Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
Timothy Noah at The Atlantic writes—The Trump You’ve Yet to Meet. Just because we know bad things about the 45th president, don’t assume that there’s nothing bad left to find out.
How well do we know Donald Trump? Pretty well, it would seem. Nobody has ever accused the outgoing president of possessing a complex personality. His behavior in office confirmed the common view, barely disputed even by his allies, that he is a shallow narcissist, blind or indifferent to common decencies, with poor impulse control and a vindictive streak. His futile attempt to litigate away electoral defeat may appall you, but it probably doesn’t surprise you.
Still, just because we know bad things about the 45th president, don’t assume that there’s nothing bad left to find out. Journalists like to pretend that we know everything about a president in real time, but our information is never close to complete. There’s always more to learn, and it’s seldom reassuring. [...]
Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act, the National Archives may not grant the public access to presidential documents for a period of five years. Ex-presidents are given considerable latitude—too much, really—to restrict access to certain types of records, including those related to national-security and medical matters. This means that it may be a while before we find out what prompted Trump’s unexplained Saturday-afternoon visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in November 2019. (The White House said it was part of his “routine annual physical exam,” an explanation that the press immediately concluded was a lie.)
Another difficulty will be Trump’s habit, acquired when he was in real estate, of ripping up documents. At least in theory, this is against the law. For a while, Politico reported, Solomon Larty and Reginald Young Jr., two career White House records-management officials, literally gathered wastepaper from the Oval Office and the presidential residence and Scotch-taped the ripped-up documents back together. But in the spring of 2018, they were fired abruptly and marched off the White House grounds by Secret Service agents. We don’t know whether any Scotch-taping continued after that. [...]
THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING
“Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it, French hoard it, Italians squander it, Americans say it is money, Hindus say it does not exist. Know what I say? I say time is a crook.” ~~Truman Capote, Beat the Devil (1953)
At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—The Last Person Who Should Be Opening His Mouth:
Whatever differences we as Democrats have regarding President Obama's policy choices in Afghanistan, the one thing we can all agree on is that we're sick of hearing arsonists hanging around the fire they started telling us the best way put it out. Certain media, however, eagerly add kerosene to the flames by endlessly quoting them.
Thus, today, we've got torturer-in chief Richard Bruce Cheney - who lied us into war and further enriched himself and his wealthy cronies in the process—explaining to Politico how Obama has botched his decision because he actually spent time thinking about it. Therefore, the President is projecting "weakness."
Weakness is added to weakness, Cheney says, by trying some Gitmo prisoners in New York in civilian courts. Uh-huh. By hauling self-described holy warriors into American criminal courts to be tried with thieves and murderers means the terrorists have already won.
It takes no special effort or reading between the lines to see the main theme behind Cheney's remarks: Obama is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.