Hullabaloo

Monday, June 24, 2019

 
Trump and the Swamp People

by digby

My Salon column this morning: 

I think most people believe that one of Donald Trump's most important pledges during the 2016 campaign was to "Drain the swamp," a slogan that has become one of his followers' favorite chants. But unlike "Lock her up" or "Build the wall," Trump didn't even launch that phrase until Oct. 18, 2016, just a couple of weeks before the election.

I will Make Our Government Honest Again -- believe me. But first, I'm going to have to #DrainTheSwamp in DC. https://t.co/m1lMAQPnIb

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2016

It was formally introduced with great fanfare in a speech on the eve of the first general-election debate in which he presented his "ethics reform" program. That pledge included:

• A constitutional amendment imposing term limits on members of Congress
• A ban on federal employees lobbying the government for five years
• A ban on members of Congress lobbying for five years
• Tighter rules about what constitutes a lobbyist, instead of letting people call themselves consultants
• Campaign finance reform limiting what foreign companies can raise for American political candidates
• A ban on senior government officials lobbying for foreign governments

The Atlantic pointed out at the time that Trump was an imperfect messenger:

Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were top lobbyists accused of working as foreign agents in possible violation of U.S. law. His campaign and transition teams are littered with prominent industry lobbyists. And in his trafficking in falsehoods and disregard for Constitutional boundaries, Trump himself has not exactly been a paragon of high ethical standards.

Nonetheless, pundits were somewhat impressed with this package, and it got Trump some good press going into the last couple of weeks of the campaign. This was obviously tied to Trump's labeling of his opponent as "Crooked Hillary," who had, according to USA Today, "benefited time and time again from a system where lobbyists move between government, political campaigns and the private sector."

Trump no doubt believed that he'd invented "Drain the swamp," just as he believed he'd come up with "Make America Great Again," "Law and order president" and "America First," which were actually cribbed from Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and pre-World War II isolationists, respectively. "Drain the swamp" has a longer history than those, going all the way back to the early 20th century. More recently, it was used by Reagan in the 1980s and Nancy Pelosi in the 2006 midterms, when Democrats won a congressional majority under George W. Bush.

Trump surely heard it from both of them but since he thinks any catchy slogan that passes through his mind is one he made up, he claimed it as an original. For some reason the media decided that this had been a fundamental promise of his campaign and one of the most important planks in his platform, despite the fact that he never said a word about it until just days before the election.

Donald Trump as an ethics reformer was always an absurd joke, and that was proven almost immediately. A few months after his inauguration, the New York Times reported:

Established K Street firms were grabbing any Trump people they could find: Jim Murphy, Trump’s former political director, joined the lobbying giant BakerHostetler, while another firm, Fidelis Government Relations, struck up a partnership with Bill Smith, Mike Pence’s former chief of staff. All told, close to 20 ex-aides of Trump, friends, and hangers-on had made their way into Washington’s influence business.

Around the same time, the Washington Post reported that more than 74 lobbyists had been hired in the administration. At least 20 were working in the president's executive office, and "49 were working for agencies they used to lobby.”

Meanwhile, Trump refused to divest himself of his business and has the ability to draw from its coffers as president, including whatever he needs to pay hush money to porn stars. As Bloomberg put it in this compendium of Trump's ethical scandals:

He has surrounded himself with family members, appointees and advisers who’ve been accused of conflicts of interest, misuse of public funds, influence peddling, self-enrichment, working for foreign governments, failure to disclose information and violating ethics rules. Some are under investigation or facing lawsuits, others have resigned and five have either been convicted or pleaded guilty, including three for lying to government officials.

Perhaps most shocking is the number of high-level Cabinet members and top aides who resigned after having been implicated in serious ethics scandals. There has literally never been anything like it. An incomplete list includes former EPA director Scott Pruitt, who was facing more than a dozen investigations into his outrageous spending on travel and personal expenses; former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for numerous ethics investigations; former FEMA administrator Brock Long for unauthorized travel expenses; former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price for shockingly wasteful expenditures; and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, for the stunning charge of working for a foreign government while he was serving in the presidential campaign and transition.

There are half a dozen cabinet members still serving who are riddled with conflicts and several ongoing federal investigations into Trump's inaugural committee over allegations of illegal foreign contributions, access and bribes. I don't think I have to mention Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, do I?

Last week Trump's choice to lead the Pentagon, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, resigned after it was revealed that he had a serious issue with domestic abuse in his past. (He's the second Trump official to resign over such charges.) It turns out administration insiders knew about this but apparently figured they could let it slide. When asked about his vetting process, Trump replied: We have a very good vetting process. You take a look at our Cabinet and our secretary is very good. But we have a great vetting process."

That's funny. Axios reported on Sunday that its reporters had received leaked copies of the vetting reports used during the transition. As you may recall, Trump fired former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as head of the transition two days after the election and threw away all the work that had been done up to that point.

On this evening's episode of #AxiosOnHBO, Chris Christie is confronted with his own vetting dossier from the Trump transition. @hbodocs @dctvny pic.twitter.com/RuJxUhLjx0

— Axios (@axios) June 24, 2019

What the transition came up with after that was apparently work done by interns at the Republican National Committee instead of by veteran Washington lawyers, as is usually the case. But even those caught many of the conflicts of interest and dubious ethical lapses of the people Trump hired for his administration.

Supposedly Trump read these reports. I doubt that. He's not a reader. We know he hired people based upon whether they looked like they "came from Central Casting." What we didn't know was that he thought he was casting the new season of "Swamp People."

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digby 6/24/2019 10:30:00 AM

 
He can rape someone on 5th Avenue and ...

by digby



Stunning:

Acclaimed author E. Jean Carroll publicly alleged for the first time Friday that President Donald Trump raped her in a dressing room in the mid-1990s.

Two days later, the hosts of the most popular Sunday morning talk shows in the U.S. had opportunity to ask their guests ― often a mix of high-profile Republicans and Democrats ― about Carroll’s horrifying claim and whether to hold the president accountable.

But the allegation went largely undiscussed by major TV networks on Sunday morning, clearing the path for yet another sexual assault allegation against the president to slip into the void.

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC ― the networks that make up the “big five” of Sunday morning talk shows ― boasted major political players in their lineups that included Vice President Mike Pence and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

And yet not a single one of them was asked about Carroll’s allegation that, just days earlier, had prompted front-page stories and news alerts from almost all of the major media outlets.

Carroll, 75, on Friday became the latest of more than a dozen women to have publicly accused Trump of sexually assaulting, groping or forcibly kissing them since the early 1980s.

In an excerpt from her upcoming book, “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” published in New York magazine on Friday, Carroll described Trump shoving her against the wall of a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room and forcing his penis inside her.

She was a 52-year-old former Miss Cheerleader USA and a famous advice columnist by that time. He was a 50-something real estate mogul.

Trump has denied sexually assaulting anyone, including Carroll. And despite a photograph of Carroll with Trump embedded in the magazine’s story itself, Trump claimed Friday that he had never met her.

The inconsistencies in Trump’s response, the sheer number of women accusing him of sexual misconduct, the hypocrisy of Republicans believing Juanita Broaddrick’s rape accusation against President Bill Clinton in 1999 while ignoring Carroll’s now ― all were topics that would seem to warrant significant airtime on the Sunday morning talk shows but simply didn’t receive it.

Both CNN and CBS hosted Pence. Several 2020 Democratic presidential contenders appeared on some of the shows, including Sanders, Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro. A few other congressional Republicans and Democrats were interviewed across the networks as well.

Several pressing topics were addressed, including escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran, climate change and inhumane conditions at detention centers housing migrant children at the country’s southern border, but Carroll’s allegation was noticeably absent from the conversations.

NBC’s “Meet the Press” aired an interview with Trump that taped Friday. Given the timing, host Chuck Todd was likely unaware of Carroll’s allegation before his interview with the president. Still, Todd seemingly did not reference the accusation during other portions of Sunday’s show.

Carroll appeared Sunday on NBC-owned network MSNBC during the 11 a.m. hour of “AM Joy” with Joy Reid, who lamented that the author’s allegation had been “relatively buried in this week’s new cycle.”

“In any other universe, in any other presidency, in any other news cycle, E. Jean Carroll’s bombshell revelations against the sitting president of the United States would have been the lead story all week long,” Reid said.

Reporters did ask Trump about it on Friday. And he appeared to threaten Carroll:

Trump attacks E. Jean Carroll for accusing him of rape & threatens other potential accusers: "This is a woman who has also accused other men of things ...what she did is terrible...people have to be careful because they're playing with very dangerous territory...it's a disgrace." pic.twitter.com/Ky3TaYNZGt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 22, 2019

The man is credibly accused of assaulting 16 women, the latest one a rape, he pays hush money to porn stars and playmates in the White House and it's not a story anymore. Wow.

He's psycho with these sexual assaults, Harvey Weinstein level psycho. They are all the same.

And he's president of the United States.


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digby 6/24/2019 09:00:00 AM

 

Refuse to be numbed

by Tom Sullivan

The man on the phone Sunday asked what he could do. Were there any local protests planned? (Yes. He'd just missed one.) He'd read the U.S. is holding immigrant children — migrants, refugees, what have you — in horrendous conditions in U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities on the border with Mexico. He was upset and feeling helpless. But not likely as helpless as the children themselves.

Stench. "Dangerous overcrowding." Sickness spreading. Inadequate hygiene. Children caring for children and expected to sleep on concrete floors with lights on 24 hours a day.

"The conditions within which they are held could be compared to torture facilities," physician Dolly Lucio Sevier wrote in a medical declaration obtained by ABC News.

"It just felt, you know, lawless," Lucio Sevier said. "I mean, imagine your own children there. I can't imagine my child being there and not being broken."

The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner spoke with Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University, and part of lawyer team that interviewed more than fifty children at a facility in Clint, Texas. One of her stories:

Oh, I know what I wanted to tell you. This is important. So, on Wednesday, we received reports from children of a lice outbreak in one of the cells where there were about twenty-five children, and what they told us is that six of the children were found to have lice. And so they were given a lice shampoo, and the other children were given two combs and told to share those two combs, two lice combs, and brush their hair with the same combs, which is something you never do with a lice outbreak. And then what happened was one of the combs was lost, and Border Patrol agents got so mad that they took away the children’s blankets and mats. They weren’t allowed to sleep on the beds, and they had to sleep on the floor on Wednesday night as punishment for losing the comb. So you had a whole cell full of kids who had beds and mats at one point, not for everybody but for most of them, who were forced to sleep on the cement.

Some of the guards, Binford said, were on the children's side and want the attorneys to be successful. But others are "bad people, and there’s no question about it." Laws governing the care and processing of these children are "being broken right and left," she adds. Many separated children have parents or relatives in the U.S.

"There are multiple kids that we could put on a plane this week to be with their parents in the United States. Many of them have never spoken with their parents since they got there."

Charles Blow reduces the matter to a few sentences:

Folks, we can use any form of fuzzy language we want, but the United States under Donald Trump is currently engaged in an unconscionable act. He promised to crack down on immigrants and yet under him immigrants seeking asylum have surged. And he is meeting the surge with indescribable cruelty.

Donald Trump is running concentration camps at the border. The question remains: what are we going to do about it?

Speak out. Call your representatives in the House and the Senate, no matter their party affiliation. Demand action. Or if your temperament or work schedule precludes calling, you can e-fax them for free 24 hours a day. (Fax numbers for Congressional offices are in a pull-down.)

A Twitter user over the weekend complained her feed was filled with reports about children held in these conditions. Refuse to be numbed.


Undercover Blue 6/24/2019 06:00:00 AM

Sunday, June 23, 2019

 
Sunday Funnies

by digby

Here's Brian McFadden at DKos:

A lot of bootlickers worked up an appetite this week arguing that our immigrant internment camps aren’t quite concentration camps. With another term, the differences will be even more negligible.

That's Tom Tomorrow at DKos.

Also, maybe not funny, but still fun --- my regular weekly chat with Sam Seder on Ring of Fire

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digby 6/23/2019 05:30:00 PM

 
What is this "vetting process" you speak of?

by digby

Chris Christie, who ran Trump’s presidential transition until he was abruptly fired, sees for the first time the vetting Trump’s transition team did on him. pic.twitter.com/JOrTu7Pkps

— Axios (@axios) June 23, 2019

"One heading in the document about Kris Kobach, in the running for Homeland Security Secretary, listed 'white supremacy' as a vulnerability. It cited accusations from past political opponents that he had ties to white supremacist groups." https://t.co/ONy88b2Yxz

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) June 23, 2019

Uh huh:

Nearly 100 internal Trump transition vetting documents leaked to "Axios on HBO" identify a host of "red flags" about officials who went on to get some of the most powerful jobs in the U.S. government.

Why it matters: The massive trove, and the story behind it, sheds light on the slap-dash way President Trump filled his cabinet and administration, and foreshadowed future scandals that beset his government.


Some highlights: 

Scott Pruitt, who ultimately lost his job as EPA Administrator because of serial ethical abuses and clubbiness with lobbyists, had a section in his vetting form titled "allegations of coziness with big energy companies." 

Tom Price, who ultimately resigned as Health and Human Services Secretary after Trump lost confidence in him in part for stories about his use of chartered flights, had sections in his dossier flagging "criticisms of management ability" and "Dysfunction And Division Has Haunted Price's Leadership Of The House Budget Committee." 

Mick Mulvaney, who became Trump's Budget Director and is now his acting chief of staff, has a striking assortment of "red flags," including his assessment that Trump "is not a very good person." 

The Trump transition team was so worried about Rudy Giuliani, in line for Secretary of State, that they created a separate 25-page document titled "Rudy Giuliani Business Ties Research Dossier" with copious accounting of his "foreign entanglements." 

One red flag for Gen. David Petraeus, who was under consideration for Secretary of State and National Security Adviser: "Petraeus Is Opposed to Torture."

Behind the scenes: In the chaotic weeks after Trump's surprise election victory, Trump fired Chris Christie as the head of his transition. The team that took over — which V.P. Mike Pence helmed — outsourced the political vetting of would-be top officials to the Republican National Committee. 

We obtained the political vetting forms that Trump and his senior aides were given for Ben Carson, Dan Coats, Betsy DeVos, Gary Cohn, Don McGahn, Elaine Chao, John Kelly, James Mattis, John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, Nikki Haley, Rex Tillerson, Rick Perry, Robert Lighthizer, Ryan Zinke, Scott Pruitt, and many others. 

President-elect Trump reviewed many of these documents at Trump Tower and Bedminster before his interviews, according to a source who saw him eyeball them. 

Traditionally, any would-be top official faces three types of vetting: an FBI background check, a scrub for financial conflicts of interest from the Office of Government Ethics, and a deep dive from the president-elect's political team, which veteran Washington lawyers often handle. 

We obtained many of the political vetting forms. According to sources on the RNC vetting team, senior Trump officials asked them to do an initial "scrub" of the public record before Trump met the contenders. But in many cases — for example the misguided choice of Andrew Puzder as Labor Secretary — this RNC "scrub" of public sources was the only substantial vetting in Trump's possession when he announced his picks. 

The documents show what Trump’s vetting shop worried about in assessing candidates for the most important jobs in government.

The RNC researchers identified some striking "Red Flags." 

The first red flag for Rex Tillerson, who became Trump’s first Secretary of State, was about Russia. "Tillerson's Russia ties go deep," it read. 

One red flag for Fox News host Laura Ingraham, considered for White House press secretary: "Ingraham said people should wear diapers instead of sharing bathrooms with transgender people." 

One heading in the document about Kris Kobach, in the running for Homeland Security Secretary, listed "white supremacy" as a vulnerability. It cited accusations from past political opponents that he had ties to white supremacist groups. 

Vetters had unique concerns about Gary Cohn. "Some Say Cohn Has An Abrasive, Curt, And Intimidating Style," they wrote, citing a Bloomberg piece. "He Would Sometimes Hike Up One Leg And Plant His Foot On A Trader's Desk, His Thigh Close To The Employee's Face, And Ask How Markets Were Doing."

Some of the contenders were strikingly swampy — even by the RNC vetters' standards.
Seema Verma, who Trump appointed as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had this paragraph near the top of her vetting form: "Verma was simultaneously advising Indiana ($3.5 million in contracts) on issues impacting how it would spend Medicaid funds while she was also being paid by a client that received Medicaid funds. Ethics experts have called the arrangement a conflict of interest that potentially put Indiana taxpayers at risk." 

Sonny Perdue, Trump's pick for Agriculture Secretary, had a vetting form with sections labeled "Business conflicts of interest" and "Family conflicts of interest." It noted that "Perdue is the owner of Houston Fertilizer and Grain, a company that has received contracts from the Department of Agriculture."

The documents point to Trump’s willingness to meet with — and sometimes hire — people who had harshly criticized him. The vetting team often put these denigrations at the top of the documents. A source with direct knowledge told me many of these documents were handed to Trump; he knew about the insults, and picked the insulters anyway. 

Nikki Haley, who became Trump's U.N. ambassador, had a note that she'd said Trump is everything "we teach our kids not to do in kindergarten." 

Ryan Zinke, who became Interior Secretary, had described Trump as "un-defendable."
Rick Perry, Energy Secretary, had voluminous vetting concerns: "Perry described Trumpism as a 'toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition,'" the vetters noted.

The RNC vetted some left field contenders. Nobody we spoke to, including senior members of the transition, could remember what job Hollywood talent agent Ari Emanuel was vetted for. (A suggested question for Emanuel in his interview: "Will you have any personal issues during times when the Trump administration faces partisan criticism from Democrats, including your brother Rahm or President Obama?") 

Two sources who were doing the vetting at the RNC told me they often didn't know what jobs they were vetting people for.

Our process: We are publishing a selection of these vetting documents. Below you can read the forms we obtained for the people who got jobs in the Trump administration, as well as a small group who didn't get jobs but whose vetting dossiers are noteworthy.
We redacted personal details that weren't newsworthy, information from spurious sources, and material the vetting team described as rumors about contenders’ personal lives, and contact and identification information. All the unredacted information is from public sources. 

We've reached out for comment to the White House, the Republican National Committee, and each person whose vetting form we are publishing. You can see the responses here, and we publish the RNC's full statement in a separate article that has behind-the-scenes details about their work.

White House response: "President Trump has assembled an incredible team throughout the federal government who — in spite of 93% negative news coverage — has accomplished undeniable successes like tax cuts, record employment levels, a booming economy...rebuilding the military and crushing ISIS," said principal deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley. 

"President Trump has done more to improve the lives of the American people in two years — than past presidents have done in eight — and no disgruntled, establishment, D.C. swamp creature's cowardly leaks can change that."

Go deeper: Read the leaked vetting documents here

Frankly, I doubt Trump ever read those vetting books. He doesn't read. We know that the Trump vetting process is whether or not Trump thinks they could have come from Central Casting. And I'm not kidding. That's why he picked Tillerson over Bob Corker --- Corker is short and Tillerson looks like he should be on money. 

These documents were more likely used by Javanka to determine good strategies for leverage and character assasination should it be necessary.

Fascinating stuff. There has never ever been a more dysfunctional operation in history than the Trump administration. It will be his legacy.

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digby 6/23/2019 04:00:00 PM

 
He wasn't kidding. He loved Wikileaks. 

by digby

You remember this, I'm sure:




More bullshit from our president on Meet the Press this morning:

CHUCK TODD:

But going back, on WikiLeaks, knowing now that that was stolen foreign material, do you regret using it?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Well, I, I wouldn't have. But this was well-known. I think it was in papers. And, again, I'm going back now a long ways. But --

CHUCK TODD:

It was all rumored to be Russian stolen property.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Wait a minute. But --

CHUCK TODD:

So why'd you use it?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

--but how would I even know that? I made a speech. It was in there about WikiLeaks. I'm not a --

CHUCK TODD:

Right, but I'm saying knowing now --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

-- WikiLeaks person.

CHUCK TODD:

Knowing that they are a Russian intelligence --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Hey, Chuck.

CHUCK TODD:

-- asset --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Ok.

CHUCK TODD:

-- do you regret it?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Let me tell you-- WikiLeaks, et cetera, that's not my deal in life. You know, in other words, I don't know about WikiLeaks. It was a strange name. But there were stories about something WikiLeaks that they had information. And I say it in a joking manner at a speech. Joking. Everybody laughing. Everybody having a -- And they made it like it was serious. No, I don't want anything bad to happen to our country. Anything bad happens to this country, I will end it and I'll end it fast. I don't want any of that to happen.

Also this:



Anyone who would vote for a snotty piece of work like Trump has a lot to answer for. There is just no excuse for that.


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digby 6/23/2019 02:30:00 PM

 
"Take their money Chuck, take their money"

by digby

Good lord, this is bad. I'm copying just a piece of the full interview on Meet the press this morning about Iran:

CHUCK TODD:

Mr. President, welcome back to Meet the Press.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Thank you.

CHUCK TODD:

Let me start right in, what happened last night?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Well, you had a situation that was very bad because the night before, they shot down an unmanned drone. And the unmanned is a very big factor. The fact that there was not a person on it, a U.S. person on it, or anybody. And that had an impact on me. I said, "Well, you know, we got a little problem." And I think they did that on purpose because they understand that they will be hit very hard if that were a plane with a person in it. And I think they knew that there was nobody there. So we had a very, you know, modest but pretty, pretty heavy attack schedule.

CHUCK TODD:

And this is a pre-plan that you had, something that if they did something, you had something --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Yeah, we had it --

CHUCK TODD:

-- these were sort of ready-made plans --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Sure, we have many of them --

CHUCK TODD:

-- to use if necessary, right?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Oh, I have so many targets you wouldn't believe.

CHUCK TODD:

Right.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

We have targets all over.

CHUCK TODD:

So did you green light something? Or had you said --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Nothing’s --

CHUCK TODD:

"If we do it, I'll do this." What was, what was the order you gave?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Nothing is green lighted until the very end because --

CHUCK TODD:

Ok.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

-- things change, right?

CHUCK TODD:

So you never gave a final order?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

No, no, no, no. But we had something ready to go, subject to my approval. And they came in. And they came in about a half an hour before, they said, "So we're about ready to go." I said, "I want a better definition --"

CHUCK TODD:

Planes in the air? Were planes in the air?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

No, no. "We're about ready to go." No, but they would have been pretty soon. And things would have happened to a point where you wouldn't turn back or couldn't turn back. So they came and they said, "Sir, we're ready to go. We'd like a decision." I said, "I want to know something before you go. How many people will be killed, in this case Iranians?" I said, "How many people are going to be killed?" "Sir, I'd like get back to you on that," great people these generals. They said, came back, said, "Sir, approximately 150." And I thought about it for a second and I said, "You know what? They shot down an unmanned drone, plane, whatever you want to call it. And here we are sitting with 150 dead people that would have taken place probably within a half an hour after I said go ahead." And I didn't like it. I didn't think it was, I didn’t think it was proportionate. Now that doesn't mean --

CHUCK TODD:

So what should the response be right now?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I think the response should be -- Well, first of all, as you know, we've done very massive sanctions. We're increasing the sanctions now. But the response is always going to be very strong. I built up a lot of capital. I've had a lot of people that aren't Trump fans saying, "I can't believe." You know, a lot of them said, "We're going to be in World War III the first week." Didn't work out that way. We're doing great in North Korea. We're doing great in a lot of different places. We knocked out the caliphate in Syria. We knocked out 100%. Remember I was going to leave it?

CHUCK TODD:

It’s not 100%. Not everybody says it’s 100%, even --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

No, no, no, the caliphate.

CHUCK TODD:

Ok.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

No, the caliphate, which is the land.

CHUCK TODD:

The land.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

The area --

CHUCK TODD:

Fair enough.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

-- is 100%. You never knock these people out.

CHUCK TODD:

No, you won't.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

These people are stone cold crazy. And they walk into a store and they'll be wired up for bombs and they'll blow -- it's a horrible thing. So I never say that. I don't want to do what other presidents have done or other people have done saying, "We won," because you don't win so conclusively. I would love to have the day where we can win. You know, I remember when I was young I'd go on airplane and I'd walk up, I'd buy a ticket, I'd go on a plane. Nobody thought about bombs and nobody thought about security. You'd walk in, you'd give the ticket to the person at the gate and you'd walk into a plane. Today it's like, a big deal. So what happened is I said, "I'm not going to do it. I'll save it. If they do something else, it'll be double."

CHUCK TODD:

You think they were trying to provoke you?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

No, I don't think so. And I think it was very important that they, to them, don't forget, their economy --

CHUCK TODD:

They don’t -- they, they --you don't think they intended to get you to respond militarily?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

No, their economy is shattered. Shattered.

CHUCK TODD:

So what's the message you think they’re sending?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Their inflation is through the roof. They’ve never had, the highest in the world right now. Worse than any place. They're, they’re living not well.

CHUCK TODD:

So put yourself in their shoes, what do you think the message they're trying to send you with this, with this drone?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I think they want to negotiate. And I think they want to make a deal. And my deal is nuclear. Look, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. This isn't about the straits. Do you know that China gets 91% of its oil from the straits? We don't even need the straits. We have, we are now, because of -- since I came in, we're the number one energy producer in the world. Okay? Actually by far. And if I get the pipelines approved through the environmental process, which I will in Texas, we'll go up by another 25%. But we're way ahead of Russia, we're way ahead of Saudi Arabia. And I think that they want to negotiate. I don't think they like the position they're in. Their economy is, is absolutely broken.

CHUCK TODD:

So you sent a letter to the Ayatollah via Prime Minister Abe. And the Ayatollah seemed to say, "I'm not talking to you."

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I didn't send a letter, no.

CHUCK TODD:

What was the --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I didn't, I didn’t send a letter. No, no --

CHUCK TODD:

Was it a verbal message? What did Prime Minister Abe carry on your behalf?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Prime Minister Abe's a great guy. He's a friend of mine. And he obviously is close to them. I think he was their, their largest buyer of oil from before.

CHUCK TODD:

But did he, did he deliver a message from you to them?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

No. He wanted to do something.

CHUCK TODD:

Ok.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

According to Prime Minister Abe, they went to him, it's according to the prime minister, and they said, "What do we do with Trump? Can we make a deal? Is there something that can be done?" That's what Prime Minster Abe told me. I said, "Do you mind if I say that if I have to?" And he said, "Not particularly." So they came to Prime Minister Abe. He then called me. I said, "Send the following message: you can't have nuclear weapons. And other than that, we can sit down and make a deal. But you cannot have nuclear --"

CHUCK TODD:

No other --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

"-- weapons."

CHUCK TODD:

-- conditions other than that?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

You cannot have nuclear weapons. And they would have had them with President Obama. He gave them $150 billion --

CHUCK TODD:

What is your deal?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Remember this.

CHUCK TODD:

I understand. But what is your deal --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

But, Chuck, you have to remember this.

CHUCK TODD:

-- going to look like with them?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Let me explain something. Number one, you have to look at the sites. Some of the most important sites we weren't even allowed to look at or inspect, okay? Number two, the term was not long enough.

CHUCK TODD:

Ok.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

There’s like a short number of years left. After a very small number of years, he’s talking about a country, after a very small number of years, they have a free pass to nuclear weapons. You can't do that. So I want to be able to inspect all sites. They cannot have ballistic missiles, which under the agreement, isn't even covered. And as you know, that agreement wasn't even approved by Congress. A lot of people don't know that. That was an agreement that he couldn't get through Congress. He was not authorized, really, to do that deal.

CHUCK TODD:

Congress did give him some authorization to do that. It gave him the power to cut the deal.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

It wasn't ratified by Congress.

CHUCK TODD:

It wasn't a, it wasn’t a treaty.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

It was very, very short of what it should have been. You know that.

CHUCK TODD:

Don’t you think though -- does it at all tell -- what does it tell you that the Iranians haven't violated the agreement yet? That they are trying hard not to violate this agreement?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Well, you see, I think they have violated the agreement because I think in the areas that we're not allowed to inspect they're doing things. And I think they have been for years.

CHUCK TODD:

Europeans don't think they're violating the agreement.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Well, I don't care about the Europeans. The Europeans are going out and making a lot of money. The Europeans are fine. But they're going out and making a lot of money. They’re selling, in France, they're selling cars to Iran. They're doing other things. And let me tell you, we're very good to Europe. We take care of them. NATO, we spend a tremendous amount, a disproportionate amount. On trade, the European Union's taken, really, they have really taken advantage of us for a long time. Just to finish, we have great relationships with Europe. I don't mind Europe getting in the middle. Europe wants to make a deal too. Europe would love to see a deal be made.

CHUCK TODD:

Are these going to be separate deals?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

By the way, Europe --

CHUCK TODD:

Do you want to do a separate deal with Iran? Or do you want to get everybody involved in the same deal? Get the Russians, get the Chinese?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I don't care which, what kind of a deal. It can be separate or it could be total.

CHUCK TODD:

But it’s one-on-one talks, you and the Ayatollah?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

All it is -- all it is --

CHUCK TODD:

Is it one-on-one talks, you and the Ayatollah, or you and the President?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

It doesn't matter to me. Here's what I want, anything that gets you to the result. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. It's not about the straits. You know, a lot of people covered it incorrectly. They're never mentioned. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. They'd use it. And they're not going to have a nuclear weapon.

CHUCK TODD:

Did you send a message --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

And it's not about the oil.

CHUCK TODD:

-- last night? You know, Reuters is reporting that you sent a message to the Iranians saying, "I don't want war. I want to talk."

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Wrong. It’s wrong. I did not send that message. I did not send that message. I don't know who --

CHUCK TODD:

Ok.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I don’t know who would have said that.

CHUCK TODD:

Send a message right now to the Ayatollah.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I mean it's fake news.

CHUCK TODD:

Then send a message right now to the Ayatollah.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Wouldn't be much different than that message.

CHUCK TODD:

Which is?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I'm not looking for war and if there is, it'll be obliteration like you've never seen before. But I'm not looking to do that. But you can't have a nuclear weapon. You want to talk? Good. Otherwise you can have a bad economy for the next --

CHUCK TODD:

No pre-conditions?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

-- three years. Not as far as I'm concerned. No pre-conditions.

CHUCK TODD:

And you'll talk anywhere?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Here it is. Look, you can't have nuclear weapons. And if you want to talk about it, good. Otherwise you can live in a shattered economy for a long time to come.

CHUCK TODD:

If you, are you, do you feel like you were being pushed into military action against Iran by any of your advisors?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I have two groups of people. I have doves and I have hawks.

CHUCK TODD:

Yeah, you have some serious hawks.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I have some hawks. Yeah, John Bolton is absolutely a hawk. If it was up to him he'd take on the whole world at one time, okay? But that doesn't matter because I want both sides. You know, some people said, “Why did you put --” You know, I was against going into Iraq for years and years. And before it ever happened I was against going into Iraq. And some people said, "Oh I don't know." I was totally against and I was a private citizen. It never made sense to me. I was against going into the Middle East. Chuck, we've spent $7 trillion in the Middle East right now.

CHUCK TODD:

Why is this our problem? This is a proxy war. Iran and Saudi Arabia are in a fight to the death out there.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Yeah. You're right. You're right. And that's another thing I've done --

CHUCK TODD:

Candidate Trump, candidate Trump for years would have said, "Not our fight." Why are you involved?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Because of nuclear weapons. It has nothing to do with oil.

CHUCK TODD:

So the minute you get them to do nuclear weapons, you want out of the Middle East?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

That's all I care. I don’t care about -- Well, we're going to protect Israel. But I have nothing to do, absolutely nothing -- and we're going to protect Saudi Arabia. Look, Saudi Arabia is buying $400 billion worth of things for us. That's a very good thing.

CHUCK TODD:

You used to say we don't get anything in return --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

We are now.

CHUCK TODD:

-- for protecting Saudi Arabia.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

You know that this --

CHUCK TODD:

You feel like they're now paying for --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

-- this morning --

CHUCK TODD:

-- the American protection?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

-- I spoke to the Crown Prince, this morning. And we had a great conversation. I said, "This is a very expensive operation. You and the other nations that we're protecting have to pay."

CHUCK TODD:

Did you talk --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

And he said, "Yes."

CHUCK TODD:

Did you talk to him about the U.N. report about Jamal Khashoggi?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I did not because it really didn't come up in that discussion. I called about one reason.

CHUCK TODD:

I understand.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I called about one -- I didn't call about that. I called about one reason. There’s a very expensive operation. Unlike President Obama and unlike everybody else, I’ll say others too, not just President Obama. You've got to pay for it. We cannot, we, we just don't want to go in and, and protect the Middle East and protect Saudi Arabia and everyone else and not get reimbursed.

CHUCK TODD:

So this is why you're overruling Congress and, and letting all these weapon sales happen in Saudi Arabia?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Economic development and that. But economic development.

CHUCK TODD:

Never mind the humanitarian disaster --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

A million jobs.

CHUCK TODD:

-- that's taking place in Yemen?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

A million jobs -- No it's going to end. It's going to end. By the way, who's causing it though? If you look at it, Iran goes into Yemen. They start firing rockets at Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has to protect themselves, Chuck. But it's, it’s a million jobs and probably more. They buy massive amounts, $150 billion worth of military equipment that, by the way, we use. We use that military equipment. And unlike other countries that don't have money and we have to subsidize everything. So Saudi Arabia is a big buyer of America product. That means something to me. It's a big producer of jobs.

CHUCK TODD:

It makes you overlook some of their bad behavior?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

No.

CHUCK TODD:

I mean --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I don't like anybody's bad behavior.

CHUCK TODD:

Are you going to -- The United Nations said they'd like the United States to order the FBI to investigate Jamal Khashoggi's death and possibly MBS’ --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Well, I think it's, I think it’s --

CHUCK TODD:

-- involvement in it. Will you allow the FBI to do that?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I think it's been heavily investigated.

CHUCK TODD:

By who?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

By everybody. I mean --

CHUCK TODD:

By the FBI?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

I’ve seen so many different reports.

CHUCK TODD:

What about the FBI?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Here's where I am, you ready?

CHUCK TODD:

Uh-huh.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Iran's killed many, many people a day. Other countries in the Middle East, this is a hostile place. This is a vicious, hostile place. If you're going to look at Saudi Arabia, look at Iran, look at other countries, I won't mention names, and take a look at what's happening. And then you go outside of the Middle East, and you take a look at what's happening with countries. Okay? And I only say they spend $400 to $450 billion over a period of time --

CHUCK TODD:

So --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

-- all money, all jobs, buying equipment --

CHUCK TODD:

That's the price. As long as they keep buying --

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

No, no.

CHUCK TODD:

-- you'll overlook some of this behavior.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

But I'm not like a fool that says, "We don't want to do business with them." And by the way, if they don't do business with us, you know what they do? They'll do business with the Russians or with the Chinese. They will buy -- We make the best equipment in the world, but they will buy great equipment from Russia and from China. Chuck --

CHUCK TODD:

Yeah. Alright.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:

Take their money. Take their money, Chuck.

The most succinct way to describe Trump is that he is a money-grubbing imbecile. He understands nothing, has no grasp of the contradictions of his own positions and obviously doesn't understand the complexity of the job he's been inexplicably tasked to do, even after more than two years. He thinks everyone in the world is just as simple-mindedly narcissistic and avaricious as he is.

The world is in flux, we have a self-inflicted emergency on the border, his tariffs are hurting his own voters and he spends his time getting "advice" from Fox and Friends, designing a new paint job for AirForce One and planning his July 4th military tribute to his Great Big Hands. Oh, and ditheringfrom one minute to the next about dropping bombs because he is clearly clueless about what to do and has to check in with Tucker Carlson to try to figure it out.

Honestly, I think his 13 years old son could do a better job.

.


.
digby 6/23/2019 01:00:00 PM

 
Trump's July 4th Salute to Trump

by digby



This is going to be a real clusterfuck:

Trump will deliver a speech from the Lincoln Memorial as part of a daylong series of events that includes a military-themed parade near the National Mall and flyovers featuring planes used for Air Force One, officials said.

“There is no more appropriate place to celebrate the anniversary of American independence than among the Nation’s monuments on the National Mall and the memorials to the service men and women who have defended the United States for the past 243 years,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said in a statement.

Trump's address at the Lincoln Memorial, to be delivered at a "Salute to America" event at 6:30 p.m. on Independence Day, is designed "to honor America’s armed forces," the Interior Department said.

The president, who pushed for new July Fourth events based on a military parade he saw in France, promoted the new holiday approach during his speech Tuesday announcing his re-election bid. He urged supporters in Orlando, Florida, to bring flags to the event.

More details:

Where will the fireworks be?

The traditional site for the holiday’s fireworks along the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been moved about 1,500 feet south to West Potomac Park, and the display will run from 9:07 p.m. to 9:27 p.m. An Interior Department spokeswoman said that there are plans to bring together the two companies producing the fireworks.

When is Trump expected to speak at the Lincoln Memorial?

The Salute to America, with music, military demonstrations and flyovers, is to take place from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The White House has not yet provided details on when the president will speak.

Will ‘A Capitol Fourth’ still go on in front of the U.S. Capitol?

Yes. The annual event, which airs on PBS, is unaffiliated with any other Fourth of July event. This year’s concert, which runs from 8 to 9:30 p.m., will feature songwriting legend Carole King, singer Vanessa Williams and the National Symphony Orchestra.

How much will the additional events cost the city and the federal government?

It is unclear how much the additional events will cost the city and the federal government. The city says that Trump still has not paid the District government more than $7 million for the 2017 inauguration, which cost the city $27.3 million.

What’s the history here? Who was the first president to celebrate July 4?

No president has been part of a Fourth of July celebration on the Mall in recent memory. President Ronald Reagan participated in a “Star Spangled Salute to America” at the Jefferson Memorial on July 3, 1987, the day before the holiday. Presidents George Washington and John Adams attended celebrations in various towns around the country.

Babies and kids are going without diapers and soap in squalid concentration camps at the border. But we're going to blow tens of millions of dollars on this ridiculous pageant so Trump can feel like a real dictator.

I really hope the networks give this the attention it deserves. Which is none.

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digby 6/23/2019 11:30:00 AM

 
Clarence Thomas lights a match to stare decisis

by digby



This piece about Clarence Thomas by Jeffrey Toobin is downright depressing:

Mississippi prosecutor went on a racist crusade to have a black man executed. Clarence Thomas thinks that was just fine.

That’s the message of an astonishing decision today from the Supreme Court. The facts of the case, known as Flowers v. Mississippi, are straightforward. As Justice Brett Kavanaughput it, in his admirably blunt opinion for the Court, “In 1996, Curtis Flowers allegedly murdered four people in Winona, Mississippi. Flowers is black. He has been tried six separate times before a jury for murder. The same lead prosecutor represented the State in all six trials.” Flowers was convicted in the first three trials, and sentenced to death. On each occasion, his conviction was overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court, on the grounds of misconduct by the prosecutor, Doug Evans, mostly in the form of keeping African-Americans off the juries. Trials four and five ended in hung juries. In the sixth trial, the one that was before the Supreme Court, Flowers was convicted, but the Justices found that Evans had again discriminated against black people, and thus Flowers, in jury selection, and they overturned his conviction. (The breathtaking facts of the case and its accompanying legal saga are described at length on the American Public Media podcast “In the Dark.”)

As Kavanaugh recounted in his opinion, Evans’s actions were almost cartoonishly racist. To wit: in the six trials, the State employed its peremptory challenges (that is, challenges for which no reason need be given) to strike forty-one out of forty-two African-American prospective jurors. In the most recent trial, the State exercised peremptory strikes against five of six black prospective jurors. In addition, Evans questioned black prospective jurors a great deal more closely than he questioned whites. As Kavanaugh observed, with considerable understatement, “A court confronting that kind of pattern cannot ignore it.“

But Thomas can, and he did. Indeed, he filed a dissenting opinion that was genuinely outraged—not by the prosecutor but by his fellow-Justices, who dared to grant relief to Flowers, who has spent more than two decades in solitary confinement at Mississippi’s notorious Parchman prison. Thomas said that the prosecutor’s behavior was blameless, and he practically sneered at his colleagues, asserting that the majority had decided the Flowers case to “boost its self-esteem.” Thomas also found a way to blame the news media for the result. “Perhaps the Court granted certiorari because the case has received a fair amount of media attention,” he wrote, adding that “the media often seeks to titillate rather than to educate and inform.”

The decision in Flowers was 7–2, with Neil Gorsuch joining Thomas’s dissent. The two have become jurisprudentially inseparable, with Gorsuch serving as a kind of deputy to Thomas, as Thomas once served to Antonin Scalia. But Thomas usually has a majority of colleagues on his side, in a way that often eluded Scalia. The Flowers case notwithstanding, Thomas now wins most of the time, typically with the assistance of Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Kavanaugh.

Despite Thomas’s usual silence on the bench (he did ask a question during the Flowers argument), he is clearly feeling ideologically aggressive these days. In his Flowers dissent, Thomas all but called for the overturning of the Court’s landmark decision in Batson v. Kentucky, from 1986, which prohibits prosecutors from using their peremptory challenges in racially discriminatory ways. Earlier this year, he called for reconsideration of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, from 1964, which established modern libel law, with its protections for journalistic expression. And in a decision earlier this month, Thomas made the case that the Court should be more willing to overturn its precedents. It’s customary for the Justices to at least pretend to defer to past decisions, but Thomas apparently no longer feels obligated even to gesture to the Court’s past. As he put it last fall, in a concurring opinion in Gamble v. United States, “We should not invoke stare decisis to uphold precedents that are demonstrably erroneous.” Erroneous, of course, in the judicial world view of Thomas. The Supreme Court’s war on its past has begun, and Clarence Thomas is leading the charge.

Great.

I know that all the Federalist Society types are very excited about this. In fact, it's their dream come true. But I'm afraid a whole lot of the same people who voted for Trump because he'd remake the courts are going to be surprised at just what a wrecking crew they created. It's going to hurt a whole lot of people, including them.

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digby 6/23/2019 10:00:00 AM

 

The second coming of Jim Crow

by Tom Sullivan

"The essence of the Confederate worldview," Doug Muder wrote in 2014, "is that the democratic process cannot legitimately change the established social order, and so all forms of legal and illegal resistance are justified when it tries." So it was in the pre-Civil War United States. So it is today. The political parties devoted to safeguarding that established social order have changed over time. The Confederate worldview has not.

Defeated on the battlefield, men of the South set about undoing their loss. They morphed the Civil War into The Lost Cause. Reconstruction they morphed into Jim Crow. Through stubbornness and "terrorist insurgency," the planter aristocrats that lost the war succeeded in winning the peace and rewriting history. The "three constitutional amendments that supposedly had codified the U.S.A’s victory over the C.S.A.– the 13th, 14th, and 15th — had been effectively nullified in every Confederate state," Muder wrote. "Except for Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, [blacks] vanished like the Lost Tribes of Israel. They wouldn’t re-enter history until the 1950s, when for some reason they still weren’t free."

Nancy LeTourneau pulled together several more recent threads at Washington Monthly that leave the impression history being made today at least rhymes with that Confederate past. If the 1960s represented a second Reconstruction, legislative terrorism being wrought now by a rump Confederate faction against American minorities represents a renewed insurgency against rights they've won at the ballot box and in the courts since then.

In “The American Right Gets Tired of Democracy,” Josh Marshall examines how in the face of a demographic trajectory unfavorable to upholding the white political and cultural dominance God intended, the right concluded "the culture war and the related battle for an ethno-nationalist identity are simply too important, immediate and dire to have any time to worry about things like the rule of law or even democracy."

Conservative faux-patriots are systematically laboring to ensure their incipient plurality status will not mean they must share power with neighbors not of their tribe. "Republicans in red and battleground states have spent the last six years winding back the clock to the good old days when voting was a (white) privilege, not a right," Bob Moser writes at The American Prospect in a near-exhaustive accounting of post-Shelby election-rigging. He begins, naturally, in North Carolina.

A series of field hearings across the country sponsored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi would examine voting discrimination since Shelby. The hearings hope to document the persistence in 2018 of election practices outlawed in 1968 and loosed again with the Supreme Court overturning the “preclearance” provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote in her dissent that past “attempts to cope with this vile infection resembled battling the Hydra. Wherever one form of voting discrimination was identified and prohibited, others sprang up in its place.” She predicted “second-generation barriers” would arise to replace the old Jim Crow system. And so they have:

She proved to be prophetic. The field hearings, which concluded in Birmingham in late May, provided ample evidence of the Hydra-headed nature of the new voter suppression—and how Republicans in Southern and battleground states have been learning from each other since the monster law set the tone for the post-Shelby era. “Notes are compared,” Tomas Lopez, head of the civil rights group Democracy North Carolina, said in Halifax. “You see something in one place, it gets used in another.”

The recent battle cry for “uniformity,” for instance, hadn’t originated with North Carolina lawmakers; it was the brainchild of Ohio Republicans. And that, in turn, means that the 900,000 voters in Ohio’s largest county, Cuyahoga, have just one polling place till Election Day—making Cleveland a supersized version of Halifax County. At the hearing there, longtime county board of elections member Inajo Chappell projected photos of the predictably long lines that ensued. She couldn’t tell the subcommittee how many voters in her majority-black county had simply given up and gone home. “There is no way to estimate the number. But I can say that uniform rules have continued to be implemented in a manner that limits voter access,” she testified. The Republicans’ justifications for the changes did not pass muster, she said. “The constant clamoring about rampant voter fraud is discouraging voter participation, and my experience over the years permits me to say that persistent claims about voter fraud are wholly without merit.”

Ohio Republicans also popularized voter purges, with former Secretary of State Jon Husted (who’s now lieutenant governor) showing other states how to perfect the art of tweezing minority voters from the rolls. As Tom Roberts of the Ohio NAACP testified, Husted used a provision in the 2002 Help America Vote Act—Congress’s timid response to the Florida debacle in 2000, which “we all thought was a helpful law,” said Roberts—to start removing voters from the rolls if they’d sat out two straight elections. The Supreme Court upheld the practice, which stripped 270,000 voters from the rolls in Ohio in 2018. There’s ample evidence that the practice disproportionately affects poor people and voters of color, who tend to move more and miss the notices that come in the mail from the state, directing them to update their information to remain active voters. “The decision allows states to treat the fundamental right to vote as a use-it-or-lose-it right,” Roberts said.

Repressive practices that pop up in one state replicate themselves in others where Republicans control legislatures. Diabolical in their "sheer inventiveness," the measures end up in litigation that drags out for years.

“We will support democracy in Venezuela, in Russia, in China, everyplace but here,” said Representative Marcia Fudge of Ohio. “Every time we change the rules, which we do in every single election, we make it more difficult for people to vote. If you’re confused about what time of the day you can vote, it is suppressing your vote.”

North Carolinians have voted since 2012 in state and congressional districts declared unconstitutional. Still, the costly court battles to enforce those rulings continues, sewing "nothing but chaos and confusion” among voters. But Republicans are well funded. They're fighting a war of attrition. If they retain control of North Carolina's legislature after 2020, they'll gerrymander, suppress, and go to court again for another ten-year cycle. Voting rights advocates have overcome the obstacles through aggressive organizing, but they shouldn't have to.

LeTourneau adds that conservatives in America as well as in Europe are poised to replace democracy with authoritarianism:

This willingness to eschew democracy in favor of authoritarianism was forecast by Zachary Roth before Trump’s election. He noted that, recognizing that they were about to become a permanent minority, Republicans decided that “being outnumbered doesn’t have to mean losing.” The strategies employed to undermine democracy included voter suppression, gerrymandering, fighting for the involvement of dark money in politics, judicial engagement, and something called pre-emption, by which red states overruled laws passed by more progressive local communities.

Frustrating in the debate over impeaching Donald Trump is Democrats' insistence on procedure and rule-following in the face of an administration openly rejecting liberal democracy. Pundits peddling both-siderism may argue that were the demographic shoe on the other foot, Democrats would do the same. Adam Serwer argues the opposite case:

Black Americans did not abandon liberal democracy because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the systematic destruction of whatever wealth they managed to accumulate; instead they took up arms in two world wars to defend it. Japanese Americans did not reject liberal democracy because of internment or the racist humiliation of Asian exclusion; they risked life and limb to preserve it. Latinos did not abandon liberal democracy because of “Operation Wetback,” or Proposition 187, or because of a man who won a presidential election on the strength of his hostility toward Latino immigrants. Gay, lesbian, and trans Americans did not abandon liberal democracy over decades of discrimination and abandonment in the face of an epidemic. This is, in part, because doing so would be tantamount to giving the state permission to destroy them, a thought so foreign to these defenders of the supposedly endangered religious right that the possibility has not even occurred to them. But it is also because of a peculiar irony of American history: The American creed has no more devoted adherents than those who have been historically denied its promises, and no more fair-weather friends than those who have taken them for granted.

Bishop William Barber II, a leader of the renewed Poor People's Campaign, argues what we are experiencing in America today are the birth pangs of a Third Reconstruction. Meeting it head on is a second Jim Crow thinly disguised as "election integrity" or "uniformity" or state-sponsored terrorizing of Latinos and blacks. It is a cat-and-mouse game played by flag-waving legislators, their hands over their hearts and humming Lee Greenwood, as they ensure no matter how much the white majority shrinks, the established order — their Confederate order — retains power, democratically or not.


Undercover Blue 6/23/2019 06:00:00 AM

Saturday, June 22, 2019

 

Saturday Night at the Movies

I never sang for my father: Rocketman (***½)

By Dennis Hartley





So…Baz Luhrmann, Ken Russell, and Bob Fosse walk into a bar. Out pops Rocketman, an unabashedly over-the-top biopic about an unabashedly over-the-top superstar. And considering that it’s been unabashedly executive produced by said over-the-top superstar, it is surprisingly not so much a vanity piece as it is a ­self-abasing confessional.

With lots of singing, dancing, and jazz hands.

The eponymous astro-powered gentleman is Reginald Kenneth Dwight, aka Sir Elton Hercules John…pianist, singer-songwriter, balladeer, glam-rocker, pop star, composer, and a man prone (at times in his life) to drug-alcohol-sex-food and/or shopping addiction.

It is the latter iteration (a walking gestalt of coked-out, fucked-silly, booze-soaked, self-absorbed and over-pampered rock star excess) that the director Dexter Fletcher (Bohemian Rhapsody) and screenwriter Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) present as the film opens.

In case we don’t glean that this troubled, troubled man is about to face his inner demons by going full confessional at an addict recovery meeting, Elton (Taron Egerton) makes a grand entrance with a world-weary plod down a long hallway, bedecked in a devil costume that recalls Tim Curry’s Mephistophelian creature in Legend. He looks…unwell.

The support group device is a launch pad; a flashback-generator enabling rocket man to blast off into inner space, access his drug-addled memory banks and reassess his life as a mashup of kitchen sink drama, lurid soap, Fosse musical and MTV video (fasten your seat belts, check ignition, and may God’s love be with you…it’s gonna be a bumpy night).

Rocket man’s earliest recollections roil through his psyche. We observe young Reggie (Matthew Illesley) constantly vying for attention from his mother (Bryce Dallas Howard) and father (Steven Mackintosh). But alas, it is for naught; Dad is cold and distant as the moon and Mum is vain and self-absorbed (in one telling scene, Reggie is traumatized when he stumbles upon Mum and future stepdad having a shag in the back seat of a car).

In fact, it is his Gran (Gemma Jones) who becomes his nurturer (in real life, John was raised by his maternal grandparents). She is the one who encourages her daughter to invest in piano lessons for Reggie when he begins to demonstrate a natural ear for music early on (his Dad, despite being a trumpet player and a jazz fanatic, is oddly ambivalent).

[SFX: phonograph needle ripping across vinyl] A quick note, before I proceed. If you are a stickler for linear timelines, 100% historical accuracy, and such-abort this mission now. As I noted in my review of Fletcher (and Bryan Singer’s) biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody:

Now, I like to fancy myself a bit of a rock ‘n’ roll historian. I’m not claiming to be a “scholar”, mind you…but I’m cognizant enough to conclude that for beauty of language, I would read Lester Bangs, and for interpretation of fact…I would read Richard Meltzer. 

I am also a film critic (allegedly). So, when I settle down to review a rock ‘n’ roll biopic like Bryan Singer’s long-anticipated “Bohemian Rhapsody”, I start to feel a little schizoid. My mission as a film critic is to appraise a film based on its cinematic merits; e.g. how well is it directed, written, and acted? Does it have a cohesive narrative? Do I care about the characters? How about the cinematography, and the editing? Are you not entertained?

However, my inner rock ‘n’ roll historian also rears its head, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge it’s only a movie, thereby releasing the kraken of pedantic angst. So, I’ll endeavor to tread lightly…otherwise I’ll be at risk of pleasing neither of my two readers.

And so, I was fully prepared, and therefore did not flinch (okay maybe I did twitch once or twice) when, for example, pre- “Elton” Reginald and his band launched into “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” a decade before he and Bernie Taupin actually co-wrote it. Steel yourself for these anachronisms; a good portion of the songs are chosen to fit the scene, rather than the actual historical timeline. That said, since we’re (largely) talking the Elton John/Bernie Taupin catalog here…one could do worse for a movie soundtrack.

This turns out to be an effective device. For example, in my favorite music vignette, wherein Elton debuts the finished version of “Your Song” for writing partner Bernie (Jamie Bell), it lends a completely new and emotionally resonant subtext to a familiar tune. While I’ve heard the song 100s of times over the years, I’ve never considered the possibility (as the scene infers) that it’s Bernie’s way of telling Elton he loves him, but “just not like that” (which Bernie says to Elton, whilst gently deflecting a romantic pass).

My gift is my song
And this one's for you

(Elton’s 2019 net worth is $500 million…a loving “gift” indeed, in the fullness of time).

In case you were wondering, not all of Elton’s romantic overtures are deflected; the film is open and honest regarding his sexuality. There is no “straight-washing” (which was a bone of contention regarding Fletcher and Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody). So, if Aunt Mabel is an Elton fan but maybe a little conservative, just a caveat that she is going to get the truth, the whole truth, and…oh fuck it. There’s gay sex, alright? Bring her-she’ll deal.

The film is fueled by Egerton’s knockout performance, which obfuscates a few “backstage drama” clichés. He’s also a terrific singer. He doesn’t mimic Elton’s voice, but does capture his essence (most of the songs are truncated or reconstructed anyway). Ultimately, it’s more musical fantasy than biopic. For just the facts, ma’am…read the Wiki entry. But if you’re up for singing, dancing and jazz hands…you’ll dig Rocketman.


Previous posts with related themes:

Top 11 Rock Musicals
Top 10 Glam-Rock Movies
Bohemian Rhapsody
Love and Mercy

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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---Dennis Hartley

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digby 6/22/2019 05:30:00 PM

 
"I run the risk of making him more popular by revealing what he did..."

by digby

BREAKING: Writer E. Jean Carroll says Donald Trump violently sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid ’90s.

Here are some of the other women who have accused Trump of abuse and sexual misconduct: pic.twitter.com/mPMJw8OHnS

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 21, 2019

I read Carroll's advice column in Elle for years. She's an honest, edgy writer who doesn't hold back. If you haven't read the NY Magazine excerpt of Carroll's book, here's the part about Trump:

Which brings me to the other rich boy. Before I discuss him, I must mention that there are two great handicaps to telling you what happened to me in Bergdorf’s: (a) The man I will be talking about denies it, as he has denied accusations of sexual misconduct made by at least 15 credible women, namely, Jessica Leeds, Kristin Anderson, Jill Harth, Cathy Heller, Temple Taggart McDowell, Karena Virginia, Melinda McGillivray, Rachel Crooks, Natasha Stoynoff, Jessica Drake, Ninni Laaksonen, Summer Zervos, Juliet Huddy, Alva Johnson, and Cassandra Searles. (Here’s what the White House said: “This is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the President look bad.”) And (b) I run the risk of making him more popular by revealing what he did.

His admirers can’t get enough of hearing that he’s rich enough, lusty enough, and powerful enough to be sued by and to pay off every splashy porn star or Playboy Playmate who “comes forward,” so I can’t imagine how ecstatic the poor saps will be to hear their favorite Walking Phallus got it on with an old lady in the world’s most prestigious department store.

On the Ask E. Jean show, which aired from 1994 to 1996. Photo: Courtesy of the author

This is during the years I am doing a daily Ask E. Jean TV show for the cable station America’s Talking, a precursor to MSNBC launched by Roger Ailes (who, by the way, is No. 16 on my list).

Early one evening, as I am about to go out Bergdorf’s revolving door on 58th Street, and one of New York’s most famous men comes in the revolving door, or it could have been a regular door at that time, I can’t recall, and he says: “Hey, you’re that advice lady!”

And I say to No. 20 on the Most Hideous Men of My Life List: “Hey, you’re that real-estate tycoon!”

I am surprised at how good-looking he is. We’ve met once before, and perhaps it is the dusky light but he looks prettier than ever. This has to be in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996 because he’s garbed in a faultless topcoat and I’m wearing my black wool Donna Karan coatdress and high heels but not a coat.

“Come advise me,” says the man. “I gotta buy a present.”

“Oh!” I say, charmed. “For whom?”

“A girl,” he says.

“Don’t the assistants of your secretaries buy things like that?” I say.

“Not this one,” he says. Or perhaps he says, “Not this time.” I can’t recall. He is a big talker, and from the instant we collide, he yammers about himself like he’s Alexander the Great ready to loot Babylon.

As we are standing just inside the door, I point to the handbags. “How about—”

“No!” he says, making the face where he pulls up both lips like he’s balancing a spoon under his nose, and begins talking about how he once thought about buying Bergdorf ’s.

“Or … a hat!” I say enthusiastically, walking toward the handbags, which, at the period I’m telling you about — and Bergdorf’s has been redone two or three times since then — are mixed in with, and displayed next to, the hats. “She’ll love a hat! You can’t go wrong with a hat!”

I don’t remember what he says, but he comes striding along — greeting a Bergdorf sales attendant like he owns the joint and permitting a shopper to gape in awe at him — and goes right for a fur number.

“Please,” I say. “No woman would wear a dead animal on her head!”

What he replies I don’t recall, but I remember he coddles the fur hat like it’s a baby otter.

“How old is the lady in question?” I ask.

“How old are you?” replies the man, fondling the hat and looking at me like Louis Leakey carbon-dating a thighbone he’s found in Olduvai Gorge.

“I’m 52,” I tell him.

“You’re so old!” he says, laughing — he was around 50 himself — and it’s at about this point that he drops the hat, looks in the direction of the escalator, and says, “Lingerie!” Or he may have said “Underwear!” So we stroll to the escalator. I don’t remember anybody else greeting him or galloping up to talk to him, which indicates how very few people are in the store at the time.

I have no recollection where lingerie is in that era of Bergdorf’s, but it seems to me it is on a floor with the evening gowns and bathing suits, and when the man and I arrive — and my memory now is vivid — no one is present.

There are two or three dainty boxes and a lacy see-through bodysuit of lilac gray on the counter. The man snatches the bodysuit up and says: “Go try this on!”

“You try it on,” I say, laughing. “It’s your color.”

“Try it on, come on,” he says, throwing it at me.

“It goes with your eyes,” I say, laughing and throwing it back.

“You’re in good shape,” he says, holding the filmy thing up against me. “I wanna see how this looks.”

“But it’s your size,” I say, laughing and trying to slap him back with one of the boxes on the counter.

“Come on,” he says, taking my arm. “Let’s put this on.”

This is gonna be hilarious, I’m saying to myself — and as I write this, I am staggered by my stupidity. As we head to the dressing rooms, I’m laughing aloud and saying in my mind: I’m gonna make him put this thing on over his pants!

There are several facts about what happens next that are so odd I want to clear them up before I go any further:

Did I report it to the police?

No.

Did I tell anyone about it?

Yes. I told two close friends. The first, a journalist, magazine writer, correspondent on the TV morning shows, author of many books, etc., begged me to go to the police.

“He raped you,” she kept repeating when I called her. “He raped you. Go to the police! I’ll go with you. We’ll go together.”

My second friend is also a journalist, a New York anchorwoman. She grew very quiet when I told her, then she grasped both my hands in her own and said, “Tell no one. Forget it! He has 200 lawyers. He’ll bury you.” (Two decades later, both still remember the incident clearly and confirmed their accounts to New York.)

Do I have photos or any visual evidence?

Bergdorf’s security cameras must have picked us up at the 58th Street entrance of the store. We would have been filmed on the ground floor in the bags-and-hats sections. Cameras also must have captured us going up the escalator and into the lingerie department. New York law at the time did not explicitly prohibit security cameras in dressing rooms to “prevent theft.” But even if it had been captured on tape, depending on the position of the camera, it would be very difficult to see the man unzipping his pants, because he was wearing a topcoat. The struggle might simply have read as “sexy.” The speculation is moot, anyway: The department store has confirmed that it no longer has tapes from that time.

Why were there no sales attendants in the lingerie department?

Bergdorf Goodman’s perfections are so well known — it is a store so noble, so clubby, so posh — that it is almost easier to accept the fact that I was attacked than the fact that, for a very brief period, there was no sales attendant in the lingerie department. Inconceivable is the word. Sometimes a person won’t find a sales attendant in Saks, it’s true; sometimes one has to look for a sales associate in Barneys, Bloomingdale’s, or even Tiffany’s; but 99 percent of the time, you will have an attendant in Bergdorf’s. All I can say is I did not, in this fleeting episode, see an attendant. And the other odd thing is that a dressing-room door was open. In Bergdorf’s dressing rooms, doors are usually locked until a client wants to try something on.

Why haven’t I “come forward” before now?

Receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed, being dragged through the mud, and joining the 15 women who’ve come forward with credible stories about how the man grabbed, badgered, belittled, mauled, molested, and assaulted them, only to see the man turn it around, deny, threaten, and attack them, never sounded like much fun. Also, I am a coward.


Carroll, Donald and Ivana Trump, and Carroll’s then-husband, television-news anchor John Johnson, at an NBC party around 1987.Photo: Courtesy of the author

So now I will tell you what happened:

The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.

I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I keep laughing. The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me. It turns into a colossal struggle. I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot. I try to push him off with my one free hand — for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other — and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.

The whole episode lasts no more than three minutes. I do not believe he ejaculates. I don’t remember if any person or attendant is now in the lingerie department. I don’t remember if I run for the elevator or if I take the slow ride down on the escalator. As soon as I land on the main floor, I run through the store and out the door — I don’t recall which door — and find myself outside on Fifth Avenue.

And that was my last hideous man. The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening. And whether it’s my age, the fact that I haven’t met anyone fascinating enough over the past couple of decades to feel “the sap rising,” as Tom Wolfe put it, or if it’s the blot of the real-estate tycoon, I can’t say. But I have never had sex with anybody ever again.

If you can read the whole NY Magazine article, do it. Her story is harrowing.

Trump attacks E. Jean Carroll for accusing him of rape & threatens other potential accusers: "This is a woman who has also accused other men of things ...what she did is terrible...people have to be careful because they're playing with very dangerous territory...it's a disgrace." pic.twitter.com/Ky3TaYNZGt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 22, 2019

They knew he was a snake before they let him in...

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digby 6/22/2019 04:00:00 PM