Dana Milbank reminds you that it’s just one month until the national celebration of Trump.
Washington Post
For President Trump, every day is Presidents’ Day.
As Trump prepares to turn Independence Day into a political rally, the question is not why he has decided to crash the nation’s birthday party on the Mall, but why he didn’t do it sooner.
One by one, he has tried to remake our holidays to his benefit. He issued a federal order declaring his Inauguration Day a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.”
He claimed credit for saving Christmas, so that “everybody’s very proud to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”
On Thanksgiving, he proclaimed his gratitude for himself and “having made a tremendous difference.”
He attempted a grand Veterans Day military parade — reviewed by him — and when he failed to make that happen, he skipped the traditional visit to Arlington National Cemetery because he was “extremely busy . . . doing other things.”
On Memorial Day, he said “those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud” of his leadership.
And on the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy this week, he used the white crosses of fallen Americans as his backdrop for an interview condemning “Nervous Nancy” Pelosi and the “fool” Robert Mueller.
Has someone let Trump know that the month of July was named in honor of Julius Caesar? I mean … what has he done lately? Thank how much nicer it will be when the nation’s birthday is celebrated on the fourth of Trumpy.
Come on. Let’s read pundits.
Jonathan Chait has been looking at those dark clouds on the economic horizon.
New York Magazine
The healthy state of the recovery forms the backbone of President Trump’s public message. It is his all-purpose proof of success, and even a defense of his high crimes and misdemeanors. (“You can’t impeach a president for creating the best economy in our country’s history,” he proclaimed.)
But Friday morning’s disappointing jobs number adds to a growing list of warning signs that the economy might be heading into recession. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have both cut their growth forecasts. Just what kind of campaign will Trump run if the recovery ends on his watch?
The poor jobs figures and weakening income numbers aren’t the only bad economic indicators. There are multiple numbers piling up out there that would seem to represent an end to the long period of growth isn’t too far away.
But what Chait suggests is … how do you know the economy is going south if no one tells you?
One of Trump’s greatest political successes has been his ability to influence (with the help of Fox News and other partisan media) how his supporters gauge the economy. Trump convinced people the economy had gone from the disaster he had painted on the campaign trail to historic prosperity, and that he did it basically overnight.
The Gallup economic confidence chart that Chait provides is one of the scariest things you can see when it comes to the public disconnect from reality.
Paul Krugman on Trump’s lust to kill the British public health system.
New York Times
Probably everyone who followed Donald Trump’s visit to Britain has a favorite scene of diplomatic debacle. But the moment that probably did the most to poison relations with our oldest ally — and undermine whatever chance there was for the “phenomenal” trade deal Trump claimed to be offering — was Trump’s apparent suggestion that such a deal would involve opening up Britain’s National Health Service to U.S. private companies.
It says something about the qualities of our current president that the best argument anyone has made in his defense is that he didn’t know what he was talking about. He does, however, know what the N.H.S. is — he just doesn’t understand its role in British life.
When Trump says something both ignorant and inflammatory, always assume that the inflammatory part was the point. Trump does not care if you think he’s ignorant, so long as you are pissed.
But never mind what was going on in Trump’s mind. Let’s focus instead on the fact that no American politician, Trump least of all, has any business giving other countries advice on health care. For we have the worst-performing health care system in the advanced world — and Trump is doing all he can to degrade it further.
As it happens, the British and American health systems lie at opposite ends of a spectrum defined by the relative roles of the private and public sectors.
Although the Affordable Care Act expanded health coverage and increased the role of Medicaid, most Americans still get their insurance (if they get it at all) from private companies and get treated at for-profit hospitals and clinics. In other countries, like Canada, the government pays the bills, but health providers are private. Britain, however, has true socialized medicine: The government owns the hospitals and pays the doctors.
I actually think the Australian system hits a good compromise, with both a full coverage public system and an ability to buy into private coverage for those who can afford it. Yes, there’s the danger that having a second private system means that there won’t be enough funds directed at the public system. But it also de-fangs the argument for those feel like the government is standing between them and the care they want. But then, I think this mostly because I had a very good experience with the Australian health care system (you know, other than the screaming, delusional, unending agony I was experiencing, but that wasn’t the system’s fault).
Art Cullen once again provides a glimpse into what’s boiling in Iowa.
Storm Lake Times
President Trump has made it abundantly clear that immigration will be the flash point of his 2020 campaign. His threats to impose tariffs on all Mexican imports over immigration show how far Trump will go in keeping fear at the fore. He thinks the issue won him the election in 2016. So let it be an issue that defines the debate and the United States as a nation of freedom. It’s high time to have that discussion. We have been waiting for it since at least 2008.
Two Democratic candidates have an intimate understanding and offer comprehensive solutions that stand out: Julian Castro and Beto O’Rourke, which you should expect since they come from Texas. O’Rourke served in Congress from El Paso and, like Pope Francis, believes that building walls separates communities like El Paso and Juarez. When Trump issues calls to build that wall, O’Rourke is calling back to tear down the wall in El Paso to wide appeal. It’s difficult enough building a community without putting fear, ethnic division and barbed wire between good people trying to weave lives across a border.
Cullen has had a knack for bringing up candidates who are getting almost no mention in national coverage. I don’t know if his interest in these candidates tracks with their activity in Iowa or the interest of Iowa voters … if so, the national polls may be missing something.
Renée Graham on the spitefulness that is the “straight pride parade.”
Boston Globe
A proposed “straight pride” parade in Boston isn’t a parade at all. It’s a temper tantrum.
Clearly, it’s not a coincidence that this “straight pride” nonsense went public just as the city was gearing up for its 49th annual LGBTQ Pride event this weekend. The men behind this farce derive pleasure from stealing someone else’s joy, mocking progress they can’t relate to or keep pace with.
It might seem like a dumb joke. But it’s more insidious than funny.
Honestly, when I first heard this idea, I just assumed it was the general sort of idiocy proposed by people who think that “fairness” means everyone thinks about their first, last and only. But it’s worse than that.
According to The Daily Beast, the event, which still doesn’t have city approval, is being promoted by members of far-right groups. Mark Sahady, the “straight pride” instigator, belongs to Resist Marxism, which has a history of racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. At one of its events, security was provided by Patriot Front, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as “a white-nationalist hate group.”
These are the kind of always aggrieved people who get knotted up during all 28 days of Black History Month wondering why there’s no “White History Month.” After 34 black women graduated from West Point this year, the most for a single class, these are the sad sacks who poured out their free-range rage on Reddit, claiming that “Diversity just means ‘less white people.’”
Screw all that. They should just ask for ME month. A month in which they are the center of attention and everything they like is important. But of course, they are celebrating ME month everyday in their own heads.
Michael Tomasky thinks Nancy Pelosi is both a threat to Trump, and deserving of more respect.
The Daily Beast
So now progressives are furious at Nancy Pelosi for not being more like Newt Gingrich. Yes, the circumstances today are radically different from 1998 in one big way: Donald Trump deserves to be impeached, and Bill Clinton didn’t. But maybe Pelosi recognizes a way in which, for now at least, they’re the same.
Well, I will recognize a way in which that first sentence generates a giant straw man. Because it’s always easier to argue a point when you place your opponents on an unreasonable position in sentence one.
Back in October 2017, I wrote a column suggesting that it was getting to be time for Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and James Clyburn to move along. If they take back the House in 2018, I wrote, let them have a victory-lap term, and then they should hand the reins to the next generation.
Subsequently, during the heat of the election, when “my opponent will vote for Nancy Pelosi” was a GOP heavy-breathing pitch, I ventured here and there that this was a real issue in some of these swing districts, and liberals were wrong to dismiss it as such.
On Twitter and among friends, I was mostly told that I was crazy and possibly sexist. Nancy Pelosi, people insisted with the gravest certainty, is an infallible genius!
Well, what do you know. It’s going to be strawmen all the way down. Let’s just move along to another column.
Nancy LeTourneau and the basic injustice of treating rich white guys as if the law applies to them.
Washington Monthly
Michael Caputo is a Roger Stone protégé who worked as a communications advisor for the Trump campaign. He recently joined Tucker Carlson to complain about how our criminal justice system is being totally unfair to a rich white guy. I kid you not!
Caputo and Carlson were, of course, talking about the fact that Paul Manafort is being transferred to Rikers Island to await trial on the charges he faces from New York state prosecutors. Here are some snippets from their conversation.
Your semi-regular reminder that Roger Stone and Paul Manafort set up a consulting firm together. That firm had such a propensity for working with mass murderers and dictators that it became known as “the torturer’s lobbyist.”
First of all, Manafort has already been convicted of tax evasion, bank fraud, failure to disclose a foreign bank account, and witness tampering. To Carlson, those qualify as “prosaic crimes,” by which he means “commonplace.” That sure makes it sound like Carlson’s world is full of people who commit what we often refer to as “white collar crimes.” Someone should look into that.
In one sense Carlson and Caputo are right, those people are rarely charged, much less go to jail. But that is a perfect example of how our criminal justice system stacks the deck—by going after poor people and giving the rich a pass. So spare me your crocodile tears for Manafort.
I still want to kick a federal judge in the shins for the “otherwise you have led a blameless life” statement to Manafort. Even Donald Trump hasn’t managed anything quite that idiotic and untrue. And no, dear observing FBI people, the shin thing is not an actual threat.
Virginia Heffernan on Trump’s misbehaving moral compass.
Los Angeles Times
The Mueller report amply chronicles President Trump’s staggering, decades-long crime spree. Like an iron skillet to the head, the extent of Trump’s corruption seems to have stupefied voters, legal scholars and, of course, Congress, all of whom are currently at a loss for a remedy.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in her run for the Democratic nomination for president, put it best: “If he were any other person in the United States, based on what’s documented in that report, he would be carried off in handcuffs.”
But because our norms appear to be inadequate to the current catastrophe in the White House, Trump is not yet in handcuffs. So while Congress equivocates about the Mueller report and its implications for impeachment, voters ought to recognize a more homespun truth that it doesn’t take a degree in con law to understand.
The president is a cheater.
Trump voters recognize that Trump cheats. They admire that he cheats. Playing fair is for suckers. Paying your taxes is for suckers. Following the rules is for suckers.
Cheating takes many forms: nepotism, cronyism, plagiarism, deck-stacking, table-tilting, cherry-picking, data-fudging, doping, calling bogus outs and fouls. Most cheating is an honor offense, punished not legally but socially — and often after a single offense — with banishment from the tribe.
Keep listing other forms of cheating. I’ll let you know when you hit one that doesn’t apply to Trump.
Mike Littwin is following another candidate who’s yet to make a national ripple.
Colorado Independent
If you missed it, Michael Bennet did well in his CNN town hall with Dana Bash Thursday night. The question now is whether doing well will translate into doing much good for his campaign. And there, as the line goes, is the rub.
He was late to the race — delayed, of course, by his (successful) bout with prostate cancer — and he’s rushing to find a place among the 24 candidates that does not put him on the bottom rung of Nate Silver’s bottom tier, along with John Hickenlooper.
If Bennet doesn’t get a noticeable bump in the polls — meaning going from somewhere under 1 percent to anywhere consistently over 1 percent — he probably won’t make it onto the June debate stage in the first round. Even then, he might still have to meet the goal of 65,000 unique donors to qualify, which would be a monumental reach. For example, it took Cory Booker many months to get to 65,000. Bennet has been out there for weeks.
I confess to catching zero post town hall buzz for Bennet. Am I just that obvious to waves of support rolling past?
Anne Applebaum finds D-Day and Trump completely incompatible.
Washington Post
In April 1941, Charles Lindbergh gave a speech at a meeting of the America First Committee, during which he called on Americans to stay out of the war, so that they might “contribute to the progress of mankind in a more constructive and intelligent way than has yet been found by the warring nations of Europe.” Hundreds of thousands of Americans, including future presidents Gerald Ford and John F. Kennedy, initially agreed and joined the America First movement. But that was before Pearl Harbor. Trump, by contrast, agrees with that analysis in retrospect, decades after the war’s end. In a book he published in 2000, Trump — who also likes the expression “America First” — wrote that in Europe, “America has no vital interest in choosing between warring factions whose animosities go back centuries. . . . Their conflicts are not worth American lives.”
If NATO were an old-fashioned sort of alliance, Trump’s language might not matter. But NATO is a defensive alliance: It exists not to attack but to deter, precisely so that we don’t have to fight another battle as bloody as D-Day. And the deterrent effect works because Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty implies that the United States, and its nuclear arsenal, would come to the aid of a NATO member under attack. Uniquely, the U.S. president can put that guarantee in doubt — just by talking. And Trump does like to talk, frequently and irresponsibly, about how much he dislikes Europe.
Trump will continue to threaten to pull out of NATO, then pretend that he has extracted concessions from other NATO members … right up to the point where they kick us out.