It seems clear that Donald Trump’s goal is to degrade the discourse of America until the average Sunday morning political talk hour sounds like one of those cut-rate Sopranos imitators that believes the best way to ‘realistic’ dialog is simply using the f-word for every word.
What conservatives think is “kitchen table talk” would certainly make me lose my appetite. What they pass off as “locker room talk” would make me shower at home.
Thanks to Trump, every headline, news program, and late night host in the nation has had to deal with terms that are generally reserved for those who have recently hammered their own thumbs. Or those who think talking like a bad movie tough guy makes them sound like an actual tough guy.
But it’s not the crudeness that’s the issue. Or, well, it is partly the crudeness. But the bigger point is that the crudeness only serves to amplify the racism and sexism of Trump’s statements. It’s not enough for him to make declarations that he’s a racist who thinks that African nations consist only of huts half-submerged in disease-ridden swamps, and a sexist who believes that women are nothing but a collection of grabbable parts. He says it loudly. He tosses on the literally foul language just to be sure you heard what he said. He’s not just a racist, he’s a RACIST. He’s not just a sexist, but a SEXIST. Did you get that? Good.
Unrepentant doesn’t cover it. He’s smugly proud.
The other thing the last few days have done is remind us again just who the Republicans are. They are the people who want power so badly, that they will go anywhere to get it. There’s no “too far,” No “too low.” No “too much.”
Forget the fact for a moment that Donald Trump in his racist spit fit maligned most of the planet. The justification that he’s using for this is that the Democrats brought him a plan to address DACA that was so awful, he couldn’t help but shout his frustration. Except it wasn’t a Democratic plan. It was a bipartisan plan. The Republicans who were in that room when Trump took another match to the respect the world once held for America, were the co-authors of that plan.
And when he blamed his whole explosion on the plan that they wrote … the Republicans bowed their heads and slunk away. It’s hard to expect Republicans to stand up for women, or to stand up for people of color, when they won’t even stand up for themselves.
Don’t expect anything better from them when Robert Mueller drops charges on their desks.
Okay, it’s pundit time. Come on in.
Donald Trump is a racist
Richard Wolff puts an alarm clock to Trump’s Aryan dream.
Donald Trump knows a thing or two about “shitholes” – the label he apparently bestowed on El Salvador, Haiti and various African nations during an Oval Office meeting about immigration. His own father was reportedly so ashamed of coming from Germany – widely considered to be a “shithole” by Americans fighting in two world wars – that he pretended for most of his life that he was Swedish.
These Aryan dreams glowed all blond and bright through Trump’s seminal book, The Art of the Deal, in which he claimed his father arrived as a child from Sweden like some kind of Nordic dreamer.
I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that Trump lied about his own origins. Of course now Germany is super-acceptable to his followers.
Far too many people are surprised by your racism, which is as ignorant as it is blatant. This is confusing because you’ve made no secret of your attitudes.
Seriously, how often do people need to be reminded of all the openly racist remarks Trump has not only made, but made repeatedly? It’s hard to think of a country, race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation he hasn’t attacked. Why does any media on any network allow the surrogate of the moment to keep making the “Trump is the least racist person ...” gambit without simply showing them the door?
The Washington Post fastens on the more important part of Trump’s statement.
What is most offensive in the president’s comment on immigration to a group of senators on Thursday is not the vulgarity. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, referring to Haiti and countries in Africa and Central America. “Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out.” What is most offensive is not even the insult to other nations, though that is certainly unacceptable from a president of the United States.
No, what should sadden every American is to have someone living in the White House with so little respect for the courage of women and men who have been coming here from “shithole” countries for centuries — and who have built the United States into the great nation it is today. The Jews who fled the shtetls, the Irish who escaped the potato famine, the Italians who left hardscrabble farms in Sicily, the Vietnamese who crammed onto rickety fishing boats, the Afghans and Eritreans and Nicaraguans who ran from bloody civil wars — each and every one of them could have been turned back to their “shithole” native lands had U.S. leaders then been as obtuse as Mr. Trump is today.
This is a point that a number of pundits (and guest pundits) made this week, but Republicans are already deeply invested in the “difference” between those countries and Trump’s comments. It’s not hard to think of what that difference is.
Ibram Kendi hits at the heart of Trump’s statements.
Mental health experts routinely say that denial is among the most common defense mechanisms. Denial is how the person defends his superior sense of self, her racially unequal society.
Denial is how America defends itself as superior to “shithole countries” in Africa and elsewhere, as President Trump reportedly described them in a White House meeting last week, although he has since, well, denied that. It’s also how America defends itself as superior to those “developing countries” in Africa, to quote how liberal opponents of Mr. Trump might often describe them.
But just because Trump is so obviously racist, doesn’t mean everyone else can wave a fist and call it a day.
Mr. Trump appears to be unifying America — unifying Americans in their denial. The more racist Mr. Trump sounds, the more Trump country denies his racism, and the more his opponents look away from their own racism to brand Trump country as racist. Through it all, America remains a unified country of denial. …
In framing Mr. Trump’s racism as exceptional, in seeking to highlight the depth of the president’s cruelty, Mr. Durbin, a reliably liberal senator, showed the depth of denial of American racism.
Begin with the eight presidents who held slaves while in the Oval Office. Then consider how Abraham Lincoln urged black people to leave the United States. “Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race,” Lincoln told five black guests at the White House in 1862. So “it is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”
A year ago, I would have argued that the nation had made a great deal of progress since then. It’s hard to make that claim now. It was probably a comfortable illusion then.
Gail Collins on the Trump three step.
The nation is reeling from Donald Trump’s immigration week, during which he changed personalities on several occasions, made the now-famous complaint about African “shithole countries” and appeared to believe that if we just changed our rules, droves of Norwegians would flee the oppression of generous pensions and quality health care to become American citizens.
Trump has a way of creating three-step crises: He begins with an unnerving decision, then makes it clear he’ll be doing nothing to minimize the potential damage. Then comes Step 3, which involves something so bizarre that it’s almost scary.
And yes, even Collins admits that “almost scary” is a vast understatement.
David Leonhardt calls a Trump a Trump.
No one except Trump can know what Trump’s private thoughts or motivations are. But the public record and his behavior are now abundantly clear. Donald Trump treats black people and Latinos differently than he treats white people.
And that makes him a racist.
Is it possible to defend some of his racially charged statements by pointing out that something other than race might explain them? Sure. Is it possible that he doesn’t think of himself as a racist who views white people as superior to nonwhite people? Yes.
Why should everyone work so hard to defend Trump from statements that he has made so often and so clearly? Trump wants all the “credit” of racist positions with his alt-Reich fans, but doesn’t want to carry the label around every day. He wants to go to his rallies and tell them it’s okay to hate black people, and Mexicans, and anyone else who doesn’t look like them, and that hating doesn’t make them racist. Oh, no. They’re just economically unsettled.
But the definition of a racist — the textbook definition, as Paul Ryan might say — is someone who treats some people better than others because of their race. Trump fits that definition many times over:
Leonhardt’s column has a good list of some of Trump’s most notable, and most obvious, racist statements and actions. So bookmark if you need it.
The New York Times on how Trump is flushing away respect for America.
For a fleeting moment Tuesday, President Trump seemed to signal he would do the right thing on immigration. At a 90-minute meeting with congressional Republicans and Democrats, much of it televised, he said he’d be willing to “take the heat” for a broad immigration deal of the sort urgently needed by the country and despised by his hard-core base.
Alas, it was all a charade. The real Donald Trump was back two days later with his now notorious “shithole” remark, asking why the United States should accept people from places like Haiti or Africa instead of nice Nordic countries like Norway, and then tweeting his tiresome demands for a “Great Wall” along the Mexican border.
On Tuesday, Trump’s team was still hoping against hope that he could demonstrate a degree of sanity. On Wednesday, that hope went by the wayside.
The “hole” world and what we owe to it
Lauren Markham on ending protections for people from El Salvador.
According to a small study by the United Nations’s refugee agency, two-thirds of the child migrants from El Salvador surveyed cited violence as a reason for fleeing. ...
Salvadorans like the young woman in my book are also fearing the impact of so many people being sent home so suddenly. El Salvador is home to 6.34 million people; the 200,000 deportees from the United States would mean a population increase of 3 percent. Where are these 200,000 people expected to go, and how will they possibly be absorbed? They won’t, Mr. Bukele says — or at least not without severely harming the economy and civil society.
Think of it like an extra 11 million people landing at JFK next week and spilling out the door without homes, jobs, or connections.
David Von Drehle on America without Haiti.
In 1787, the same year the Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia, an enslaved immigrant from Haiti named Pierre Toussaint arrived in New York. He was the sort of person you dream of meeting: empty of resentments, boundlessly resourceful, endlessly generous and kind.
Toussaint eventually secured his freedom and became one of New York’s first celebrated hairstylists. With the proceeds from his successful business, the entrepreneur became an admired philanthropist. Toussaint fed orphans, sheltered refugees, tended the sick and helped to build New York’s first cathedral. In 1996, Pope John Paul II advanced him along the path to sainthood.
Von Drehle continues a roll call of Haitians who have positively impacted America in big ways. It’s a list worth checking out, with names I bet you’ll find surprising.
Nuclear War
Robert Andersen and Martin J Sherwin say that nuclear war became more likely this week, and not just the kind with fake missiles.
News that the Trump administration’s nuclear policy review loosens constraints on the use of nuclear weapons to improve US military capabilities is a case of déjà vu. It’s back to the hottest moments of the cold war and a reinforcement of the first principle of American nuclear policy – first-use – a policy of questionable value and certain immorality.
How bad is a week in which I failed to notice that Trump had changed the constraints on nuclear weapons? Often I feel that I only have a 1/2 track mind, and way too much of the moving wavefront of information gets past me. But if you miss the Doomsday Clock winding down a tick, that seems … bad.
Reports claim that it is designed to “send a clear deterrent message to Russians, the North Koreans and the Chinese”. This is one-size-fits-all nuclear thinking: “Fire and fury like the world has never seen.” It is another misguided and dangerous policy, as its critics have made clear.
If the message is “we’re so screwed that if you launched first we’d probably not get off a reply shot because it would take more than the 8 minute missile travel time to explain to Trump what’s happening,” then they probably got the message. Trump may actually destroy MAD by being mad.
The New York Times and the false alarm that seemed way too real.
At a time when many are questioning whether Mr. Trump ought to be allowed anywhere near the nuclear “button,” he is moving ahead with plans to develop new nuclear weapons and expanding the circumstances in which they’d be used. Such actions break with years of American nuclear policy. They also make it harder to persuade other nations to curb their nuclear ambitions or forgo them entirely.
Mr. Trump has boasted about the size and power of America’s nuclear arsenal, threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, pushed for a massive buildup of an arsenal that already has too many — 4,000 — warheads and wondered aloud why the United States possesses such weapons if it isn’t prepared to use them.
I’m grateful that it seems Trump missed the missile show. Please no one try to explain it to him. Let’s just be glad we made it through today and move on.
Law and Justice
Jeffrey Stein on how to convict an innocent person. And I’m including a bunch of it.
The conversation almost always begins in jail. Sitting with your client in the visitation room, you start preparing them for the most important decision the person has ever made. Though the case is just a few days old, the prosecution has already extended a plea offer that will expire within the week. And, because local laws might require detention for certain charges at the prosecutor’s request, or because criminal justice systems punish those unable to pay bail, your client will have to make that decision while sitting in a cage.
The thought of what people go through when confronting a plea deal makes me physically ill. If you’ve been lucky enough to never be on the other end, it is not like you see on TV. Not even like you see on TV when the cops are being “tough.” It’s infinitely worse. More raw, more threatening, more frightening, more uncomfortable.
Your client is desperate, stripped of freedom and isolated from family. Such circumstances make those accused of crimes more likely to claim responsibility, even for crimes they did not commit. A 2016 paper analyzing more than 420,000 cases determined that those who gained pretrial release were 15.6 percentage points less likely to be found guilty. Not surprisingly, prosecutors commonly condition plea offers on postponing hearings where defendants may challenge their arrests and request release.
Try this scenario on for size. You’re not charged with one crime, you’re charged with ten. You know the charges are wrong, but some of them are confusing, even to you. The prosecutor makes sure you know that each of these charges carries a mandatory minimum sentence of at least 5 years. Each of them can be longer, but not shorter. Even if you’ve never had so much as a traffic ticket in the past, you’re done for now. You’re looking at life. You maintain your innocence, but he makes it clear that juries, facing such a stack of charges, often feel like they should vote guilty on at least one of them. You know, just to be safe. Even if your attorney is telling you there’s a 90 percent chance you’ll get off, are you going to take that chance when it means you’ll be jailed for at least 5 years? Just to help you make this decision, the prosecutor says if he gets you on any of them, he’ll press the judge for the maximum. It won’t be 5. It’ll be 30. Oh, and in any case you’ll be in jail until the trial comes up which will be, eh, maybe next year.
But … on the other hand, here’s this deal. For a very limited time, if you sign right here to these tiny little ‘class C’ charges.You’ll get probation and can go home to your family today. Right now in fact. Here’s a pen.
In what little time exists before the plea expires, you dispatch your overworked investigator to identify, find and interview witnesses. In federal and in many local courts, the prosecution is not obligated to reveal its witnesses before trial.
What are you going to do? Here’s a clue: On many charges, the conviction rate isn’t just over 90 percent, it’s over 99 percent. That’s not because the police are perfect. It’s because the system is that efficient at turning anyone they bring in into a conviction.
The judge turns to you and asks, “Does either counsel know of any reason that I should not accept the defendant’s guilty plea?” You hesitate. You want to shout: “Yes, your honor! This plea is the product of an extortive system of devastating mandatory minimums and lopsided access to evidence. My client faced an impossible choice and is just trying to avoid losing his life to prison.”
Trump–Russia
Dana Milbank on the Steele dossier, and his long-time friend Glenn Simpson.
President Trump has been leading the charge to portray Simpson and Fusion GPS, the opposition-research firm Simpson started in 2009 when he left the Journal, as puppets of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, “colluding” with Russia to find dirt on Trump. Trump has been tweeting about pay received by Fusion from Clinton and other Democrats, and the “COMPLETE FRAUD” of a dossier produced by a Fusion contractor, which Trump alleges sparked the FBI’s investigation of him.
Both Trump and a number of Republican congressmen are repeating the lie that the FBI helped fund Christopher Steele and his dossier. This is a lie in the totally not true sense, but I fully expect several Republicans — Mark Meadows among them — to float this statement again this morning in full confidence no one will shoot them down.
I get it. Trump’s best defense in the Russia probe (perhaps his only defense other than repeating “there’s no collusion” ad infinitum) is to go on offense, saying Clinton and the Democrats were the ones who colluded with Russia, using a double bank shot involving Simpson, Fusion and their contractor, former British spy Christopher Steele.
Milbank cites a number of instances in which Fusion, and Simpson in particular, surfaced information on Democratic politicians and drew praise from Republicans. You can read about this incidents here, but don’t expect to hear about them from Republicans.
Civil Rights
Leonard Pitts is back, thank goodness.
As we mark what would have been his 89th birthday, it seems fitting to recall that Martin Luther King spoke to that difficulty in a 1957 speech whose words ring relevant 61 years later. “All types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters,” lamented King.
As he saw it, neither political party was blameless. He castigated Democrats for capitulating to the rabid racists of their Southern wing — the so-called “Dixiecrats” — and blasted Republicans for caving in to “rightwing reactionary Northerners.” …
While there are no more Dixiecrats and the rightwing reactionaries to whom the GOP kowtows are more likely to be found in the South and Midwest now than in the North, it is noteworthy that King’s central point remains valid. Neither party covers itself with glory where African Americans are concerned. To the contrary, African-American issues — police reform, job discrimination, mass incarceration — routinely go unaddressed by both.
Before anyone huffs about Pitts sinking into bothsiderism, hang on for few paragraphs.
And here, someone will demand to know how it is, if both parties share blame, black voters remain overwhelmingly loyal to one of them, reliably casting about 90 percent of their presidential ballots for Democrats. But it isn’t that hard to understand.
Imagine you have two suitors. One of them tends to ignore you, often seems ashamed to be seen with you, but occasionally brings you flowers. The other beats you.
If you must date one, is it any wonder you’d choose the former?
But dammit, we can do better than ignorance and shame.