David Owens/New Yorker:
LESSONS FROM PLAYING GOLF WITH TRUMP
After lunch, Trump and I played eighteen holes, accompanied by a bodyguard and John Nieporte, the club’s head professional. A friend asked me later whether Trump wasn’t “in on the joke” of his public persona, and I said that, as far as I could tell, the Trump we were used to seeing on television was the honest-to-god authentic Trump: a ten-year-old boy who, for unknown reasons, had been given a real airplane and a billion dollars. In other words, a fun guy to hang around with. As Tiger Woods observed recently, after also playing golf with him, Trump hits the ball a long way for a seventy-year-old. (He certainly outdrove me.) He’s also a good ball-striker and a terrific putter, despite employing a putting technique that, Nieporte told me, is so idiosyncratic that he wouldn’t dare either to change it or to teach it to anyone else. At the end of the round, Trump and I posed together for a photograph in front of the signature design feature of several of his courses: an enormous man-made waterfall, the outdoor equivalent of the huge fake-gold chandeliers and “French” furniture that he also has a weakness for.
Golf publications periodically rate golf courses—the hundred best in the world, the hundred best in the country, the dozen best in each state—and Trump’s relationship with such ratings is complex. He complained to me that golf publications never rank his courses high enough, because the people who do the rating hold a grudge against him, but he also said that he never allows raters to play his courses, because they would just get in the way of the members.
NY Times:
Trump Sets Off Backlash With Attack on Civil Rights Icon
- Outrage over President-elect Donald J. Trump’s criticism of Representative John Lewis is driven by what many blacks see as his lack of understanding of their reverence for the civil rights movement.
- Several members of Congress said they would not attend the inauguration, and would meet with activists to discuss strategies to oppose Mr. Trump’s administration
On Martin Luther King Day, honor John Lewis and remember and honor Dr. King. These are American heroes.
Independent:
Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele's frustration as FBI sat on Donald Trump Russia file for months
Exclusive: Steele was so concerned by revelations he worked without payment after Trump's election victory in November
Make no mistake. Whatever out press does with this, world press is not backing off.
Margaret Sullivan/WaPo:
A hellscape of lies and distorted reality awaits journalists covering President Trump
At the northeast corner of the National Archives building sits Robert Aitken’s sculpture “The Future,” inscribed with some famous words from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”: “What is past is prologue.”
If you buy that, it’s possible to have a solid idea of what Donald Trump’s presidency will be like for the American media and for citizens who depend on that flawed but essential institution.
The short form: hellish.
Consider, for example, the saga of Serge Kovaleski, the highly regarded New York Times reporter whose disability limits the use of his arms.
Yes, this is the reporter whom Trump mocked during the campaign — waving his arms in a crude but unmistakable imitation of Kovaleski’s movements. When criticized for doing so, Trump vehemently denied that mocking Kovaleski was even possible because he didn’t know him. (Which was also a lie.) All this, because Trump wanted to promote a myth — talk about “fake news” — that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated 9/11, which he falsely claimed Kovaleski reported while working at The Washington Post. Any reasonable person looking back at the facts would find that absurd.
What can this small chapter tell us about what’s to come?
Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.
You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.
Bit of inspiration on a dark day. So is John Lewis.
WaPo:
Trump’s feud with John Lewis echoes a long, difficult relationship with African Americans
Trump’s attack on Lewis drew widespread condemnation across party lines, particularly given Lewis’s role in the fight for voting rights for African Americans.
“John Lewis is beyond a doubt the conscience of the country, and that’s why his people [constituents] send him to Congress,” said Kwame Lillard, an activist who helped to organize the civil-rights-era Freedom Rides and has known Lewis for more than 60 years.
Lewis also was one of the leaders of the legendary Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march in 1965, in which Alabama state troopers clashed with marchers, leaving many of them, including Lewis, badly injured. The march entered the American lexicon as “Bloody Sunday,” and the stark images of the police beatings helped build support for the civil rights movement.
Guardian:
On Friday the White House said it was aware of regular contact between Trump’s pick for national security adviser, retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn, and the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak. Before the campaign, Flynn met Putin and made occasional appearances on Russia Today, a Kremlin-funded media network.
Pence denied that Flynn spoke with Russia’s ambassador in December about sanctions on Russian officials.
“I talked to General Flynn yesterday, and the conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to new US sanctions against Russia and the expulsion of diplomats,” Pence said.
He then argued that the intelligence agencies’ conclusions were politically motivated. “I joined this campaign in the summer,” he said, “and I can tell you that all the contact by the Trump campaign and the associates were with the American people.