Monday Reads: Trump’s Disastrous Records as a President, a Citizen, and a Business Owner
Posted: September 28, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: People Died, Trump Lied, Trump's Fraud, Trump's Taxes 20 Comments
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Tightrope Walk, 1908-10 Neue Galerie New York
Good Day Sky Dancers!
By now it is abundantly clear that the Trumpist Regime makes the Nixon years look like a peaceful and crimefree cakewalk and the Hoover years a time of great economic growth. We’ve got lots of news today to both cry about and reveal as good news. The Sunlight is shining!
Lindsay Graham may be about to be replaced. He’s been drug down by Trump and this rush to appoint a SCOTUS justice during a national election. We’ve finally got Trump’s taxes and they are everything we thought they’d be. He’s basically been broke a very long time and is living off credit from countries that are the true shitholes because they are your basic thugocracies. Today, it’s being argued he’s a definite threat to US National Security because he’s just about as broke as you can get and desperate to keep his false front. His tax revelations may also put Ivanka in the slammer.
How’s that for a little bit of karma? I’m going to truly enjoy delineating each and every one of the portraits of the disaster that is the Trumpist Businesses and Regime. Yes, it’s a an all out circus! Come join in the fun!
Otto Dix, Zirkus (Circus), 1922
Let’s start with the New York Times‘ reveal with its tales of tax fraud and business busts of the last 15 years. This is a good summary by 18 Revelations From a Trove of Trump Tax Records. Times reporters have obtained decades of tax information the president has hidden from public view. Here are some of the key findings.”
Among the key findings of The Times’s investigation:
Mr. Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years that The Times examined. In 2017, after he became president, his tax bill was only $750.
He has reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund that is the subject of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service.
Many of his signature businesses, including his golf courses, report losing large amounts of money — losses that have helped him to lower his taxes.
The financial pressure on him is increasing as hundreds of millions of dollars in loans he personally guaranteed are soon coming due.
Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television.
Ivanka Trump, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received “consulting fees” that also helped reduce the family’s tax bill.
As president, he has received more money from foreign sources and U.S. interest groups than previously known. The records do not reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
George Grosz, The Rabble Rouser, 1928.
From Timothy O’Brien at Bloomberg News: “Trump’s Taxes Show He’s a National Security Threat. What trade-offs would a president with this level of indebtedness be willing to make to save face?” My guess is mister O’Brien is happy as a clam to finally get his eyes on all of these.
Due to his indebtedness, his reliance on income from overseas and his refusal to authentically distance himself from his hodgepodge of business, Trump represents a profound national security threat – a threat that will only escalate if he’s re-elected. The tax returns also show the extent to which Trump has repeatedly betrayed the interests of many of the average Americans who elected him and remain his most loyal supporters.
I have some history with Trump and his taxes. Trump sued me for libel in 2006 for a biography I wrote, “TrumpNation,” claiming the book misrepresented his track record as a businessman and lowballed the size of his fortune. He lost the suit in 2011. During the litigation, Trump resisted releasing his tax returns and other financial records. My lawyers got the returns, and while I can’t disclose specifics of what I saw, I imagine that Trump has always refused to release them because they would reveal how robust his businesses and finances actually are and shine a light on some of his foreign sources of income. The Times has now solved that problem for us.
According to the Times, Trump has about $421 million in debts which he has personally guaranteed and which are coming due over the next several years. This is consistent with earlier reporting about how much debt he carries, a chunk of which could be gleaned from the personal financial disclosures he is required to file with the federal government. But Trump’s overall indebtedness is greater than the Times tally, I believe.
Russ Choma reported in Mother Jones last summer that Trump’s debts were nearly $500 million and would come due in relatively short order, pressuring the president’s finances. But Trump’s debts are even bigger than that, and he’s worked hard to keep them hidden for decades. Dan Alexander, a senior editor at Forbes, has been covering Trump’s business interests since 2016 and has a new book out about the president’s financial conflicts of interest, “White House Inc.” Alexander, in a helpful tally he shared Sunday evening, estimates Trump’s total indebtedness to be about $1.1 billion. Now that’s more like it.
La Malady d’Amour 1916, George Grosz
From Jason Easley: “Ivanka Trump Could Be Going Down Thanks To Her Dad’s Tax Fraud”.
The “consultants” are not identified in the tax records. But evidence of this arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.
Ms. Trump had been an executive officer of the Trump companies that received profits from and paid the consulting fees for both projects — meaning she appears to have been treated as a consultant on the same hotel deals that she helped manage as part of her job at her father’s business.
Fake consulting deals with members of a company that is also managing the same project are a big red flag to the IRS. Trump hid income by listing his own daughter a consultant on projects that she was managing. In other words, Ivanka Trump and her father were cheating the United States government, and the American people to hide income and avoid paying taxes.
Ernest Ludwig Kirchner, Couple in a Room, 1912
This is from Forbes and I must say that Lindsey and his sullen little face fit right in with our art today!
New polls released Sunday show Sen. Lindsey Graham’s reelection bid deeply threatened by Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison as the former gears up for what promises to be a brutal partisan battle over the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.
KEY FACTS
- In an internal poll of 608 likely South Carolina voters conducted by Harvard University fellow Cornell Belcher for the Harrison campaign, Graham trails Harrison by 2 points, 43% to 45%.
- Meanwhile, a CBS news/YouGov poll of likely voters has Graham leading by 1 point, with 45% to Harrison’s 44%.
- Both Graham and President Trump have shown signs of unique weakness in the Palmetto State, which typically elects Republicans by double digit margins; Graham led by 1 point in a Morning Consult poll released last week, while Trump led by 6.
- Driving Harrison’s lead in the internal poll is a poor approval rating for Graham, with 55% of voters saying they disapprove of the job he is doing and 58% saying it’s time to elect someone new, compared to 32% who say Graham deserves re-election.
So, we’re not quite done yet!
Otto Dix
Marseille, 1922
This is by far something that might get through to a few undecides from USA Today: “Trump wants to run on his record. We hope he does. It’s been a disaster for America. Trump’s historically, mind-bogglingly bad record is on the ballot. He has destroyed lives and livelihoods, weakened America and risked our democracy. ‘This is an op ed from David Rothkopf and Bernard L. Schwartz.
At some point during the debates, perhaps more than once, Donald Trump will say yet again that he has accomplished more in his first term than any prior president. Despite his penchant for lying, it is hard to deny that among all our presidents, his record does stand out — just not in the way he wants you to think it does.
Trump has presided over the worst U.S. public health catastrophe in more than a century. His leadership failures during that crisis — from lying to suppressing data to promoting quack cures to endangering his own supporters in mass gatherings without masks or social distancing — have led to nearly 205,000 COVID deaths. That’s many more per capita than other developed nations, in some cases more than double their toll.
Trump’s mishandling of the COVID pandemic helped produce the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression — including an unemployment rate of nearly 15% in April. Some estimates suggest that over 40 million Americans lost their jobs as a result of the crisis. Only a fraction of those jobs have returned. Some will never return.
Economists predict that the unemployment rate through the end of the year, even with recent improvement, could average about 10%, roughly the same as during the worst of the Great Recession a decade ago. In fact, as a recent advertisement for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has made clear, Trump has the worst job creation record of any president in our modern history.
The gross domestic product contraction of 31.7% in the second quarter of this year, on an annualized basis, is by far the largest recorded in U.S. history. According to economists tracked by Bloomberg, the annualized growth rate under Trump’s first four years under a reasonable projection for the remainder of his term is likely to be 0.6%. That’s the worst since Herbert Hoover, about a quarter of the growth level under Barack Obama, and just about a seventh the average growth rate during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office.
As a result of the crisis, today 1 in 5 mothers of children under 12 reported that their children were not getting enough to eat.
“Man in the Zoo” George Grosz, 1927
Originally published in The Evergreen Review Issue 40 in 1966 and featured in Issue 107 in 2004.
When we we’re growing up we were told to eat because there were starving children elsewhere who had no food. Which countries now tell their children about the starving children in the United States? The children separated from the parents and placed in cages? The children whose education has been forever changed by having to be pulled from school for a long period of time then more than ceremoniously dumped back in to get sick or bring that illness home with them?
So, here’s the big NYT article with the Tax Forms Analysis in case you didn’t read it last night when it hit us all square in the face. “The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.”
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.
I can only wonder how these square up with his internal records that should be on their way to the Southern District of New York unless Bill Barr can continue to block them and is willing to put his own freedom in jeopardy. You can read more of that at BiPartisan Report “Trump Family Terrified After Southern District Of New York Strikes Again”.
A recent court ruling regarding Trump’s financial records and an investigation by the Southern District of New York into alleged tax and bank fraud determined that a criminal lawsuit can be brought against a sitting U.S. president no matter how busy he claims to be. For Trump rape accuser and author E. Jean Carroll, that decision may have an impact in her case against Trump for defamation.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, The Street, 1913
This is from Greg Sargent and the link in the tweet.
Now that the New York Times has broken the explosive news that Donald Trump paid a scant $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 — and that Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 out of the 15 preceding years — it provides an occasion to reconsider one of the biggest scams Trump has been perpetrating on the American people for years now.
I’m not talking about the scam that Trump was a good businessman, or that a good businessman will be a good managerial president, though both have long been central to Trump’s game, and this new exposé leaves that game in ruins.
Rather, I’m talking about a scam that’s more fundamental to the Trumpist mystique. It’s the idea that someone with extensive inside experience in milking a system rigged to enrich elites like him is uniquely positioned to either (in the more charitable telling) un-rig that system for the benefit of all or (in the less charitable one) unlock its spoils for supporters who place him in a position of power to do so.
The Times exposé strips the sheen off Trump’s image-making like so much imitation gold leaf. We learn that Trump evaded income taxes for many years largely through his epic financial losses. While Trump scooped in hundreds of millions of dollars off “The Apprentice,” he dumped those profits into a series of big-league money losers that he owned and ran himself.
All of this shows that Trump is simply “pouring more money into many businesses than he is taking out,” the Times observes, which “exposes the “hollowness” behind the “self-made-billionaire image.”
We know Trump is basically a carnival barker. He’s not a billionaire. He was never self-made. He has no business acumen. He can only think of how to scam people by bringing them into the big top to see the freaks and greedos he surrounds himself with. This includes an assorted oddball group of christianist conmen. How many of them will eventually go down for their crimes? Will we ever seen the hardcore Trump believers leave the death cult alive?
Stay tuned as we start to fight to keep the Handmaiden’s Tale off the Supreme Court. Welcome to the Christoban Caberet! Where it’s all for sale as long as you make them feel superior to every one else!
And so I have to ask again, what is on your reading and blogging list today?
But, this also. How do you feel? Are we going to make it through this? We care about you! Please take care of yourselves and check in with us!
There’s only two types of people in the world
The ones that entertain, and the ones that observe
Well baby I’m a put-on-a-show kinda girl
Don’t like the backseat, gotta be first
I’m like the ringleader
I call the shots (call the shots)
I’m like a firecracker
I make it hot
When I put on a showI feel the adrenaline moving through my veins
Spotlight on me and I’m ready to break
I’m like a performer, the dance floor is my stage
Better be ready, hope that you feel the sameAll eyes on me in the center of the ring
Just like a circus
When I crack that whip, everybody gon’ trip
Just like a circus
Don’t stand there watching me, follow me
Show me what you can do
Everybody let go, we can make a dance floor
Just like a circusThere’s only two types of guys out there
Ones that can hang with me, and ones that are scared
So baby I hope that you came prepared
I run a tight ship so, beware
I’m like the ringleader
I call the shots (call the shots)
I’m like a firecracker
I make it hot
When I put on a showI feel the adrenaline moving through my veins
Spotlight on me and I’m ready to break
I’m like a performer, the dance floor is my stage
Better be ready, hope that ya feel the sameAll eyes on me in the center of the ring
Just like a circus
When I crack that whip, everybody gon’ trip
Just like a circus
Don’t stand there watching me, follow me
Show me what you can do
Everybody let go, we can make a dance floor
Just like a circus
Lazy Caturday Reads: We Survived Another Wild Week in Trump World
Posted: September 26, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2020 presidential debates, 2020 presidential election, Amy Coney Barrett, coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump, Hitler comparisons, Joe Biden, Reichstag fire, SCOTUS 18 Comments
Good Morning!
We’ve reached the end of another wild week in Trump World. The 2020 election is only 38 days away; on Tuesday Biden will meet Trump in the first presidential debate; and we’re still in the first wave of an out-of-control pandemic and the resulting economic meltdown. Today Trump nominates a woman to the Supreme Court who will vote to end the Affordable Care Act and Roe v. Wade. On top of all that, the fake “president” suggests he won’t accept the results of the election if he loses, and he’s counting on the election being decided the newly far right SCOTUS. That’s where we are right now.
Last night at his super-spreader rally in Virginia, Trump doubled down on his promise to disrupt the election. Raw Story: Trump tells supporters he won’t be ‘stupid’ enough for peaceful transition of power if he loses.
President Donald Trump continued to spread debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election during a Friday night campaign rally in Virginia.
Trump argued that it was impossible for him to lose the election, thus concluding he would be “stupid” to hand over power peacefully should he lose.
“We not gonna lose this, except if they cheat,” Trump falsely claimed about the 2020 campaign, where he trails Joe Biden in national and battleground polling.
“That’s the only way we’re gonna lose is if there’s, uh, mischief,” he argued. “And it will have to be on a big scale.”
“And we do want a very friendly transition, but we don’t want to be cheated and be stupid and say, ‘oh, let’s transit — we’ll go and we’ll do a transition’ and we know that there were thousands and thousands of ballots that made the difference through cheating,” he said, repeating the debunked conspiracy theories.
“We’re not going to stand for it,” he vowed. “We’re not going to stand for it.”
Yesterday at The Washington Post, Dana Millbank brought out the Hitler comparisons: This is not a drill. The Reichstag is burning.
By Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
With his repeated refusals this week to accept the peaceful transfer of power — the bedrock principle that has sustained American democracy for 228 years — President Trump has put the United States, in some ways, where Germany was in 1933, when Adolf Hitler used the suspicious burning of the German parliament to turn a democracy into a totalitarian state.
Overwrought, you say? Then ask Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a top authority on Nazism and Stalinism. “The Reichstag has been on a slow burn since June,” he told me. “The language Trump uses to talk about Black Lives Matter and the protests is very similar to the language Hitler used — that there’s some vague left-wing conspiracy based in the cities that is destroying the country.”
Trump, as he has done before, has made the villain a minority group. He has sought, once again, to fabricate emergencies to justify greater powers for himself. He has proposed postponing elections. He has refused to commit to honoring the results of the election. And now, he proposes to embrace violence if he doesn’t win.
“It’s important not to talk about this as just an election,” Snyder said. “It’s an election surrounded by the authoritarian language of a coup d’etat. The opposition has to win the election and it has to win the aftermath of the election.”
If not? There won’t be another “normal” election for some time, he said. But that doesn’t have to happen, and Snyder is optimistic it won’t. To avoid it, we voters must turn out in overwhelming numbers to deal Trump a lopsided defeat. The military must hold to its oath. Homeland Security police must not serve as Trump’s brownshirts. And we citizens must take to the streets, peacefully but indefinitely, until the will of the people prevails.
“It’s going to be messy,” Snyder said. “He seems pretty sure he won’t win the election, he doesn’t want to leave office,” and he appears to Snyder to have “an authoritarian’s instinct” that he must stay in power or go to prison.
There’s more at the link.
My Father, by Marc Chagall
Trump has announced that he will nominate Amy Coney Barrett to replace Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The New York Times: To Conservatives, Barrett Has ‘Perfect Combination’ of Attributes for Supreme Court.
…Judge Barrett…would be the sitting justice with the least courtroom experience, but one viewed as a home run by conservative Christians and anti-abortion activists.
“She is the perfect combination of brilliant jurist and a woman who brings the argument to the court that is potentially the contrary to the views of the sitting women justices,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion political group….
Liberal groups have been sounding the alarm over Judge Barrett for two years because of concerns over how she might rule on abortion and the Affordable Care Act.
“Amy Coney Barrett meets Donald Trump’s two main litmus tests: She has made clear she would invalidate the A.C.A. and take health care away from millions of people and undermine a woman’s reproductive freedom,” said Nan Aron, the president of Alliance for Justice, a liberal group.
Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast: Kiss Your Rights Goodbye When Amy Coney Barrett Joins SCOTUS.
Like Judge Garland, who was denied even a hearing, Judge Barrett is unquestionably qualified. She has written numerous scholarly articles on a wide variety of legal and philosophical issues, and unlike some recent Trump nominees, appears to have a spotless ethical record.
But Barrett is also an arch-conservative who has espoused troubling views about the intersection of her personal beliefs with her role as a judge, and who will fundamentally alter the American legal landscape on a number of issues.
Obviously, abortion is the highest-profile of these, and it’s easy to see why every major anti-abortion organization in America hailed Barrett when she was appointed to the Seventh Circuit. She has criticized Roe v. Wade as “judicial fiat” and an “erroneous decision.”
By Paul Gauguin
And at a Notre Dame Law School event 2013, she asked, rhetorically, “Would it be better to have this battle in the state legislatures and Congress rather than the Supreme Court?”
That, of course, is intrinsically an anti-choice position. We don’t ask whether it would be better or worse for a state to violate constitutional rights–for Mississippi to outlaw Islam, for example, or Vermont to ban the Republican party. If a constitutional right is at issue–as the Supreme Court held in Roe–then the whole point of judicial review is that it doesn’t matter if it would be “better” for legislatures to fight it out.
Barrett has made similar remarks about same-sex marriage and is a guaranteed vote against Obamacare. On Monday, Dakinikat discussed Barrett’s extreme religious beliefs. From the Daily Beast article:
On its own, none of that matters since Barrett’s religious beliefs should have no bearing on her fitness as a Supreme Court justice.
However, Barrett has made several troubling statements regarding how religious belief impacts the roles of lawyers and judges. Most famously, she said in 2006 that a legal career should be “a means to an end,” namely “building the Kingdom of God.” Now, despite much liberal hand-wringing over this comment, it, alone, is not so problematic. It may simply mean to build a more just and equitable world, as the Bible requires. Indeed, Justice Ginsburg herself had Biblical injunctions to pursue justice on her chamber walls.
But when Barrett’s “means to an end” statement is placed in the context of other statements she has made, it raises questions. For example, in her first law review article, published in 1998, Barrett wrote that “Catholic judges (if they are faithful to the teaching of their church) are morally precluded from enforcing the death penalty.”
That is an unusual position, suggesting that a judge cannot discharge her public duty if she has a personal religious belief regarding it. Ironically, if that principle is applied to all cases in which the Catholic Church has stated moral positions, it might require Justice Barrett to recuse herself from cases regarding abortion and homosexuality, as well as the death penalty.
By Franz Marc
On next Tuesday’s debate, The Washington Post’s Sean Sullivan and Josh Dawsey anticipate vicious Trump attacks: Trump readies a debate onslaught — and Biden allies worry.
President Trump is gearing up to launch blistering personal attacks on Joe Biden and his family in the first presidential debate on Tuesday, while Biden is bracing for an onslaught and worried allies are warning the Democratic nominee not to lose his temper and lash out, according to people with knowledge of the strategies in both camps.
Trump has told associates he wants to talk specifically about his opponent’s son Hunter Biden and mused that the debates are when “people will finally realize Biden is just not there,” according to one adviser. The president is so eager to lay into his rival that he has called aides to test out various attacks, focusing on broadsides that cast Biden as a longtime Washington insider with a limited record of accomplishment, said another adviser, who like many interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe private talks.
Biden and his advisers are anticipating a venomous barrage, according to a person with knowledge of their thinking, and they are preparing to counter with an affirmative case for a Biden presidency. The Democrat wants to stay focused on how he would address the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s economic problems, which he blames Trump for worsening.
The prospect of a cage match between a president for whom no subject is off-limits and a challenger who can be openly emotional is making some Biden advisers nervous. They see a fine line between Biden’s passion and empathy, which can appeal to voters, and the raw anger that sometimes gets him in trouble and could undercut his pitch as a calming alternative to a president who thrives on chaos.
“When you go at his family, he becomes hotter than hell, which is part of the thing I worry about,” said John Morgan, a Florida trial lawyer and major Biden donor. “I think what Biden has to be careful about is not letting his Irish temper blow when that happens.”
Would it really be so awful for Biden to give Trump a tongue-lashing? I’m not so sure.
Girl with Rabbit, Paula Modersohn-Becker
Philippe Reines writes, also at The Washington Post: I played Trump in Clinton’s debate prep. Here’s what Biden can expect.
Donald Trump is a very bad debater. Donald Trump is very difficult to debate.
These two seemingly contradictory statements are equally true. He’s a dangerous opponent. In 2016, it was because he had nothing to lose. Now, it’s because he has everything to lose.
I would know. In the last cycle, I had a unique assignment: playing Trump’s stand-in during Hillary Clinton’s mock debates. Before donning the ill-fitting suit I had tailored, my preparation included studying the 11 Republican primary debates in which Trump participated, watching each three times: once start to finish; then only exchanges involving Trump; and finally only Trump, standing at a lectern in my living room with the sound off to focus entirely on his gestures and body language.
Mimicking his appearance, gesticulations and histrionics aside, my overall approach meant zeroing in on the four topics that obsessed Trump: immigration, Obamacare, trade and “the swamp.” When he was on offense, his attacks on (and nicknames for) Clinton were honed and simple by the time the debates began in September. But he rarely, if ever, defended himself. No matter the attack against him — and there were some doozies — he dispensed with them quickly. And in the GOP primary debates, his answers involved three parts: I am great; you are terrible; and a nonsensical digression that often changed the subject entirely.
Four years later, Trump is not different, but the circumstances are. The Trump we see at the first presidential debate in Cleveland on Tuesday may be even harder to debate than last time, because whatever ability he possessed to engage has been subsumed by a constant need to launch into tirades over grievances. (“I sort of prepare every day by just doing what I’m doing,” he told “Fox and Friends” about his pre-debate regimen.) He exists in a double bubble — isolated in the Oval Office, consuming and regurgitating nothing but friendly right-wing media and Twitter bile. And he’s desperate: The debate presents the first big chance to shake up a race he’s losing, but he doesn’t seem to have a plan to turn things around other than to hope for Joe Biden to collapse.
Read Reines’ suggestions for Biden at the link.
Finally, at The New York Times, Hannah Beech reports that the world pities the USA: ‘I Feel Sorry for Americans’: A Baffled World Watches the U.S.
by Suzanne Valadon
BANGKOK — Myanmar is a poor country struggling with open ethnic warfare and a coronavirus outbreak that could overload its broken hospitals. That hasn’t stopped its politicians from commiserating with a country they think has lost its way.
“I feel sorry for Americans,” said U Myint Oo, a member of parliament in Myanmar. “But we can’t help the U.S. because we are a very small country.”
The same sentiment prevails in Canada, one of the most developed countries. Two out of three Canadians live within about 60 miles of the American border.
“Personally, it’s like watching the decline of the Roman Empire,” said Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, an industrial city on the border with Michigan, where locals used to venture for lunch.
Amid the pandemic and in the run-up to the presidential election, much of the world is watching the United States with a mix of shock, chagrin and, most of all, bafflement.
Click the link to read the rest.
That’s it for me. What’s happening from your point of view? I hope you all have a great weekend, and please check in at Sky Dancing blog if you have a moment free.
Friday Reads: It came from the Sewers of Queens (2020)
Posted: September 25, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, Afternoon Reads | Tags: American Horror Shows 22 Comments
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Good Day Sky Dancers!
The president is a poo poo platter of pathologies and chief among them is that he is a psychopath. This op ed piece is written by ALAN D. BLOTCKY and SETH D. NORRHOLM. I’m adding to the outrage that BB wrote about yesterday and upping the volume to 11. We’re being run by some one who should be under psychiatric care and placed in some place where he can’t hurt any more people.
“Get rid of the ballots” and “there won’t be a transfer,” said Donald Trump on Wednesday. This comment is a direct and dangerous expression of his anti-democratic intention. If unstopped, Trump may well destroy our 244-year-old democracy.
It is time to stop pulling punches. It is time to stop relying on political pundits to weigh in on Trump’s behavior, which they often soften and even normalize.
We are psychologists, and we are convinced Donald Trump is a psychopath. His malignant behavior over the past four years is growing and escalating right before our eyes. Trump’s psychopathy will change us forever if he is not stopped.
This is not hyperbole. This is not an expression of “a left-wing agenda.” This is a mental health opinion based on thousands of hours of documented behavior by this president.
He breaks norms, rules, and laws with impunity.
He lies, on average, 15 times a day.
He peddles fake conspiracy theories and irrational magical thinking.
He has been accused of sexually predatory behavior by at least 25 women.
He blames, scapegoats and gaslights as easily as he breathes.
He undermines the vital role of the free press because he abhors oversight and accountability.
His lies and anti-scientific advice and intentional downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic has led to countless American deaths.
He is callous and cold and unfeeling because he has no conscience.
He denigrates and humiliates anyone and everyone in his path.
He has no respect for military heroes or renowned experts.
He is racist and xenophobic.
He incites violence and culture wars.
He is obsessed with power and adoration.
He is a greedy opportunist.
He is corrupt to the core.
House on a Haunted Hill with actress Carol Ohmart (1959)
Can’t argue with any of that.
After more than four years of nonstop voter fraud claims, insinuations that he might not accept the presidential election results and at least one float about delaying the November election, it’s no secret. Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power this week — and his choice not to walk back his remarks Thursday in the face of widespread unease — merely broadcasts his strategic intent in terms both parties can understand.
As a result, Republicans can no longer truthfully deny that Trump may be unwilling to leave officein the event he is defeated. And Democrats must now confront the possibility they may not have the power to stop him.
It’s an unprecedented backdrop for a modern presidential race, one that could stretch the electoral process to its limits, almost guaranteeing a chaotic, divisive finish to the campaign.
“We are super alarmed,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way, which released a primer this week on how Trump is laying the groundwork to dispute the election results in the event of a defeat. “I now think it’s very, very likely that Joe Biden will win the election if the votes are counted, but it’s not clear that the votes will be counted.”
Recalling the 2000 election, in which the Supreme Court prohibited further recounts of the Florida vote, awarding the presidency to George W. Bush, Bennett said, “We’re a lot more organized than in 2000. A lot … But I don’t know if it’s enough.”
Ruth Bader Ginsberg is the first woman to lie in state in the US Capitol. She is also the first Jewish person to do so. This is via USA Today.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi began the day’s events with a formal arrival ceremony in National Statuary Hall, in which eight military pallbearers carried Ginsburg’s flag-draped casket up the Capitol steps as lawmakers stood in somber observance.
Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer led Ginsburg’s family into the large hall before her casket was carried inside. Lawmakers and guests, including Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden, held their hand over their hearts as Ginsburg’s casket was placed on the Lincoln Catafalque, which first supported President Abraham Lincoln’s casket in the U.S. Capitol after his assassination in 1865.
“It is with deep sympathy to the Ginsburg family that I have the high honor to welcome Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lie in state in the Capitol of the United States,” Pelosi said in brief opening remarks.
Many female lawmakers were in attendance, including vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The bipartisan, masked group honoring Ginsburg’s legacy and 27 years on the high court remained safely distanced in the approximately 100 seats. But the two highest ranking Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, did not attend.
“Justice Ginsburg embodied justice, brilliance and goodness,” Pelosi said in a statement Friday. “Her passing is an incalculable loss for our democracy and for all who strive to build a better future for our children.”
In a nod to Ginsburg’s passion for opera, American soprano Denyce Graves – a friend whom the justice saw perform many times – sang “Deep River” and “American Anthem” before lawmakers and other guests filed past her casket in small groups to say their goodbyes.
“America, America, I gave my best to you,” Graves belted out in the marbled hall.
The She Creature (1956)
The DOJ continues to do weird things to undermine the confidence of voters in the election probably paving the way for an endless Trump Court battle which he hopes to win as he continues to pack the court with simply temperamentally, professionally, and mentally unfit people. This is from NPR: “Feds, In Unusual Statement, Announce They’re Investigating A Few Discarded Ballots.”
The FBI and the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania said Thursday that they are investigating “potential issues” with nine military ballots in one county. They believe the ballots were opened improperly, though they have not filed any charges or taken official action.
U.S. Attorney David Freed noted that the investigation remains active but said he is releasing the news publicly “based on the limited amount of time before the general election and the vital public importance of these issues.”
Voting rights experts and Justice Department veterans, however, said that proximity to the election and the preliminary nature of the investigation make Freed’s announcement highly unusual.
The announcement comes as President Trump continues to baselessly claim that voting by mail will lead to widespread fraud and as the Justice Department is under scrutiny for allegations that its decisions under Attorney General William Barr are increasingly directed at boosting Trump’s reelection efforts.
Trump’s campaign immediately seized on the announcement of an investigation to conclude that it was evidence Democrats were trying to “steal” the election.
The potential voting irregularities in Pennsylvania came to light after President Trump mentioned them, offhand, in an interview with a Fox radio host Thursday.
“We have to be very careful with the ballots,” the president told reporters later, according to a news pool report. He described what he called a “scam” where ballots had been found in the trash. The president has been criticizing the integrity of this year’s election for months.
“We want to make sure the election is honest, and I’m not sure that it can be,” Trump continued.
And, don’t forget we have this and a Pandemic to deal with. Over 200,000 Americans are dead from Covid-19.
Mnunchin has announced that he and Speaker Pelosi will once more try to get something done in terms of economic relief. But where are the Republicans in the Senate? (From the Hill)
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday that he and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have agreed to revive negotiations over a stalled follow-up coronavirus relief bill.
“I’ve probably spoken to Speaker Pelosi 15 or 20 times in the last few days on the CR,” Mnuchin told the Senate Banking Committee during a hearing with Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, referring to a continuing resolution to extend government funding, “and we’ve agreed to continue to have discussions about the CARES Act.”
Pelosi also said Thursday that she expected negotiations with the White House to resume shortly, telling reporters at the Capitol, “We’ll be hopefully soon to the table with them.”
Mnuchin and Pelosi’s comments come amid a months-long partisan stalemate over a follow up to the CARES Act, the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill signed by President Trump in March.
While there is broad bipartisan support for certain components of a stimulus bill, Democrats and Republicans remain deeply divided over the size and scope of another package. Spiking partisan tensions driven by the looming November elections and the battle over the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have also made a breakthrough unlikely before Election Day.
Democrats have insisted that the federal government must approve trillions in further aid to renew a lapse in enhanced unemployment benefits, bolster state and local government budgets, send another round of direct relief payments to struggling households and expand housing and eviction protections.
Republicans, however, are wary of adding to the national debt and prefer a targeted package intended to help schools and day care centers reopen and bring Americans back to work as quickly as possible.
Mnuchin, one of Trump’s two chief stimulus negotiators, urged Democrats to come back to the table for a bill built around areas of wide bipartisan agreement such as revamping the Paycheck Protection Program to aid small businesses and relief payments.
The Monster that Challenged the World with Actress Audrey Dalton (1957)
This is all nice and well but none of these businesses will hire people if they don’t have customers buying their stuff and holding them open on a thread of funds seems unkind given the incredible botched job of getting the pandemic under control. How long are they going to bleed taxpayer and their own cash before we release that customers who can’t buy anything are the ones that sink businesses.
So, I’m not sure how long this little horror show called the Trumpist Regime wrecks the US Economy and Democracy while killing tens of thousands of people, but Gee I’m ready for the cartoons. I’m ready for some America Heroes to return the Monster from Queens to his sewer.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: “Get Rid of the Ballots” — Donald Trump
Posted: September 24, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: "get rid of the ballots", 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, peaceful transfer of power, voting by mail 22 CommentsGood Morning!!
The U.S. may finally have reached peak banana republic status. Can it possibly get any worse? Probably.
Axios: Trump refuses to commit to peaceful transfer of power if he loses.
President Trump repeatedly refused to say on Wednesday whether he would commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses the election to Joe Biden, saying at a press briefing: “We’re going to have to see what happens.”
The big picture: Trump has baselessly claimed on a number of occasions that the only way he will lose the election is if it’s “rigged,” claiming — without evidence — that mail-in ballots will result in widespread fraud. Earlier on Wednesday, the president said he wants to quickly confirm a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg because he believes the Supreme Court may have to decide the result of the election.
The exchange:
REPORTER: “Win, lose, or draw in this election, will you commit here today for a peaceful transferral of power after the election? There has been rioting in Louisville, there has been rioting in many cities across the country. Your so-called red and blue states. Will you commit to make sure there’s a peaceful transferral of power after the election? ”
TRUMP: “We’re going to have to see what happens, you know that. I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are disaster.”REPORTER: “I understand that, but people are rioting. Do you commit to make sure that there’s a peaceful transferral of power?”
TRUMP: “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”Go deeper: Trump says he wants 9 justices in case Supreme Court must decide 2020 election
Fine. But what is the FEC going to do about it? Hasn’t Trump already neutered them?
Yesterday people were talking about a startling article in The Atlantic by Barton Gellman: The Election That Could Break America. If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?
There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11. As November 3 approaches, their screens are blinking red, alight with warnings that the political system does not know how to absorb. They see the obvious signs that we all see, but they also know subtle things that most of us do not. Something dangerous has hove into view, and the nation is lurching into its path.
The danger is not merely that the 2020 election will bring discord. Those who fear something worse take turbulence and controversy for granted. The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery.
Something has to give, and many things will, when the time comes for casting, canvassing, and certifying the ballots. Anything is possible, including a landslide that leaves no doubt on Election Night. But even if one side takes a commanding early lead, tabulation and litigation of the “overtime count”—millions of mail-in and provisional ballots—could keep the outcome unsettled for days or weeks.
This is what Trump is counting on–that there will be an extended period of confusion and chaos during which we won’t know for sure who has won the presidential election. We already saw something like this in 2000; but in that case, Al Gore conceded and allowed a peaceful transfer of power to George W. Bush. Trump is stating clearly that he will respond differently. Here is what Lindsey Graham told Fox News today:
Returning to the Atlantic article:
“We could well see a protracted postelection struggle in the courts and the streets if the results are close,” says Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the UC Irvine School of Law and the author of a recent book called Election Meltdown. “The kind of election meltdown we could see would be much worse than 2000’s Bush v. Gore case.”
A lot of people, including Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee, have misconceived the nature of the threat. They frame it as a concern, unthinkable for presidents past, that Trump might refuse to vacate the Oval Office if he loses. They generally conclude, as Biden has, that in that event the proper authorities “will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”
The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that uncertainty to hold on to power.
According to Gellman, the Trump campaign is already working to convince state legislators in battleground states to ignore the popular vote.
Trump’s state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for postelection maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states. Ambiguities in the Constitution and logic bombs in the Electoral Count Act make it possible to extend the dispute all the way to Inauguration Day, which would bring the nation to a precipice. The Twentieth Amendment is crystal clear that the president’s term in office “shall end” at noon on January 20, but two men could show up to be sworn in. One of them would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand.
“We are not prepared for this at all,” Julian Zelizer, a Princeton professor of history and public affairs, told me. “We talk about it, some worry about it, and we imagine what it would be. But few people have actual answers to what happens if the machinery of democracy is used to prevent a legitimate resolution to the election.”
Please go read the whole thing if you haven’t already. People on Twitter yesterday were calling Gellman’s piece ridiculous scaremongering, but then yesterday evening Trump came right out and said it on national TV.
NewsPressNow.com: A list of the times Trump has said he won’t accept the election results or leave office if he loses. Read the whole list at the link, here’s what he said earlier yesterday:
September 23 Oval Office: “But in terms of time, we go to January 20th. But I think it’s better if you go before the election because I think this — this scam that the Democrats are pulling — it’s a scam — this scam will be before the United States Supreme Court. And I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation, if you get that.”
He has made it clear that he expects the Supreme Court to decide the election in his favor, regardless of the how Americans vote.
This from Slate is by Richard Hasan, who is quoted in the Atlantic article:
The Trump strategy of fighting the expansion of mail-in balloting appears to be twofold. To begin with, the campaign appears to have made the calculation that lower turnout will help the president win reelection. This may explain why Pennsylvania Republicans are planning on going to the U.S. Supreme Court to argue against a state Supreme Court ruling allowing the counting of ballots arriving soon after Election Day without a legible postmark. They argue that doing so unconstitutionally extends Election Day beyond Nov. 3 and takes power away from the Pennsylvania Legislature to choose presidential electors.
The first argument is not a particularly strong one: A decision to accept ballots soon after Election Day without a legible postmark does not extend Election Day as much as it implements how election officials determine if a mailed ballot was timely mailed. It recognizes the reality that many ballots have been arriving without postmarks and uses proximity to the election as a proxy for timely voting. Virginia and Nevada recently adopted similar rules, in light of pandemic-related mail delays. The Trump-allied Honest Elections Project is fighting a consent decree over a similar extension in Minnesota.
The argument about the state Supreme Court’s ruling usurping legislative power to set federal election rules echoes a parallel claim that was made during the disputed election in 2000. The question is whether a state supreme court usurps legislative power when it interprets election rules in line with both state statutes and the state constitution. The argument that a state supreme court applying a state constitution in a voting case usurps legislative power is weak to me, but it was convincing enough for the more conservative members of the Supreme Court that decided Bush v. Gore.
The idea is to throw so much muck into the process and cast so much doubt on who is the actual winner in one of those swing states because of supposed massive voter fraud and uncertainty about the rules for absentee ballots that some other actor besides the voter will decide the winner of the election….Indeed, on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence suggested that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement needs to be seated, possibly without so much as a hearing, in order to decide “election issues [that] may come before the Supreme Court in the days following the election,” including questions involving “universal unsolicited mail” and states “extending the deadline” for ballot receipt.
Read more at Slate.
Joe Biden is clearly growing tired of his daily task of having to think up responses to President Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic comments. Asked about Trump’s latest threat, when he blatantly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election fair and square, Biden rolled his eyes and sighed. Muffled behind his face mask, he said: “What country are we in?” Biden then briefly lowered his mask to say more clearly to the gathered reporters: “I’m being facetious—what country are we in? Look, he says the most irrational things. I don’t know to say.” During a White House briefing Thursday, Trump was asked if he has any intention of peacefully handing over power if he loses. The president ominously responded: “We’re going to have to see what happens.”
Let’s hope the Democrats and Biden figure out a more substantive response.
Of course we also will have to deal with Trump’s cultish supporters. Stephen Collinson at CNN: Trump’s comments send a signal to his supporters about how to react if Biden prevails.
The President’s comments risked not only dealing another blow to an election in which he has been trailing and has incessantly tarnished, but could send a signal to his supporters about how to react if the Democratic nominee prevails in 41 days. That possibility is especially dangerous given this past summer’s racial and social unrest — which burst forth again on Wednesday evening after police said two officers were shot in Louisville, Kentucky, amid protests about the failure to charge officers in the death of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed Black woman.
Trump’s near simultaneous warning on Wednesday that he thinks the election will end up being decided by the Supreme Court also raises the risk of a constitutional imbroglio likely to be worse than the disputed 2000 election.
His rhetoric escalated as he yet again politicized the effort to quell the pandemic by threatening to override regulators on the question of whether a newly developed vaccine would be safe in a highly irregular move. Taken together, his anti-democratic instincts and prioritization of his own political goals amid a national emergency show he plans to allow nothing — not the health of Americans, the sanctity of US elections or the reputation of the Supreme Court — to prevent him from winning a second term.
And his comments poured gasoline on an already inflamed nominating battle to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg while threatening to drag the court further into politics in a way that could shred its legitimacy among millions of Americans.
Trump’s latest attempts to create uproar came amid new efforts to subvert the traditional mechanisms of government for his own gain — in what has become an almost daily ritual.
Obviously, there is much more news out there, including the situation in Louisville over the murder of Breonna Taylor. Please feel free to discuss any issue of importance to you in the comment thread. Take care, and I hope you’ll check in sometime today.
Tuesday Reads: Two Valuable New Books on Trump and Russia
Posted: September 22, 2020 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Andrew Weissmann, Andriy Derkach, CIA, Donald Trump, Tim Weiner, Trump Russia, Vladimir Putin 27 Comments
Good Morning!!
The Trump books just keep on coming. This week and next week we’re getting two very significant releases. A new book by Tim Weiner came out today. Weiner is a historian of both the FBI and CIA. His latest is The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare 1945–2020. The Washington Post published an op-ed by Weiner yesterday: The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?
The FBI faced a national security nightmare three years ago: It suspected that the new president of the United States was, in some unknown way, in the sway of Russia.
Was an agent of a foreign power in the White House? Should they investigate Donald Trump? “I can’t tell you how ominous and stressful those days were,” Peter Strzok, then the No. 2 man in FBI counterintelligence, told me. “Similar to the Cuban missile crisis, in a domestic counterintelligence sense.”
But the Cuban missile crisis lasted only 13 days — and it had a happy ending. This crisis has no end in sight. Despite the investigation by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, despite the work of congressional intelligence committees and inspectors general — and despite impeachment — we still don’t know why the president kowtows to Vladimir Putin, broadcasts Russian disinformation, bends foreign policy to suit the Kremlin and brushes off reports of Russians bounty-hunting American soldiers. We still don’t know whether Putin has something on him. And we need to know the answers — urgently. Knowing could be devastating. Not knowing is far worse. Not knowing is a threat to a functioning democracy.
Tim Weiner
The FBI’s counterintelligence agents wondered: Why did Trump invite the Russian ambassador and the Russian foreign minister into the Oval Office on the day after he keelhauled FBI Director James B. Comey — and brag about it? “I just fired the head of the FBI,” Trump told them in confidence. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” Like the rest of America, the FBI learned about that conversation only from a Russian government readout. But then Trump went on television and said he had fired Comey over the FBI’s probe into ties between Team Trump and Team Putin during and after the 2016 election.
Unfortunately the counterintelligence investigation seems to have been short-circuited by the firing of Andrew McCabe and the failure of Robert Mueller to seriously investigate Trump’s connections to Russia. Here’s Weiner’s chilling conclusion:
There’s a classic story about an American agent of influence that predates the Cold War — and might presage the strange case of Donald Trump, if these questions about his relationship with Russia go dormant. Samuel Dickstein was a member of Congress from Manhattan, elected in 1922, and chairman of the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee in the 1930s. He walked into the Soviet Embassy in 1937 and offered the ambassador his services for $25,000 a year — three times his congressional salary. In exchange, he sold fake passports to Soviet spies. And he held headline-grabbing public hearings investigating Joseph Stalin’s enemies in the United States. Dickstein served 11 terms in Congress. His file lay locked up in the KGB archives for 60 years. Today, if you go down to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, to the intersection of Pitt and Grand streets, you’ll be standing in Samuel Dickstein Plaza. He got away with it.
A related opinion piece from today’s Washington Post by Josh Rogin: Secret CIA assessment: Putin ‘probably directing’ influence operation to denigrate Biden.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top aides are “probably directing” a Russian foreign influence operation to interfere in the 2020 presidential election against former vice president Joe Biden, which involves a prominent Ukrainian lawmaker connected to President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, a top-secret CIA assessment concluded, according to two sources who reviewed it.
On Aug. 31, the CIA published an assessment of Russian efforts to interfere in the November election in an internal, highly classified report called the CIA Worldwide Intelligence Review, the sources said. CIA analysts compiled the assessment with input from the National Security Agency and the FBI, based on several dozen pieces of information gleaned from public, unclassified and classified intelligence sources. The assessment includes details of the CIA’s analysis of the activities of Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach to disseminate disparaging information about Biden inside the United States through lobbyists, Congress, the media and contacts with figures close to the president.
Andriy Derkach
“We assess that President Vladimir Putin and the senior most Russian officials are aware of and probably directing Russia’s influence operations aimed at denigrating the former U.S. Vice President, supporting the U.S. president and fueling public discord ahead of the U.S. election in November,” the first line of the document says, according to the sources.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Treasury Department have identified Derkach as a Russian agent, but it has not been publicly reported that the CIA, NSA and FBI believed Putin may be personally directing the campaign. Derkach has denied working on behalf of Moscow.
The CIA assessment described Derkach’s efforts in detail and said that his activities have included working through lobbyists, members of Congress and U.S. media organizations to disseminate and amplify his anti-Biden information. Though it refers to Derkach’s interactions with a “prominent” person connected to the Trump campaign, the analysis does not identify the person. Giuliani, who has been working with Derkach publicly for several months, is not named in the assessment.
Read the rest at the WaPo.
Another book that is getting much more attention than Weiner’s is Andrew Weissmann’s inside account of the Mueller investigation, Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation. The book will be released next Tuesday.
George Packer interviewed Weissmann at The Atlantic: The Inside Story of the Mueller Probe’s Mistakes.
Andrew Weissmann was one of Robert Mueller’s top deputies in the special counsel’s investigation of the 2016 election, and he’s about to publish the first insider account, called Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation. The title comes from an adapted quote by the philosopher John Locke that’s inscribed on the façade of the Justice Department building in Washington, D.C.: “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.”
Weissmann offers a damning indictment of a “lawless” president and his knowing accomplices—Attorney General William Barr (portrayed as a cynical liar), congressional Republicans, criminal flunkies, Fox News. Donald Trump, he writes, is “like an animal, clawing at the world with no concept of right and wrong.” But in telling the story of the investigation and its fallout, Weissmann reserves his most painful words for the Special Counsel’s Office itself. Where Law Ends portrays a group of talented, dedicated professionals beset with internal divisions and led by a man whose code of integrity allowed their target to defy them and escape accountability.
“There’s no question I was frustrated at the time,” Weissmann told me in a recent interview. “There was more that could be done that we didn’t do.” He pointed out that the special counsel’s report never arrived at the clear legal conclusions expected from an internal Justice Department document. At the same time, it lacked the explanatory power of last month’s bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on the 2016 election. “Even with 1,000 pages, it was better,” Weissmann said of the Senate report. “It made judgments and calls, instead of saying, ‘You could say this and you could say that.’”
Andrew Weissmann
The Mueller inquiry was the greatest potential check on Trump’s abuse of power. The press gives the president fits, but almost half the country chooses not to believe the news. Congress will protect Trump as long as his party controls at least one chamber. Local prosecutors and civil plaintiffs are severely limited in pursuing justice against a sitting president. Public opinion is immovably split and powerless until the next election. Only the Special Counsel’s Office—burrowing into the criminal matter of Russian interference in the 2016 election, a possible conspiracy with the Trump campaign, and the president’s subsequent attempts to block an investigation—offered the prospect of accountability for Trump. Mueller couldn’t try the president in court, let alone send him to prison, but he could fully expose Trump’s wrongdoing for a future prosecutor, using the enforceable power of a grand jury subpoena. The whole constitutional superstructure of checks and balances rested on Mueller and his team. As their work dragged on through 2017 and 2018, with flurries of indictments and plea deals but otherwise in utter silence, many Americans invested the inquiry with the outsized expectation that it would somehow bring Trump down.
Read the rest at the Atlantic link.
Charlie Savage at The New York Times: Mueller’s Team Should Have Done More to Investigate Trump-Russia Links, Top Aide Says.
The team led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, failed to do everything it could to determine what happened in the 2016 election, shying away from steps like subpoenaing President Trump and scrutinizing his finances out of fear he would fire them, one of Mr. Mueller’s top lieutenants argued in the first insider account of the inquiry.
“Had we used all available tools to uncover the truth, undeterred by the onslaught of the president’s unique powers to undermine our efforts?” wrote the former prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, in a new book, adding, “I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more.”
The team took elaborate steps to protect its files of evidence from the risk that the Justice Department might destroy them if Mr. Trump fired them and worked to keep reporters and the public from learning what they were up to, Mr. Weissmann wrote in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation,” which Random House will publish next week.
While he speaks reverently of Mr. Mueller, he also says his boss’s diffidence made him ill-suited for aspects of shepherding the politically charged investigation. He saw Mr. Mueller and his deputy, Aaron M. Zebley, as overly cautious.
Mr. Weissmann also defended against accusations by the president and his allies that he and other investigators were politically biased “angry Democrats”; Mr. Weissmann said his personal views had no bearing on the crimes that Russian operatives and Trump aides committed.
And he elevates particular details — for example, emphasizing that the same business account that sent hush payments to an adult film star who alleged an extramarital affair with Mr. Trump had also received “payments linked to a Russian oligarch.” The president has denied the affair; his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen controlled the account. Mr. Mueller transferred the Cohen matter to prosecutors in New York.
More Reads, links only:
The Washington Post: Mueller prosecutor says special counsel ‘could have done more’ to hold Trump accountable.
Book review by Jennifer Szalai at The New York Times: A Prosecutor’s Backstage Tour of the Mueller Investigation.
The American Independent: Trump says coronavirus ‘affects virtually nobody’ as death toll reaches 200,000.
The Washington Post: Pentagon used taxpayer money meant for masks and swabs to make jet engine parts and body armor.
The New York Times: Trump Could Be Investigated for Tax Fraud, D.A. Says for First Time.
Jane Mayer at The New Yorker: A Young Kennedy, in Kushnerland, Turned Whistle-Blower.
CNBC: Powell pledges the Fed’s economic aid ‘for as long as it takes.’
Brian Karem at The Bulwark: The Absentee President. Donald Trump rarely shows up to the West Wing—and when he does, he is too incompetent to effectively fulfill his oath of office.
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