In previous weeks, I’ve dedicated the APR infographic to the various doin’s of Donnie. But this week that didn’t seem right. It wasn’t that Trump was struck with sudden sanity. Witness ...
That’s Donald Trump, screaming at judges that he will “see them in court” because he just lost two court cases. No, America. Rest assured that we are still plumbing previously unplumbed depths of surreality. But it only seemed right to credit some other names this week … after all, it was like someone called for a potlatch of idiocy, and every Republican brought their own steaming dish.
Meanwhile, wouldn’t you really like to join the team? Apply for a job at the Trump White House!
Sample question #1
Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
Sample question #2
Would you like to be convicted of a felony?
Go fill yours out today! (Seriously it’s hilarious, go look.) Now come on in. Let’s read pundits ...
Leonard Pitts reminds me that I really should have made room for Sean Duffy in my graphic.
White terrorism is not as bad as Muslim terrorism.
That, believe it or not, was the crux of an argument Sean Duffy, a Republican representative from Wisconsin, made last week on CNN.
Pitts recaps Duffy’s statements which, in case you’ve forgotten, were both textbook racism and utter batshit, with the core being that, no matter how may examples are tossed to him, Duffy never ceases to maintain that right wing terrorism is a “one off.”
Duffy is wrong about pretty much everything else, too. No white extremist groups fomenting terror? What do you call the Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan? The Southern Poverty Law Center has tied one group, Stormfront, to acts of murder and terror that have killed nearly 100 people. ...
“Look at the good things that came from,” the Charleston church massacre, chirps Duffy, as if lowering that odious flag somehow — what? — balances things out?
Imagine how offensive that must be to anyone who lost someone in that church. The lengths to which some will go to protect the fiction of innocence are staggering.
Duffy has a terrible case of snow blindness. No matter how many right wing white nationalists you stand in front of him, he simply can’t see them—except for the ones who are supporting him.
Kathleen Parker tries to get back in my good graces by dangling this glorious lure.
Good news: In two years, we’ll have a new president. Bad news: If we make it that long.
My “good” prediction is based on the Law of the Pendulum. Enough Americans, including most independent voters, will be so ready to shed Donald Trump and his little shop of horrors that the 2018 midterm elections are all but certain to be a landslide — no, make that a mudslide — sweep of the House and Senate. If Republicans took both houses in a groundswell of the people’s rejection of Obamacare, Democrats will take them back in a tsunami of protest.
Once ensconced, it would take a Democratic majority approximately 30 seconds to begin impeachment proceedings selecting from an accumulating pile of lies, overreach and just plain sloppiness.
Seriously, Parker’s column — but for a few forlorn appeals to the nonexistent mass of long-suffering centrists — could have been written on Daily Kos. And it probably would have made the rec list.
It seems clear that the president, who swore an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution, has never read it. Nor, apparently, has he ever even watched a Hollywood rendering of the presidency. A single episode of “The West Wing” would have taught Trump more about his new job than he seems to know — or care.
I know there is bound to be a Masha Gessen “Conservative Columnists: Rules for Reading” somewhere with a rule #1 that says “Do not be taken in by signs of reasoning.” Because you know that, the moment Trump’s phone runs out of juice long enough to leave a two hour Twitter silence, conservative columnists will once again be completely gruntled. But for the moment, it’s hard to resist.
David Ignatius notes that while the Logan Act has never been enforced, Trump boiling over with anger is a daily event.
Michael Flynn’s real problem isn’t the Logan Act, an obscure and probably unenforceable 1799 statute that bars private meddling in foreign policy disputes. It’s whether President Trump’s national security adviser sought to hide from his colleagues and the nation a pre-inauguration discussion with the Russian government about sanctions that the Obama administration was imposing.
Flynn called, texted, and emailed the Russian ambassador several times. And then, somehow, because Flynn apparently paid absolutely no attention to anything that happened last year except for dinner invites from Putin, he thought he could lie about both the frequency and content of those messages and never get caught.
A national security adviser’s success depends on maintaining trust, especially with his White House colleagues. After Flynn’s changing statements about a sensitive issue, he has a trust deficit that can only be filled with a full accounting of what happened — one that is consistent with any record that was compiled by U.S. intelligence agencies of his calls with Kislyak.
Actually, I’d really like to hear about another secret conversation Flynn had just last week. What did the ex-general tell Trump when Donald asked where the money comes from?
Frank Bruni needs to join Chris Cillizza and Glen Greenwald in that big Concern Troll Locker room.
Have Democrats learned and implemented all the right lessons from Trump’s victory and from the party’s brutal fade during Barack Obama’s presidency? As the race for the D.N.C. chairmanship lurches toward its conclusion later this month and as Democratic lawmakers sweat the smartest strategy against Trump, I wonder. I worry. …
Yelling has an impact, but it takes you only so far if you don’t choose your battles, marshal your fiercest energy for ones that can yield concrete results, and buckle down to the nitty-gritty of electing legislators who can actually vote against Trump’s worst initiatives in numbers that exceed those of his abettors.
Powder. Must. Be. Kept. Dry. At all costs. Because there’s a limited supply, and saving shots for when they really matter worked so well against the Republican continuous assault over the last two decades. Here’s one promise I’m happy to make: If Demcrats fail to take back at least one branch of Congress in 2018, it won’t be because there was too much protest, too much anger, too much fight.
Ross Douthat really doesn’t have a single decent point in this whole column, but I’m putting in this paragraph because it delighted me.
The peak of Donald Trump’s presidency, so far and perhaps forever, happened before he became the president. It was the deal he struck with Carrier, the Indiana air-conditioning company, to keep a factory open and jobs in the United States. No moment was so triumphantly Trumpian; nothing has gone as well for him since.
The best thing that Douthat can come up with in his attempt at Trump apologia, is a deal in which Trump actually engaged in no negotiation and Carrier received over $7 million in tax breaks to save a bare 1,000 jobs while the rest went away. Then the company promptly announced they would invest the taxpayer-sourced funds in automating the factory, further reducing the need for workers. And the really amazing thing? Douthat is not wrong. That really was the highlight of the Trump regime.
Ruth Marcus and that refreshing reminder that there has not been a senatus consultum ....
The minutes seem like hours in the Trump administration. Every day brings a fresh deluge of alarming developments. Has it only been three weeks? Can the country survive four years of this?
Ain’t that the truth. By Tuesday afternoon I find myself unable to believe it’s not yet Friday. I know that Trump is practicing a Gish Gallop, but sometimes it feels as if we’re all being dragged behind the horse. Barely a day goes past where some republic-threatening constitutional crisis doesn’t seem dead ahead. But thankfully, we still have a judiciary branch.
Not only did the federal appeals court reject the Trump administration’s highhanded argument that its immigration order was not subject to judicial review, it did so unanimously.
A judge appointed by President George W. Bush joined two judges appointed by Democratic presidents (Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter) to uphold a decision by a district court judge named by Bush. The appeals court spoke as one. Not as partisans or ideologues but as judges, calmly and convincingly applying the law in State of Washington v. Donald J. Trump.
But if the judges represented order, chaos wasn’t exactly ousted.
Trump was predictably dismissive and disrespectful, typical for a man who referred to a “so-called judge” and who described the sober, probing oral argument as “disgraceful.” A “political decision,” he sniffed to reporters. This is Trump-speak for any ruling he disagrees with, in line with his recent Orwellian tweet, “Any negative polls are fake news.”
How can anyone who believes everything that doesn’t go his way isn’t real, be so angry all the time?
David Cole looks at just why the three judges were so adamant in their decision.
The executive order, issued Jan. 27, sought to make good on candidate Trump’s promise to impose a “Muslim ban.” As Rudy Giuiliani told Fox News, the president called Giuliani to ask how he could implement a Muslim ban that would withstand legal challenge. Giuliani recommended that he target not Muslims per se, but countries that happened to be predominantly Muslim. But Trump apparently didn’t get the full message. The day the order issued, Trump appeared on Christian Broadcast News to explain the order was designed to prioritize Christian refugees over Muslim refugees. (A separate provision of the order allows refugees who are members of a “minority” faith in their country to avoid a ban on refugee admissions).
Many commentators, especially those who don’t like the decision, have shaken a finger at the judges for considering the background against which the order was made. But divorcing the order from context is not just foolish, it’s all but impossible.
That’s like a governor signing a “voter ID” law and simultaneously holding a news conference to announce that the purpose of the law is to suppress black votes. It admits a blatantly unconstitutional purpose, because, as the 9th Circuit noted, both the establishment clause and the equal protection clause prohibit the government from favoring or disfavoring specific religious denominations.
If you need a reference article for friends that want more on the ruling, Cole’s isn’t a bad place to start.
Dana Milbank starts off sounding like another applicant for that Concern Troll club, but actually has a point.
But there is a better way. I consulted with leading figures in mobilization — people such as Marshall Ganz, of Cesar Chavez fame, and Harvard University’s Theda Skocpol — and asked them to propose actions an ordinary citizen might take.
Until now, the response to Trump has been ad hoc: demonstrations arranged on social media or flooding the Capitol switchboard. That does some good, and the rallies are a balm for people feeling isolated. But the activities are wasted if those involved don’t join a larger movement.
“We need to shift from a reactive to a strategic response,” Ganz says. His solution: Join something. “To the extent it brings you into a relationship with others, it’s worth doing. Unless it has that further dividend, it gets old.”
LIke 99.92% of people inside the beltway, Milbank seems to have missed that many of those people marching have already joined something. That people needed to be welded to an ongoing movement was not a secret that required climbing a mountain to question gurus.
But some organizations do more than others to combat Trump. Here, then, are a few illustrative examples — though their inclusion is not an endorsement, nor should an omission be seen as a demerit.
Milbank names a good number of groups, and all of them are worth considering as places to invest your time. That list is what makes this your “go read the rest of it” for the morning. But again, Indivisible and related groups are not on the list. Because people haven’t yet realized that the something happening here is neither just “protests” and certainly not just a “balm” for the isolated.
The Washington Post looks into the abyss with Donald Trump.
The United States of America is in a “ mess.” As “carnage” in Chicago mounts, the murder rate nationally has risen to “the highest it’s been in 45 years.” American courts are not fair arbiters of the law, but “political.” On top of that, our armed forces are “bogged down in conflict all over the place.” China and Japan devalue their currencies and “we sit there like a bunch of dummies.” We are even being “taken advantage of” in trade by the middle-income nation on our southern border, Mexico.
…
Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, however, veers into outright alarmism, unqualified by a reasonable view of the facts. His words, in short, seem more likely to foster desperation than determination, and radicalism rather than hope. History shows that when populaces succumb to such moods they are more likely to follow “strong” leaders, and the simplistic, forceful solutions they offer to complicated problems. As Mr. Trump continues his efforts to manufacture a sense of crisis, Americans would do well to remember that.
Trumpism only works so long as the Trumpistas are too scared to look at facts.
The New York Times on Republicans using the myth of voter fraud to lock down control.
The newest and loudest zealot in this cause is, of course, President Trump, with his scurrilous claim that millions of illegal ballots cost him a popular vote majority. His baseless claim only encourages the renewed efforts at voter suppression reported to be underway in a score of Republican-dominated statehouses intent on making it harder for citizens to register or vote.
Mr. Trump is trying to sell the false idea that he was fraudulently denied a clear mandate. Republican state legislators, in turn, are no more convincing but just as cynical in insisting that elaborate new ballot protections are needed — protections that effectively target poor people, minorities and students, who tend to favor Democratic candidates
How long before Republicans recycle some form of poll tax, poll test, and every other Jim Crow obstacle with some new, “fraud protection” label attached and a conservative court to discover some “original text” that makes it constitutional-by-fiat?
Chuck Schumer addresses Judge Gorsuch.
Just three weeks in, the Trump administration has tested the limits of executive power, violated the separation of powers and shaken the very roots of the Constitution. A particular theme of President Trump’s first days in office has been contempt for the judicial branch as a check on his authority: He criticized individual judges, preemptively blamed them for all future terrorist attacks and ridiculed the court system as “disgraceful.”
None of which seems likely to endear a single judge or justice to Trump. But then, people will put up with a lot when it comes to a chance to sit on the Supreme Court. In Gorsuch’s case, Schumer gets a “met this guy before” feeling.
As I sat with Judge Gorsuch, a disconcerting feeling came over me that I had been through this before — and I soon realized I had, with Judge John G. Roberts Jr. He was similarly charming, polished and erudite. Like Neil Gorsuch, he played the part of a model jurist. And just like Neil Gorsuch, he asserted his independence, claiming to be a judge who simply called “balls and strikes,” unbiased by both ideology and politics.
When Judge Roberts became Justice Roberts, we learned that we had been duped by an activist judge. The Roberts court systematically and almost immediately shifted to the right, violating longstanding precedent with its rulings in Citizens United and in Shelby v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act. Before Justice Scalia died, the court was on the precipice of violating precedent again with Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which would have eviscerated unions. In each instance, there was an attempt to tilt the scales of justice in favor of big business or right-leaning interests. Rather than calling balls and strikes, Chief Justice Roberts was a 10th player, shifting the power structure toward the privileged and away from the average American.