The Commentariat -- November 18, 2019
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Impeachment investigators are exploring whether President Trump lied in his written answers to Robert S. Mueller III during the Russia investigation, a lawyer for the House told a federal appeals court on Monday, raising the prospect of bringing an additional basis for a Senate trial over whether to remove Mr. Trump.... Mr. Trump wrote that he was 'not aware during the campaign of any communications' between 'any one I understood to be a representative of WikiLeaks' and people associated with his campaign, including his political adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., who was convicted at trial last week for lying to congressional investigators about his efforts to reach out to WikiLeaks and his discussions with the campaign." A CNN report is here.
Jeff Stein & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "Two senators are looking into a whistleblower's allegations that at least one political appointee at the Treasury Department may have tried to interfere with an audit of President Trump or Vice President Pence, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, a sign that lawmakers are moving to investigate the complaint lodged by a senior staffer at the Internal Revenue Service. Staff members for Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (Ore.), the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, met with the IRS whistleblower earlier this month, those people said. Follow-up interviews are expected to further explore the whistleblower's allegations.... Trump administration officials have previously played down the complaint's significance and suggested that it is politically motivated.... The IRS whistleblower complaint was first disclosed in an August court filing by Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.... Neal made the disclosure in court filings as part of his battle with the Trump administration over the president's tax returns, which the Treasury Department has refused to furnish. At the time, Neal said the whistleblower complaint raises 'serious and urgent concerns' about the integrity of the IRS audit process." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Of course it could not be possible that (1) the whistleblower's complaint is accurate and (2) Trump directed a political appointee to mess with his audit. ~~~
~~~ Harper Neidig of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Monday issued a temporary stay of an appeals court ruling that granted House Democrats' access to President Trump's financial records.... The subpoena from the House Oversight Committee will be unenforceable while the Supreme Court decides whether to take up the case. Developing." ~~~
~~~ Update. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Monday temporarily blocked an appeals court ruling that required President Trump to turn over financial records to a House committee. The brief order gave no reasons and served to maintain the status quo while the justices decided how to proceed. In a letter to the court earlier on Monday, lawyers for the committee said they did not oppose a brief interim stay. In entering one, the chief justice ordered the committee's lawyers to file papers on whether to grant a longer stay by Thursday. If the justices grant a longer stay, they will next consider whether to hear Mr. Trump's appeal. The case, concerning a subpoena from the House Oversight and Reform Committee, is one of two cases before the Supreme Court in which Mr. Trump is seeking to halt disclosures of his financial records by his accounting firm, Mazars USA. The other case concerns a subpoena from Manhattan prosecutors to the firm seeking eight years of his personal and business tax returns."
Stephanie Nebehay of Reuters: "The United States has the world's highest rate of children in detention, including more than 100,000 in immigration-related custody that violates international law, the author of a United Nations study said on Monday.... Children should only be detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest time possible, according to the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty." ~~~
~~~ Abigail Hauslohner of the Washington Post: "Though President Trump has made cracking down on immigration a centerpiece of his first term, his administration lags far behind President Barack Obama's pace of deportations. Obama -- who immigrant advocates at one point called the 'deporter in chief' -- removed 409,849 people in 2012 alone. Trump, who has vowed to deport 'millions' of immigrants, has yet to surpass 260,000 deportations in a single year. And while Obama deported 1.18 million people during his first three years in office, Trump has deported fewer than 800,000. It is unclear why deportations have been happening relatively slowly." ~~~
~~~ Katie Rogers & Jason LeParle of the New York Times look into Stephen Miller's "intellectual ties to the world of white nationalism.... Katie McHugh -- the former Breitbart editor who leaked the messages, some 900 emails sent from March 2015 to June 2016 -- said in an interview last week that 'it's easy to draw a clear line from the white supremacist websites where he is getting his ideas to current immigration policy.'"
More below the graphic.
If Sondland shows up Wednesday & testifies truthfully, what are the odds that Trump will tweet-fire him mid-hearing?
Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump on Monday said he will 'strongly consider' giving written or in-person testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, despite his repeated refusal to cooperate with the investigation thus far. Trump responded to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) suggestion on 'Face the Nation' a day earlier in which she said the president could 'come right before the committee and talk... or he could do it in writing.'" Mrs. McC: Yeah, Donnie, just as you repeatedly said you could hardly wait to testify to Bob Mueller. I'm going to spend the day strongly considering swimming from Kennebunkport to Brittany, France.
Sad! Carol Lee, et al., of NBC News: "The impeachment inquiry has created the first rift between ... Donald Trump and the Cabinet member who has been his closest ally, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to four current and former senior administration officials. Trump has fumed for weeks that Pompeo is responsible for hiring State Department officials whose congressional testimony threatens to bring down his presidency, the officials said. The president confronted Pompeo about the officials -- and what he believed was a lackluster effort by the secretary of state to block their testimony -- during lunch at the White House on Oct. 29, those familiar with the matter said.... Trump particularly blames Pompeo for tapping Ambassador Bill Taylor in June to be the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, the current and former senior administration officials said.... The impeachment inquiry has put Pompeo in what one senior administration official described as an untenable position: trying to manage a bureaucracy of 75,000 people that has soured on his leadership and also please a boss with outsized expectations of loyalty." Thanks to Patrick for the link. See his commentary in today's thread.
Jonathan Allen of NBC News: "Two days after a whistleblower secretly filed a complaint about ... Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine in August, two top congressional staffers arrived in Kyiv on a routine business trip that ended up setting off alarm bells on Capitol Hill. The aides ... had been dispatched to make an on-the-ground assessment of the cash Congress has been pumping into former Soviet states -- including Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine -- to aid their defenses against Russian aggression. But ... the staffers were shocked to learn from U.S. embassy officials that there was no new money coming into Ukraine.... What's more, the two Appropriations staffers, Becky Leggieri and Hayden Milberg, couldn't even get an explanation for the hold-up, because embassy officials didn't know the reason.... That set off a scramble in Washington to find out what happened to the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that had been specifically earmarked by Congress for Ukraine.... The hunt to find out why the money wasn't moving played out on Capitol Hill and across several federal agencies at the same time the whistleblower complaint was quietly winding its way through separate government channels in August and early September, and it illustrates the difficulty anyone connected to the administration would have in hiding a plot to withhold federal funds."
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This Is the Week That Is. Sam Brodey of the Daily Beast: "The upcoming week on Capitol Hill will be defining for the impeachment inquiry. Eight witnesses will testify publicly over three days in what will be the second, and perhaps final, week of public impeachment hearings." Set to testify this week are Gordon Sondland, Alexander Vindman, Kurt Volker, Jennifer Williams, Fiona Hill, Laura Cooper & David Hale. ~~~
~~~ Deirdre Walsh of NPR reports the schedule of witness testimony, which begins Tuesday at 9 am ET with Col. Alexander Vindman & ends Thursday with testimony from Fiona Hill, scheduled to begin at 9 am ET.
Emma Newburger of CNBC: "... Donald Trump on Sunday attacked Jennifer Williams, a special advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, a day after the House Intelligence Committee released testimony in which she called the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky 'unusual and inappropriate.' 'Tell Jennifer Williams, whoever that is, to read BOTH transcripts of the presidential calls, & see the just released statement from Ukraine,' the president wrote on Twitter. 'Then she should meet with the other Never Trumpers, who I don't know & mostly never even heard of, & work out a better presidential attack!' A spokesperson for the vice president's office, responding to a request for comment on Trump's remarks, simply said 'Jennifer is a State Department employee.' While Williams is a State Department employee, she has been detailed to Pence's national security council staff to work on issues related to Europe and Russia." ~~~
~~~ Chandelis Duster, et al., of CNN point out that Jennifer Williams is scheduled to testify in public this week, and they note that "Trump resurfaced an unfounded accusation he has raised against other officials who have testified in the probe, characterizing Williams as a Never Trumper and associating her with other 'Never Trumpers.'" As for veep wimpy, "Pence's office on Sunday declined to defend Williams after Trump's Twitter attack.... Staffers in the vice president's office have made a concerted effort to distance Pence from Williams, even before she sat down to testify. But sources explained to CNN that his office is selective about which career officials get detailed to their staff. His senior staff typically interviews them beforehand. Keith Kellogg, the vice president's national security adviser, was responsible for selecting Williams." Mrs. McC: Taken together, this is attempted witness intimidation.
Mimi Rocah & Jennifer Rodgers in a USA Today op-ed: Former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was testifying before a House panel that "she later learned the reason for her recall was a smear campaign orchestrated by Rudy Giuliani and others because she was standing in the way of their corrupt agenda in Ukraine. As she spoke..., Donald Trump was on Twitter doing exactly the same thing to Yovanovitch that his cohorts had done: attempting to smear and intimidate her.... This was not his first foray into public witness tampering. It is, in fact, one of his go-to moves[.]... The right to express one's opinion does not extend to criminal speech, such as verbal efforts to intimidate or tamper with witnesses. And the language, the pattern, the timing, and the contrast with tweets about other potential witnesses whom Trump considers loyal makes clear what he intends by these smear attacks.... The real issue for these impeachment proceedings is whether Trump appears to be using his platform and the power of the presidency to intimidate and harass witnesses who are providing highly damaging testimony against him. The answer to that is clearly yes." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Oh, For Those Quiet Rooms of Yore. Allan Smith of NBC News: "Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said Sunday that the administration officials who provided the whistleblower with information on ... Donald Trump's conduct toward Ukraine 'exposed things that didn't need to be exposed.... This would have been far better off if we would have just taken care of this behind the scenes,' he said.... 'If the whistleblower's goal is to improve our relationship with Ukraine, he utterly -- or she -- utterly failed,' Johnson said...." Emphasis added. Mrs. McC: So here's a U.S. senator going on national teevee & advocating for cover-ups of presidential crime sprees. In fairness, Johnson is the stupidest senator. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Mike Allen of Axios: "House Republicans are asking Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for 'firsthand information' about Ukraine-related meetings, briefings and conversations with President Trump and EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland.... A letter from Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who's leading the GOP case, and Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, asked Johnson for his recollections after attending the inauguration of Ukraine's president in May. The senator said yesterday on 'Meet the Press' that he had received the letter, and said he'd be working over the weekend on preparing his 'telling of events.' 'I will lay out what I know,' Johnson said. 'They're not going to call me, because certainly Adam Schiff wouldn't want to be called by the Senate. There's going to be a separation there.'" ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Johnson has already "laid out what he knows" a few times (here, for instance), and it's been, inadvertently, pretty devastating to Trump. But apparently Jordan & Nunes are themselves dumb enough not to realize that the Supidest Man in the Senate could put his foot in it again.
The "But His Gun Jammed"; Defense. Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "House Republicans ... asserted on Sunday that President Trump had done nothing wrong because his plans for Ukraine to investigate his political rivals never came to fruition -- even as the president complicated their efforts by attacking another witness.... -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited Mr. Trump to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, while the president's allies shifted their emphasis away from the defense they offered last week, when they stressed that witnesses had only secondhand information against him. That argument may not work much longer, because lawmakers are about to hear from crucial witnesses who had direct contact with the president including Gordon D. Sondland.... 'The Ukrainians did nothing to -- as far as investigations goes -- to get the aid released,' Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Mr. Trump's chief defenders, said on CBS's 'Face the Nation.' 'So there was never this quid pro quo that the Democrats all promise existed.'"
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is equivalent to witnesses testifying that Trump aimed a gun at a person walking down Fifth Avenue, cocked & pulled the trigger, but the gun jammed. There is a sort of "logical" argument here: the penalty for attempted murder usually isn't as great as the penalty for murder. So Trump -- because his plot failed -- should not get the equivalent of the death penalty: removal from office. A serious flaw in that argument: Trump's intended result was to smear Joe Biden. And now nearly every adult in the U.S. knows that Biden's son took a high-paying position at a dodgy Ukrainian gas company just as Joe Biden made certain Ukraine's top prosecutor was fired. So, yeah, Trump shot the guy. On Fifth Avenue. In front of a huge crowd. And he kept on shooting.
Chris Wallace Did Not Drink the Kool-Aid. Justin Baragona of the Daily Beast: "Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace repeatedly confronted House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) on Sunday over the top Republican's characterization of last week's impeachment testimony, accusing the congressman of 'very badly' misrepresenting the witnesses' positions.... Scalise ... asserted [that] ... senior State Department official George Kent, top Ukraine envoy Bill Taylor, and former U.S. Amb. to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch essentially said Trump did nothing wrong. 'All three of them were asked, did you see any impeachable offenses' he declared. 'Did you see any bribery? Any of that? Not one of those things were mentioned. Not one person said they saw a crime committed.' 'With all due respect -- with all due respect, that very badly mischaracterizes what they said,' Wallace pushed back. '... William Taylor, for instance, the acting ambassador to Ukraine, was asked whether or not these were impeachable offenses. He said I'm there as a fact witness. I'm not there to pass judgment, but he made it clear what he thought about what the president was doing.' Wallace would then go on to play a clip of Taylor's testimony, further noting that Taylor said that withholding aid to Ukraine to help Trump's presidential campaign was 'crazy.' This wasn't the only time that Wallace left Scalise stumbling...." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: So apparently a new line of "defense" is that fact witnesses have properly left it to Congress to determine what constitutes impeachable offenses. (Of course, had the witnesses called for Trump's impeachment, Republicans would have screamed about their deep-state, anti-Trump bias.) When your best defense is a word-twisting game, you got nuthin'.
BUT One Republican Was Not Amused. Devan Cole of CNN: Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) "said Sunday [on CNN's 'State of the Nation'] that information provided about Trump during a closed-door deposition of a former National Security Council official [Tim Morrison] 'is alarming' and 'not OK.'" Turner said Trump's tweet dissing Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was not impeachable, but it was "unfortunate." "'I think along with most people, I find the President's tweets, generally, unfortunate,' Turner said."
** Gordon Sondland Is Really Forgetful. Erin Banco & Lachlan Markey of the Daily Beast: Gordon "Sondland has previously tried to claim he didn't know much about a quid pro quo with Ukraine -- until he suddenly told Congress he now recalls the deal. But the details of Sondland's behavior [at a White House meeting with Ukrainian officials on July 10] underscore the intensity in which the EU Ambassador advocated for the investigations into Biden and Burisma." When Sondland stepped into a meeting John Bolton was holding with the Ukraines, "'That's when things really went off the rails,' one person in the room said.... Bolton immediately cut the get-together short.... But Sondland guided the Ukrainians into the White House's Ward Room.... Sondland continued to not just relay, but demanded ferociously, that the Ukrainians open the Biden investigations, saying it was the only chance for Washington and Kyiv to develop any further meaningful relationship, two individuals with knowledge of Sondland's overtures said. Sondland raised his voice several times.... One individual ... [said] ... 'there was lots of yelling.' Another individual called the meeting 'erratic.'..." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Both Fiona Hill & Tim Morrison have testified that Sondland told them he was acting at Trump's direction. And he knocked himself out, during a number of meetings & likely in texts & phone conversations & other meetings not yet revealed, to get the Ukrainians to cooperate with Trump's demand that President Zelensky announce an "investigation" into the Bidens. Yet this all, uh, slipped his mind during his initial deposition. His testimony this Wednesday, unless he just begins & ends it quickly by invoking his Fifth Amendment rights, should be very interesting. I'm sure we could all help him write his confession, the one where he breaks down in the witness chair, attests to his own corruption, fingers Trump as a lawless mob boss who should be removed from office forthwith, & throws Rudy & sundry co-conspirators under the bus. When Gym Jordan asks a question aimed at defending Trump, Sondland says, "Mr. Jordan, Trump is as bad as you were when you let that doctor get away with molesting boys you were supposed to protect." Alas, none of that will happen. And now this: ~~~
~~~ Uh-Oh. Rebecca Falconer of Axios: "Gordon Sondland ... briefed senior administration officials on efforts to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of President Trump's July 25 call with the Ukrainian leader, the Wall Street Journal reports.... Emails allegedly sent by Sondland that were obtained by the WSJ indicate that several other officials can confirm what some witnesses have testified to already about a Trump administration request to investigate Burisma, a gas company with ties to Biden's son. Sondland ... previously testified that he told a top Ukraine official that military aid to the country wouldn't be released until officials agreed to investigate Burisma.... Per the WSJ, Sondland kept officials including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Energy Secretary Rick Perry informed via email of developments in the push to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into the Bidens." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Oh, Rick. What about that time way last month when you said, "Not once, as God is my witness, not once was a Biden name -- not the former vice president, not his son -- ever mentioned"? And you said that on the Christian Broadcasting Network, for Pete's sake. Isn't lying under oath, as Gordy did, just like taking the Lord's name in vain on CBN? If God doesn't strike you dead, are you going to whip off your glasses and pretend you were too dumb to realize when you read Gordy's e-mails that B-I-D-E-N spells "Biden"? Or maybe you thought it was Gordy who couldn't spell, and that "Biden" meant "by then."
Kendall Karson of ABC News: "An overwhelming 70% of Americans think ... Donald Trump's request to a foreign leader to investigate his political rival, which sits a the heart of the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry, was wrong, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds. A slim majority of Americans, 51%, believe Trump's actions were both wrong and he should be impeached and removed from office. But only 21% of Americans say they are following the hearings very closely."
Jonathan Chait: "The saga of President Trump's reprisals against Amazon has lurked on th margin of the news, largely overshadowed by the Ukraine scandal. Late Thursday night, Amazon revealed it had filed a protest in federal court of a Pentagon decision to deny it a $10 billion cloud-computing contract.... The story here is almost certainly a massive scandal, probably more significant than the Ukraine scandal that spurred impeachment proceedings. Trump improperly used government policy to punish the owner of an independent newspaper as retribution for critical coverage. It resembles the Ukraine scandal because it is a flagrant abuse of power, and has been hiding in plain sight for months (as the Ukraine scandal did, until a whistle-blower report leaked in September). The scale of the abuse, though, is far more serious, because it is a concrete manifestation of Trump's authoritarian ambitions.... By 2016 Trump had gone from implicitly threatening to harm Amazon's interests to threatening this explicitly.... As president, Trump has continued denouncing the Post and its owner, and publicly floating policies to exact his revenge." The GOP "defense" of Trump in the Ukraine scandal is that he failed to get the result he wanted, but in the Amazon case, "Trump set out to abuse his powers of office to intimidate the media, and succeeded." ~~~
~~~ MEANWHILE, Alex Pareene, in the New Republic, mourns the "death of the rude press." Mrs. McC: Pareene himself is rude, and has been rude as long as I've been reading his stuff, almost always in a good way.
Max Boot, in the Washington Post: "Enter Attorney General William P. Barr to put a pseudo-intellectual gloss on Trump's authoritarian [view that he has an 'absolute right' to do anything he wants]. In a Friday night speech to the Federalist Society, Barr gave a chilling defense of virtually unlimited executive authority.... To hear Barr tell it, Trump is somehow denied power by the nefarious 'Resistance.' Barr decried Trump critics who do not view 'themselves as the 'loyal opposition,"' but rather 'see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.' Earth to Barr: Trump does not treat his critics as 'the loyal opposition.' He calls them 'human scum,' 'traitors' and 'the enemy of the people,' using the language of dictators. And it is Trump and his toadies -- not his opponents -- who are 'willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage.'... The real threat to 'our Constitutional structure' emanates not from administration critics who struggle to uphold the rule of law but from a lawless president who is aided and abetted in his reckless actions by unscrupulous and unprincipled partisans -- including the attorney general of the United States."
Never Mind. Josh Dawsey & Laura McGinley of the Washington Post: "Everything seemed ready to go: President Trump's ban on most flavored e-cigarettes had been cleared by federal regulators. Officials were poised to announce they would order candy, fruit and mint flavors off the market within 30 days -- a step the president had promised almost two months earlier to quell a youth vaping epidemic that had ensnared 5 million teenagers. One last thing was needed: Trump's sign-off. But on Nov. 4, the night before a planned morning news conference, the president balked. Briefed on a flight to a Lexington, Ky., campaign rally, he refused to sign the one-page 'decision memo,' saying he didn't want to move forward with a ban he had once backed, primarily at his wife's and daughter's urging, because he feared it would lead to job losses, said a Trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity.... As he had done so many times before, Trump reversed course -- this time on a plan to address a major public health problem because of worries that apoplectic vape shop owners and their customers might hurt his reelection prospects, said White House and campaign officials."
Matt Stieb of New York: "On Saturday afternoon, Trump's tendency to downplay his personal health reached the most concerning moment of his presidency, when he went to Walter Reed Military Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, for a surprise medical exam.... According to CNN, hospital staff were not aware that Trump was swinging through: 'Typically, Walter Reed's medical staff would get a general notice about a "VIP" visit to the medical center ahead of a presidential visit, notifying them of certain closures at the facility. That did not happen this time, indicating the visit was a non-routine visit and scheduled last minute.'... Former Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow ... [tweeted], 'This does not add up; the White House Medical Unit has very comprehensive facilities at the White House complex that could easily accommodate most of what is needed in an annual physical....'... If the president's Sunday behavior was any indication, all is well: Trump spent the day online, tweeting over 40 times about 'sleepy' and 'very slow' Joe Biden, 'corrupt' Adam Schiff, and the 'nasty & obnoxious Chris Wallace.'" ~~~
~~~ Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post calls for a second opinion: "The only thing of which we can be fairly certain about President Trump's mysterious Saturday-afternoon trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is this: The White House is not telling the truth when it claims the president was there 'to begin portions of his routine annual physical exam.' We know this because -- well, because those people lie about pretty much everything.... Medical privacy is something that should not be granted the most powerful person in the world.... As Trump embarks on his effort to convince us that he deserves another four years in office, Americans should demand something more than what they are getting, starting with a briefing from the physicians who treated him at Walter Reed." ~~~
~~~ Do Not Question Our Lies. Bob Brigham of the Raw Story: "Press secretary Stephanie Grisham on Saturday argued it was 'dangerous for the country' for anyone to challenge the veracity of her claims. Grisham made her argument after ... Donald Trump went to Walter Reed Hospital for an unannounced doctor's visit, resulting in a great deal of speculation.... 'Further speculation beyond the extensive & honest info I put out is wholly irresponsible & dangerous for the country,' Grisham argued." Brigham reports some of the speculative tweets from a bunch of horrible, suspicious traitors.
Presidential Race
Maybe Bloomberg Really Is Running. Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "Ahead of a potential Democratic presidential run, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York reversed his longstanding support of the aggressive 'stop-and-frisk' policing strategy that he pursued for a decade and that led to the disproportionate stopping of black and Latino people across the city. 'I was wrong,' Mr. Bloomberg declared. 'And I am sorry.' The speech was Mr. Bloomberg's first since he re-emerged as a possible presidential candidate. The topic and the location, the Christian Cultural Center, a black megachurch in Brooklyn, was a nod to the fact that African-American voters are a crucial Democratic constituency and that Mr. Bloomberg's policing record is seen as one of his biggest vulnerabilities, should he decide to run. Until Sunday, Mr. Bloomberg had steadfastly ... defended stop-and-frisk, which gave New York police officers sweeping authority to stop and search anyone they suspected of a crime. Mr. Bloomberg stood behind the program even after a federal judge ruled in 2013 that it violated the constitutional rights of minorities and despite the fact that crime continued to drop even after the program was phased out in recent years." Politico has the story here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Charles Blow of the New York Times is underwhelmed: "It feels like the very definition of pandering. It is impossible for me to take seriously Bloomberg's claim that he didn't understand the impact that stop-and-frisk was having on the black and brown communities when he was in office.... Bloomberg's cynicism here is staggering. But, this is something that black voters must contend with: politicians who do harm through policy to black communities, then come forward with admissions and contrition when they need black people's votes.... As he was about to enter the race..., Joe Biden finally offered a full apology for the disastrous 1994 crime bill that wreaked havoc on the black community, after having defended the bill for years." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Politicians like Biden & Bloomberg have histories of promoting or supporting policies that are known to hurt minorities & women, then -- sometimes decades later -- "apologizing," while saying their motives back then were pure. We all make well-intentioned mistakes, so it's reasonable to believe once or twice that politicians with long records didn't understand the consequences of their actions in real time, but it gets as old as they are when the excuses keep coming and the effects of their mistakes have been in evidence for a long time.
Way Beyond the Beltway
Hong Kong. Lily Kuo of the Guardian: "Hong Kong police have fought running battles with protesters trying to break through a security cordon around a university in the city, firing teargas at anyone trying to leave. Polytechnic University, a sprawling campus that has been occupied by demonstrators since last week, has become the scene of the most prolonged and tense confrontation between police and protesters in more than five months of political unrest. Hundreds were still trapped inside on Monday, after overnight clashes during which protesters launched petrol bombs and shot arrows at police, who threatened to use live rounds."
U.K. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "... when Prince Andrew set out to explain his friendship with the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a BBC interview broadcast Saturday night, it backfired predictably. Viewers were left shaking their heads at the wisdom of consenting to a polite-but-relentless grilling by the journalist Emily Maitlis in the first place. Many said they found his statements alternately defensive, unpersuasive or just plain strange. Prince Andrew, also known as the Duke of York, repeatedly denied accusations by Virginia Roberts Giuffre that he had sex with her when she was 17 years old and had been offered to him by Mr. Epstein. Under insistent questioning by Ms. Maitlis, the duke insisted he had 'no recollection' of meeting Ms. Giuffre." He called Epstein's pedophelia "unbecoming." "The reaction in the British media and on social media was uniformly withering."
News Ledes
CNN: "A group of family and friends were gathered in a backyard Sunday to watch a football game when a gunman walked up and began shooting, killing four young men and wounding six others, police in Fresno, California, said. About 35 to 40 people were at the house, including several children, when the suspect -- who remains on the loose -- began shooting into the crowd, according to police."
Breaking Bad. Guardian: "Two chemistry professors in Arkansas are accused of making methamphetamine in a lab at their school. According to a statement from Clark County sheriff Jason Watson, Terry David Bateman and Bradley Allen Rowland, of Henderson State University, were arrested and charged with manufacturing meth and use of drug paraphernalia."
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