Music: André Bush — ‘New Born’
Whatever we call Trump, he stinks just as bad
So CNN has canceled Reza Aslan's show b/c he tweeted that Trump is a "piece of shit," but hired Corey Lewandowski AFTER he assaulted someone
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 9, 2017
CNN where you can be a piece of shit but can't say piece of shit
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) June 10, 2017
Shakespeare, a master of insults who could have prolifically composed tweets and might have described Donald Trump as an “unwash’d maggot-pie,” or a “goatish bat-fowling moldwarp,” an “idol of idiot-worshippers,” whose “name blisters our tongues,” and who is not “clean enough to spit upon,” would have run into trouble if he worked for CNN or the New York Times.
The Times reports that the presenter of CNN’s weekly show “Believer,” Reza Aslan, got fired for writing tweets in which “he described the president as ‘an embarrassment to humankind’ and compared him, using profanity, to a piece of excrement.”
In point of fact, this reporting is inaccurate. Aslan didn’t compare Trump to a piece of shit — he said he is one. Aslan was using a metaphor, not a simile. He wrote:
This piece of shit is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind
A succinct, objective, fair assessment that in global terms cannot be seen in any sense as controversial — except for this: including the word “shit.”
But in reference to Trump, how on earth can the word “shit” be described as profane? I know he has lots of supporters, but he’s not exactly a figure of reverence. Indeed, many of those supporters regard his crudeness as one of his principle virtues.
Donald Trump is the embodiment and arguably purest distillation of vulgarity and yet the prissy gatekeepers of American mainstream-media civility have a problem when vulgar language is used to describe a vulgar man.
What other kind of language is in any sense appropriate?
Some will argue we shouldn’t stoop to Trump’s level, yet this kind of self-imposed restraint plays straight into the orange man’s little hands.
He shameless exploits the respect offered to his office, while using this as a shield behind which he can constantly lob provocations with relative impunity.
In other words, if people like CNN’s Jeff Zucker get their way, Trump can carry on being a piece of shit while anyone in the media who wants to keep their job must be afraid of calling him the way he calls to be named.
Trump’s lawyer in Russia probe has clients with Kremlin ties
The Washington Post reports: The hard-charging New York lawyer President Trump chose to represent him in the Russia investigation has prominent clients with ties to the Kremlin, a striking pick for a president trying to escape the persistent cloud that has trailed his administration.
Marc E. Kasowitz’s clients include Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to President Vladimir Putin and has done business with Trump’s former campaign manager. Kasowitz also represents Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-owned bank, U.S. court records show.
Kasowitz has represented one of Deripaska’s companies for years in a civil lawsuit in New York and was scheduled to argue on the company’s behalf May 25, two days after news broke that Trump had hired him, court records show. A different lawyer in Kasowitz’s firm showed up in court instead, avoiding a scenario that would have highlighted Kasowitz’s extensive work for high-profile Russian clients. [Continue reading…]
Justice Department argues Trump can accept payments from foreign governments
Bloomberg reports: George Washington did it, so Donald Trump can too.
That’s the Justice Department’s take on why the 45th president isn’t violating the U.S. Constitution by accepting payments for goods and services from foreign governments without congressional approval.
The foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution doesn’t apply to fair-market commercial transactions, such as hotel bills, golf club fees, licensing payments and office rent, the Justice department argued Friday in a filing. The government is asking a judge to throw out a lawsuit brought by a watchdog group that claims Trump’s business dealings violate the Constitution. [Continue reading…]
Bernie Sanders ‘delighted’ by Jeremy Corbyn’s results in election vote
The Guardian reports: Bernie Sanders has congratulated Jeremy Corbyn on Labour’s performance in the general election. The Vermont senator – who narrowly failed to win his bid for the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race for the White House – said he had watched the UK results coming in on Thursday and was very pleased about the party’s showing.
“I am delighted to see Labour do so well,” the Vermont senator said in a Facebook post, linking to a Guardian news story. He went on: “All over the world, people are rising up against austerity and massive levels of income and wealth inequality. People in the UK, the US and elsewhere want governments that represent all the people, not just the 1%. I congratulate Jeremy Corbyn for running a very effective campaign.”
Sanders voiced his support for Corbyn this month, drawing parallels between anti-establishment anger at both ends of the political spectrum in Britain and the US, and applauding the Labour leader’s efforts to reshape the party.
Organisers who worked on the Sanders campaign provided assistance to Momentum, the leftwing pressure group, in the runup to the election, coaching Labour members on how to canvass voters online and offline. [Continue reading…]
How Trump’s endless bullshit is debasing America’s governing institutions and poisoning civic life
At today’s White House news conference, Trump was challenged on the question of whether there are tapes of his conversations with James Comey.
Reporter: “You seem to be hinting there are recordings of those conversations…”
Trump: “I’m not hinting anything. I’ll tell you about it over a very short period of time.”
Reporter: “When will you tell us?”
Trump: “Over a fairly short period of time.”
Reporter: “Are there tapes sir?”
Trump: “Oh, you’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer.”
Reporter: “Mr President. Are you now hinting that you’ve actually been bullshitting about these tapes all along?”
Except for the last question, that’s exactly how this brief exchange played out. The last question, of course, never got asked — the White House press corps is too polite to challenge Trump that bluntly.
Trump thinks it’s his prerogative to jerk around the press, abuse reporters personally, pour scorn on what he brands as “fake news,” and he also expects that journalists will meekly take this in their stride. He expects that he can constantly dish out bullshit while never being told to his face that he’s a bullshitter.
Matthew Yglesias writes: Donald Trump says a lot of things that aren’t true, often shamelessly so, and it’s tempting to call him a liar.
But that’s not quite right. As the Princeton University philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt put it in a famous essay, to lie presumes a kind of awareness of and interest in the truth — and the goal is to convince the audience that the false thing you are saying is in fact true. Trump, more often than not, isn’t interested in convincing anyone of anything. He’s a bullshitter who simply doesn’t care.
In Trump’s own book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, our now-president describes himself in a way that Frankfurt could hold up as the quintessential example of a bullshitter. Trump writes that he’s an “I say what’s on my mind” kind of guy. Pages later, he explains that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily an honest guy.
“If you do things a little differently,” he writes of the media, “if you say outrageous things and fight back, they love you.” The free publicity that results from deliberately provoking controversy is invaluable. And if a bit of exaggeration is what it takes, Trump doesn’t have a problem with that. “When,” he asks “was the last time you saw a sign hanging outside a pizzeria claiming ‘The fourth best pizza in the world’?!”
When Trump says something like he’s just learned that Barack Obama ordered his phones wiretapped, he’s not really trying to persuade people that this is true. It’s a test to see who around him will debase themselves to repeat it blindly. There’s no greater demonstration of devotion.
In his first and best-known book, The Art of the Deal, Trump writes a passage that is one of the most remarkable ever set to paper by a future American president. It’s deeply telling about Trump’s views on the distinction between integrity and loyalty. Trump sings the praises of Roy Cohn — Joe McCarthy’s infamous legal attack dog later turned Trump mentor:
Just compare that with all the hundreds of “respectable” guys who make careers out of boasting about their uncompromising integrity but have absolutely no loyalty. They only care about what’s best for them and don’t think twice about stabbing a friend in the back if the friend becomes a problem. What I liked most about Roy Cohn was that he would do just the opposite. Roy was the kind of guy who’d be there at your hospital bed long after everyone else had bailed out, literally standing by you to the death.
Trump, ironically, would not stand by Cohn’s deathbed as he perished of AIDS; instead, he disavowed his friend. For Trump, loyalty is a way to size up those around him, suss out friend from foe. It is not a quality he cares to embrace in his personal life. Now president, it’s the same in his political life.
The two passages taken together illuminate an important facet of Trump’s personality, and of his presidency. He’s a man who doesn’t care much about the truth. He’s a man who cares deeply about loyalty. The two qualities merge in the way he wields bullshit. His flagrant lies serve as a loyalty test.
Trump’s tactics, in a different context, would be understood as typical authoritarian propaganda — regimes often propound nonsense more to enforce expectations on their citizens than because they are expecting anyone to actually believe it. The United States isn’t the kind of place where that can work. There’s a free and vibrant press and political debate operating wholly outside the world of Trump’s bullshit. But by filling the heads of his fans — and the media outlets they consume — with a steady diet of bullshit, Trump is nonetheless succeeding in endlessly reinscribing polarization in American politics, corroding America’s governing institutions, and poisoning civic life. [Continue reading…]
There’s no indication Comey violated the law. Trump may be about to
Philip Bump writes: President Trump’s declaration that the Thursday testimony of former FBI director James B. Comey was a “total and complete vindication” despite “so many false statements and lies” was the sort of brashly triumphant and loosely-grounded-in-reality statement we’ve come to expect from the commander in chief. It was news that came out a bit later, news about plans to file a complaint against Comey for a revelation he made during that Senate Intelligence Committee hearing meeting, that may end up being more damaging to the president.
CNN first reported that Trump’s outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, plans to file complaints with the inspector general of the Justice Department and the Senate Judiciary Committee about Comey’s testimony. At issue was Comey’s revelation that he provided a memo documenting a conversation with Trump to a friend to be shared with the New York Times.
As the news broke, I was on the phone with Stephen Kohn, partner at a law firm focused on whistleblower protection. We’d been talking about where the boundaries lay for Comey in what he could and couldn’t do with the information about his conversations with the president. Kohn’s response to the story about Kasowitz, though, was visceral.
“Here is my position on that: Frivolous grandstanding,” he said. “First of all, I don’t believe the inspector general would have jurisdiction over Comey any more, because he’s no longer a federal employee.” The inspector general’s job is to investigate wrongdoing by employees of the Justice Department, of which Comey is no longer, thanks to Trump.
“But, second,” he continued, “initiating an investigation because you don’t like somebody’s testimony could be considered obstruction. And in the whistleblower context, it’s both evidence of retaliation and, under some laws, could be an adverse retaliatory act itself.” [Continue reading…]
Trump targets illegal immigrants who were given reprieves from deportation by Obama
Reuters reports: In September 2014, Gilberto Velasquez, a 38-year-old house painter from El Salvador, received life-changing news: The U.S. government had decided to shelve its deportation action against him.
The move was part of a policy change initiated by then-President Barack Obama in 2011 to pull back from deporting immigrants who had formed deep ties in the United States and whom the government considered no threat to public safety. Instead, the administration would prioritize illegal immigrants who had committed serious crimes.
Last month, things changed again for the painter, who has lived in the United States illegally since 2005 and has a U.S.-born child. He received news that the government wanted to put his deportation case back on the court calendar, citing another shift in priorities, this time by President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration has moved to reopen the cases of hundreds of illegal immigrants who, like Velasquez, had been given a reprieve from deportation, according to government data and court documents reviewed by Reuters and interviews with immigration lawyers.
Trump signaled in January that he planned to dramatically widen the net of illegal immigrants targeted for deportation, but his administration has not publicized its efforts to reopen immigration cases.
It represents one of the first concrete examples of the crackdown promised by Trump and is likely to stir fears among tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who thought they were safe from deportation. [Continue reading…]
Trump assails Qatar, despite Tillerson’s call for ‘calm’ in standoff
The New York Times reports: Reversing himself again, President Trump on Friday delivered a stinging rebuke to Qatar, accusing the Persian Gulf nation of being a “funder of terror at a very high level” and demanding that it cut off that money flow to rejoin the circle of responsible nations.
Mr. Trump’s comments undercut his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, who has thrown himself into an effort to mediate a resolution to a bitter dispute between Qatar and several of its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. Earlier on Friday, Mr. Tillerson called for “calm and thoughtful dialogue” to resolve the crisis.
The president’s comments were anything but that, and they suggested a continuing divide between Mr. Trump and his advisers about how best to deal with Qatar, which is arguably the nation’s most important military outpost in the Middle East. [Continue reading…]
Josh Rogin writes: Listening to Tuesday’s first ever State Department briefing by new spokeswoman Heather Nauert, one might get the impression that the United States is conducting traditional, balanced and even somewhat nuanced foreign policy on the world stage. The problem is, of course, that President Trump’s own statements on foreign policy destroy that image and there’s no effort by either side to address the resulting contradictions.
Nauert, a former Fox News host, waited five weeks before taking to the lectern to meet the State Department press corps, which is filled with seasoned diplomatic reporters steeped in the nuances of international issues. She was well prepared, firm but not combative and began by praising the diplomatic corps and the media for doing their jobs in service to the United States and the ideals America represents.
The press corps, in turn, treated her with respect without pulling punches, a clear effort to set the relationship on the right foot and give her time to adjust to the new spotlight. But as the briefing wore on, the sheer disconnect between what Nauert was explaining as State Department policy and what the White House and Trump have said was striking. [Continue reading…]
Theresa May and the revenge of the Remainers
Anne Applebaum writes: Theresa May had a plan: Steal the policies of Britain’s “far right” — the U.K. Independence Party — and then steal their voters, too. Since she took office about a year ago, the formerly moderate British prime minister attacked foreigners, jeered at the European Union and held Donald Trump’s hand. In April, she called an early general election, confident that UKIP voters would now endorse her “hard Brexit” and her watered-down English Tory populism.
Never mind that the moderate centrism of her predecessor, David Cameron, won a Conservative Party majority only two years ago. Never mind that she herself has offered few details about Brexit and what it will mean: May called this a “Brexit election,” declared herself the “strong and stable” candidate, promised tough negotiations with Europe and clearly expected to win a larger majority.
Yes, May had a plan — but it was a plan designed for her base. She ignored the 48 percent of the country that did not vote for Brexit, calling them “citizens of nowhere.” She ignored the anxiety that Brexit has created and the economic consequences that are now just beginning to bite. She ignored younger people, who preferred to stay in the E.U. last year and now prefer the Labour Party to the Tories by a huge margin, 63 percent to 27 percent.
May also assumed that the centrists and moderates who had voted Conservative in 2015 and to “Remain” in Europe in 2016 would have to vote for her because they would have nowhere else to go. They couldn’t possibly vote for Jeremy Corbyn, the quasi-Marxist, left-wing Labour Party leader who campaigned on high taxes for the rich, heavy spending and deep skepticism toward Britain’s traditional defense and foreign policies. They couldn’t possibly prefer a Labour Party that is itself divided over Brexit. But as the campaign went on, as May grew stiffer and more prone to error, as her “strong and stable” tagline wore thin, a lot of people in the floating center looked at Corbyn and thought, “Is he really that much worse?”
And the result? Remainers’ revenge. [Continue reading…]
Conservatives successfully resist the drive for Scottish independence
Reuters reports: Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has delivered the party’s biggest success in Scotland in a generation, leading a dogged charge against independence from the United Kingdom that has left the nationalist movement reeling.
Davidson, whose colourful humour and approachability has won her many fans, notched up the Conservatives’ best result since 1983 north of the border. She may yet prove key to choosing a new leader to replace the party’s nationwide leader, Prime Minister Theresa May, whose future is now in question.
With an easy, raucous laugh, she is a self-described “shovel-faced lesbian”, a literature graduate and a former journalist who says the army taught her the art of leadership when she was a reservist.
Davidson, 38, has unapologetically stood up for the United Kingdom.
“I’ve never been afraid of debate and clash and think that’s part of it. It’s important that the Conservative voice isn’t delegitimised,” she told Reuters prior to the election.
In Britain’s constantly shifting political landscape, she has reached Scottish voters by sticking to a message they not only understand but care about, as well as being more ordinary than the elite associated with her party 400 miles (644 km) down south in London.
“I’m proud to be Scottish and British and female and gay and Christian and Conservative and a Fifer and fond of chips, a fan of “Hamilton” the musical and to prefer dogs to cats,” she told an audience at the Orwell Foundation last month. [Continue reading…]
Ruth Davidson planning Scottish Tory breakaway as she challenges Theresa May’s Brexit plan
The Telegraph reports: Ruth Davidson is to defy Theresa May’s plans for a hard Brexit and tear her Scottish party away from English control after the UK Tories’ disastrous General Election result.
Amid a growing clamour among senior Tories in London for Ms Davidson to be given a top position in the UK party, her aides are working on a deal that would see the Scottish party break away to form a separate organisation.
It would maintain a close relationship with the English party – they have been joined together as part of the United Kingdom Conservative and Unionist Party since 1965 – and its 13 MPs would take the Tory whip at the Commons.
Although it has been mooted for some time, the imminent split between the Scottish and English parties is a direct result of a dramatic deterioration in relations between the Scottish Tory hierarchy in Edinburgh and 10 Downing Street.
Fresh from her success in winning an extra 12 Scottish seats in Thursday’s election, at the same time as the Prime Minister was losing 21 constituencies in England, Ms Davidson also vowed to use her Commons votes to prioritise the single market over curbing immigration.
This is certain to split Tory ranks as Mrs May has pledged to take the UK out of both the single market and the EU customs union as part of her Brexit negotiations, which begin next week. [Continue reading…]
Interesting report — although Davidson’s succinct response calls into question the report’s accuracy:
B****cks. Folk might remember I fought a leadership election on the other side of that particular argument…. https://t.co/IQev2xSnUp
— Ruth Davidson (@RuthDavidsonMSP) June 9, 2017
Breitbart lost 90 percent of its advertisers in two months
The Washington Post reports: The number of advertisers on the alt-right site Breitbart.com has dropped 90 percent in recent months, from 242 in March to 26 in May, according to data from MediaRadar, a New York firm that tracks online advertising. Among those that continue to advertise on the site include a gentleman’s club in Northern Virginia, a golf resort near the coast of Spain and the conservative foundation Judicial Watch.
“Liberal activists want to destroy Breitbart, but we won’t be cowed,” the foundation’s president Tom Fitton said in an interview. “We advertise widely on the internet, and we’re proud of the relationship and the partnerships we have.”
Fitton said Judicial Watch had been advertising on Breitbart for years, but would not elaborate on the company’s strategy or where else it places ads. “I’m not talking about the details of our internal decision-making with the anti-Trump Washington Post,” he said. [Continue reading…]
Music: André Bush — ‘Degree of Difficulty’
Theresa May’s Brexit strategy lies in ruins
Simon Jenkins writes: The clock is ticking on the two-year Brexit countdown, with just 10 days to go to fiendishly urgent talks on its modality. May’s tactic appeared to be to enter those talks armour-plated against domestic trouble from both her right and left, or at least from advocates of hard and soft Brexit. That tactic, however plausible, lies in ruins.
How the EU’s negotiators will react is hard to predict. They must be dismayed at the prospect of weakened British negotiators vulnerable to constant carping and second-guessing by a hung British parliament. Some are already suggesting a postponement of the talks. It is hard to see that helping.
Meanwhile it is likely that in coming months a “remainist” or perhaps “softest” fifth column will open up across parliament and among the lobbyists. The collapse of Ukip and the probable increase in emboldened remain MPs clearly undermines whatever May’s “hard Brexit” stance was meant to achieve. In the Commons there should now be a majority behind Corbyn’s view, that no deal is worse than a soft deal.
The British team’s absurdist machismo in advance of talks has never rung true – and would appear to have cut little ice even with a post-referendum electorate. Coupled with the result itself, this should tilt the balance towards a more accommodating approach on both sides. The EU and Britain must clearly compromise, to honour last year’s referendum yet without the manifest shambles of a negotiating failure.
Common sense indicates that, at the day’s end, Britain must somehow stay within the regulatory regime of a European customs union. Since that would leave migration as the chief bone of contention, and since some deal on the movement of workers is vital for British industry, it is now possible to see negotiations slithering towards a “Norwegian” version of a single market. If so, this election could prove a blessing, albeit in heavy disguise. [Continue reading…]
Theresa May reaches deal with DUP to form government after shock election result
The Guardian reports: Theresa May has struck a deal with the Democratic Unionists [in Northern Ireland] that will allow her to form a government, sources have confirmed.
The prime minister is expected to see the Queen at about 12.30pm on Friday to confirm that a deal is in place.
It follows extensive talks with the DUP late into the night. Party figures say they have been driven on by their dismay at the possibility of Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.
DUP figures insist their relationship with May’s team has been close since she became prime minister 11 months ago. [Continue reading…]
Comey testimony raises new questions about Jeff Sessions and Russia
NPR reports: Former FBI director James Comey may have done more potential damage to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday than even President Trump, who Comey publicly accused of waving him off part of the Russia investigation.
Comey said he expected Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation weeks before he did because of reasons that are classified. That does not comport with Sessions rationale when he announced his recusal in early March.
Sessions has been the subject of scrutiny over his failure to disclose meetings with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 campaign, which Sessions has defended as routine — part of his duties as a U.S. senator.
In his opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee, released on Wednesday, Comey detailed a private conversation with President Trump in the Oval Office shortly after National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was forced to resign, in which Comey recalls the president saying, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
This has raised questions as to why Comey didn’t tell others, including the attorney general. Comey said in his opening statement that his leadership team at the FBI agreed not to share this with Sessions for the following reason: “We concluded it made little sense to report it to Attorney General Sessions, who we expected would likely recuse himself from involvement in Russia-related investigations.”
Comey also pointed out that they were right – Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation less than two weeks later.
The question is why Sessions recused himself. [Continue reading…]
.@NBCNews reports that in the closed session, Comey told Senators that AG Sessions met with Russians a *third* time that he never disclosed
— Doug Sovern (@SovernNation) June 8, 2017
The five lines of defense against Comey — and why they failed
David Frum writes: Thursday was a bad, bad day for Team Trump. Things looked even worse at the end of the day than they did when the Senate Intelligence Committee adjourned midday.
The first line of defense—revealed by the president’s own team yesterday—is that Comey somehow vindicated Trump by confirming that he told Trump in January that Trump was not personally a target of an investigation. But if that assurance had been enough for the president, Trump would not have added the demand that Comey end the investigation of Michael Flynn. Trump evidently felt strongly motivated to protect Flynn—more strongly motivated than he had been to protect any of his other associates.
Line two of defense is that the president’s expression of a “hope” that Mike Flynn could be “let go” merely expressed a wish, not an order. But Adam Liptak, Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times, almost instantly produced an example of an obstruction of justice conviction that rested precisely on “I hope” language—and the all-seeing eye of Twitter quickly found more. Anyone who has ever seen a gangster movie has heard the joke, “Nice little dry cleaning store, I hope nothing happens to it.” The blunt fact is that after Comey declined to drop the investigation or publicly clear the president, Trump fired Comey. A hope enforced by dismissal is more than a wish. [Continue reading…]