division only for elections, like his predecessors; he uses it to govern. And while that is a tad embarrassing for Republicans, they know from half a century of experience that it works to stir up racial animus and label foes wild-eyed socialists and commies. Mitch McConnell admitted this on Thursday when he told Fox Business that 'the president is on to something' with his fragging, though he denied Trump was a racist. While it is awful to contemplate, this trade-off of our national ideals for strong stock returns and more millions for billionaires could be working." ...
... Trump: Melania & Ivanka Are Just as Racist as I Am. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "... Donald Trump contradicted reports that First Lady Melania Trump and White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump objected privately to rally chants urging that U.S. citizen Rep. Ilhan Omar be sent back to Africa. Rep. Omar was born in Somalia.... During an impromptu gaggle on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump was asked 'What did the First Lady and Ivanka advise you about the chant? I know you guys talked about it...' 'False information,' Trump interrupted. 'It was fake news.... We -- I talked about it, but they didn't advise me. They told me, but I didn't....'" Mrs. McC: That "they told me" sentence fragment is suspicious. "They told me" what? It sounds to me as if Trump caught himself just in time to avoid a gaffe. (Also linked yesterday.)
Billings Gazette Editors: "Responding to a Tweet in which Donald Trump told Democrats to go back to the country they came from, [Montana Sen. Steve] Daines said, 'Montanans are sick and tired of listening to anti-American, anti-Semite, radical Democrats trash our country and our ideals. We're the greatest country in the world. I stand with @realdonaldtrump.'... But Montanans are more sickened by the never-ending torrent of childish, bigoted views that are shoveled from the White House that make the country look like bigots and idiots.... To make matters worse, Daines' chief of staff decided to applaud his boss by commenting, 'America: Love It Or Leave It.'... Sen. Daines, please stop defending the indefensible. You don't represent Donald Trump, you represent us.... If Daines really believes that people should go back to where they came from, then that means Daines should start packing for California where he was born." Mrs. McC: Daines is not up for re-election till 2022.
Presidential Race 2020
Tim Reid of Reuters: Joe "Biden, in California for a two-day swing to campaign and fundraise, told a gathering that Trump is 'more George Wallace than George Washington.'"
"Dream Small." Alex Shephard of the New Republic: Joe "Biden has spent much of the week targeting [Bernie] Sanders, making the case that Medicare for All is both a pipe dream and, apparently, an affront to Barack Obama's legacy. 'I knew the Republicans would do everything in their power to repeal Obamacare,' he said in a promotional video timed to the release of his health care plan. 'They still are. But I'm surprised that so many Democrats are running on getting rid of it.' Sanders himself has fired back a number of times, pointing out factual inaccuracies in Biden's critique -- including his delusory claim that a transition to Medicare for All would create a 'hiatus' in health coverage.... Biden's health care plan is yet another example of the kind of thinking that has plagued Democrats over the past several decades. Rather than presenting a bold vision for the country, Biden is promising a steady hand guiding a slightly improved version of what people already have."
Eric Levitz of New York on a few ways confederates are trying to corral the American identity & remake it to fit their limited -- and limiting -- worldview.
The New York Times has a neat interactive page in which they superimpose the words of the Apollo 11 crew & Houston control upon photos that reflect what's going on in the dialog.
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Reader Comments (8)
Dowd days... "While it is awful to contemplate, this trade-off of our national ideals for strong stock returns and more millions for billionaires could be working."
Correction: It IS working, fantastically. Chris Hayes laid it out pretty damn well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF4YvnbfBWg
I never hear of rapper ASAP, but according to DiJiT I fully support him in his hour of trial. Kumbaya, y'all.
DiJiT tweets:
"... So I personally don’t know A$AP Rocky but I can tell you he has a lot of support from the African American community in this country,” Trump said. “And when I say African American, I can really say from everybody in this country, because we are all one.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/trump-personally-vouch-asap-rocky-bail-sweden-no-bail.html
@ Safari
Thanks for the Hayes clip...I guess. I usually depress myself enough all by myself by thinking of one element at a time of how we're going off the rails, but Hayes lays it all out, doesn't he? Pretty much the whole Pretender package laid bare.
After that six minutes, I'm not sure there's any need for further political analysis.
But....wrote this the other day, which expands on only one aspect of the cancerous corruption that has taken over the body politic. At the time, that prospective LTTE was enough for me.
In the third year of the Trump administration, how’s that “draining the swap” thing going?
Not too well--if the ongoing corporate capture of our government was the swamp Trump had in mind.
Mr.Trump may not know much about history, science, or foreign policy, but he does know where the money is, and he has acted accordingly.
Mere months into his presidency he had already placed seventy former business lobbyists or executives in his administration. By March of 2019 year that number had grown to more than 350 (washingtonpost.com).
Such cozy behavior once made headlines. The 1920’s Teapot Dome scandal, in which bribes bought no-bid oil leases on public lands, sent a Secretary of the Interior to jail and prompted passage of the law that allows Congress to request a copy of anyone’s tax return (the law Mr. Trump is currently defying).
Today in Trumpland, the close relationship between government and business is out in the open. Instead of governing harmful business practices, this president works directly for business. His administration has clawed back thousands of acres of public land for private mineral and oil interests. It has sided with Bayer in the dispute over the harmful effects of the herbicide glyphosate. Though touted as a win for workers, NAFTA 2.0 heavily favors pharmaceutical and technology giants, and the actions of the Trump Labor Department have rendered its very name a joke.
Trump offers strident warnings about “socialism” as his excuse for running the government on behalf of corporations instead of the people.
A commenter on a recent Krugman column in the NYTimes had the perfect response.
“The government should not own the means of production.... But neither should those who own the means of production own the government... which IS pretty much what the Republican party now stands for.”
@Patrick: I hadda look up your citation because I couldn't believe Trump had the chutzpah to say, "We are all one." You were right. Of course he's just trolling us as he did on Cinco de Mayo 2016 with the very American taco bowl/"I love Hispanics!" thing.
BTW, in the article you cite, Daniel Politi explains to Trump that his offer of providing bail for the rapper guy was ridiculous because Sweden doesn't have a bail system. A real president of course would have known that because he would have consulted the State Department before calling the Swedish PM & making an ass of himself.
Mrs. B.McC. From Yesterday
Letting My Shtoopid Flag Fly:
Needed to google James O’Keefe.
(Thanks for raising my game.)
What a load of toxic waste!
And young, so the odds don’t favor change re: his sleazy stripes.
Trump is always attributing criticisms of himself onto others, but the projection in his tweet today is next level.
"I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country. They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said. They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!" - Donald Trump
Regarding Ken's post and quote:
“The government should not own the means of production.... But neither should those who own the means of production own the government... which IS pretty much what the Republican party now stands for.”
It is a strange coincidence that today's NY Times ran a front page article about distrust of Chinese business interests, and this week DW Documentary ran a two part series titled "China's Move on the West" [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUxw9Re-Z-E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyeBxcvUJIU ]
about the new Silk Road.
The growing influence of China on the world is due precisely because their government capitalizes the means of production, and does so with laser focus and strategic planning for their national interests. Our businesses try to influence government to help them monopolize markets, somewhat (largely ?) for the benefit of a small percentage of wealthy individuals. There is a global economic/political sea change afoot with China's state-moderated capitalism. It is worrisome to think that the West's version of capitalism may turn out to be inferior and uncompetitive.
Re: Fox News Sunday
Must’ve missed something cuz I didn’t notice Chris Wallace “shutting down” Stephen Miller. ‘Fraid a replay of this vile creature is out of the question as he genuinely makes me physically ill.
Referencing as “sinful” AOC’s use of “concentration camps”, he stated that “As a Jew. An American Jew . . . “ he was profoundly outraged that she would minimize the death of “six million of my Jewish brothers and sisters”. What a load of kosher hogwash!
What *is* sinful and profoundly outrage-ing is his appropriation of the Holocaust and the Jewish faith for political pontificating and tRump licking.
An opportunistic Faux Jew who imagines he’ll be considered “different from the others” and, therefore, circumvent Hell at The End of Days.
A sickening disgrace to many of my forebears.