The Commentariat -- June 30, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Jim Acosta of CNN: "The new White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, got into a scuffle with North Korean officials on Sunday during a chaotic scene outside a meeting room where ... Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un talked privately. A source at the scene said Grisham got in 'an all out brawl' with North Korean officials as American and North Korean reporters were hustled in to view the summit. Grisham was bruised a bit in the scuffle, the source added."
Christopher Cadelago of Politico: "The number of Democratic primary voters who pick Kamala Harris as their first choice for president doubled after the first Democratic debates, vaulting the California senator into a third-place tie in a new poll. The latest Morning Consult survey found Harris increased her standing to 12 percent in the poll, which was taken after the debate ended through Friday, up 6 percentage points over the previous week."
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Zeke Miller & Jonathan Lemire of the AP: "With wide grins and a historic handshake..., Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un met at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone on Sunday and agreed to revive talks on the pariah nation's nuclear program. Trump, pressing his bid for a legacy-defining accord, became the first sitting American leader to step into North Korea. What originally was intended to be an impromptu exchange of pleasantries turned into a 50-minute meeting, another historic first in the yearlong rapprochement between the two technically warring nations." ...
... The New York Times story, by Peter Baker & Michael Crowley, is here. ...
... Zeke Miller & Jonathan Lemire: "... Donald Trump will meet Sunday with North Korea's Kim Jong Un at the Demilitarized Zone separating the North and South, a day after he issued an unprecedented invitation and expressed willingness to cross the border for what would be a history-making photo op. South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced that Kim accepted Trump's invitation to meet when the U.S. president visits the heavily fortified site at the Korean border village of Panmunjom." ...
... The Pathetic, Envious Liar-in-Chief Makes up Another Fantastic Lie about Obama. Inquisitr: "... before making the trip to the DMZ, Trump made a claim about his predecessor, Barack Obama, that was immediately contradicted by one of Obama's top former foreign policy advisers. Trump claimed that while president, Obama was 'begging' to meet with Kim, according to ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl reporting via Twitter. 'There were begging for meetings constantly, and Chairman Kim would not meet him,' Trump said, according to an Twitter account to deny Trump's claim, which was also reported as 'false' in the ABC News report.... The truth was exactly the opposite of the way Trump described it, according to a Los Angeles Times report. It was Kim and his predecessor Kim Jong Il -- Kim's father -- who repeatedly sought meetings with Obama and previous U.S. presidents, but were rejected."
Peter Baker & Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China agreed on Saturday to resume trade talks after a seven-week breakdown, averting for now an escalation of their multibillion-dollar tariff war that has roiled global markets and threatened the future of the world's two largest economies. The agreement, brokered during more than an hour of discussion between the leaders, did not by itself signal any major breakthrough in resolving the fundamental conflict. But it represented a temporary cease-fire to give negotiators another chance to forge a permanent accord governing the vast flow of goods and services between the two nations." ...
... The Art of the Cave. Gordon Chang of the Daily Beast: "The United States will resume sales of products to Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer..., Donald Trump said in his post-G20 press conference Saturday in Osaka. The action appears to be a surrender to publicly issued Chinese demands.... On Thursday..., the Wall Street Journal reported that Huawei's removal [from the U.S.'s 'Entity List' of foreign companies U.S. companies cannot deal with without prior government approval] was one of China's three main preconditions to a trade deal.... Trump, in response to a reporter's question at the Osaka press conference, refused to confirm he would be taking Huawei off the Entity List.... Nonetheless, the president's initial words made it clear that his administration would resume the flow of high-tech American products to the embattled Chinese company.... Trump also mentioned at the press conference that he would not be imposing any additional tariffs on Chinese goods."
Mrs. McCrabbie: When Patrick wrote in yesterday's Comments, "DiJiT thinks that when Putin says Western liberalism is kaput, he's talking about California democrats and cities," I thought Patrick was joking. He wasn't. Jonathan Chait provides the evidence. Even Mueller would convict. Trump's ignorance is breathtaking. (So is his incoherence, but that's SOP.) (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Rebekah Entralgo of ThinkProgress: "This was hardly Trump's only flub during the Saturday's news conference. He was asked by ABC News about an exchange between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) in Thursday's Democratic presidential debate over busing.... Trump's made clear he thought the term 'busing' meant using a bus to commute to school. 'You know, there aren't that many ways you're going to get people to schools. So this is something that's been done. In some cases, it's been done with a hammer instead of a velvet glove. And, you know, that's part of it[....] But it is certainly a primary method of getting people to schools.' (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Gary Bass in a New York Times op-ed: "President Trump reserves some of his worst behavior for foreign trips.... Yet even by Mr. Trump's dismal standards, his performance this week before the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, should take everyone's breath away. More than yet another demonstration of his erratic behavior, this was also an object lesson in the dangers of his context-free hostility to the world beyond the United States. Before arriving in Japan, Mr. Trump had reportedly been musing about withdrawing the United States from the security treaty with Japan signed in 1951 and revised in 1960 -- the cornerstone of the alliance between the United States and Japan and a pillar of American foreign policy.... Though Mr. Trump implied that the security treaty favors Japan, it was largely dictated by the United States.... Mr. Trump's comment demonstrates a strategic cluelessness and historical ignorance that would disqualify a person from even a modest desk job at the State Department." ...
... Aris Folley of the Hill: "Veteran journalist Dan Rather criticized President Trump for his 'deeply strange behavior' towards Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit.... 'But that was only the beginning. He praises the leader of Saudi Arabia,' Rather continued while speaking to CNN's Anderson Cooper, saying that 'to put this in context, we have to understand, and whether you're Republican, Democrat or whatever, that under President Trump, American foreign policy has become incoherent and immaturish. For example, tweeting to the president of North Korea, "Meet me at the DMZ, just to see you and say hello,"' Rather continues, referring to a tweet Trump shared on Friday.... Cooper cut in saying he thought that was 'a joke' at first.... 'The president himself doesn't seem all that interested in learning about foreign policy...,' Rather continued, telling Cooper that it's 'hard to say ... whether it's more ineptitude, ignorance or mendacity. But whatever it is, it's dangerous for the country."
LOLGOP in ElectraBlog: "Donald Trump is good at a lot of things, nearly all of them are terrible and nearly all of them exploit weaknesses in our system that have been intentionally exacerbated by America's right wing.... You don't get away with crimes like rape, tax fraud, or conspiring with foreign powers because you're lucky. You do it because you mastered the advantages you have.... The greatest advantage [the powers who made Trump possible] have is our belief is that it can't happen here. But Donald Trump already happened here and he knows he can get away with it." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... As Rose, who linked the LOLGOP post for us wrote at the end of Friday's thread, "... I think the Democrats are falling into the trap described in the article of thinking that Trump is incompetent at what he does. Yes, he's stupid beyond bearing mentally unstable in the extreme, narcissistic, sadistic and just plain evil, but -- and he doesn't need intelligence for this, just gut instinct -- he's gifted at grifting, a perfect example of the idiot savant in that regard. Whoever ultimately ends up facing off against him in the general election is going to have to take this into account if they hope to bring him down."
Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "A federal judge has ordered a mediator to move swiftly to improve health and sanitation at Border Patrol facilities in Texas, where observers reported migrant children were subject to filthy conditions that imperiled their health. Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Central District of California asked late on Friday that an independent monitor, whom she appointed last year, ensure that conditions in detention centers are promptly addressed. She set a deadline of July 12 for the government to report on what it has accomplished 'post haste' to remedy them." ...
... Kate Cronin-Furman in a New York Times op-ed: "What's happening at the border doesn't match the scale of [some infamous] horrors, but if, as appears to be the case, these harsh conditions have been intentionally inflicted on children as part a broader plan to deter others from migrating, then it meets the definition of a mass atrocity: a deliberate, systematic attack on civilians.... Many Americans have been asking each other 'But what can we DO?' The answer is that we call these abuses mass atrocities and use the tool kit this label offers us to fight them.... Children are suffering and dying. The fastest way to stop it is to make sure everyone who is responsible faces consequences." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This sounds like an urgent call to Congress to either investigate the atrocities from the ground up or quickly appoint a nonpartisan commission to hold open hearings.
Presidential Race 2020
Anita Kumar of Politico: "Sen. Kamala Harris 'received too much credit for her attack on Joe Biden at Thursday night's Democratic presidential debate,' ... Donald Trump said Saturday. 'I think she was given too much credit for what she did. It wasn't that outstanding,' Trump said at a news conference in Osaka, Japan...." Mrs. McC: Trump's little critique is based on (1) he's afraid to run against Harris, and (2) he had no idea whatsoever about what Harris was talking about. (See Rebekah Entralgo's post above.) P.S. Notice how, at the end of her report, Kumar pretends that Trump did understanding busing. This is notably irresponsible reporting.
Trump Consultant Runs Fake Biden Website. Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "For much of the last three months, the most popular Joseph R. Biden Jr. website has been a slick little piece of disinformation that is designed to look like the former vice president's official campaign page, yet is most definitely not pro-Biden. From top to bottom, the website, JoeBiden.info, breezily mocks the candidate in terms that would warm the heart of any Bernie Sanders supporter.... All the site says about its creator is buried in the fine print at the bottom of the page. The site, it says, is a political parody built and paid for 'BY AN American citizen FOR American citizens,' and not the work of any campaign or political action committee.... His name is Patrick Mauldin, and he makes videos and other digital content for President Trump's re-election campaign.... in anonymously trying to exploit the fissures within the Democratic ranks -- fissures that ran through this past week's debates -- Mr. Mauldin's website hews far closer to the disinformation spread by Russian trolls in 2016 than typical political messaging."
Maureen Dowd: "The aloofness and arrogance of the Biden operation came spilling out for all to see under the bright lights of the debate stage. The 76-year-old seemed irritated and unprepared to address inevitable jabs from his younger, more nimble rivals.... [Kamala] Harris [ground] her stiletto on a vulnerable part of Biden's record. The reason [Anita] Hill was eviscerated and a lying Clarence Thomas ascended to the Supreme Court is that Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was bending over backward to appease uncompromising Republicans on the panel -- the same men who were falsely accusing Hill of perversity, erotomania and perjury.... Biden is selling himself as someone who can work with a Republican Party that everyone but Biden realizes doesn't exist anymore."
Sam Roberts of the New York Times: "Luis G. Alvarez, a former New York City detective who pleaded with Congress this month to extend health benefits to police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, died on Saturday in a hospice in Rockville Centre, N.Y. He was 53. His family announced his death in a post on Facebook. The cause was complications of colorectal cancer, for which Mr. Alvarez received a diagnosis in 2016. The disease was linked to the three months he had spent at the site of the toppled World Trade Center towers in Lower Manhattan, searching for survivors and for remains of his fellow officers on nearby rooftops and in the toxic rubble at ground zero."
Beyond the Beltway
California. Bari Weiss of the New York Times: "... the San Francisco school board's [unanimously decided] on Tuesday night to spend at least $600,000 of taxpayer money ... to destroy [a historical work of art].... Victor Arnautoff, the Russian immigrant who made the paintings in question, was perhaps the most important muralist in the Bay Area during the Depression.... His freshly banned work, 'Life of Washington,' does not show the clichéd image of our first president kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge. Instead, the 13-panel, 1,600-square-foot mural, which was painted in 1936 in the just-built George Washington High School, depicts his slaves picking cotton in the fields of Mount Vernon and a group of colonizers walking past the corpse of a Native American.... Arnautoff's purpose was to unsettle the viewer...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This supports my contention that school boards in general are gathering places for the stupidest people in the U.S. Thus, the San Francisco school board is being perfectly consistent with other boards when they prove they "just don't get" art even when it is carefully explained to them. Now, can we please burn Picasso's "Guernica" & replace it with a painting of playful kittens?
I've always considered school board elections stepping stones for up and coming future stupid politicians. -- Dan L., in yesterday's Comments
First God made idiots. That was for practice. Then He made school boards. -- Mark Twain, via Procopius, in yesterday's Comments thread
Florida. Doha Madani of NBC News: "A group of civil rights organizations filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida Friday after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would require felons to pay court-ordered financial obligations if they want their voting rights restored. Florida's new law, SB7066, violates the prohibition against poll taxes enshrined in the 24th Amendment, claims a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Florida, the Brennan Center for Justice and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The suit filed on behalf of 10 Floridians also claims the law was at least partly motivated by a racially discriminatory purpose in violation of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to people born or naturalized in the United States, and the 15th Amendment that prohibits the government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race or color or previous servitude."
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Reader Comments (13)
I'm nowhere as disgusted with Trump for his photo-op of walking into North Korea with Kim Jong-Il as I am with Kim for letting him return.
"And we are all so used to it by now that it hardly registers." Gary Bass
"whether it's more ineptitude, ignorance or mendacity...[all three] But whatever it is, it's dangerous for the country." Dan Rather
and from Rose's link: " The greatest advantage [the powers who made Trump possible] have is our belief is that it can’t happen here. But Donald Trump already happened here and he knows he can get away with it."
And I ask: If we are finally facing the fact that Trump is/ has been corrupting this country WHY are we letting him "get away with it?"
I share everyone's passion for defeating Trump but the question is, how will you make things better for me and the country as a whole?
Let's not forget Captain Ahab's obsession with the great white whale. It eventually led to his own demise.
@Dan Lowery: Thanks. Equating Trump with the great white whale is apt in more ways than one.
"... Trump said he will be releasing his own plan related to the issue* in a couple months. He declined to elaborate but predicted it would be “surprising to a lot of people."
* busing
The surprise will come from DiJiT's proposal to have Frederick Douglass be the czar of busing. DiJiT's heard a lot of good things about the good work he's been doing lately.
The other surprise will be when DiJiT learns that "busing" in this context refers to school integration and not removing dishes and utensils from tables in a restaurant.
Finally, DiJiT is unusually time-specific here ("... a couple months ...") since he usually likes the completely unaccountable "... very short period of time ..." to set his deadlines. So ... in August we will have a busing plan, right?
It’s perhaps beyond obvious, but how could any sentient American who lived through the 70’s not immediately grasp the import of the term “busing”? It was front page news for years. Court ordered busing was an enormous flashpoint in America, dragging longstanding differences about race, racial enmity, the role of government and the courts, the makeup of neighborhoods and public schools out into a garish light.
The rending of the social and political fabric was impossible to miss, as were the hard feelings, on both sides, especially in the poorest blue collar communities, black and white which suffered in ways few wealthy suburban towns did. But even those towns could not escape the net that descended over the entire nation.
During that era, I made a cross country trip (my first) from California back east to my college. Along the way, when finding out where we were headed, people like a gas station attendant in Utah and a waitress in an all-night diner in St. Louis asked about the busing problem. But Trump was completely oblivious.
How is that remotely possible? Even his extreme narcissism can’t explain it. Certainly he didn’t have to worry about it. His kids weren’t going to public schools upended by busing. But to miss it so completely as to mistake Harris’ reference for a problem about transportation? It would be like wondering if all the references toVietnam had to do with foreign travel.
This is worse than ignorance. I just don’t know what to call it. Impeach this fucking fool. NOW!!
" ... wondering if all the references to Vietnam had to do with foreign travel. "
They did. Remember, not-too-short-a-period-of-time-ago, he said he didn't feel like going to Viet Nam (in the 60s) because it was so far away and nobody had ever heard about it?
I am beginning to feel sorry for the people who have to work for/with him. I no longer regard them as a-holes, but as beleaguered a-holes.
But not really sorry. They can leave.
Regarding Trump as the great white whale, now all we have to do is find a candidate named Ishmael.
(And not for nothin’, but the whale won. As Ahab, and the crew of the Pequod, save one, boarded the local express to Davy Jones’ locker, the whale swam away blissfully unconcerned about the chaos in his wake.
I guess we’ll also need a candidate named Queequeg, someone with decent carpentry and woodworking skills and a bit of a death obsession (lots of obsessed characters in this book).
And remember that chapter about the whiteness of the whale (Melville was a strange dude)? Not sure it would work the same if the color was orange.
@Akhilleus: Apparently when the only page of a newspaper you ever read was Page Six of the New York Post, you miss some things.
I think Jonathan Chait's critique of Trump's answer regarding Putin's liberalism comment is a perfect example of the mistake LOLGOP warns us to avoid. Trump does know what Putin meant and, if he had given an honest answer, agrees with him. He answered the question in the way he did to deflect attention from what Putin was actually saying and, secondly, to play his standard riff against urban, progressive elites. We continue to underestimate the intelligence and the amoral, devious character of Trump and his ideological associates.
"Call me Ishmael."
Really great first sentence: we're ALL Ishmael.
And we have to remember why Ishmael decided to go to sea in the first place: he was in a black mood and he couldn't stand the humanity around him, so he made a baaad decision.
Well, I'm a black mood and I will probably do something negative to the next person I see with a MAGA hat on. But like Ishmael, I'll probably live to tell the tale.
While Agent orange stumbles and falls on his face abroad for now, I'm increasingly worried how the autocrats of the world will react with the elections impending and not wanting their dotard in place to keep manipulating American foreign policy in their favor.
I'm betting Dear Leader and BFF Kim will, shortly before the election, agree to sign a letter agreeing to agree to maybe take a step forward on something, so his BFF can wave the letter before the cameras and declare victory. This seems pretty much inevitable, as Kim knows he's got a golden opportunity if Drumpf gets reelected. Saudi Arabia will declare they're buying billions of arms too. And Russia will probably sign some new meaningless START treaty with huge loopholes and claim huge progress in bilateral relations. Preisdent Xi surely abhors him and would love for him to exit stage left ASAP, though the next President will surely keep the pressure on to make serious concessions.
This tracking up of AmazInG foreign policy "victories" right before the election is a big x factor we need to consider unfortunately......
Sorry for the terrible writing in my post above, spell check was not kind. Shouldn't be a "not" in the first paragraph and "racking" rather than tracking.
[Lays down the wine glass....]