In the past few days, we have Donald Trump lashing out at the audience members and cast members of a Broadway musical, calling a meeting with press executives and reporters for the sole purpose of viciously attacking them, and all the while, completely ignoring neo-Nazis and white supremacists who have been emboldened and who openly celebrate his victory. First up in today’s roundup, The New York Times:
The young, suit-and-tie white supremacists who traveled to Washington had no idea a year ago that their views would be getting a hearing in mainstream political discourse, much less finding sympathy in the White House. But Mr. Trump ensured that outcome by playing to white nationalism during the primaries, then choosing as his campaign chairman Mr. Bannon, who managed the alt-right’s most visible platform.
The country now finds itself at a particularly dangerous moment, with advocates of discrimination and hate emboldened as they have not been for decades. Given the danger of violence and bigotry these groups pose, why would Mr. Trump, who was so offended by the “Hamilton” cast’s plea for tolerance, remain silent?
The Washington Post:
What is so disturbing here is not just Mr. Trump’s hotheaded Twitter habits, but rather his casual disregard for freedom of expression and visceral intolerance of criticism. In his campaign, he regularly insulted journalists and sometimes leveled threats of retaliation. Now that he is president-elect, his complaints can no longer be dismissed as cranky late-night ramblings. And it is doubly disturbing that Mr. Trump can find more time to rebuke legitimate satire — but not the hateful speech being wielded, often in his name, at white-nationalist forums and other venues across the country.
David Remnick at The New Yorker:
The fantasy of the normalization of Donald Trump—the idea that a demagogic candidate would somehow be transformed into a statesman of poise and deliberation after his Election Day victory—should now be a distant memory, an illusion shattered.
First came the obsessive Twitter rants directed at “Hamilton” and “Saturday Night Live.” Then came Monday’s astonishing aria of invective and resentment aimed at the media, delivered in a conference room on the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower. In the presence of television executives and anchors, Trump whined about everything from NBC News reporter Katy Tur’s coverage of him to a photograph the news network has used that shows him with a double chin. Why didn’t they use “nicer” pictures?
For more than twenty minutes, Trump railed about “outrageous” and “dishonest” coverage. When he was asked about the sort of “fake news” that now clogs social media, Trump replied that it was the networks that were guilty of spreading fake news. The “worst,” he said, were CNN (“liars!”) and NBC.
This is where we are. The President-elect does not care who knows how unforgiving or vain or distracted he is. This is who he is, and this is who will be running the executive branch of the United States government for four years.
Here’s Dana Milbank’s take:
The scenes seemed as if from another time and another place, but in Donald Trump’s America, they are here and now. And if Trump doesn’t do something more forceful to disown his neo-Nazi hangers on, they will continue their brazen march into the mainstream.
Michael Tomasky’s piece at The Daily Beast on the need to resist a Trump administration is a must-read:
[T]here are four Democratic senators from deep-red states who are up for reelection in 2018. The pressure on those four—Claire McCaskill, Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, Jon Tester—to support Trump initiatives will be enormous. Another five represent states that Trump won, albeit more narrowly; they too will face such pressures, so Schumer is going to have a tough time holding that caucus together. [...]
Some background. In recent history, the Democrats were most notably in the oppositional spotlight twice: in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president, and then in 2001-2002 when it was George W. Bush. Both times, the Democrats were overly accommodating. The 1980s are ancient history now in terms of polarization, but just for the record, I’ll note for you that 63 Democratic House members and 30 senators backed Ronald Reagan’s first budget. That represented nearly a third of all Democrats then in Congress. [...]
They were wrong every time. Voting for Republican economic schemes just ended up muddying their own message and lending bipartisan cover to a massive wealth transfer to those at the top. And voting for Bush’s war, well… [...]
Eugene Robinson writes about Trump already using his position for personal gain:
Amid the hustle and bustle of his transition, according to the New York Times, President-elect Trump found time last week for a visit from the Indian partners with whom he is developing a pair of residential towers in Pune, a sprawling city not far from Mumbai. And Trump received a congratulatory phone call from Argentine President Mauricio Macri, with whose father Trump had business dealings. Trump and Macri denied published reports that Trump lobbied for an office building project he and a group of partners want to build in Buenos Aires.
Also, when Trump met last week with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump’s daughter Ivanka was present. That raised eyebrows because Ivanka Trump, along with her brothers Donald Jr. and Eric, apparently will manage Trump’s business empire while he is in office. Trump’s lawyer called this arrangement a “blind” trust, but it is no such thing. Rather, it’s a way to use the presidency for the Trump family’s further enrichment.
Meanwhile, Eric Levitz at New York Magazine explains why the Constitution likely doesn’t prevent a kleptocracy:
When confronted with the nefarious implication of these actions — that the man who campaigned against corruption could intend to govern as a kleptocrat — he and his surrogates responded with variations of the same refrain: The president-elect will dutifully comply “with all applicable rules and regulations.”
The problem with this answer is that there are, quite likely, no applicable rules and regulations: The president is exempt from conflict-of-interest laws. The only constraints on Trump’s freedom to leverage his public power for private profit is political disapproval and his own sense of shame.
And, considering that Trump was just elected after spending a year and a half advertising his own avarice and shamelessness, it’s hard to have much confidence in those constraints.
The search for some other means of reining in our president-elect’s capacity for corruption has led several legal minds to a little-known section of the Constitution called the Emoluments Clause.
On a final note, please don’t miss out on this critically important piece on voting rights by Ari Berman:
A grave danger comes from the Supreme Court. If Donald J. Trump appoints a justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia to fill the current vacancy, as he has pledged to do, there could be five votes to further gut the Voting Rights Act. Conservatives will target Section 2 of the law, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race or color. (This provision was successfully used to challenge voting restrictions in North Carolina and Texas this year.) [...]
The voting-rights landscape may look bleak, but that is no reason to give up the fight. Things can change quickly if advocates in enough states build support for reform. In 2010, for example, only six states offered online voter registration. Today, 31 states do, and those measures enjoy broad bipartisan support. (Momentum is now also building for automatic voting registration, which Oregon enacted this year.)
The Voting Rights Act once enjoyed bipartisan support, but that consensus has collapsed. Recent elections illustrate that when more people vote, Democrats tend to do better, which is why Republicans want to restrict access to the ballot. After this year, the party that claimed the election was rigged will be the one doing the real rigging.