Trump 23: The Death Eaters Have Taken the Fucking Country

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s vicious attack on the media shows one thing clearly: He’s running scared"

Spoiler

As with so much about President Trump, his Phoenix rally on Tuesday night was two contradictory things: both shocking and completely predictable.

Shocking because it was the most sustained attack any president has made on the news media. (“It’s time to expose the crooked-media deceptions and challenge the media for their role in fomenting divisions,” Trump ranted, as he charged that reporters invent sources and make up stories. “They are trying to take away our history and our heritage.”)

And predictable because this is exactly what Trump does when he’s in trouble. He finds an enemy and punches as hard as he can.

Make no mistake, he is in trouble. With a special prosecutor breathing down his neck and even once-loyal Breitbart News turning on him, Trump is, according to one new poll, at the lowest point of his presidency.

Fifty-three percent of voters say he is not moral. (Stop a moment to take that in.)

Fifty-five percent say he isn’t stable, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll taken this past weekend. And 58 percent of voters call him reckless.

Never one to examine his own conscience, or look for self-improvement, Trump apparently consulted his tried-and-true playbook.

“Go for the jugular,” Trump advised in his 2009 book “Think Big.”

Always get even: “You need to screw them back 15 times harder. You do it not only to get the person who messed with you but also to show the others who are watching what will happen to them if they mess with you.”

It is a philosophy learned decades ago from his mentor, the ruthless lawyer Roy Cohn. In a recent Vanity Fair article on Trump and Cohn, Marie Brenner quotes lawyer Victor Kovner: “You knew when you were in Cohn’s presence you were in the presence of pure evil.”

She writes: “Cohn’s power derived largely from his ability to scare potential adversaries with hollow threats and spurious lawsuits. And the fee he demanded for his services? Ironclad loyalty.” Sounds familiar.

Trump lapped up this advice. No target is sacrosanct.

Even if the person or organization that “screwed him” is a Gold Star parent like Khizr Khan, in the Trump philosophy, you must counterpunch.

If it’s one of the cornerstones of American democracy like the independent news media, that’s fair game, too.

In Phoenix, Trump praised his friends at Fox News, with especially kind words for his most dependable toady, Sean Hannity, and the cheerleaders at “Fox & Friends.” And he mourned the loss of the intolerable Jeffrey Lord, fired recently by CNN.

But otherwise, the news media is “damned dishonest,” he said, leading the crowd in familiar chants of “CNN sucks.”

Aggressive as Tuesday night’s attack was, it had more than a whiff of desperation about it.

After all, there was no dishonesty in the mainstream media coverage of Trump’s initial “on many sides” reaction to Charlottesville, which has had such dire political consequences for him, in addition to financial repercussions, as groups withdraw from planned events at his resorts.

The president may be able to convince his die-hard supporters, like the ones at the Phoenix rally, that he was misquoted or misrepresented, but that’s simply not true. Anyone who was paying attention knows that.

What happens next? Under siege, Trump needs a foil more than ever, so these media attacks are only going to grow in intensity.

It will be journalists’ continued challenge not to take the bait, to refuse to play the assigned role of presidential enemy. Leave the revenge to the expert.

Yes, he is feeling threatened and getting desperate.

[onekidanddone]

25 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s vicious attack on the media shows one thing clearly: He’s running scared"

Yes, he is feeling threatened and getting desperate.

The more desperate the more dangerous.  Like a rabid animal backed into a corner. 

[Palimpsest]

2 hours ago, sawasdee said:

Go, Jennifer! She is writing some of the most incisive and coherent criticism of this "presidency" - I can almost forgive "Jenghazi"!

Yes.  I too have turned into an avid Jennifer fan.  Who would have thunk it!

[GrumpyGran]

Regarding the people at the AZ rally, I always look closely at the people they put behind him and I swear this time most of those people were not there because they love him.

Some cheered at the appropriate time but others were talking to each other during the clips I saw, some were on their phones and there was that one woman just to his right who never cracked a smile. When he started talking about George S. being short she looked pissed. She was short. I think most were paid.

[WiseGirl]

James Clapper questioning  TT's fitness to do the job on NBC tonight. Ryan calls for party to stay unified.  Hmm with this man as your leader and attacking individual Republicans. I hope they bail on him/the party.  TT clearly showing he won't support you.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

"Trump’s science envoy quits in scathing letter with an embedded message: I-M-P-E-A-C-H"

Spoiler

Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy expert appointed last year as a science envoy to the State Department, resigned Wednesday, citing President Trump's response to the violence in Charlottesville as the final straw that led to his departure.

In a resignation letter posted to Twitter, Kammen wrote that Trump's remarks about the racial violence in Virginia had attacked “core values of the United States” and that it would have “domestic and international ramifications.”

Demonstrations by white supremacist groups on Aug. 12 turned deadly after a neo-Nazi plowed a car into a crowd, killing one counterprotester and injuring at least 19 other people in Charlottesville. Two Virginia state troopers were also killed when their helicopter crashed.

Trump's initial response was widely criticized, even by members of his own political party, for being insufficient and vague. Though the president later condemned the hate groups, he went on to effectively undo his conciliatory remarks by giving an off-the-rails news conference days later in which he once again blamed “both sides” in Charlottesville.

Kammen, who was appointed during Barack Obama's presidency, said it would be unconscionable for him to continue serving the administration after those remarks. He said he stood with “the unequivocal and authoritative statements” of a slew of other public officials, both Democratic and Republican.

“Acts and words matter,” Kammen wrote. “To continue in my role under your administration would be inconsistent with the principles of the United States Oath of Allegiance to which I adhere.”

However, his most biting message may have come in the form of a hidden acrostic: The first letter of each paragraph spelled out I-M-P-E-A-C-H.

...

The State Department appointed Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California at Berkeley, as one of five U.S. science envoys in February 2016. At the time, Kammen said he would be working on various global energy initiatives, as well as “the wider Paris Accord.”

In his resignation letter, Kammen cited other concerns that predated Trump's Charlottesville comments, including the president's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord in June.

“Particularly troubling to me is how your response to Charlottesville is consistent with a broader pattern of behavior that enables sexism and racism, and disregards the welfare of all Americans, the global community and the planet,” Kammen wrote. “Your decision to abdicate the leadership opportunities and the job creation benefits of the Paris climate Accord, and to undermine energy and environmental research are not acceptable to me. … Your actions to date have, sadly, harmed the quality of life in the United States, our standing abroad, and the sustainability of the planet.”

During his approximately 18 months as a science envoy, Kammen said, the United States had “built significant partnerships in North and East Africa, and in the Middle East, around shared visions of national security, job creation in the U.S. and sustainable energy.”

According to his letter, Kammen has also served in various federal roles since 1996, including at the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

A State Department representative said: “Today, Dr. Daniel Kammen made a personal decision to resign. We appreciate his dedicated service to U.S. scientific diplomacy during his appointment working on energy efficiency and renewable energy in Africa as a Science Envoy. Margaret Leinen and Tom Lovejoy are current Science Envoys. The State Department’s Science Envoy program supports the establishment, strengthening, and mobilization of regional and global networks of scientists to advance U.S. science and technology priorities and solve real-world problems.”

Kammen did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Kammen wrapped up his resignation letter with something of a warning for Trump, borrowing the words of President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “A people [or person] that values its privileges above principles soon loses both.”

Trump's response to Charlottesville has cost him the support of a slew of business leaders and Hollywood performers who resigned from various presidential advisory groups.

Kenneth C. Frazier, the chief executive of Merck, was the first member to quit the president’s American Manufacturing Council on Aug. 14, citing “a matter of personal conscience” and “a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” Trump quickly rebuked him on Twitter.

Over the next few days, several more executives followed Frazier's lead, prompting Trump to lash out at them as “grandstanders” who could easily be replaced.

Before the end of the week, both the manufacturing council and the president's Strategy & Policy Forum had been disbanded. Though Trump announced publicly it was his decision to end both councils, those close to the process, including JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon, said the groups had already decided to disband.

Last Friday, the members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities announced in a fiery letter that they were resigning en masse.

“Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions …” the letter stated. “Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.”

That letter also contained a hidden message. The first letters in each of those paragraphs, taken together, spelled out: “R-E-S-I-S-T.”

...

Unfortunately, the TT doesn't understand subtle. And he doesn't care about energy experts, unless they are gas and coal magnates who line his pockets.

[candygirl200413]

Now I'm back to being in my sad mood (Since he ran for election, my moods have been happy/sad/indifferent and keep going on a cycle, with the election making it semi-permanent). James Clapper comment actually really made me mad because we've known he is mentally well. Yet, no one will do anything about it so while people's lives are being ruined, people just could care less.

[AmericanRose]

I'm not a doctor or anything, but I think it's highly possible that Trump isn't going senile or anything like that -- he's just THAT narcissistic. How DARE anyone critisize him? How DARE anyone suggest he isn't the best or the brightest?! Has anyone ever told him no??? I have a feeling people have walked on eggshells around him since he was born.... and that's why he figures anyone can just change the rules of the Senate. No big deal.

The exceedingly simple way he talks? Maybe that's how he thinks 'working class Americans' talk, and hey, it got him elected, right?

He doesn't seem to realise the election is over, and 2020 is a ways off (sadly). But as time goes on, as his supporters realise he's talking the same talk as he did on the campaign trail without actually walking the walk they elected him to do... I like to think, anyway, they'll realise he's not who he was claiming to be. All talk and no action is bad, right? Of course, I suppose there's ways to blame Congress and the 'failing news media'.

I'm pretty convinced he keeps visiting his properties not because he's 'more comfortable' there, but because he knows the Secret Service is paying $$$ to stay wherever he is, and that money will go right back into his pockets... though what he needs more money for, at 70+, I can't imagine. Does he think he's going to live forever...?

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, AmericanRose said:

I'm not a doctor or anything, but I think it's highly possible that Trump isn't going senile or anything like that -- he's just THAT narcissistic. How DARE anyone critisize him? How DARE anyone suggest he isn't the best or the brightest?! Has anyone ever told him no??? I have a feeling people have walked on eggshells around him since he was born.... and that's why he figures anyone can just change the rules of the Senate. No big deal.

While I agree that he is a narcissist of a degree rarely ever seen, I've seen many articles from reputable sources where people who have known the TT for years/decades say his speech patterns and behavior have changed in the last couple of years. Frankly, whether he's mentally ill or not, he's a menace to the world in this position.

 

This is an interesting analysis: "Trump’s whiplash: Three roles in three speeches, but the same president"

Spoiler

In the span of 48 hours this week, President Trump has boomeranged among three roles — the commander in chief, the divider and the uniter.

Like a contestant on one of his reality TV shows, Trump has taken on contrasting personas, showcasing divergent traits with flourishes seemingly to survive another day of his beleaguered presidency. Or, as Trump the television producer might put it, to keep up the ratings.

On Monday night at Fort Myer in Virginia, before hundreds of uniformed military, Trump announced a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan with sobriety and seriousness. Reading from a teleprompter script, Trump ruminated on the gravity of his office and vowed to win a deeply unpopular conflict that, at 16 years, is the country’s longest war.

The next day Trump jetted to Phoenix, where the immigration inferno he has helped ignite burns nearly as hot as the broiling sun. Tuesday night’s “Make America Great Again” rally amounted to a relief valve for the pent-up grievances of a president under siege.

For 75 minutes, Trump ranted and roared his way through a fact-challenged, disjointed performance that, even by his own standards, could be considered epic. Speaking from the heart, he served up one “us” versus “them” riff after another. By us, he meant himself and the shrinking minority of mostly-white Americans who fervently support him. By them, he meant everybody else — the news media (“damned dishonest”), Democrats (“obstructionists”), Arizona’s two Republican senators (“weak”), illegal immigrants (“animals”) and people in favor of removing Confederate monuments (“they are trying to take away our history and our heritage”).

By Wednesday, with television news commentators devouring his Phoenix free-for-all, Trump swooped into Reno, Nev., with the kind of unity message that you would expect to hear Pope Francis deliver.

“It is time to heal the wounds that divide us and to seek a new unity based on the common values that unite us,” Trump said, again reading from a teleprompter, at the national convention of the American Legion.

In Phoenix, Trump attacked — though not by name — one war hero, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). But in Reno, he invited another, Medal of Honor recipient Donald Ballard, on stage for a warm embrace.

The whiplash from the three consecutive Trump speeches exemplifies the confusion and chaos that have come to define presidency.

Is Trump trying to heal the wounds of a country torn over this month’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.? Or is he trying to pull it further apart?

Did Trump act prudently to approve sending thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan after a deliberative, informed review of military options? Or is he an irrational and impulsive man with nuclear codes, as many watching the Phoenix rally concluded?

“Downright scary and disturbing” is how James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence and retired Air Force lieutenant general, summed it up.

Clapper briefed Trump during the transition in his capacity as a top intelligence official in the Obama administration, and his assessment of Trump’s presidency has worsened in the months since. It seemed to reach a new low on Tuesday night.

“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” Clapper said on CNN, where he is a contributor. “How much longer does the country have to, to borrow a phrase, endure this nightmare?”

Trump arrived in Phoenix nursing many wounds, most of his own making. Business executives, afraid of being associated with the president after his racially divisive comments about Charlottesville, resigned from White House advisory councils. Charities canceled planned galas at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private seaside resort in Palm Beach, Fla., for the same reason. Some prominent Republicans who enthusiastically supported his candidacy were now questioning Trump’s fitness for office.

“The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman who had been considered a candidate for vice president and secretary of state, said last week.

Last weekend, as Trump wrapped up a two-week working vacation at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., he was in a particularly sour mood, brooding in particular about the exodus from his beloved Mar-a-Lago, according to someone who spoke with him.

These were only the most recent developments in a summer of crises for his administration has sent his approval rating tumbling to historic lows.

The escalating investigations into his campaign’s possible role in Russia’s meddling in the 2016 campaign have enraged Trump, who maintains he is innocent and decries what he sees as a “witch hunt.”

But there are other factors feeding Trump’s discontent, including the denunciations in recent weeks — either implicitly or explicitly — by fellow Republicans, as well as Democrats in Congress, business leaders, uniformed military leaders, police officers and the Boy Scouts of America.

All the while, Trump’s new chief of staff, retired four-star Marine Corps general John F. Kelly, has sought to enforce new discipline on the White House — including controlling the administration’s message, which is often set or reset by the president himself.

Trump long has chafed at attempts by his advisers to control him. He believes he is his own best messenger, and that the millions of Americans who elected him president want to hear his raw, unvarnished opinions — either in 140-character bursts on Twitter or at campaign rallies like the one he held in Phoenix.

Consider his many responses to Charlottesville. After Trump blamed the violence on “many sides” and declined to single out white supremacists in his initial statement on Aug. 12, his advisers convinced him two days later to deliver scripted remarks from the Diplomatic Room of the White House. That is where the president calmly condemned “criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

The next day, however, Trump abandoned his message and offered a third response. At a free-wheeling news conference in the pink-marbled lobby of Trump Tower in New York, Trump declared that “both sides” were responsible for violence and that there were “very fine people” alongside the demonstrators brandishing Confederate battle flags and swastikas.

Again and again, the pattern has been the same. The moments when Trump stays on message — as with his Aug. 14 statement in the White House — almost inherently serve as a precursor for meltdowns, such as his news conference the next day.

In some ways, the Phoenix rally was an encore of his Trump Tower performance the previous Tuesday, a showcase of the core Trump — impassioned and indignant at the seven-month mark of his presidency.

Returning to the Phoenix Convention Center, where in July 2015 he held the first fiery mega-rally of his upstart campaign, Trump waxed about the good old days — back before he slandered the media as “fake news,” back when he had a love-hate-but-mostly-love relationship with the news outlets showering his candidacy with attention.

“The crowds were so big, almost as big as tonight, that the people said right at the beginning, ‘You know, there’s something special happening here,’” Trump said. “And we went to center stage almost from day one in the debates. We love those debates. We went to center stage and we never left.”

 

[Howl]

2 hours ago, AmericanRose said:

I'm not a doctor or anything, but I think it's highly possible that Trump isn't going senile or anything like that -- he's just THAT narcissistic. How DARE anyone criticize him? How DARE anyone suggest he isn't the best or the brightest?! Has anyone ever told him no??? I have a feeling people have walked on eggshells around him since he was born.... and that's why he figures anyone can just change the rules of the Senate. No big deal.

Bingo!  Many who are familiar with this type of personality predicted much of what is going on now with Trump, although I think even they didn't think it would go this far.  

Quote

Narcissists suffer from what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines as narcissistic injury: “vulnerability in self-esteem which makes narcissistic people very sensitive to ‘injury’ from criticism or defeat. Although they may not show it outwardly, criticism may haunt these individuals and may leave them feeling humiliated, degraded, hollow and empty. They react with disdain, rage, or defiant counterattack.”

Full text here: 

The Destructive Force of Narcissistic Injury: What is it? How does it affect leadership and relationship?

Psychology Today, Posted Aug 01, 2016

 

[candygirl200413]

This is also the first time they removed the Goldwater rule which allows Psychiatrists to talk about fuckface's mental health. I follow one on twitter who has backed it up greatly by explaining his narcissism as well as obvious cognitive decline.

[WiseGirl]

I just saw this for the first time today. I realize it was published earlier, but it seems relevant to his Charlottesville response. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-jews-anti-semitic-hate-crimes-false-flag-reverse-david-duke-kkk-ku-klux-klan-a7604801.html

I'd like to say that words fail me, but it really seems I have plenty of words to use. It's just that using them would cause me to owe vast amounts of  $$$$ to the swear jar.

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘I don’t know how it got this bad’: Trump supporters and protesters meet in Phoenix"

Spoiler

PHOENIX — Just before 4 p.m. on Tuesday, at an intersection near the convention center where President Trump was scheduled to hold a campaign rally, two vendors hawked products with competing messages.

On one side of the street, two men sold “Make America Great Again” caps for $20 and T-shirts featuring Trump’s beloved red-splattered electoral map, along with this message: “Better coverage than Verizon. Can you hear us now?”

On the other side of the street, volunteers collected donations for stickers, buttons and signs with messages such as: “Make racists afraid again,” “White silence is compliance,” “Goodnight alt-right,” “No border wall,” “Punch your local Nazi” and “Resist!”

The event would not start for another three hours, but thousands of rallygoers and protesters had already arrived downtown and made clear on which side they stood.

They swapped accusations of being ignorant or brainwashed, of being paid to be there, of being on the wrong side of history, of being hateful. Some tried to engage in discussions, but those often devolved into screaming positions over and over again as both sides recorded video of the exchange. Local police officers in casual polo shirts served as a buffer.

Under the hot August sun that afternoon, the political and racial divisions that have deepened across the country in recent weeks played out on this city’s downtown streets.

5 p.m.

As the temperature hovered near 106 degrees, volunteers on both sides handed out bottles of water.

Nearby, the Rev. Michael Weldon sat on the steps of St. Mary’s Basilica in a brown robe and quietly prayed: Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

“I hear anger in people’s voices,” he said.

On the other side of the convention center, rallygoers stood in line along a street protected by trash and recycling trucks. A protester in a floppy hat held a neon pink sign reading “Trump the Ignoramus” and loudly mocked the president for avoiding the draft and for not following through on many of his campaign promises, such as building a wall and locking up his political rival, Hillary Clinton.

“He’s a chicken! Chicken!” the man shouted.

“I don’t even know what he’s saying,” Robyn Elam, 28, said to a friend as the line inched forward. “I can’t understand him at all.”

Elam said she’s glad Trump ignored the pleas from Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton (D) to delay the event because the country is so divided following a rally in Charlottesville earlier this month that attracted hundreds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis and ended in violence.

Elam, who works in the health-care industry and lives in Tempe, Ariz., said she’s alarmed to see cities remove monuments to Confederate leaders, an action she compared theoretically to conservatives removing the statues of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.

“Personally, I like the statues being up. To me, it’s not celebrating racism; it’s remembering the past,” she said. “If you try to erase history, how do you remember the past?” “To me, he loves America — and you can’t fake that,” she said of Trump, as others in line voiced their agreement. “Am I right? You can’t fake it.”

She struggled to list what Trump has done as president that she likes. For her, success is more of a feeling than a laundry list of actions.

5:30 p.m.

To Betsy Sweeney, a 70-year-old East Coast transplant living in Phoenix, the president’s behavior since taking office has been un-American. She believes the president is an embarrassment who is disrespectfully holding a rally so soon after the clashes in Charlottesville that left a counterprotester dead.

She can’t even bring herself to say his name, instead referring to him as “45.”

“No other president would behave in the manner that he’s been behaving in,” said Sweeney, a health-care worker who said her elderly patients would suffer under the health care changes Trump has proposed.

Police in helmets and bulletproof vests were now on the scene, and black-clad and masked protesters associated with the far-left antifa movement — short for anti-fascist — began to file into the crowd of protesters.

Trump supporters booed and hissed.

A supporter with a .357 Magnum holstered around his waist told his companion: “They’re bad people.”

6:01 p.m.

Austin Knaust, a 24-year-old self-employed trucker, had finally made his way past the screaming protesters and into the rally hall. He’s surprised by the backlash following what happened in Charlottesville — he thought the president’s comments “nailed it right on the head.”

“I think there’s blame on both sides,” he said, as a song from the musical “Cats” blared in the rally hall. “Just because someone wants to protest doesn’t mean that someone should antagonize them.”

But what if those people protesting are yelling anti-Semitic things?

“It’s ridiculous, because they can sit there and call [Trump] a Nazi and call him all this stuff because he didn’t call them white supremacists?” Knaust said. “Well, what did Obama do for eight years? Obama didn’t call Muslim terrorists Muslim terrorists, so does that make him a Muslim terrorist? It doesn’t make sense.”

Minutes later, a local GOP official took the stage and announced: “Welcome to the president’s rally.”

7:06 p.m.

The president took the stage as the crowd cheered and parents put their young children on their shoulders. He spent the next three minutes marveling at his crowd size, claiming “there aren’t too many people outside protesting,” attacking the media and reminiscing about the debates.

Meanwhile, Diana Bunyard, a 52-year-old real estate agent from Phoenix, continued to stand in a line that snaked two blocks, fanning herself with a Make American Great Again hat. Her mission for the day: “I want him to know we still love him.”

7:15 p.m.

Outside the rally, antifa member Samad Agwani, 25, stood behind barricades that separated protesters from supporters. Dressed head to toe in black, he was there “to make sure that white nationalists and Nazis and white supremacists are uncomfortable.”

Following Charlottesville, he said antifa has become misunderstood and that the violence seen earlier this month doesn’t “reflect the group’s cause.” That includes letting the president know that many people oppose how his actions perpetuated racism and prejudice that polarize the country, he said.

“The political atmosphere right now just makes me a little uncomfortable to be a minority,” said Agwani, a social-media content moderator who lives in Phoenix and is of Indian descent. “I feel like I have to be a little more careful in public because — as was demonstrated in Charlottesville — there are a lot of people coming out as openly white supremacists, openly Nazi, openly white nationalists, and I feel that they do pose an actual threat to minorities, including myself.”

Inside the rally, Trump declared that “this entire arena stands united in forceful condemnation of the thugs who perpetrate hatred and violence” and that the media fabricates information and invents sources.

The crowd booed the reporters in its midst, and a few people shouted: “Fake news!”

7:30 p.m.

Desire Ontiveros, a 50-year-old Phoenix native, joined the protest with her daughters, 11-year-old Evangelia and Kavina Sai Pen, 9, who are of Cambodian, Mexican, Thai and Native American descent.

She believes Trump has helped foster intolerance, which has changed aspects of her life. “I have friends that are Republicans, and of course, I’m a Democrat, and it’s almost like you’re on egg shells,” she said. “You have to be careful about what you say.”

Inside the arena, Trump launched into a 16-minute defense of his response to Charlottesville that included reading snippets of the statements he made over several days. He also denounced the removal of Confederate statues underway in many communities.

“They’re trying to take away our culture. They are trying to take away our history,” Trump said. “And our weak leaders, they do it overnight . . . Weak, weak people.”

Eric Wilson, a 42-year-old Army veteran who now runs a mobile mechanic service, nodded his head in agreement and often shouted encouraging things to the president. At one point, he rolled up his “Veterans for Trump” sign into a megaphone to yell “good riddance” at the media.

“I believe that racism is still strong in this country, but you’re erasing history,” he said after the rally. “I feel so bad for the minorities who have to deal with that in their past or who feel that way, but it wasn’t our generation. It was a generation a hundred years ago.”

He said that while he doesn’t agree with the statues coming down, he understands why it’s happening.

“Oppression, suffering — I’ve never suffered from oppression,” he said. “But they feel in their hearts that they have suffered or that their family has suffered. It’s a tough one.”

8:15 p.m.

Outside the convention center, many people thought the rally had ended because hundreds of Trump supporters had left early and were streaming into the streets.

Jaclyn Boyes, a nonprofit employee with dark braids, held a sign with a photo of Heather Heyer, the woman who died while demonstrating against bigotry in Charlottesville. Boyes, 35, wanted Trump to refer to the violence as she saw it: terrorism.

“He’ll speak out against terrorists within hours if it happens in Barcelona,” she said.

Dejan Knezevic, a 44-year-old Phoenix resident who supports Trump, pointed his phone at Boyes — he was live-streaming the evening — and asked if she would say the same of antifa.

Knezevic, an IT specialist, said he stood against neo-Nazis and the KKK but that Democrats need to condemn protesters on the left sparking mayhem.

“They have the communist flag, but none of you guys will denounce them,” Knezevic told Boyes.

“Why isn’t the president standing up against domestic terrorism?” she shot back.

“We agree with you there! We agree!” yelled a man in an American flag bandanna behind Knezevic’s shoulder. “But it’s got to be even across the board.”

8:25 p.m.

The rally ended with Trump declaring he would “make America great again.” Although many media outlets characterized Trump’s appearance and speech as being politically and racially divisive, many of his supporters said they heard a message of unity.

“He wants to unite us,” said George Kinley as he left the rally with his wife, Debbie. “And I think he’s calling out those who are purposely being roadblocks to him.”

9 p.m.

A police officer’s voice floated through the crowd from a loudspeaker: “If you don’t leave the area, you are subject to arrest.”

Many protesters had already left the area, but others stood defiant, and officers blasted them with gas that made their eyes sting. Those who lacked goggles and bandannas dashed away. A woman smoking a cigarette doused her face with milk of magnesia, an over-the-counter stomach medicine that also washes out eye irritants.

9:20 p.m.

Gabriel Hernandez, a 33-year-old Web designer from the area, backed away from a row of officers with riot shields as smoke filled the air. He pulled a black bandanna over his nose.

To his left was a parking garage, cloudy now with what looked like tear gas. Moments ago, the structure had provided a perch for people decked out in American flag gear, dropping empty water bottles on the crowd below.

Now men and women stood outside, wiping their eyes.

Hernandez, who said he came to protest because he sees Trump as needlessly divisive, decided to head home, saying: “I don’t know how it got this bad.”

I find the differences in perspective between TT supporters and protesters interesting.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Former CIA agent wants to buy Twitter to kick Trump off"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — Former undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is looking to crowdfund enough money to buy Twitter so President Donald Trump can’t use it.

Wilson launched the fundraiser last week, tweeting: “If @Twitter executives won’t shut down Trump’s violence and hate, then it’s up to us. #BuyTwitter #BanTrump.” The GoFundMe page for the fundraiser says Trump’s tweets “damage the country and put people in harm’s way.”

As of Wednesday morning, she had raised less than $6,000 of her $1 billion goal.

In an emailed statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the low total shows that the American people like the Republican president’s use of Twitter.

“Her ridiculous attempt to shut down his first amendment is the only clear violation and expression of hate and intolerance in this equation,” the statement read.

Wilson wrote on the fundraiser’s GoFundMe page that she hopes to raise enough money to buy a controlling interest of Twitter stock. If she doesn’t have enough to purchase a majority of shares, she said, she will explore options to buy “a significant stake” and champion the proposal at Twitter’s annual shareholder meeting.

If Plame were to hit her $1 billion goal, she’d still fall far short of gaining a controlling interest in the company. As of Wednesday, a majority stake would cost roughly $6 billion. But a $1 billion stake would make her Twitter’s largest shareholder and give her a very strong position to exert influence on the company.

Twitter declined to comment Wednesday on Wilson’s tweet about seeking to buy the San Francisco-based company.

Wilson’s identity as a CIA operative was leaked by an official in President George W. Bush’s administration in 2003 in an effort to discredit her husband, Joe Wilson, a former diplomat who criticized Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. She left the agency in 2005.

 

[fraurosena]

So, after last months tweet, this now came out:

White House to brief Pentagon on transgender ban details: report

Spoiler

he White House is almost ready to issue guidance to the Pentagon on the implementation of President Trump's proposal to ban transgender people from serving in the military.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that a White House memo will direct the Defense Department on details related to Trump's intention to bar transgender people from being admitted to the military. 

Under the new policy, Defense Secretary James Mattis would have to consider a service member's ability to deploy in deciding whether to remove them from the military. 

Trump announced via Twitter last month that he would reinstate a ban on transgender military service that was lifted last year under former President Barack Obama. 

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had clarified that there would be no practical modifications to Pentagon policies until the White House issued detailed guidance on the reimplemented ban.

“Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” Trump tweeted.

The president said at the time that he had made the determination after consulting with his "generals and military expert." The announcement, however, reportedly took Pentagon officials by surprise. Several members of the military openly opposed the decision.

The Pentagon said after Trump’s announcement that its policies would not change until the White House issued new guidance.

A Rand Corp. study commissioned last year estimated that there are between 1,320 and 1,600 transgender people serving openly in the U.S. military.

The announcement drew bipartisan condemnation, including from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the top lawmaker on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who admonished Trump for making such a proclamation on Twitter and defended transgender military service.

“There is no reason to force service members who are able to fight, train, and deploy to leave the military – regardless of their gender identity," he said in a statement.

It appears he's still insisting on a transgender ban in the military. Quite the flip-flop from last year, when he tweeted this:

Although I wouldn't be surprised if he has no idea what those letters stand for. (Lowlife Gullible Branch Trumpvidians maybe?)

[GreyhoundFan]

Not directly about the TT, but an interesting perspective: "We know how a true leader deals with hatemongers. We’ve seen it."

Spoiler

Of all the many slimy things Donald Trump has done, his coddling of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke ranks among the most vile and degenerate.

Desperate to win the 2016 Republican primary in South Carolina, where Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) was polling well among white supremacists and Christian fundamentalists, Trump engaged in a game of footsie with Duke. Trump hungered for alt-right voters in the Deep South even if it meant kissing up to the Klan. When pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper three times to refuse Duke’s support, Trump balked. His excuse, issued days later, was that his earpiece wasn’t working properly. Duke told his radio audience that to vote for one of Trump’s rivals was akin to “treason to your heritage.” Given this alliance, it’s understandable why Duke praised Trump on Twitter for championing the alt-right movement in the wake of the Charlottesville protests.

Trump’s tacit alliance with Duke made me yearn for the bravery of Jimmy Carter after he won the governorship in Georgia. At his inaugural address on Jan. 12, 1971, he boldly declared: “The time of racial segregation is over.” Many in the crowd gasped in disbelief. Carter also ordered that a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. be hung in the Georgia State Capitol. These courageous acts encouraged Time magazine to put Carter’s portrait on the cover under the banner of “Dixie Whistles a Different Tune.” Carter had national ambitions and didn’t want to be contaminated by the bigotry of his predecessor, arch-segregationist Lester Maddox. But what made the “New South” moment of Carter’s inauguration so extraordinary was that Maddox was standing right behind him on the inaugural stand. Maddox had just become lieutenant governor, and the contrast could hardly have been more stark.

A lover of white-supremacist groups, Maddox was nationally infamous for his deeply racist views. On the day after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, he used a gun and a club to intimidate three African American Georgia Tech students who were trying to enter his fried-chicken restaurant. Overnight, Maddox became a folk hero to a smorgasbord of bigots. With the Confederate battle flag as his symbol, Maddox was elected governor in 1966. When King was assassinated two years later, Maddox refused to allow the Georgia state flag to be flown at half-staff.

During the 1990s, I revisited the Carter-Maddox feud when researching a biography of Carter, our 39th president. One lazy afternoon in Plains, I talked with Carter about his historic inaugural. He told me that not long afterward he met with Maddox and dressed him down, warning him not to oppose desegregation initiatives. A few weeks later, I interviewed Maddox at his ranch-style home in Marietta.

According to Maddox, Carter had asked to see him three days after the inaugural. As he entered the governor’s office, Maddox openhandedly vowed to help Carter implement state policies. After all, both men were Democrats and could find common ground on many issues. But Carter glowered at him. An anguished Maddox told me that Carter tore him to pieces. “He stood right in my face, with his finger in it and said, ‘Lieutenant Governor Maddox, I didn’t call you into my office to find out when and how you were going to support me. I called you to tell you one thing. If you ever oppose me on one issue, I am going to meet you head-on and fight you with the full command and resources of this office.”

I asked Maddox whether he was shocked by Carter’s rebuff. “My daddy whipped me and things like that but he never talked to me that mean, that vicious,” Maddox complained. “If I even opposed him on one issue, I went with him 99 times and missed him one, he was going to crush me.” Maddox became instantly afraid of Carter and stayed alienated from him until his death in 2003.

By slapping Maddox down, Carter demonstrated how a true leader deals with hatemongers: crush them and render them powerless. That takes strength, something Trump doesn’t have. Carter didn’t kowtow to racists and he wouldn’t play dog-whistle games for their support. If Trump had an iota of Carter’s moral rectitude and personal strength, America wouldn’t be gasping today, whistling unhappily a very old tune.

I was a small child in 1970, so I wasn't aware of the Carter/Maddox situation. Carter was and is such a good man. Too bad the current occupant of the WH has no desire to think about others.

[sawasdee]

Thinking about Carter, and how a man of moral integrity behaved and behaves, in contrast to the present abomination, brings me, literally, to tears.

[fraurosena]

This is just one of those classic WTF moments...

This is the guy that allegedly spoke to Guccifer 2.0, who we all know is a front for the Russian intelligence agency that hacked the DNC. So he's up to his eyeballs in the Russian collusion. And he's willing to go to Civil War to protect himself and his fellow colluders.

Just so you know where they stand.

[Rachel333]

He's having some spelling difficulties today.

Spoiler

 

[GrumpyGran]

23 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

He's having some spelling difficulties today.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

*Sigh*  Every day I wonder how much further down the loony highway he can go before he literally takes his pants off and starts running around on the South Lawn, screaming about how he "made the best planet, the most beautiful planet, something Obama wasn't able to do in eight years!"

Was this week suppose to be something week? I mean, other than what it is: Somebody-for-God's-Sake-Get-the Fucking-Phone-Away-from-Him Week?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Escalating feud, Trump blames McConnell and Ryan for upcoming ‘mess’ on debt ceiling"

Spoiler

President Trump on Thursday sought to pin blame on his party’s congressional leaders for what he predicts will be “a mess” to raise the federal government’s debt limit.

In a pair of morning tweets, Trump said he asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to include a debt-ceiling increase in a recent veterans bill.

Trump tweeted: “I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval. They … didn’t do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy — now a mess!”

...

The Trump administration has warned that Congress must raise the debt limit before the end of September to avert a fiscal crisis. Next month could produce legislative brinkmanship because the debt impasse coincides with the deadline to pass a new government spending bill.

On Tuesday, Trump threatened to shut down the government if the bill does not include funding to construct a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, one of the president’s signature campaign promises.

Trump’s Thursday tweets escalate a feud with fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill. Trump’s relationship with McConnell in particular has deteriorated in recent weeks, with the president blaming his party’s senators for failing to pass health-care legislation this summer.

Following his debt-limit missives, Trump sent another tweet about his relationship with McConnell. The New York Times reported this week that Trump complained in an angry phone call with the Senate leader about his refusal to protect the president from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But Trump insisted in his tweet that he was only upset with McConnell over health care: “The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that, after hearing Repeal & Replace for 7 years, he failed!That should NEVER have happened!”

...

President Barack Obama and Congress agreed in 2015 to suspend the debt ceiling until March 2017, and the Treasury Department has used emergency measures to delay a default. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said he will run out of options on Sept. 29, meaning that the Treasury Department could miss a payment if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling in time. Mnuchin on Monday appeared in Kentucky with McConnell, and they both assured voters that the debt ceiling would be raised. But neither said how they would pull it off.

The government spends more money than it brings in through revenue, and it borrows money to cover the difference by issuing debt. The gap between revenue and spending — known as the deficit — is expected to total more than $800 billion for the year that ends Sept. 30, a phenomenon that has been worsened because some companies and others are delaying payments in anticipation of big tax cuts.

But Treasury can only borrow money up to a limit set by Congress, and this limit is known as the debt ceiling. Failing to raise the debt ceiling could force the government to fall behind or delay some of its payments, an action that could lead to a spike in interest rates, a stock market crash and a global recession, economists have predicted.

One reason Treasury officials are worried about the late September deadline is because they have a payment scheduled for military pensions that would exceed $70 billion. As of late last week, Treasury had only $84 billion in its cash reserves. That figures rises and falls based on daily tax collection and spending requirements, but it has drawn down steadily for months. When Trump was sworn into office, Treasury had more than $350 billion in cash reserves.

Traditionally, top political figures are coached to project calm about the debt ceiling for fear of spooking investors. Trump's alarmist warning on Thursday could lead to a new concern because Mnuchin has tried to alleviate fears. Neither Mnuchin nor Trump has had to deal with the debt ceiling before, and Trump — before he was sworn in as president — ridiculed Republicans for raising the debt ceiling.

The Trump administration has struggled to deal with the debt-ceiling issue for months. Mnuchin has long called for a “clean” debt-ceiling increase, which means he wants Congress to pass it with no strings attached. But the White House Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said an increase in the debt ceiling should be tied to spending or other budget cuts, an assertion that emboldened House conservatives to drive a hard bargain in negotiations. Mulvaney eventually backed off his position, but for many on Capitol Hill, it was too late. They saw a divided White House with little leverage or focus on the issue, and time began running short.

Republicans typically resist raising the debt ceiling, and GOP leaders were expecting to rely on Democrats to supply the votes to avoid a financial panic. But Republicans have not seriously opened negotiations with Democrats on the measure, and they don't have much time in September to cut a deal.

Even though the White House and Congress have failed for months to spell out how they would raise the debt ceiling, markets had mostly shrugged it off, convinced that lawmakers would eventually reach an agreement. But that could change if investors become worried that the government risks falling behind on payments or if ratings agencies will downgrade the status of U.S. debt based on the drama.

Sadly, the TT is too concerned with picking fights to actually do work. Maybe McTurtle and Lyan will finally stop supporting TT. Eh, who am I kidding? They won't stand up to him.

[GrumpyGran]

11 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Escalating feud, Trump blames McConnell and Ryan for upcoming ‘mess’ on debt ceiling"

  Reveal hidden contents

President Trump on Thursday sought to pin blame on his party’s congressional leaders for what he predicts will be “a mess” to raise the federal government’s debt limit.

In a pair of morning tweets, Trump said he asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to include a debt-ceiling increase in a recent veterans bill.

Trump tweeted: “I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval. They … didn’t do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy — now a mess!”

...

The Trump administration has warned that Congress must raise the debt limit before the end of September to avert a fiscal crisis. Next month could produce legislative brinkmanship because the debt impasse coincides with the deadline to pass a new government spending bill.

On Tuesday, Trump threatened to shut down the government if the bill does not include funding to construct a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, one of the president’s signature campaign promises.

Trump’s Thursday tweets escalate a feud with fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill. Trump’s relationship with McConnell in particular has deteriorated in recent weeks, with the president blaming his party’s senators for failing to pass health-care legislation this summer.

Following his debt-limit missives, Trump sent another tweet about his relationship with McConnell. The New York Times reported this week that Trump complained in an angry phone call with the Senate leader about his refusal to protect the president from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But Trump insisted in his tweet that he was only upset with McConnell over health care: “The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that, after hearing Repeal & Replace for 7 years, he failed!That should NEVER have happened!”

...

President Barack Obama and Congress agreed in 2015 to suspend the debt ceiling until March 2017, and the Treasury Department has used emergency measures to delay a default. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said he will run out of options on Sept. 29, meaning that the Treasury Department could miss a payment if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling in time. Mnuchin on Monday appeared in Kentucky with McConnell, and they both assured voters that the debt ceiling would be raised. But neither said how they would pull it off.

The government spends more money than it brings in through revenue, and it borrows money to cover the difference by issuing debt. The gap between revenue and spending — known as the deficit — is expected to total more than $800 billion for the year that ends Sept. 30, a phenomenon that has been worsened because some companies and others are delaying payments in anticipation of big tax cuts.

But Treasury can only borrow money up to a limit set by Congress, and this limit is known as the debt ceiling. Failing to raise the debt ceiling could force the government to fall behind or delay some of its payments, an action that could lead to a spike in interest rates, a stock market crash and a global recession, economists have predicted.

One reason Treasury officials are worried about the late September deadline is because they have a payment scheduled for military pensions that would exceed $70 billion. As of late last week, Treasury had only $84 billion in its cash reserves. That figures rises and falls based on daily tax collection and spending requirements, but it has drawn down steadily for months. When Trump was sworn into office, Treasury had more than $350 billion in cash reserves.

Traditionally, top political figures are coached to project calm about the debt ceiling for fear of spooking investors. Trump's alarmist warning on Thursday could lead to a new concern because Mnuchin has tried to alleviate fears. Neither Mnuchin nor Trump has had to deal with the debt ceiling before, and Trump — before he was sworn in as president — ridiculed Republicans for raising the debt ceiling.

The Trump administration has struggled to deal with the debt-ceiling issue for months. Mnuchin has long called for a “clean” debt-ceiling increase, which means he wants Congress to pass it with no strings attached. But the White House Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said an increase in the debt ceiling should be tied to spending or other budget cuts, an assertion that emboldened House conservatives to drive a hard bargain in negotiations. Mulvaney eventually backed off his position, but for many on Capitol Hill, it was too late. They saw a divided White House with little leverage or focus on the issue, and time began running short.

Republicans typically resist raising the debt ceiling, and GOP leaders were expecting to rely on Democrats to supply the votes to avoid a financial panic. But Republicans have not seriously opened negotiations with Democrats on the measure, and they don't have much time in September to cut a deal.

Even though the White House and Congress have failed for months to spell out how they would raise the debt ceiling, markets had mostly shrugged it off, convinced that lawmakers would eventually reach an agreement. But that could change if investors become worried that the government risks falling behind on payments or if ratings agencies will downgrade the status of U.S. debt based on the drama.

Sadly, the TT is too concerned with picking fights to actually do work. Maybe McTurtle and Lyan will finally stop supporting TT. Eh, who am I kidding? They won't stand up to him.

When I've had three glasses of wine and go to my happy fantasy place, I imagine that they're quietly moving behind his back, setting up the necessary legislation to remove the nuclear codes from his reach, preparing to impeach him when Mueller reveals his findings and making a list of who will have to go with him.

I don't like the specter of a Pence presidency but it can't be as dangerous as this. And I'm hoping that the Repubs have crossed over the threshold with regard to deniability where Trumps views are concerned. Pence has kissed his ass too many times now. How will he be able to justify a U-turn?

[Palimpsest]

17 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I've seen many articles from reputable sources where people who have known the TT for years/decades say his speech patterns and behavior have changed in the last couple of years.

Indeed.  There is a lot of research in this area, and I've been following it off and on, mostly on, because I did an independent study for my masters many years ago on this very subject.  I was before my time and spitting in the dark (think single case study of a family member).  I did get an A!

But, as it turns out, I might have been on to something.  Loss of vocabulary is now thought to be a very early indicator of some forms of dementia.  There's some interesting research on the writings of Agatha Christie and Iris Murdoch ... and much more.

Trump seems to find it impossible to construct a sentence these days.  When he talks spontaneously it's like a bunch of unrelated phrases, repetition, and scrambled thoughts.  As for his spelling ...

I forget where I saw it (STAT, perhaps) but there is also footage of Trump 10, 15, and certainly 20 years ago, talking intelligibly if not intelligently.  (Trump has always been canny but has never shown much evidence of intelligence.)

And I don't think he's dumbing it down for his audience (as many of the analysts suggest as a CYA).

On a related tangent, just look at footage or photos of TT a mere 12 months ago and compare them to those today.  The guy looks a good 10 years older - and extraordinarily unhealthy today.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good one from the WaPo's editorial board: "What a presidential president would have said in Phoenix". The italics are what he actually said. The bold is what he SHOULD have said.

Spoiler

THERE IS a danger, as we wrote a few weeks ago, that we become inured to President Trump’s mockery of democratic norms and common decency. To stave off forgetfulness, we provide here some of Mr. Trump’s actual comments at a rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, juxtaposed with what we imagine a presidential president — a president we could be proud of — might have said:

“ You know I’d love it if the cameras could show this crowd, because it is rather incredible. It is incredible. It is incredible. As everybody here remembers, this was the scene of my first rally speech, right? The crowds were so big, almost as big as tonight, that the people said right at the beginning, you know, there’s something special happening here. And we went to center stage almost from day one in the debates. We love those debates. But we went to center stage, and we never left, right? ”

“As we begin, I just want to say on behalf of all Americans that our hearts go out to the 10 American sailors who are missing in the terrible accident involving our 7th Fleet on the other side of the world, and to their families. Our brave men and women serve far from home for months and years at a time and take grave risks every day to keep us free, and this should serve as a reminder of how much we owe them.”

“Do the people in this room like Sheriff Joe? So, was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job? That’s why . . . he should have had a jury, but you know what? I’ll make a prediction. I think he’s going to be just fine, okay?”

“And of course it would be wrong to come to your great state and not pay tribute at the very outset to your great senator, John McCain. John and I don’t always see eye to eye, but he is a patriot and an inspiration, and our hearts go out to him too as he battles brain cancer. Get well and come back soon, John.”

“You look at what just happened in Spain and so many other places. Nope. We’re really vetting. We’re tough. Does anybody want me to be soft on the vetting, or would you like ‘extreme vetting’? — I came up with that term. That’s what it has to be.”

“And finally, before we dive into politics, let’s have a moment of silence for our brave allies in Barcelona, victims of the latest cowardly terrorist attack. It was sobering to learn that the attackers in Barcelona were young men who lived and worked right there in Spain. No travel ban would have kept them away. It’s a reminder to all of us that, while we need to safeguard our borders, we also need to foster inclusion, to discourage homegrown terrorism and to encourage cooperation with law enforcement.”

“But believe me, if we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall.”

“Now, we’re coming up on a risky time. Congress has to raise the debt ceiling, or the world won’t have faith in American credit anymore, and that would be disastrous. It has to pass a budget, or the government will shut down, and that would be disastrous, too — for thousands of my hard-working employees and their families, for people who have been saving up for years to visit a national park, for older folks worried about their Social Security checks.

“So let’s not play games here. I’ve got priorities. The Democrats have priorities. I’m ready to sit down and talk and make a deal. But nobody — nobody — should ever threaten to shut down our government.”

“You have some very fair journalists. But for the most part, honestly, these are really, really dishonest people, and they’re bad people. And I really think they don’t like our country. I really believe that.”

“No president is ever happy with his press coverage, I know that. Reporters get things wrong. They’re not always fair. But you know what? They love their country, just like you and I do. We’re lucky to live in a country where you can watch CNN and Fox News and MSNBC. I recommend you listen to a lot of different points of view and then make up your own mind.”

“And yes, by the way, they are trying to take away our history and our heritage. You see that.”

“In our complicated, glorious rainbow nation, we’re going to argue about lots of things — monuments, school names, history, heritage. God bless us for that. But there are a few things we can all agree on: Hatred is unacceptable. Bigotry is unacceptable. We can be better than the sins of our past — slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans, Jim Crow — but we must never celebrate, whitewash or forget them.”

“Well, it’s obvious that we won the state of Arizona, do you agree with that? It’s pretty obvious. And we won it by a lot. And I hear we’re winning it by even more right now.”

“Well, thanks again for welcoming me back to Arizona. You know, slightly more than half of you voted against me in 2016, if you count Hillary Clinton and the third-party candidates together, but that’s okay. It doesn’t matter to me now who you voted for — I want to be the president for every Arizonan, and I’m going to work hard every day to earn your trust and make you proud.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Donald Trump’s Identity Politics"

Spoiler

In the wake of the presidential election, we’ve all been asking simplistic questions about how Donald Trump won. Was it economics? Was it racism? Was it misogyny? Did it come down to identity? We know that it can’t have been just one thing, and that President Trump’s triumph was a concoction of many things. Nonetheless, several factors came together in a peculiar way, with serious electoral consequences. Millions of white voters began to see themselves more openly not as white supremacists but as white identified.

It is no secret that the president has capitalized on the increasing salience of race and ethnicity in recent years. The furious reaction to many different historical and cultural developments — mass immigration; the success of the civil rights and women’s rights movements; the election and re-election of a black president; and the approaching end of white majority status in the United States — has created a political environment ripe for the growth of white identity politics.

Ashley Jardina, a political scientist at Duke, puts it this way: When the dominant status of whites relative to racial and ethnic minorities is secure and unchallenged, white identity likely remains dormant. When whites perceive their group’s dominant status is threatened or their group is unfairly disadvantaged, however, their racial identity may become salient and politically relevant.

White voters for whom racial identity is important include a minority faction of white supremacists, but as a whole they constitute a much broader and encompassing group. In an Aug. 16 essay for The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, Jardina wrote: The whites marching on Charlottesville were only a small segment of a much larger population for whom the politics of white identity resonates. The vast majority of white Americans who feel threatened by the country’s growing racial and ethnic diversity are not members of the KKK or neo-Nazis. They are much greater in number, and far more mainstream, than the white supremacists who protested in Virginia over the weekend.

A total of 36 percent of whites described their racial identity as either “very important” (16 percent) or “extremely important” (20 percent), according to an American National Election Studies survey in January 2016. Another 25 percent said it was “moderately important.”

Careful examination of Trump’s initial support shows the key role of white identity voters in Trump’s ascendance.

Between Jan. 22 and Jan. 28, 2016, as Trump consolidated his early support on the eve of the Republican caucuses and primaries, ANES conducted a special pre-election survey. To explore the role of white voters for whom racial identity was especially important, three political scientists — John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck — analyze the ANES data in their forthcoming book, “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America.”

The survey, they write, asked four questions that captured dimensions of white identity: the importance of white identity, how much whites are being discriminated against, the likelihood that whites are losing jobs to nonwhites, and the importance of whites working together to change laws unfair to whites. We combined those questions into a scale capturing the strength of white identity and found that it was strongly related to Republicans’ support for Donald Trump.

On the basis of that scale, the authors assembled the data illustrated by the accompanying chart, which shows that fewer than five percent of white Republicans who indicated that their racial identity was of little importance supported Trump. Among those who said their identity as whites was extremely important to them, Trump’s support reached 81 percent.

...

In a separate essay on the Post’s Monkey Cage site in March 2016, Tesler and Sides explained that both white racial identity and beliefs that whites are treated unfairly are powerful predictors of support for Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.

Once Trump secured this “white identifier” base — making him competitive in a multicandidate field — he was positioned to expand his traction among traditional Republicans, including a decisive majority of those who backed Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush.

What are the views of “white identifiers”?

According to Jardina, these voters are more likely to think that the growth of racial or ethnic groups in the United States that are not white is having a negative effect on American culture.

And they are much more likely to rank illegal immigration the most important issue facing the U.S. today, relative to the budget deficit, health care, the economy, unemployment, outsourcing of jobs to other countries, abortion, same-sex marriage, education, gun control, the environment or terrorism.

Perhaps most important, Jardina found that white identifiers are an aggrieved group. They are more likely to agree that American society owes white people a better chance in life than they currently have. And white identifiers would like many of the same benefits of identity politics that they believe other groups enjoy.

In other words, most — though by no means all — white identifiers appear to be driven as much by anger at their sense of lost status as by their animosity toward other groups, although these two feelings are clearly linked.

Tesler argued last November, after the election, that the Trump effect combined with eight years of racialized politics under President Obama, means that racial attitudes are now more closely aligned with white Americans’ partisan preferences than they have been at any time in the history of polling.

Just over a decade ago, political scientists were discounting the significance of white identity in elections.

David O. Sears, a professor of political science and psychology at U.C.L.A., wrote in 2006 that whites’ whiteness is usually likely to be no more noteworthy to them than is breathing the air around them. White group consciousness is therefore not likely to be a major force in whites’ political attitudes today.

In a 2005 paper, Cara Wong, a political scientist at the University of Illinois, and Grace E. Cho, who was a graduate student in politial science at the University of Michigan at the time, found that many whites identified with their race, but “white racial identity is not politically salient.”

Wong and Cho went on, however, to make what turned out to be a crucially important point: that since white identity is indeed unstable but easily triggered, the danger is that a demagogue could influence the salience of these identities to promote negative outgroup attitudes, link racial identification more strongly to policy preferences, and exacerbate group conflict.

John Podhoretz, in an article on the Commentary website, referred to Trump’s failure to condemn white supremacy — and anti-Semitism — on display in Charlottesville:

Our president responded by condemning violence “on many sides” and offering his “best regards” to the casualties. This was not a mistake on Trump’s part. This was a deliberate communications choice. It has a discomfiting parallel with the now-forgotten moment one week after Trump’s swearing in when his administration issued a statement on Holocaust remembrance that did not mention Jews.

Podhoretz recognizes Trump’s adamant refusal to alienate his most dogged backers: If there’s one thing politicians can feel in their marrow, even a non-pol pol like Trump, it’s who is in their base and what it is that binds the base to them and, even more important, the nucleus — the very heart of a base, the root of the root of support.

For years, Podhoretz writes, Trump operated below the radar, cultivating a constituency of “disaffected Americans entirely on the margins of American life, politically and culturally and organizationally.”

He did so, Podhoretz argues, by capitalizing on media and organizational tools disdained by the establishment: Alex Jones’s Infowars; the American Media supermarket tabloids, including The National Enquirer, Star and the Globe; the WWE professional wrestling network where “Trump intermittently served as a kind of Special Guest Villain.”

While Trump’s initial base included many on the margins of society, the larger population of white identifiers has been a growing constituency within the Republican electorate, starting in the white South after the passage under President Lyndon Johnson of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Trump, Vavreck noted in an email, was the first successful presidential candidate willing to explicitly direct his campaign toward this disaffected white electorate.

“This has been happening for a while, which is why Trump was able to leverage white identity in 2016,” she wrote. “Trump went where no other GOP primary candidate would go even though they all knew those voters were there.”

In “Identity Crisis,” Sides, Tesler and Vavreck write that Trump’s primary campaign became a vehicle for a different kind of identity politics — oriented around white Americans’ feelings of marginalization in an increasingly diverse America.

The three authors describe a rapidly “growing sense of white victimhood.” They cite surveys showing that among Republicans, the perception of discrimination against whites grew from 38 percent in 2011-12 to 47 percent in January 2016.

A February 2017 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute separately asked voters whether “there is a lot of discrimination” against various groups. 43 percent of Republicans said there is a lot of discrimination against whites, compared to 27 percent of Republicans who said that there is a lot of discrimination against blacks.

Trump, according to Sides, Tesler and Vavreck, was unusual in how he talked about race. Candidates have traditionally used implicit racial appeals to win over voters without appearing overtly prejudiced. And, as much political science research has shown, these appeals have often succeeded in activating support among voters with less favorable views of racial minorities. But Trump talked about issues related to race and ethnicity in explicit terms.

Direct and indirect references to threats to white identity continue to shape Trump’s rhetoric. In his ongoing drive to demonize the media, Trump declared during his rally in Phoenix on Tuesday that “they are trying to take away our history and our heritage.”

Shedding light on Trump’s sustained backing among his supporters, a Public Policy Polling survey conducted from Aug. 18 to Aug. 21 found that Trump’s approval rating did not diminish in the aftermath of the Charlottesville protests on Aug. 11 and 12, during which white nationalists marched wearing Nazi insignia and chanting anti-Semitic slogans. The poll reported that support for Trump held firm probably because his supporters think that whites and Christians are the most oppressed groups of people in the country.

Trump has mobilized the white identity electorate, and in doing so has put the tenuous American commitment to racial and ethnic egalitarianism on the line. And Trump has been captured by the success of his own demagoguery. He surged ahead of his Republican competitors for the nomination when he threw matches on the kindling and now, under siege, his only strategy for survival is to pour gasoline on the flames.

No one doubts that it has been unsettling for many Americans to adapt to an increasingly interconnected world. Still, history has not been kind to those who have unequivocally yielded to racial grievance — to our local agitators, the David Dukes and the Father Coughlins, as well as to the even more poisonous propagators of racial hatred overseas. As Trump abandons his campaign promises to end endless war, to provide “beautiful” health care, to protect Medicaid, to restore American industry, jobs and mines, to make Mexico pay for a border wall, he has kept his partially veiled promise to focus on white racial essentialism, to make race divisive again. He has gone where other politicians dared not venture and he has taken the Republican Party with him.

This is a very thoughtful piece.