This is the last Sunday during which Barack Obama will be President of the United States. By next week, assuming we make it to Sunday, it’ll be a different world.
You’d like to think that Donald Trump would at least take the weekends off from being an ass. Maybe take Barron to … whatever they do together. Make a run with junior and Eric to that club from The Freshman to chow down on some komodo dragon and roast sandill crane. Spend a couple of hours cheating at one of his golf courses. That he’d not, say, burn his Saturday firing off racist tweets to a civil rights icon. Or that he could wait till Monday before citing a propaganda site that contradicts what he’s been told in his own briefings. But no. It’s not going to run like that. It’s going to be round the clock, 24/7. Things are going to be … different.
But while we’re lingering in this world, everyone wants a chance to say goodbye.
Leonard Pitts gets first dibs.
As you head for the door, I find myself simply wanting to address you as one African-American man to another about the singular mark you made on American history: first black president. To be a first black anything significant has often been a thankless task. Jackie Robinson learned this when he crashed Major League Baseball in 1947. Your experience proves that it remains true 70 years later.
You got it from all sides, didn’t you, Mr. President? ...
You have performed on the highest, most public stage there is, sir, faced headwinds unprecedented in American politics and nonstop disrespect from the GOP. But you did so with unflappable dignity, unshakable class … and urbane cool. No stench of personal scandal wafts after you as you leave office, and the country is better for your service. So allow me to say, as one African-American man to another:
Godspeed, brother. You did us proud.
Go read the part in the middle. Then join me inside.
The New York Times bids farewell to one of the most popular presidents in decades.
His achievements, not least pulling the nation back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, have been remarkable — all the more so because they were bitterly opposed from the outset by Republicans who made it their top priorityto ensure that his presidency would fail.
That Republicans have the nerve to campaign on the speed of the recovery, when they’ve done everything possible to throw roadblocks into the process—including forcing the initial stimulus package to place worthless tax cuts ahead of actual job creation—was a great example of the press environment that made the world safe for Donald Trump.
Many Americans celebrated the election of the first African-American president as a welcome milestone in the history of a nation conceived in slavery and afflicted by institutional racism. Yet the bigotry that president-elect Donald Trump capitalized on during his run for office confirmed a point that Mr. Obama himself made from the start: that simply electing a black president would not magically dispel the prejudices that have dogged the country since its inception. Even now, these stubborn biases and beliefs, amplified by a divisive and hostile campaign that appealed not to people’s better instincts but their worst, have blinded many Americans to their own good fortune, fortune that flowed from policies set in motion by this president.
Why would anyone expect anything else? Half of America is convinced that the stock market is lower than it was when Obama took office. That there were fewer people employed. Even that fewer people have medical insurance. They didn’t get that impression out of thin air. It’s what they were told. As long as the press values access over accuracy, it will only get worse.
Michael Eric Dyson on how black Americans are, in a way, actually relieved to see Obama go.
Black America has held its collective breath during every second of Barack Obama’s presidency. I remember stumping early for the Illinois senator, only to have black people I met on the campaign trail tell me that they couldn’t possibly vote for my man. Not only was he not as well known, or beloved, as his opponent Hillary Clinton, but didn’t I know that he’d be harmed if he even got close to the White House? “You know they’re going to shoot him.”
I have to admit that I had such thoughts myself, but then I grew up in the 60s and 70s when it seemed like someone was taking a shot at a public official in any given week. If there is anything in which we can take solace, it’s that this transition is not happening because of, or though the force of, a gun.
Death has been the existential arc for some of the most prominent black leaders since the 1960s. It was true of Dr. King, and before him, Malcolm X, and before him, Medgar Evers. Leaders who have survived have been dogged by the threat of death. The former leader of the National Urban League, Vernon Jordan, survived an assassination attempt in 1980. Al Sharpton was stabbed in 1991 as he prepared to lead a protest march. Jesse Jackson endured death threats when he contended for the presidency in 1988. The paradox that surrounds such figures is irresistible. The invincible are the vulnerable; the heroic are the tragic; the iconic are, too often, posthumously celebrated.
I suspect that if we knew the number of death threats President Obama has received while remaining “no drama,” we’d all be impressed. Or faint.
Khalil Muhammad on how President Obama broke every barrier ... and none.
It’s true that, in fulfilling the duties of the presidency with great dignity, Mr. Obama represents the highest expression of the goal of assimilation. But for African-Americans, he was also the ultimate lesson in how this antidote alone is insufficient to heal the gaping wounds of racial injustice in America. It’s clear that black leadership, in itself, isn’t enough to transform the country. So we must confront the end of an era and the dawn of a new one.
It’s not Obama’s fault that many of us became so focused on the top of the party, that we allowed the based to become hollowed out and weak.
We cannot engineer a more equitable nation simply by dressing up institutions in more shades of brown. Instead, we must confront structural racism and the values of our institutions. … the exceptionalism of Mr. Obama’s biography couldn’t save us from the Tea Party revolution, Republican obstructionism, police brutality, voter suppression and Islamophobia. We now know that no individual, no matter how singular, can bend the moral arc of the universe. Not even Dr. King could.
Nicholas Kristof hangs a parking sign for Trump in the Kremlin parking lot.
American intelligence officials reportedly cautioned that Vladimir Putin might have “leverages of pressure” to extort Trump. That presumably was a reference to the hanky-panky recounted in the dossier alleging that Moscow compromised Trump by filming him cavorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel.
Perhaps more troubling are suggestions of collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign. ...
So is our new president a Russian poodle?
Of course not. Poodles are much more loyal, and considerably brighter, than Trump.
Look, it’s poetic justice that Donald Trump, who for years falsely bellowed that President Obama was born abroad, is now caught in similarly unsubstantiated rumors. So Democrats have a right to chortle. But they should remain skeptical.
I’m skeptical, but I’d be more skeptical if the dossier didn’t provide pretty much the only fit for Trump’s actions. From weakening the Republican platform on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to the constant bowing to Putin, the dossier provides ugly, but reasonable, answers.
Kathleen Parker asks if we can really say that Donald Trump was elected president.
Republicans can argue until their last breath that Trump objectors are sore losers, but isn’t more at stake than “mere politics”? This phrase has been rendered quaint by such serious issues as Russian hackers apparently trying to tilt the election toward Donald Trump; the FBI’s possibly politically motivated practices; Trump’s initial resistance to the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community; Trump’s refusal to release tax records, which might mollify concerns about his relationship with Russia.
It’s not just the Russia connection that causes Parker to veer toward Camp Illegitimate.
Let me help you: Eleven days to go and the man who had said there’s nothing to see here suddenly says, Hey, there might be something after all! And no one’s supposed to think this affected the election?
Add Russian efforts and Comey, and it’s well more than enough to make the difference. That doesn’t mean Clinton did nothing wrong. Of course she did. She made mistakes both strategic and tactical. It doesn’t mean Democrats don’t need to rethink their messaging, which was singularly ineffective, or that progressives don’t need to get past “the most progressive platform ever” and match that with more progressive candidates. All of that is true. Without Comey, we would still be having all the same arguments about Clinton and the DNC, but we would not be about to inaugurate Donald Trump.
Michael Bromwich on the investigation into Comey.
The investigation will address allegations that Comey violated established Justice Department and FBI policies and procedures in his July 5, 2016, public announcement concerning the Hillary Clinton email investigation. And it will explore allegations that Comey’s Oct. 28 and Nov. 6 letters to Congress, which jolted the presidential election — and may have changed its outcome — were improper.
We can’t be certain, but the way late breaking deciders were moving previous to Comey’s letter, vs how they broke following that letter, suggests that Comey’s decision alone was enough to make the difference. And that’s not even counting the effect of the director’s highly unusual mid-summer tirade that provided Trump and other Republicans with fuel for months.
Some members of the public may wonder how a political appointee in an outgoing administration can launch an investigation such as this one. That misunderstands the role of federal inspectors general, who do not leave with the change of administrations. Inspectors general are the only political appointees whom the law requires be selected “without regard to political affiliation and solely on the basis of integrity.” They serve for indefinite periods and may be removed only for cause and with advance notice to Congress.
Anne Applebaum says forget the secret dossier, and the not so secret report, what we know to be true is enough.
We now have not one but two “secret” dossiers on the Russian campaign to support Donald Trump. One of them is an unverified and probably unverifiable 35-page collection of rumors and gossip put together by a former British spy. …
The other is the declassified version of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence report on Russia’s role in the U.S. election campaign. …
Trump’s real estate empire relies, though we don’t know how much, on Russian money. Trump says he never invested in Russia or got loans from Russia. But he did get investment from Russia. In 2008, his son said that Russian investment was “pouring in” to Trump properties. Even before that, Trump had a whole series of partners and investors linked to post-Soviet oligarchs and even Russian organized crime. Has Trump concealed his tax returns for this reason?
The rest of Applebaum’s piece is a pretty good list of Trump’s Russia connections. I happen to be working on a longer one, but this is a good reference for things we already know.
Dana Milbank might as well be asking for the moon.
I’m not questioning Trump’s citizenship or patriotism. But it would be reassuring to see him renounce fidelity to another repressive leader of Russia — to demonstrate that he is “no puppet” of Vladimir Putin.
Well, I am questioning Trump’s patriotism. Just in the last two day’s he’s indicated he would be open to removing sanctions on Russia and he’s started planning a visit with Putin. He’s not going to “renounce” Putin in any meaningful way.
Trump arguably owes his election to Putin. (In an election as close as this one, any number of minor factors could have been decisive, including the Russians’ leaks of Democrats’ hacked emails.) And he steadfastly refuses to do the things that would remove fears that Putin has sway over Trump’s finances: release his tax returns, divest of his businesses or put them into a blind trust. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if the incoming president is beholden to one of the nation’s most wily adversaries.
See you need week. Same time. Different planet.