Tuesday Reads: Trump and White Backlash

Posted: January 16, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | 28 Comments

Good Morning!!

Yesterday we celebrated the birthday of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But in our new reality, the day highlighted the fact that in 2016, Americans elected a man who symbolizes “white backlash.” His career in real estate reflected the survival of American racism 50 years after King’s assassination; and his presidency has been about erasing the accomplishments of America’s first black president as well as  making America white again by curbing immigration.

Vann R. Newkirk III at The Atlantic: Five Decades of White Backlash.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In response, a week later President Lyndon B. Johnson scrambled to sign into law the Fair Housing Act, a final major civil-rights bill that had languished for years under the strain of white backlash to the civil-rights movement.

Five years later a New York developer and his son—then only a few years out of college—became two of the first targets of a massive Department of Justice probefor an alleged violation of that landmark act. After a protracted, bitter lawsuit, facing a mountain of allegations that the two had engaged in segregating units and denying applications of black and Puerto Rican applicants, in 1975 Trump Management settled with the federal government and accepted the terms of a consent decree prohibiting discrimination. So entered Donald Trump onto the American stage.

The country has changed since those turbulent days. Many of the major policies created to end the era of de jure white supremacy and address King’s campaigns against segregation and for voting rights have become entrenched in law, bureaucracy, and the courts. Overt racism and bigotry have acquired the stink of faux pas, integrated spaces persist in some places, and there’s even been a black president. But in this Pax Americana, the seed of resistance to those ideas and policies that King championed also germinated across generations. Now that the man who made his name flouting the spirit of King is president, the tree has borne its most ripe fruit….

As Trump’s own career indicates, the roots of this pushback reach much further than the topsoil of the Obama era. Indeed, King helped popularize the phrase and idea of “white backlash” during the civil-rights era, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, and after which Democrats, including President Johnson, feared a strong mobilization of white voters against the reform. “A section of the white population, perceiving Negro pressure for change, misconstrues it as a demand for privileges rather than as a desperate quest for existence,” King wrote in the Saturday Evening Post in November 1964. “The ensuing white backlash intimidates government officials who are already too timorous, and, when the crisis demands vigorous measures, a paralysis ensues.”

Through the later years of his life, King was acutely aware of and intensely concerned with white backlash, which he perceived as a rebounding force that could over time reduce the gains of integration and equal protection to mere tokens. He also suffered from that rebounding force in his own lifetime, with declining approval ratings and increasingly militant white-supremacist opponents. And then he was killed.

That Trump dared to speak about Dr. King in his “proclamation” on yesterday’s holiday was a sick joke. Then he rubbed our faces in his racism by spending the holiday golfing instead of the public service he recommended for the rest of us.

Last Thursday Trump ensured that this year’s MLK birthday holiday would be marked with discussions of Trump’s own racism. As everyone in the world knows by now, Trump met with lawmakers on that day to discuss an immigration deal on DACA. During the meeting Trump made it clear that he opposes allowing people of color to immigrate to the U.S., calling Haiti, El Salvador, and every African country “shitholes.”

The Washington Post has the background on that infamous meeting: Inside the tense, profane White House meeting on immigration.

When President Trump spoke by phone with Sen. Richard J. Durbin around 10:15 a.m. last Thursday, he expressed pleasure with Durbin’s outline of a bipartisan immigration pact and praised the high-ranking Illinois Democrat’s efforts, according to White House officials and congressional aides.

The president then asked if Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), his onetime foe turned ally, was on board, which Durbin affirmed. Trump invited the lawmakers to visit with him at noon, the people familiar with the call said.

But when they arrived at the Oval Office, the two senators were surprised to find that Trump was far from ready to finalize the agreement. He was “fired up” and surrounded by hard-line conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who seemed confident that the president was now aligned with them, according to one person with knowledge of the meeting.

Trump told the group he wasn’t interested in the terms of the bipartisan deal that Durbin and Graham had been putting together. And as he shrugged off suggestions from Durbin and others, the president called nations from Africa “shithole countries,” denigrated Haiti and grew angry. The meeting was short, tense and often dominated by loud cross-talk and swearing, according to Republicans and Democrats familiar with the meeting.

It appears that “empty barrel” John Kelly was the one who got Trump “fired up.”

Attendees who were alarmed by the racial undertones of Trump’s remarks were further disturbed when the topic of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) came up, these people said.

At one point, Durbin told the president that members of that caucus — an influential House group — would be more likely to agree to a deal if certain countries were included in the proposed protections, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Trump was curt and dismissive, saying he was not making immigration policy to cater to the CBC and did not particularly care about that bloc’s demands, according to people briefed on the meeting. “You’ve got to be joking,” one adviser said, describing Trump’s reaction.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly was in the room and was largely stone-faced, not giving any visible reaction when Trump said “shithole countries” or when he said Haitians should not be part of any deal, White House advisers said….

In the late morning, before Durbin and Graham arrived, Kelly — who had already been briefed on the deal — talked to Trump to tell him that the proposal would probably not be good for his agenda, White House officials said. Kelly, a former secretary of homeland security, has taken an increasingly aggressive and influential role in the immigration negotiations, calling lawmakers and meeting with White House aides daily — more than he has on other topics. He has “very strong feelings,” in the words of one official.

Yes, we learned of Kelly’s “very strong feelings” when he publicly attacked and lied about Rep. Fredrika Wilson and refused to apologize.

At CNN, Ron Brownstein explains Why Trump voters need the immigrants they want to turn away.

The irony in President Donald Trump’s hostility to immigration, expressed again in reports of his vulgar comments about Africa and Haiti last week, is that in appealing to the racial and cultural resentments of his political base he is directly threatening their economic interests.The equation is unmistakable: as America ages, the older and blue-collar whites at the core of Trump’s electoral coalition in 2016 need more working-age immigrants to pay the taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare.

Rosa Parks

Without robust immigration, each American worker will need to support substantially more retirees in the future than workers do today. And that will greatly increase the pressure for either unsustainable tax increases or biting benefit reductions in the federal retirement programs that the older and blue-collar whites central to Trump’s support rely upon so heavily.

Trump’s hostility to immigration ignores one of the central dynamics of 21st century American life: an increasingly non-white workforce will pay the taxes that support Social Security and Medicare for a rapidly growing and preponderantly white senior population.

“As every baby boomer retires over the next 15 years, we are going to need many more of these (diverse) young people to take their place,” says William Frey, a demographer at the center-left Brookings Institution.

Because the US largely shut off immigration between 1924 and 1965, today’s senior population is preponderantly white. Frey has calculated that three-fourths of all Americans 55 and older are white. Those older whites were the cornerstone of Trump’s coalition in the 2016 election: whites over 45 gave Trump over three-fifths of their votes, and provided a majority of all the votes he received, according to exit polls.

A few more stories of possible interest:

The Washington Post: The Senate’s push to overrule the FCC on net neutrality now has 50 votes, Democrats say.

Fifty senators have endorsed a legislative measure to override the Federal Communications Commission’s recent decision to deregulate the broadband industry, top Democrats said Monday.

The tally leaves supporters just one Republican vote shy of the 51 required to pass a Senate resolution of disapproval, in a legislative gambit aimed at restoring the agency’s net neutrality rules.

Barack Obama sits on Rosa Parks’ bus

Those rules, which banned Internet providers from blocking or slowing down websites, were swept away in a December vote led by Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. Republicans had argued that the rules were too restrictive for industry, while Democrats said they provided a vital consumer protection.

The resolution aims to overturn the FCC’s decision and prohibit the agency from passing similar measures in the future. It has the support of all 49 Democratic senators as well as one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider: Devin Nunes is under mounting pressure to release the transcript of a House Intel interview with Fusion GPS.

The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat is calling on the panel’s Republican majority to release the transcript of the panel’s November interview with Glenn Simpson, the cofounder of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

“In light of the selective leaks of Mr. Simpson’s testimony and the misleading manner in which Fusion GPS’ role has been characterized, I support releasing the transcript,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the panel’s ranking member, said in a statement through his office on Monday.

“The Majority has released transcripts of Dr. Page and Mr. Prince when it suited their interests, and likewise should make an exception here,” Schiff added, referring to Carter Page, an early Trump campaign aide, and Erik Prince, an informal adviser to Trump’s transition team.

A spokeswoman for Fusion GPS, the Washington, D.C.-based opposition research firm that hired the former British spy Christopher Steele to research then-candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, said on Monday that Fusion supports the release of the transcript. The firm had even sent a letter to the committee to that effect, she said, but it has not yet been publicly released.

Miami Herald: Trump’s Mar-a Lago cited by state inspectors for poor maintenance.

A year after the discovery of foods that could sicken people at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, his Winter White House was just cited by inspectors for poor maintenance.

Never mind that it costs $200,000 in initiation fees to join the exclusive club, which has two restaurants and a bed-and-breakfast.

Fresh state records show the B&B needed emergency repairs in order to pass the latest inspection in November.

Trump’s club, located on a beachfront property where the historic main house was built in the 1920s for cereals heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, was cited Nov. 8 for two violations deemed high priority: the lack of smoke detectors capable of alerting the hearing impaired through flashing bright lights; and slabs of concrete missing from a staircase, exposing steel rebar that could cause someone to fall.

“High priority lodging violations are those which could pose a direct or significant threat to the public health, safety, or welfare,” the inspection code reads.

The club was re-checked Nov. 17, a week before Trump’s return for his Thanksgiving vacation, and this time “met inspection standards,” according to the state inspection report.

What stories are you following today?

Monday Reflections on Martin Luther King

Posted: January 15, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , | 20 Comments

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

Today’s the day we celebrate the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King and the inspiration of his life, sacrifice, and commitment to civil rights.

I woke up today thinking about the country and neighborhood that I was born into and grew up in.  My father was a Ford Dealer in small town Iowa and I spent my first nursery and grade school years there.  Eisenhower was president when I was born.  JFK was the first president I remember.  I was in second grade when he was assassinated. My second grade teacher came into our classroom with tears to announce it. The first election I remember was between LBJ and Goldwater.

I remember watching two things on the nightly news that was a ritual for our family. The struggle for civil rights unfolding in the south and the reports of the Vietnam war occupied much black and white air time.  Both were horrifying.  I ended my pre-college years in Omaha across the river spending the last years of high school watching the Watergate hearings. I graduated and shortly thereafter, the president resigned.  This is the time line of a baby-boomer born right in the middle times.

The most clear thing that stood out to me as I was growing up and into adulthood where I took my place in the women’s movement and then in the fight against AIDS and discrimination against GLBT was that at the very heart of everything was our creed that  all were ‘created  equal’ and endowed with ‘inalienable’ rights. No one’s life was lived with that creed more in mind than the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King.  I also remember the day he was assassinated and trying to get to my grandfather’s place in Kansas City the long way around the riots.  Some time it takes more sacrifice and anger than we should have to muster to realize those rights.  That was 50 years ago.

Looking back at the Obama presidency and the hope I had that Hillary would also be a first, I remember those days as a kid when the holiday we celebrated was President’s day.  We celebrated Lincoln who saved the Union and freed the slaves.  We celebrated George Washington who could not tell a lie.  Through all of this, my young heart got the message that Presidents could be flawed but the great ones did not lie.  They sought the freedom and dignity that all of us deserved.  They fought in the war against NAZIS and fascism to preserve and establish freedom and dignity for others. They sent Federal Troops to places in America where black men were murdered and black people were denied their basic rights as US citizens because that’s what moved the fight for freedom and dignity along in this country.

The Presidents we celebrated as children were honest and true to our values.  They were celebrated for their humble beginnings, their military service, and–in many cases–their great minds. They established national parks to protect our nation’s lands and created the EPA. Nixon went to China.  Reagan sought out the Soviets to decrease the threat of annihilation by nuclear weapons.  Barack Obama stands in many ways as a monument to the work of King but will most likely be seen as a bright and moral man who led us out of dark economic times with a level head while seeking the establishment of health care for all.

We most often associate Dr King with his “I have a dream” speech and his letters from the Birmingham jail.  But, this was also a man who fought for the dignity of garbage collectors to have a living wage for an honest day’s work.  Our patriotic days celebrate traits of Presidents and heroes fighting for and establishing our shared values. We celebrate their establishment and furtherance as much as we celebrate the men themselves. (This is also why we need a few more patriotic holidays that enfranchise our women heroes and our indigenous peoples. Hint: NO MORE COLUMBUS DAYS)

The deal is this, I always thought that when they told us those stories of “anyone can become” president that it didn’t mean that it was an anyone that “lied”, avoided military service, ruined relations with allies, praised fascists, and gave speeches vilifying those among us that couldn’t join the Klan and recognizing goods on sides for which good does not exist in the American framework.

My children are grown and I no longer have to pass along the country’s folklore. I’m glad because what we see in the placeholder in the oval office today is anathema to all those lessons I learned during the celebration of President’s day in my grade schools and that both my daughters learned in their grade school classrooms during the celebration of MLK day.  Kremlin KKKaligula chops down cherry trees every day and lies about it. Kremlin KKKaligula seeks to send our minorities back into servitude. His speeches are of Dreams of White Supremacy.  He is way beyond a flawed man.  He daily violates  our shared values and looks towards their destruction.

He has to go.  One way or another. Many people sacrificed so we could vote and this is the year that we show Martin Luther King that his fight to get voting rights and that his sacrifices were not in vain. I usually think of my grandmothers when I vote because I know they could not vote until well into their middle age.  This November, I will hold up the promise of Dr Martin Luther King’s Dream and vote for everything that he lived and died for.   Join me and get others to do so too.  We need not just a blue wave. We need a rainbow wave. We need a colors of the earth wave.

Here are some reads that you might like.

From Electric Literature:  “11 Incredible Books by Writers from ‘Shithole’ Countries. Let’s celebrate just a few of the amazing authors the president says he wouldn’t want in the U.S.”

But it’s a good reminder to celebrate the work of writers from Africa, and from Haiti, El Salvador, and other protected-status countries. As writers, readers, and human beings, we would all be intellectually impoverished by the lack of these voices. Here are some of our favorite novels, memoirs, and poetry by authors from the countries Trump disdains, many of whom celebrate their complicated homelands in their work.

And, from a patron of the Seattle Public Library: “Sh**hole Countries”: a Reading List.”

Our sh*t-for-brains 45th President doesn’t read, but you do! Explore some of the places and cultures he’s maligned, learn history he’s ignorant of, and see the world through the eyes of people whose lives he regards as worthless. Resist hate-mongering and race-baiting, and experience the world and your fellow human beings in ways that only someone not wholly devoid of curiosity, empathy, and functional literacy truly can! *Note: This list is not a publication of the Seattle Public Library, nor intended to be presented on its behalf. It was created on a patron account, outside the library, in the same manner that any library patron can do. (I encourage library patrons everywhere to create and share their own lists!) The Bibliocommons software tags all such lists with its creator’s home library. I apologize for any confusion: it was never my intention to present this list on the Library’s behalf.

From New York Magazine and the Jonathan Chait: “Why Republicans Love Dumb Presidents”.

Rather than segregate questions about Trump’s brain away from the broader partisan debate, they dissolve the former into the latter. They believe that Trump’s being called dumb by the intellectual elite is intimately connected to his political identity. This belief is largely correct. As it has moved farther and farther right, the Republican Party has grown increasingly anti-intellectual. Trump’s base adores him, not despite his obvious mental limitations, but because of them.

Two caveats are in order. First, many intelligent people have conservative values, and rationally support the Republican Party. Second, while Trump’s lack of mental aptitude may be similar to that of previous Republican leaders in kind, it is very different in degree. That said, Trump’s flamboyant ignorance and disdain for intellectual standards are very much in keeping with modern conservative politics.

From the SF Chronicle:   “Airbnb loses thousands of hosts in SF as registration rules kick in.”

Thousands of San Francisco hosts on Airbnb and rival home-stay sites have stopped renting their homes and rooms to tourists. Many others are scrambling to register their vacation rentals with the city as a Tuesday deadline looms for Airbnb and HomeAway to kick off unregistered hosts.

From the NYT:

Trump’s Racism, a definitive list. (DAVID LEONHARDT and IAN PRASAD PHILBRICK)

The media often falls back on euphemisms when describing Trump’s comments about race: racially loaded, racially charged, racially tinged, racially sensitive. And Trump himself has claimed that he is “the least racist person.” But here’s the truth: Donald Trump is a racist. He talks about and treats people differently based on their race. He has done so for years, and he is still doing so.

Trump is a Racist, PERIOD.  (CHARLES M.BLOW)

Racism is simply the belief that race is an inherent and determining factor in a person’s or a people’s character and capabilities, rendering some inferior and others superior. These beliefs are racial prejudices.

The history of America is one in which white people used racism and white supremacy to develop a racial caste system that advantaged them and disadvantaged others.

Understanding this, it is not a stretch to understand that Donald Trump’s words and deeds over the course of his life have demonstrated a pattern of expressing racial prejudices that demean people who are black and brown and that play to the racial hostilities of other white people.

The Heartbeat of Racism Is Denial   (IBRAM X. KENDI)

Mental health experts routinely say that denial is among the most common defense mechanisms. Denial is how the person defends his superior sense of self, her racially unequal society.

Denial is how America defends itself as superior to “shithole countries” in Africa and elsewhere, as President Trump reportedly described them in a White House meeting last week, although he has since, well, denied that. It’s also how America defends itself as superior to those “developing countries” in Africa, to quote how liberal opponents of Mr. Trump might often describe them.

Mr. Trump appears to be unifying America — unifying Americans in their denial. The more racist Mr. Trump sounds, the more Trump country denies his racism, and the more his opponents look away from their own racism to brand Trump country as racist. Through it all, America remains a unified country of denial.
The reckoning of Mr. Trump’s racism must become the reckoning of American racism. Because the American creed of denial — “I’m not a racist” — knows no political parties, no ideologies, no colors, no regions.

So, what do we tell our American children? What does the world tell theirs about US?

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Lazy Saturday Reads: This Is Our Reality Now

Posted: January 13, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 50 Comments

What might have been.

Good Morning!!

The news is ugly today. The “president” calls other countries “shitholes” as he works to turn the United States into a “shithole” full of ignorant white people who live in fear of anyone who doesn’t look and think exactly as they do. On top of the “president’s” classless vulgarity and racism, it looks like next we’re going to be subjected to examinations of the “president’s” degrading sexual history.

This nightmare reality we are living in might have been prevented if only the media weren’t populated by numerous misogynist men who prey on naive young women and at the same time enjoy mocking strong, competent women like Hillary Clinton when they dare to pursue their ambitious dreams.

In the wake of the *shitstorm* over the “president’s” vile and ignorant comments in a meeting about immigration, it looks as if one of the worst media misogynist could finally get his comeuppance.

The Cut: Exclusive: Watch Chris Matthews Joke About His ‘Bill Cosby Pill’ Before Interviewing Hillary Clinton.

On January 5, 2016, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews interviewed Hillary Clinton in an Iowa fire station during the Democratic primary season. Network footage obtained by the Cut shows Matthews, during the interview setup, making a couple of “jokes” about Clinton. He asks, “Can I have some of the queen’s waters? Precious waters?” And then, as he waits for the water, he adds, “Where’s that Bill Cosby pill I brought with me?” Matthews then laughs, delighted with the line, for an extended moment, as the staffers around him react with disbelief, clearly uncomfortable. (Cosby has been accused of sexual impropriety by dozens of women, some of whom allege that they were drugged and raped by the comedian, some of them got addicted to drugs so they went to a rehab center from firststepbh.com.) They consulted xarelto lawsuit after the incident.

“This was a terrible comment I made in poor taste during the height of the Bill Cosby headlines,” Matthews said to the Cut. “I realize that’s no excuse. I deeply regret it and I’m sorry.”

Really? Fuck you Tweety. It’s time for you to retire.

Back to The Cut:

Matthews has a long history of talking disparagingly about Hillary Clinton, whom he once called “witchy,”and often seems to channel what a hypothetical sexist Republican might say about a woman candidate: “she-devil,” “Madame Defarge.” In 2005, he wondered whether the troops would “take the orders” from a (female) President Clinton. “Is she hemmed in by the fact that she’s a woman and can’t admit a mistake,” he asked in 2006, “or else the Republicans will say, ‘Oh, that’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind,’ or ‘another fickle woman’? Is her gender a problem in her ability to change her mind?” He once pinched her cheekfollowing an interview, and, though he later apologized, on another occasion suggested that she only got as far as she did on the political stage because her husband had “messed around.”

We’re all familiar with Tweety’s garbage talk. To paraphrase Trump: “Take him out!”

Also worth reading, tweets by Matthew Gertz of Media Matters. A couple of examples:

That’s part of a long thread about Matthews ugly sexist remarks about Clinton you can read on Twitter.

And now let’s check out some of the latest stories about the “president” Chris Matthews and his kind helped put in the White House.

Trump’s racism

The New York Times Editorial Board on the “president’s” “shithole” shitstorm: Donald Trump Flushes Away America’s Reputation.

Where to begin? How about with a simple observation: The president of the United States is a racist. And another: The United States has a long and ugly history of excluding immigrants based on race or national origin. Mr. Trump seems determined to undo efforts taken by presidents of both parties in recent decades to overcome that history.

Mr. Trump denied making the remarks on Friday, but Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who attended the meeting, said the president did in fact say these “hate-filled things, and he said them repeatedly.”

Of course he did. Remember, Mr. Trump is not just racist, ignorant, incompetent and undignified. He’s also a liar.

Even the president’s most sycophantic defenders didn’t bother denying the reports. Instead they justified them. Places like Haiti really are terrible, they reminded us. Never mind that many native-born Americans are descended from immigrants who fled countries (including Norway in the second half of the 19th century) that were considered hellholes at the time.

Read the rest at the NYT link. How appropriate that the headline contains the word “flushes.”

Adam Serwer at The Atlantic: Trump Puts the Purpose of His Presidency Into Words.

Francis Amasa Walker had fought to preserve the Union in the Grand Army of the Republic, but by 1896 he saw its doom in the huddled masses coming from Eastern Europe. The “immigrants from southern Italy, Hungary, Austria, and Russia,” Walker lamented in The Atlantic, were “beaten men from beaten races; representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence,” people who had “none of the ideas and aptitudes which fit men to take up readily and easily the problem of self-care and self-government, such as belong to those who are descended from the tribes that met under the oak-trees of old Germany to make laws and choose chieftains.”

More than a century later President Donald Trump would put it differently, as he considered immigration from Africa, wondering, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” instead suggesting that America take in more immigrants from places like Norway.

These remarks reflect scorn not only for those who wish to come here, but those who already have. It is a president of the United States expressing his contempt for the tens of millions of descendants of Africans, most of whose forefathers had no choice in crossing the Atlantic, American citizens whom any president is bound to serve. And it is a public admission of sorts that he is incapable of being a president for all Americans, the logic of his argument elevating not just white immigrants over brown ones, but white citizens over the people of color they share this country with.

Please go read the whole thing.

Philip Kennicott at The Washington Post: What did the men with Donald Trump do when he spoke of ‘shithole countries’?

Over the past year, as our political culture has grown more coarse and corrupt, I’ve felt different things: sometimes, anger; often, bitter resignation; and occasionally, a bemused sense of pure absurdity. But the past two nights I have actually wept. Why now? Why in response to these particular prompts? A confused and ailing woman in a thin medical gown was tossed to the roadside in freezing weather by security guards from the University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus in Baltimore. Who orders such a thing, and why would anyone carry out that order? Then, the president of the United States calls Haiti, El Salvador and African nations “shithole” countries. Who says that kind of thing? Who thinks it? Who listens to it without reflexive outrage?

Back to the Post article:

According to a few of the president’s defenders, this is what we all really think. “This is how the forgotten men and women of America talk at the bar,” said a Fox News host, imputing to ordinary Americans sentiments they wouldn’t suffer to be said at their own dinner tables. There was the usual talk about “tough” language instead of talking about this course which helps improve language, as if using racist language was merely candor or an admirable impatience with euphemism.

His defenders seemed to say that if the president says things that we would be ashamed even to think, he is somehow speaking a kind of truth. But while there may be countries that are poor and suffer from civil discord, there are no “shithole” countries, not one, anywhere on Earth. The very idea of “shithole” countries is designed to short-circuit our capacity for empathy on a global scale.

These two incidents, in Baltimore and in the Oval Office, seem related — inhumane indifference from a hospital and blatant bigotry from the president — which is even more troubling. They are about who is on what side of the door, or the wall, or any other barrier that defines the primal “us and them” that governs so much of the worst of our human-made world. When Trump called disfavored countries “shitholes,” he was indulging the most lethal and persistent tribalism of all: pure, unabashed racism. After a candidacy and now a presidency marked by implications of racism, the president has grown more comfortable with speaking in overtly racist terms, condemning whole countries and their people for not being more like “Norway,” one of the whitest countries on Earth….

Remarks like these from the president are still shocking but hardly surprising, given the frequency with which they occur. What I want to know is how the men in the room with him reacted. This is the dinner table test: When you are sitting and socializing with a bigot, what do you do when he reveals his bigotry? I’ve seen it happen, once, when I was a young man, and I learned an invaluable lesson. An older guest at a formal dinner said something blatantly anti-Semitic. I was shocked and laughed nervously. Another friend stared at his plate silently. Another excused himself and fled to the bathroom. And then there was the professor, an accomplished and erudite man, who paused for a moment, then slammed his fist on the table and said, “I will never listen to that kind of language, so either you will leave, or I will leave.” The offender looked around the table, found no allies and left the gathering. I don’t know if he felt any shame upon expulsion.

Again, please go read the rest.

On the Trump scandal front:

Raw Story: Haitian government claims ousted dictator ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier laundered stolen money through Trump Tower.

Trump and Baby Doc

More than a fifth of Trump’s condominiums in the U.S. have been purchased since the 1980s in secretive cash transactions that fit a Treasury Department definition of suspicious transactions, reported Buzzfeed News.

Records show more than 1,300 Trump condos were purchased through shell companies, which allow buyers to shield their finances and identities, and without a mortgage, which protects buyers from lender inquiries.

Those two characteristics raise alarms about possible money laundering, according to statements issued in recent months by the Department of Treasury, which has investigated transactions just like those all over the country….

According to the Buzzfeed News report, the Haitian government complained in the 1980s that former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier laundered money stolen from the Caribbean nation’s treasury by purchasing an apartment in Trump Tower.

Duvalier, nicknamed “Baby Doc,” was overthrown in 1986, but three years earlier used a Panamanian shell company called Lasa Trade and Finance to buy apartment 54-K in Trump’s Manhattan tower for $446,875 cash.

Trump, the future U.S. president, signed the deed of sale.

I tried to read the Buzzfeed story yesterday, but it got to be too much to deal with. Now I plan to go read it carefully.

CNN: James O’Keefe says Trump asked him to go on birther-linked mission.

James O’Keefe

Donald Trump in 2013 asked James O’Keefe, the controversial conservative filmmaker, if he could “get inside” Columbia University and obtain President Obama’s sealed college records, according to a passage in O’Keefe’s forthcoming book, a copy of which was reviewed by CNN.

O’Keefe, a guerrilla filmmaker whom critics have decried for his tactics and who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for entering federal property in 2010 under false pretenses, writes in “American Pravda: My Fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News” that during a meeting in New York City Trump complimented his ACORN sting videos (“That pimp and hooker thing you did, wow!”). But, O’Keefe writes, Trump “was a man with a plan” and “did not agree to this meeting to sing my praises.” [….]

According to O’Keefe, Trump “suspected Obama had presented himself as a foreign student on application materials to ease his way into New York’s Columbia University, maybe even Harvard too, and perhaps picked up a few scholarships along the way.”

O’Keefe wrote that during the 2013 meeting Trump suggested O’Keefe infiltrate Columbia and obtain the sealed records: “‘Nobody else can get this information,'” O’Keefe quoted Trump as saying. “‘Do you think you could get inside Columbia?'”

Read more at CNN.

The Washington Post: After drubbing by media, Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands apologizes for anti-Muslim remarks.

Pete Hoekstra and Trump

The embattled U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Peter Hoekstra apologized Friday for making unsubstantiated anti-Muslim claims at a conference in 2015, after his first week in the post was clouded by questions about the incendiary statements.

Hoekstra, a former Republican congressman from Michigan and recent political appointee, made the apology during an interview Friday with De Telegraaf, one of the largest Dutch newspapers, at the end of a particularly rough introduction for the new ambassador.

“Looking back, I am shocked I said that,” he told the newspaper. “It was a wrong statement. It was wrong.”

Hoekstra made the remarks in question during a conference on terrorism hosted by the right-wing David Horowitz Freedom Center. He talked about the supposed “chaos” brought to Europe by immigrants from Islamic countries and repeated a baseless theory about so-called “no-go zones” that is popular in right-wing media.

“Chaos in the Netherlands. There are cars being burned. There are politicians that are being burned,” Hoekstra said at the time. “With the influx of the Islamic community — and yes, there are no-go zones in the Netherlands. All right? There are no-go zones in France.”

Considering the quality of people Trump is appointing to diplomatic posts, I’m sure we can expect more embarrassing episodes like this.

So . . . I could go on and on. I deliberately left out the story of Trump and the two porn stars. It’s still difficult for me to believe this horrible man is POTUS. He has to go before he completely wrecks this country and destroys any hope of our regaining respect around the world.

What stories are you following?

Friday Drumpster Fire Reads

Posted: January 12, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , | 74 Comments

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

I have the task of once again introducing the politics of the day as less of a wonky conversation over policy than to report on how disturbingly unfit this president* is for office. He’s demonstrated that he’s a racist, xenophobe and misogynist over and over. Senator Dick Durbin is witness to yet another example of his virulent racism.

There are several germane questions in this discussion about immigration.  The first is simple. Why would any one from Norway want to immigrate here?  Back in 2014, I wrote “Heaven has Fjords” for this blog. Norway is probably the best country to live in for any one that’s not a greedy bastard, fascinated with the US, some one sent you here to work, or you’re just plain nuts.. It has 100% literacy and the world’s second best per capital GDP per capita which is considered the best measure of standard of living.

Without a doubt, the best country to live in the world these days going strictly by the statistics (and not the weather) is Norway.  Take a look at the CIA fact book for all the good stuff on Norway then take a look at  the United States.  Norway has bested the USA in standard of living for quite some time.  The United States keeps dropping on all lists and just in GDP per capita is now sitting at number 10.  Norway is ranked first on the Human Development index of 177 countries, so essentially they are number one country for living the good life.  It is second, only to Luxembourg, for GDP per capita.

Today’s New York Times covers the little country that can and its stellar economic performance in today’s global economic crisis.    A lot of credit is goes to Norway’s socialist finance minister Kristin Halvorsen.  She’s in charge of Norway’s $300 billion sovereign wealth fund that has been steadily buying stocks since March and is used to build a decent standard of living for every one in that country.  Norway likes its government and its government works well. The Times article contrasts the economics of the U.S. and Norway and the U.S. comes up way short.

But that’s just the second part of the bigger question. Why do we have an obviously racist, white supremacist president who wants to close the gates of the US to what he calls “shithole” countries that not so coincidentally are not shitholes and mostly have nonwhite majorities?  First, he’s completely unaware of our nation’s historical ties to Haiti which has been long standing and positive.  Second, he has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to most of Africa and places that he’s never even been.  His comments are beyond disturbing.  They hateful, bigoted, racist, and wrong.  They do not reflect the history or stated values of this country.

President Donald Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House, a Democratic aide briefed on Thursday’s meeting told NBC News.

Trump’s comments were first reported by The Washington Post, which said the nations referred to by Trump also included El Salvador.

The U.N. human rights office said the comments, if confirmed, were “shocking and shameful” and “racist,” while Haiti’s foreign minister summoned the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Robin Diallo for clarification.

Two sources briefed on the conversation say that during the portion of the conversation about Haiti — which came at the top of the exchange that led to the “shithole” comment — the president questioned why Haitians should be given specific consideration.

“Why do we need more Haitians, take them out,” he said, according to sources. Someone else in the room responded: “Because if you do, it will be obvious why.”

Trump denies saying this and his KKKRonies are saying it was an awkward way of saying we need more skilled immigrants but Senator Dick Durbin is on the record as having heard that and more.  And, I have to go back to more dancing goddess gifs to stomach this necessary conversation.

Donald Trump appeared to deny on Friday that he used the phrase “shithole countries” to describe Central American and African nations during talks with US lawmakers the day before. But one of the senators present contradicted Trump and called the remarks he had heard “hateful, vile and racist”.

But senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat was in the meeting, contradicted him in to local Chicago press on Friday morning. He said the president “in the course of his comments said things which were hateful, vile and racist”.

“He said these hate-filled things, and he said them repeatedly,” Durbin said.

On Thursday, Trump reportedly grew angry during a meeting about protections for immigrants from several countries, and asked: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

“Why do we need more Haitians?” he reportedly added. “Take them out.” He also reportedly suggested the US bring in more people from Norway.

Early on Friday, he denied the derogatory language. “The language used by me at the Daca meeting was tough, but this was not the language used,” he tweeted, using an acronym for a program to protect young undocumented immigrants. “What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made – a big setback for Daca!”

He later added: “Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country. Never said ‘take them out.’ Made up by Dems. I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians. Probably should record future meetings – unfortunately, no trust!”

“I cannot believe that in the history of the White House and the Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday,” Durbin said. “I’ve seen the comments in the press and I’ve not read one of them that’s inaccurate.”

The fallout should be swift and severe from this.  So far, we’ve seen very little coming from the Republican side but the US Ambassador to Panama just resigned.  Will this be a trend?

US Ambassador to Panama John Feeley, a career diplomat and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, has resigned, telling the State Department he no longer feels able to serve President Donald Trump.

“As a junior foreign service officer, I signed an oath to serve faithfully the president and his administration in an apolitical fashion, even when I might not agree with certain policies. My instructors made clear that if I believed I could not do that, I would be honor bound to resign. That time has come,” Mr Feeley said, according to an excerpt of his resignation letter read to Reuters.

A State Department spokeswoman confirmed Mr Feeley’s departure, saying that he “has informed the White House, the Department of State, and the Government of Panama of his decision to retire for personal reasons, as of March 9 of this year.”

How could any moral person serve this president* and our country in any manner other than to seek his removal from office?

What is really strange are these reports coming in about Trump’s own businesses including the ones he spends more time at than in the oval office.

A few minutes after the Haiti comment, the topic turned to immigration from African nations, prompting Trump to ask, “Why are we having all these people from s—hole countries come here?”

The Washington Post broke the news of Trump’s remarks Thursday afternoon, and the condemnation was swift and scathing.

But setting aside Trump’s vulgar language, the president was essentially asking questions.

Luckily for Trump, the answer to one of them — namely, why America “needs more Haitians” — lies right outside the president’s front door.

That’s because The Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump’s mansion-cum-golf resort in Palm Beach, Florida, reportedly hires more of its seasonal foreign workers from Haiti than it does from nearly any other country.

Those Haitians come to the United States to work for Trump on H-2B visas, temporary work permits issued by the Department of Labor to employers who can’t find enough American workers to fill their need for low-skilled, seasonal labor.

At Mar-a-Lago, the season runs from November to April, when sunny Palm Beach is a mecca for wealthy Northerners escaping the cold.

For the 2017-18 season, the club applied for and received 70 H-2B visas. The foreign workers serve as cooks, housekeepers and servers, paid between $10 and $13 an hour, according to filings Mar-a-Lago submitted to the DOL.

In other words, Trump is an American who literally petitioned the government for “more Haitians.”

Trump’s denial was, of course, tweeted early today.

In the wake of a firestorm sparked by President Donald Trump‘s Thursday comments slamming immigrants from ‘s—hole’ countries, the president weighed in on Twitter today, appearing to defend the “tough” language he used at an Oval Office meeting.

But he also wrote “this was not the language used,” an apparent denial, although it was unclear to what language he was referring.

“The language used by me at the DACAmeeting was tough, but this was not the language used,” Trump tweeted today of Thursday’s meeting about a proposed bipartisan immigration plan.

Trump grew frustrated that the proposal would scale back the visa lottery program, but not eliminate it, asking those in the room why they would want people from Haiti, Africa and other “s—hole countries” coming into the United States, according to multiple sources either briefed on or familiar with the discussion.

Meanwhile, Kremlin KKKaligula did an interview with the WSJ that continues to show he knows nothing about anything and continues to be obsessed with Obama and Clinton.

… TOLD THE WALL STREET JOURNAL that Mexico would pay for the wall through NAFTA. Direct quote, from an interview with the Journal: “They can pay for it through … they can pay for it indirectly through Nafta. OK? You know, we make a good deal on Nafta, say I’m going to take a small percentage of that money and it’s going to go toward the wall. Guess what? Mexico’s paying.

“Now Mexico may not want to make the Nafta deal and which is OK, then I’ll terminate Nafta … which I think would be frankly a positive for our country. I don’t think it’s a positive for Mexico, I don’t think it’s a positive for the world. But it’s a positive for our country because I’d make a much better deal. There is no deal that I can make on Nafta that’s as good as if I terminate Nafta and make a new deal. OK? But I feel that we have a chance of making a reasonable deal, the way it is now.”

… AND TOLD THE WSJ THAT he thought he “probably” had a “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un of North Korea.” Asked if he ever spoke to the North Korean leader, Trump said “I don’t want to comment on it — I don’t want to comment, I’m not saying I have or I haven’t.” He added: “[Y]ou see that a lot with me and then all of a sudden somebody’s my best friend. I could give you 20 examples. You give me 30. I’m a very flexible person.” http://on.wsj.com/2ASnP32… The full transcript http://on.wsj.com/2D3CYod

WHY THIS ALL MATTERS — NEXT WEEK, Republicans will be trying to keep government open, squeeze through what will be a massively controversial immigration bill and boost government spending by nearly $100 billion. NONE OF THIS will be possible if Trump expresses a shred of doubt on the deals Congress is trying to cut. He has a habit of taking cues from the conservative Freedom Caucus. They are sure to express some level of opposition to this triad of bills. Trump’s itchy trigger finger could give Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell serious heartache next week.

— A BITE YOU MUST READ, from the WSJ interview: “I went to the Wharton School of Finance, did well. I went out, I—I started in Brooklyn, in a Brooklyn office with my father, I became one of the most successful real-estate developers, one of the most successful business people. I created maybe the greatest brand.

“I then go into, in addition to that, part-time, like five percent a week, I open up a television show. As you know, the Apprentice on many evenings was the number one show on all of television, a tremendous success. It went on for 12 years, a tremendous success. They wanted to sign me for another three years and I said, no, I can’t do that. That’s one of the reasons NBC hates me so much. NBC hates me so much they wanted—they were desperate to sign me for—for three more years. …

“I was always the best athlete, people don’t know that. But I was successful at everything I ever did and then I run for president, first time—first time, not three times, not six times. I ran for president first time and lo and behold, I win. And then people say oh, is he a smart person? I’m smarter than all of them put together, but they can’t admit it. They had a bad year.”

COME ON!: He’s president! Who cares about his athletic prowess or his college education! IMAGINE THE REACTION… On the right if Barack Obama constantly talked about how he went to Columbia and Harvard Law School, and bragged about his jump shot.

Another correction for the record: “TRUMP’S ‘SHITHOLE’ COUNTRIES ARE WORTH $46.6 BILLION IN TRADE TO AMERICA”.

During a bipartisan meeting on immigration reform Thursday President Donald Trump fumed about the U.S. accepting immigrants from “shithole” countries. Yet the countries—and indeed continents—that angered him are worth billions in trade to America.

When lawmakers brought up protecting immigration from Africa, and the countries of Haiti and El Salvador as part of a reform deal, Trump asked: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” several sources briefed on the meeting told The Washington Post and other media.

In 2015 the U.S. engaged in $37 billion worth of two-way trade in goods with countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which make up most of the continent, according to numbers from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

I am going to turn this over to you now. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?  How long will this nightmare continue?

Music for Dancing Goddesses of the day:

Thursday Reads

Posted: January 11, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | 42 Comments

Good Morning!!

I finished reading Glenn Simpson’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. Senator Diane Feinstein is a true shero for releasing it to  the public. The contrast between the questioning by the Republican and Democratic staffs is truly shocking. The Democrats focused on the Steele dossier itself and the process by which it was produced, and the Republicans spent their time trying to find ways to undermine and smear Steele, Simpson, and his company Fusion GPS.

Brian Buetler at Crooked has a great summary of the testimony and as well as a description of the partisan questioning by Senator Chuck Grassley’s staff:

By my count, over the course of about five hours, Chuck Grassley’s lawyers asked Simpson literally zero questions designed to increase their own understanding of Russian efforts to disrupt the election. They likewise asked no questions aimed at establishing Simpsons’ level of confidence in the information in the dossier, or in documentary evidence he compiled of Trump’s involvement in money laundering and his ties to organized crime.

They spent their hours instead trying without much success to impeach Simpson’s credibility and paint him as a partisan. They were particularly interested in skewing the composition of Simpsons’ client base to make it seem tilted to Democrats (it isn’t), and in getting Simpson to testify that he had a financial interest in triggering an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign (he didn’t). Confronted with the allegation that the Trump campaign was complicit in a criminal plot to sabotage the Clinton campaign, Grassley’s representatives wanted to know why Simpson had the nerve to try to alert the public, through the media.

Woman reading “Fire and Fury” in CT bookstore

Grassley doesn’t work for Trump and neither do his aides, but their conduct blends seamlessly into the obstructive behavior Trump and his advisers exhibited during the campaign and after, and thus represents a total abdication of their Constitutional roles. Rather than alert the FBI, as requested,  about Russian meddling, the Trump campaign cooperated with Russian hackers, and used their stolen materials to maximum benefit. When the FBI acknowledged the existence of its investigation of the Trump campaign, Trump called it a witch hunt and tried to quash it, along with parallel investigations limping along on Capitol Hill. Grassley’s efforts began where Trump’s left off. The special counsel’s investigation of the Trump campaign continues, so Grassley has devoted himself to proving that it is the fruit of poisonous partisanship. First, they hoped Simpson would melt and confess to being a high-rent version of Roger Stone. When they failed to discredit Simpson, Steele, and the dossier, or to establish that the dossier triggered the FBI’s investigation, Grassley tried to bury the testimony, and then to discredit the dossier by proxy with a baseless accusation that Steele is a criminal.

Trump’s lickspittle propagandists remain as determined as ever to manufacture a scandal out of the nexus between law enforcement and the private investigators who tipped them off, based solely on the identities of the investigators’ clients. Before Feinstein posted Simpson’s testimony, they alleged, without evidence, that Steele’s dossier was the progenitor of the FBI’s Trump investigation. Amid the ruins of that theory, they have unblinkingly adopted the incompatible view that the real outrage is that the FBI tipped its hand to a witness that an investigation was already underway.

Click on the link to read a summary of what questioning by Sen. Feinstein’s staff revealed.

Did you watch that ridiculous “immigration meeting” that Trump held a couple of days ago? The purpose obviously was to demonstrate that Trump is not the raving lunatic described in the book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff. Then yesterday he had another photo op “cabinet meeting” in which he bragged that he “got great reviews from everybody” on his “performance.” Mediaite reports:

Welcome back to the studio,” Trump said as he began his address from the Cabinet Room. He proceeded to revisit his list of triumphs — as he perceives them — such as the GOP tax reform bill, the stock market’s performance, and jobs creation.

Eventually, Trump bragged about how allowing the media to film his bipartisan immigration negotiations yesterday with several members of Congress. The discussions drew rare praise from his critics and complaints fromhis base. Naturally, Trump was more focused today on the former.

“It was a tremendous meeting, actually. It was reported as incredibly good, and my performance…got great reviews from everybody other than two networks who were phenomenal for about two hours. Then after that they were called by their bosses who said “oh, wait a minute” and unfortunately, a lot of those anchors sent us letters saying that was one of the greatest meetings they’ve ever witnessed.”

Trump also claimed he had received letters from news anchors praising his handling of the immigration discussion. Last night Anderson Cooper had a little fun with that. The Hill: Anderson Cooper mocks Trump’s claim that news anchors sent him letters of praise.

Cooper on his program late Wednesday gave “major kudos” to the United States Postal Service for “delivering those letters so fast.”

“So fast, it’s almost like it wouldn’t even be humanly possible,” Cooper said.

“Quick question though: Who are these anchors who wrote letters congratulating the president on one of the greatest meetings they’ve ever witnessed, which is a highly believable, totally normal thing that would absolutely happen?”

Cooper joked that letter writing is one of the first things taught in “anchor school.”

He said he did not send the president a letter of congratulations on his meeting.

“Everyone knows when I want to do something totally normal, I send the president one of those big cookies with ‘congratulations on the meeting’ in icing or one of those edible arrangements,” he said.

Cooper added that when CNN asked the White House to back up its claim that Trump received letters of praise for the meeting from anchors, the White House gave the network a list of “two CNN videos and 19 tweets.”

“To be fair, this list does have words on it and those words are actually made up of letters,” the CNN anchor added,  “but that’s not generally accepted in reality to mean the same thing as ‘letters of congratulation that anchors sent to the president.'”

Video at The Hill.

What the televised meetings showed was that the “president” is completely clueless about his own supposed policies. He simply agreed with the last person who spoke to him and then had to be bailed out by nervous Republicans who explained tried to explain his positions to him.

The Atlantic: The President Who Doesn’t Understand His Own Positions.

The president was able to garner some positive reviews for his session with congressional leaders on Tuesday—though as one of those reviewers, Peter Baker of The New York Times, acknowledged, “The bar, of course, was historically low given that Democrats and even some Republicans have been describing him as so unstable that he should be removed from office.”

But at the same time—in that Tuesday meeting, over the weekend at Camp David, and on Twitter Thursday morning—Trump has demonstrated that he continues to have no functional grasp of policy, including the putative positions of his administration. He demonstrated this Thursday with regards to the FISA Amendments Act, which Congress is preparing to reauthorize before it expires. But reformers, including libertarian-leaning Republicans like Representative Justin Amash and Senator Rand Paul and Democrats like Representative Zoe Lofgren and Senator Ron Wyden, have sought new privacy safeguards in response to the revelations produced by Edward Snowden.

Here are the conflicting tweets from this morning:

The tweets were two hours apart, so someone in the WH must have explained to Trump that he was disagreeing with his own policy in the first one.

Read more at The Atlantic.

Bradley P. Moss has an interesting piece at Politico on the upcoming interview Trump will have to have with the Special Counsel: This is How Trump’s Lawyers Are Probably Prepping Him for the Mueller Showdown.

First things first: Even putting aside his constitutional title, the president is no ordinary client. He is in his 70s, has a healthy (albeit fragile) ego, and, after decades in the business world, is largely set in his ways about how he likes to do things. He is not a deeply analytical person, and he doesn’t like to get bogged down in details. He will not, for example—no matter how much his lawyers would like him to—be able to replicate the document-specific preparedness Hillary Clinton brought to her marathon, 11-hour congressional testimony concerning the tragedy in Benghazi, Libya. That has not been and will never be who Trump is and trying to prepare him in that manner would be a disservice to him, as it would only irritate and confuse him.

That aside, if the president is going to navigate this interview without stepping on any legal or political land mines, he absolutely must listen to the advice his lawyers are likely giving him and take this seriously….

The stakes are high: I am assuming that Mueller does not primarily intend to use the interview of the president, which he reportedly told Trump’s lawyers on Monday that he was likely to request, as a fact-finding inquiry. (Trump countered on Wednesday that an interview with Mueller “seems unlikely.”) If there are relevant and material facts to be found, Mueller’s team has likely already obtained them through the plethora of subpoenas, interviews and grand jury testimony that have already occurred. Mueller’s objective is more likely to evaluate the president’s demeanor when answering questions, particularly when he’s addressing allegations that he tried on more than one occasion to obstruct the Russia investigation. The president’s motivation—particularly whether he had “corrupt intent”—in taking steps like firing FBI Director James Comey is something that can more easily be extrapolated by observing how Trump explains the context of those actions under pressure from a prosecutor than through a dry review of factual information in and of itself.

This means that the president’s lawyers must prepare him to address any number of potential topics, and also thoroughly coach him on how he will talk about them. They’ll do this with mock interviews. A standard mock session could consist of multiple lawyers jumping in with questions at different times, placing documents in front of Trump and seeking to trip him up on the facts. It would be advisable—although it is debatable whether the president would agree to it—for several mock interview sessions to be conducted before the president sits down with Mueller.

Read the rest at Politico. It’s fascinating. No wonder Trump is freaking out.

I know much more is happening. What stories are you following today?

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