We begin today’s roundup with Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast and his take on Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees:
By my count, Ben Carson, nominated by Donald Trump to be his HUD secretary, makes the fourth designee who seems to oppose the very mission of the department he’s about to take over. There’s Jeff Sessions at Justice, who isn’t likely to be enforcing many civil rights cases or pursuing many antitrust violations. Tom Price at Health and Human Services, who wants to dismantle the same Obamacare that it’s HHS’s job to implement and who more broadly will bring a ferociously anti-statist world view to an agency that embodies the state’s concern for its citizens’ health and well being—especially its female citizens, who have extra reasons to worry about Dr. Price. And finally there’s billionaire Betsy De Vos for Education, who’s basically against, y’know, public education.
Critics of the Carson choice complain that he’s totally unqualified because he has no background whatsoever in housing. Well, if you wanna get technical about it, that’s true. But as the Beast’s Gideon Resnick wrote the other day, Carson has actually shown interest in public-housing issues for some time. The problem is that his interest is pretty much of the “public housing is social engineering” variety, even to the point where he (inevitably) compared the things the government does to house its poorest people to socialism and communism.
The Washington Post:
IT WAS less than a month ago that a spokesman for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson told reporters that the erstwhile GOP presidential candidate would not be serving the Trump administration in anything but an unofficial advisory capacity. “Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience,” Armstrong Williams said, “he’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.” On that basis alone, President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that Mr. Carson would be his choice to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development was baffling. Add the fact that Mr. Carson has no relevant expertise whatsoever (secretary of health and human services, the previous job for which the highly accomplished physician was mentioned, might have been a different story) and Mr. Trump’s pick goes well beyond baffling.
Thomas J. Sugrue writes at The Washington Post that Carson will make our cities worse by taking a look back at Reagan’s HUD appointee:
HUD’s privatization opened up new possibilities for crony capitalism. HUD staffers channeled money to Republican-connected lawyers, consulting firms and developers. One of the dozens swept up in the investigation was Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who successfully lobbied for about $43 million in federal subsidies for a shabby New Jersey housing complex, a place described as “a shamble of cinder blocks long past the point of repair.” He received $326,000 in fees for his efforts and eventually owned a 20 percent share of the development, which showed few signs of improvement after winning the HUD grant. Eventually, 16 HUD staffers and external consultants were convicted. (Manafort was never charged with wrongdoing.)
History never repeats itself exactly, but Pierce’s time at HUD offers some warnings for Carson’s nomination. Like Pierce, Carson is shaping up to be a token black Cabinet member. Trump has not appointed any other black officials so far, and given his lack of high-profile black supporters, he doesn’t have many prospects. Like his predecessor, Carson has little management experience. And like Pierce, he will oversee an agency whose budget includes substantial contracts with politically connected nonprofits, real estate developers, and mortgage lenders. The possibilities for corruption are legion with a HUD secretary who knows nothing about the agency, its programs and its vastly complex budget.
Daniel Bush at PBS runs down some of Carson’s past statements:
“It really is not compassionate to pat people on the head and say, ‘There, there you poor little thing, I’m going to take care of all your needs, your healthcare, your food, and your housing, don’t you worry about anything.'” — Speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 26, 2015.
Turning now to deliberately false news, Elizabeth Williamson is up at The New York Times with a piece on “pizzagate”:
That an insane online conspiracy theory brought violence to a neighborhood business five miles from the White House is mind-boggling. Even worse is that similar fake stories involving Mrs. Clinton and pedophilia have been promoted by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Trump’s choice for national security adviser. A conspiracy-minded Islamophobe forced out as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency in part for his lack of judgment, General Flynn lent credibility to the provably false charge by tweeting links to fake conspiracy stories cited by Pizzagate trolls. Mike Flynn Jr., Mr. Flynn’s son and adviser, and a member of the Trump transition team, was still spreading the Pizzagate lie after Sunday’s incident in the capital. [...]
Mr. Trump says he disavows hate campaigns by his supporters. Now that we’re seeing the real-world impact of phony theories spread by General Flynn, does “disavow” mean reconsidering his choice of the general as national security adviser?
Dana Milbank:
This would appear to be the new normal: Not only disagreeing with your opponent but accusing her of running a pedophilia ring, provoking such fury that somebody takes it upon himself to start shooting. Not only chafing when criticized in the press but stoking anti-media hysteria that leads some supporters to threaten to kill journalists.
After The Washington Post reported Sunday about the Comet gunman and the nonsense conspiracy theory that motivated him, the reporters received emails and tweets saying “I hope the next shooter targets you lying sacks of s--- in the media,” “God has a plan better than death,” and “it would also be a shame if someone took a gun to” The Post.
Trump is not directly responsible for every violent word or action of his followers. But he foments violence. As The Post’s executive editor, Marty Baron, has noted, when Trump refers to journalists as “the lowest form of life,” “scum” and the enemy, “it is no wonder that some members of our staff [at The Post] and at other news organizations received vile insults and threats of personal harm so worrisome that extra security was required.”
Eugene Robinson:
President-elect Donald Trump makes matters worse by trumpeting “facts” that are non-factual. To the extent that he shapes the “post-truth” media landscape, he shares responsibility for the consequences. [...]
Legally, of course, those who make up such stories are protected by the First Amendment. The only way we can shield ourselves from toxic conspiracy theories is to denounce them and disown those individuals and media outlets who spread them. In other words, we can use shame as a disinfectant. Yet next month we will inaugurate as president a man who — in this regard, at least — is without shame.
At The Nation, George Zornick writes about Trump’s “dark” and “dirty” transition team:
Seventy percent of Trump’s landing team members have some corporate affiliation, according to an analysis by Public Citizen. There is a former lobbyist for Pepsi and agro-giant DuPont on the landing team for the Department of Agriculture. The Department of Justice (DoJ) landing teams are stocked with white-collar lawyers who work primarily to defend corporate clients from DoJ actions. A former vice president for defense contractor Boeing is on the Department of Defense landing team, along with several other people who work in defense contracting or other private military companies.
Trump has an ostensible ban on lobbyists on his transition team, but it applies only to people who have had relevant lobbying activities in the past 12 months. Even that thin prohibition—which doesn’t stop company executives or lobbyists masked as “consultants” from joining—is being brazenly flouted. Several lobbyists are simply de-registering as lobbyists in order to join the transition team.
And, on a final note, here’s Paul Waldman’s piece at The Week on Trump’s whining about his popular vote loss:
One might hope that the farther away from the election we get, the less this will matter. But it may loom somewhat larger, because Republicans will almost certainly try to nationalize the voter suppression they've pursued with such enthusiasm at the state level. Now that they control the executive and legislative branches, they can pass bills to require voter ID, limit early voting and same-day registration, and mandate purges of voter rolls. And it will all be justified on the grounds that voter fraud is an out-of-control epidemic.
That will be a lie. But GOP lawmakers know that with their help, Republican base voters will believe it. And apparently, the conspiracy-theorist-in-chief believes it already.