Trump 36: We Shall Overcome

[thoughtful]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Help me out here guys, is it...

to chand, chand, chanded, or 

to chand, chund, chund?

 

 

I believe that chanding is something Trump does to his covfefe.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Howl]

The area around the White House is probably bristling with antennas and guys in black sedans from a variety of countries have set up mobile listening posts. At least somebody now knows if Trump or Hannity hangs up first. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[FloraKitty35]

[FloraKitty35]

Here's Doonesbury's Roland Hedley about Trump:

 

[fraurosena]

Presiduncial fear-mongering at its worst.

 

This podcast is so good. It obliterates the fear-mongering arguments and points to the real problem that the administration wants you to forget about.

 

[Drala]

19 hours ago, mango_fandango said:

Trump: “We must come together in peace and harmony”

With you as President? Please. It’s YOU who’s causing this shit. If this was happening to Republicans they would be frothing at the mouth. 

Bullsh*t.  I will never make peace with racists, never be in harmony with authoritarian nationalists.  

[GreyhoundFan]

Um, does Dumpy think Obama is supposed to be pumping gas or working at a grocery store? I love the first comment in the thread:

[GreyhoundFan]

There are so many awful things going on and the whole unsecured phone issue is not funny, but this response made me giggle:

 

[fraurosena]

Evidence of stable genius.

Donald Trump has written a scathing tweet downplaying his phone usage … which he sent on an iPhone

Quote

WE all know Donald Trump loves a good Twitter rant against the “fake news” media.

But this one may have backfired.

Last night, the President of the United States fired off a tweet in response to a New York Times story about his reckless mobile phone use, which has reportedly allowed officials in China and Russia to listen to his phone calls. He said the story was “sooo wrong”, noting he only has a single government-issued phone that is “seldom used”.

But the tweet itself was sent from the Twitter app for the iPhone.

Twitter itself doesn’t let you know from which device a tweet was sent, but the scheduling app TweetDeck sure does:

It doesn’t necessarily mean the President sent the tweet himself, as his aides have access to his Twitter account and occasionally do post on his behalf.

Still, you’ve got to love the irony.

Taking a page from the US president’s own playbook, China on Thursday denounced the Times report that it is listening to Donald Trump’s phone calls as “fake news,” and suggested he exchange his iPhone for a cellphone made by Chinese manufacturer Huawei.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying did not provide any evidence or cite any specifics in her dismissal of the report in The New York Times. China tightly censors domestic media and routinely rejects critical foreign media reporting about the ruling Communist Party as biased or fabricated. Ms Hua told reporters that the journalists behind the report “are sparing no efforts to win the Academy Award for best screenplay”.

“Firstly, The New York Times should know that such report just provides another piece of evidence that the NYT is making fake news,” Ms Hua said at a daily news briefing. In accusing the newspaper of fabricating news, Hua used language similar to Mr Trump’s, who has often accused the “failing” New York Times of fabricating stories.

“Secondly, I suggest they replace their iPhone with Huawei ones if they are really concerned about security issues,” Ms Hua said.

A 2012 report by a congressional panel said Huawei’s equipment was a security risk.

If the US is still concerned about security, Mr Trump could “abandon all modern communication devices and cut off contact with the outside completely,” Ms Hua said.

The Times reported that American intelligence reports said Chinese and Russian spies are listening in when Mr Trump calls friends on one of his iPhones and is using the information to try to influence him and impact administration policy. China has long been accused of efforts to target U.S. government, military and commercial entities with cyberattacks.

In 2015, a massive hack of the federal Office of Personnel Management, widely blamed on China’s government, compromised personal information of more than 21 million current, former and prospective federal employees, including those in the Pentagon.

[fraurosena]

Awww, poor presidunce misses his bots...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘I could really tone it up’: Trump shows little interest in uniting the nation during crises"

Spoiler

President Trump began his first public appearance after Friday’s arrest of a mail bomb suspect on a seemingly inclusive note, declaring as he read a script from teleprompters that “we must never allow political violence to take root in America” and pledging to “stop it and stop it now.”

But then he kept going. 

Standing in the White House’s ornate East Wing, the president expressed annoyance that at least 13 bombs sent to Democrats and a news organization that Trump had long demonized had taken the spotlight from his Medicare drug prices announcement the day before. He told the black audience he was addressing that the Democratic Party has betrayed them. He laughed along as some in the crowd chanted “Fake News!” And he echoed a chant of “Lock him up!” about liberal philanthropist George Soros, one of this week’s bomb targets.

Ten days before the Nov. 6 elections and facing a host of controversies and crises, Trump has not merely struggled to unify the country — he has shown little interest in trying. Time and again, the former reality television impresario has sought to sow discord, betting that most Americans prefer his pugilistic, divisive style over the sanitized mold of his predecessors.

The midterm elections are increasingly becoming a test of the enduring power of Trumpiness: A brand of anything-goes, combative politics focused on personal attacks and demagogic rhetoric, with little consideration for the presidential tradition of providing moral clarity and unity at moments of tragedy or danger. 

“These are the times when words really matter,” said historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of a new book on the subject, “Leadership: In Turbulent Times.”

Throughout history, Goodwin explained, “There are moments when the president’s ambition for self becomes an ambition for the greater good, to become a leader rather than simply a holder of power. The president is in a unique position during moments of crisis for the nation to mobilize the people around common ideals that should bind us together.”

This week offered a fresh example of Trump’s alternate approach: As pipe bombs were discovered addressed to prominent Democrats and a news network that have been subjects of Trump’s caustic campaign-trail attacks, the president sounded a call for national unity. 

But the words rang hollow throughout the week as Trump assailed the “Fake News” media, shirked any personal responsibility for his incendiary rhetoric and, on Friday morning, used his bully pulpit to advance a baseless conspiracy theory that the bombs were both fake and orchestrated by the left. Roughly an hour later, authorities arrested 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc, a man in Florida with a lengthy criminal record whose white van was covered in pro-Trump and anti-Democratic images. 

Later Friday afternoon, as he departed Washington for a rally in Charlotte, Trump told reporters he has no plans to tone down his rhetoric — “I could really tone it up,” he said — and noted that the suspect “was a person that preferred me over others.” He also rejected the notion of responsibility: “There’s no blame. There’s no anything.”

His supporters often argue there is no clear connection between the president’s impolitic remarks and violent acts or threats. In the case of the pipe bombs, which his own FBI director said were “not hoax devices,” many Trump backers emphasized Friday that no one had been injured.

Over the past two months, Trump has faced down a series of challenges in which he has overtly and deliberately tossed aside the expected responsibilities associated with his office. 

During Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s rocky confirmation to the Supreme Court, Trump publicly mocked Christine Blasey Ford, who had accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were both teenagers; he said later in a “60 Minutes” interview that his treatment of her did not matter because “we won.” Then, as news emerged that Saudi Arabia had orchestrated a premeditated killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, the president was muted in his criticism of the Middle Eastern country, reluctant to disrupt the strategic ties — including an arms deal — between the two nations.

Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the midterms, too, has centered on his and his advisers’ strategic decision to paint an apocalyptic portrait of the country under Democratic rule, a vision fueled by a potent mixture of falsehoods and fear. 

With many in the Republican Party following his lead, the president has repeatedly cast Democrats as an out-of control “angry mob” that is “too dangerous to govern.” Last week, with no evidence, he claimed that unknown “Middle Easterners” had infiltrated the caravans of Central American migrants snaking their way north toward the nation’s southern border, before ultimately admitting he had “no proof” for the claim. 

And on Thursday, news broke that the administration is weighing a plan that would seek to close the U.S. border to Central Americans entirely and deny them the chance to seek asylum. 

More recently, after frequent targets of Trump’s criticism became the actual targets of the attempted pipe bombs — including former president Barack Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), former attorney general Eric Holder and CNN — the president decried “the threat of violence as a method of political intimidation, coercion or control.”

But Trump has disputed that he contributes to a divisive political climate and has continued his attacks, calling the media “so bad and hateful that it is beyond description.” 

Former CIA director John O. Brennan, the addressed target of an explosive mailed to CNN’s New York headquarters, chastised Trump and urged him to “stop blaming others.”

“Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful,” Brennan wrote in a Thursday tweet. “Clean up your act . . . try to act Presidential. The American people deserve much better.” 

Responding to Brennan’s criticism on Fox News, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders defended her boss. “The president, I think, could not have been more presidential yesterday when he spoke directly to the American people,” she said Thursday.

Yet at 3:14 a.m. Friday morning, the president singled out CNN’s coverage in a tweet, saying the network was “blaming me for the current spate of Bombs . . . yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, ‘it’s just not Presidential!’”

For several days, some prominent Trump allies on the right, including talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, fanned a “false-flag” conspiracy theory that the bombs were not real and directed by liberals as a way to reverse Trump’s campaign-trail argument that Democrats are “the party of mobs” and show that conservatives, too, favor mob tactics.

Later Friday morning, Trump edged toward an endorsement of that theory. “Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this ‘Bomb’ stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows,” the president tweeted.

The president’s approach of playing to his base by sowing division and fear stands in marked contrast with his modern predecessors, both Democratic and Republican. 

Cody Keenan, a former chief White House speechwriter for Obama, said Obama and his aides recognized that providing a moral vision to the nation at times of trauma or division was one of the most important jobs of being president and they took it seriously.

“There is no room for ‘but this’ or ‘but that,’” said Keenan, who helped Obama pen many of his soaring speeches during moments of national crisis, including numerous mass shootings. “If a president doesn’t come out and say, ‘This is right,’ and, ‘That is wrong,’ they’re missing an opportunity to provide moral clarity for a country often in search of it.”

 Trump has at times shown a willingness to claim the moral high ground. Last year, for instance, after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, Trump authorized the use of nearly five dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles against Syrian targets.

Aides said the president was especially moved by the images of young Syrian children who had been wounded and killed in Assad’s attacks. The U.S. strikes also allowed Trump to portray himself as stronger and more decisive than Obama, who had set a “red line” for Syria but never followed through on his threat.

In a least one high profile moment — the deadly violence last year at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville — Trump wavered. After coming under criticism for blaming the violence on “both sides,” Trump gave a speech condemned racist hate groups as “repugnant to all that we hold dear as Americans.” But he almost immediately told aides that his lofty remarks were among his biggest mistakes, describing it as the “worst speech I’ve ever given,” according to Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear.”

“It’s very hard to think of a president in American history who has been as aggressively divisive as this one and who has shown essentially no moral leadership,” said James K. Glassman, a former ambassador and undersecretary of state who is the founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute. “Presidents set the tone, and certainly you can’t say President Trump is responsible for somebody sending bombs to Democratic leaders across the country, but there is a climate in this country that’s being encouraged by the president.”

Trump has long exhibited disinterest in expected norms of the presidency, arguing that his freewheeling style is more exciting.

“It’s so easy to be presidential, but instead of having 10,000 people outside trying to get into this packed arena, we’d have about 200 people,” Trump said during a recent campaign rally in Wheeling, W.Va., exaggerating the size of the crowd.

Then, he held up a sheet of paper and began impersonating his version of a more conventional commander in chief, rattling off a list of buzzwords — “ladies and gentlemen,” “great Americans,” and “thousand points of light.”

“Which,” Trump said, continuing to ad-lib, “nobody has really figured out.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[47of74]

Bullsh*t.  I will never make peace with racists, never be in harmony with authoritarian nationalists.  

 

Yeah he can fuck himself. I’m not one of those tolerant understanding types who sits and breaks bread with racist fucksticks.

[47of74]

Fuck face was in such a hurry to go to his Nazi Bund Meeting Rally in Indianapolis that he couldn't take the time to close his umbrella;

 

[fraurosena]

Package bombs? Not anybody's fault. Certainly not mine! 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

5 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Package bombs? Not anybody's fault. Certainly not mine! 

Boy, Dumpy is confused. "crazed and stumbling" is how most people describe HIM, not Steyer.

[onekidanddone]

 

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Package bombs? Not anybody's fault. Certainly not mine! 

 

Says the man who can't even close an umbrella 

[47of74]

And fuck head can barely be bothered to do any actual work;

Quote

President Donald Trump had about three times as much free time planned for last Tuesday as work time, according to his private schedule. The president was slated for more than nine hours of “Executive Time,” a euphemism for the unstructured time Trump spends tweeting, phoning friends and watching television. Official meetings, policy briefings and public appearances — traditionally the daily work of being president — consumed just over three hours of his day.

The president was slated to spend 30 minutes on the phone with CEOs and make brief remarks at a state leadership conference. He was briefed by senior military leaders in the evening and joined them for dinner. Apart from an 11:30 a.m. meeting with White House chief of staff John Kelly — his first commitment of the day — the rest of his day consisted of open time, some in blocks as long as 2 hours and 45 minutes.

A review of a week’s worth of the president’s private detailed schedules, from Monday Oct. 22 through Friday Oct. 26, showed that the president enjoyed more free time on Tuesday than on any other day that week, but Tuesday’s agenda was hardly atypical. And while the notion of Executive Time, and the president’s increasingly late start to the day, has come under scrutiny over the last year, this new batch of schedules obtained by POLITICO offers fresh insight into the extent to which that unscheduled time dominates Trump’s week and is shaping his presidency, allowing his whims and momentary interests to drive White House business.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"How Trump and Republicans wield the politics of victimhood"

Spoiler

For many years, conservatives mocked liberals for what they described as a politics of victimhood, one in which the left supposedly centered its politics on a series of grievances it claimed must be addressed. Quit whining and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, conservatives said; if you’ve got it bad, the fault lies with no one but yourself.

But somewhere along the way, the right realized that claiming the status of victim, whether earned or not, can be extremely powerful. In the age of Trump, the politics of conservative victimhood has reached new heights. And as usual, it comes right from the top.

After bombs were sent to a dozen people President Trump had attacked, he quickly identified the person really being threatened. “Come to think of it, who gets attacked more than me?” he asked at a White House political event just after reading some words about unity that were obviously written by others and about which he couldn’t have cared less.

And after 11 people were gunned down in a Pittsburgh synagogue, reportedly by a white supremacist who believed George Soros is bringing a caravan of migrants to invade the United States — the conspiracy theory propagated in various versions by Trump and others on the right — Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway homed in on the best way to understand what had happened:

The anti-religiosity in this country, that it’s somehow in vogue and funny to make fun of anybody of faith, to constantly be making fun of people who express religion, the late-night comedians, the unfunny people on TV shows, it’s always anti-religious. And remember, these people were gunned down in their place of worship, as were the people in South Carolina several years ago. And they were there because they’re people of faith and it’s that faith that needs to bring us together. This is no time to be driving God out of the public square.

The victims in Pittsburgh weren’t murdered because they were “people of faith”; they were murdered because they were Jews. And the nine people murdered at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 weren’t murdered because they were “people of faith”; they were murdered because they were black.

So what’s the point of the pivot toward the supposed oppression of religious people? It’s obvious: Putting it in those terms says to the deeply religious white Christians who make up such a key part of Trump’s base that they are the real victims here, or at least joined to these events by their profound and ongoing victimization.

The truth is that victimhood does afford one a certain moral status that can be politically powerful. If we accept that an actual wrong has been done and you are the victim of that wrong, that means you have a legitimate claim not only to redress but also to hold the perpetrator accountable.

Which is why it’s such a common retort to say “You’re not the real victim, I’m the real victim.” The problem isn’t racism, it’s white people being unfairly accused of racism. The problem isn’t sexual harassment and assault, it’s the fear felt by men unsure what will happen to them if they’re too flirty with their employees. The problem isn’t hate speech, it’s “political correctness” that keeps me from saying whatever I want. The problem isn’t what Brett M. Kavanaugh did to Christine Blasey Ford, it’s the fact that Kavanaugh had to endure listening to his accusers and all he got was a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.

No presidential candidate ever validated and nurtured the right’s fantasies of victimhood like Donald Trump did. He said to conservative Christians: Yes, you are the real oppressed minority (even if you’re the majority). When you walk into a department store and see a sign that says “Happy Holidays,” you have suffered a terrible injustice by not being able to force everyone to acknowledge your religious holiday to the exclusion of all others. Only I will allow you to say “Merry Christmas” again, even if nobody ever stopped you from saying it in the first place. When antidiscrimination laws are passed and you have to allow gay people to patronize your business, you’ve been wounded and the laws must be changed to undo what you have endured.

This is what they had been telling themselves for years, and when Trump repeated it back to them, they were thrilled. He also understood a different kind of victimhood that lay at the intersection of race and class. Those working-class white voters who were so drawn to him? Nothing made them madder than when they looked around their communities and saw nothing but low-wage jobs with meager benefits, underfunded schools and the opioid crisis running wild — and then heard someone say that whiteness confers on them privileges people of color don’t enjoy. Trump validated them on both counts, telling them that they’ve been victimized by a “rigged” system and that foreigners and minorities get all the breaks.

The idea of conservatives being the real victims in any situation is difficult to maintain when they control all the levers of power. But actual facts play only the slightest role in the construction of this narrative. If you believe that Trump — a man born into wealth who spent a lifetime lying, cheating and staying one step ahead of the law — is a victim, then you’ll believe just about anything.

 

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus. To stop the 'invasion'...

U. S. will deploy 5,200 additional troops to the Mexican border, officials say

Quote

Senior U.S. officials said Monday that some 5,200 additional U.S. troops will deploy to the border with Mexico by the end of the week, as President Trump likened a caravan of Central American migrants who are heading north to “an invasion.”

The deployments, occurring under an operation known as Faithful Patriot, already are underway, said Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the chief of U.S. Northern Command. He said the military, working alongside U.S. Customs and Border Protection, will focus first on hardening the border in Texas, followed by Arizona and California.

The deployments will include three combat engineer battalions, members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and troops who specialize in aviation, medical treatment and logistics, O’Shaughnessy said. He highlighted the deployment of helicopters, which will have night-vision capabilities and sensors. 

“We’ll be able to spot and identify groups and rapidly deploy CBP personnel where they are needed,” he said.

O’Shaughnessy said the Pentagon also will deploy military police units and cargo aircraft, including three C-130s and one C-17. Combined command posts will be established to integrate U.S. military and CBP efforts.

“As we sit right here today, we have about 800 soldiers who are on their way to Texas right now,” the general said. “They’re coming from Fort Campbell. They’re coming from Fort Knox. They’re moving closer to the border. They’re going to continue their training, and they’re ready to deploy to actually be employed on the border.”

The Pentagon already has sent 22 miles of concertina wire to the border, and has enough additional wire to cover 150 miles, he said.

The deployments thrust the military further into a political fight in which the president increasingly has sought to cast the migrants as a national security threat in the days leading up to the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Earlier Monday, Trump tweeted accusations about the caravan without citing any evidence.

“Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border,” Trump said. “Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!”

The White House has shown confidence that Trump’s hard-line enforcement message will continue to drive his conservative base to the polls and even draw some crossover appeal among more-moderate voters. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the administration is considering several administrative actions on the southern border, though she declined to describe the options publicly. Trump will do what “he deems necessary” on immigration, Sanders said. 

The Pentagon said last week that media reports that 800 to 1,000 U.S. active-duty troops could deploy to the border were inaccurate. As it turns out, the numbers marked the initial wave of an even larger deployment, first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Monday morning.

Immigrant rights groups have accused Trump of demagoguery on the issue by inflating the size and security threat posed by the migrants, made up largely of families, including children.

The White House has put significant pressure on the government of Mexico to block the caravan’s advance. The group has diminished from a peak of nearly 7,000 migrants, as some footsore travelers and parents with children have dropped out or fallen behind. At least 1,000 caravan members have applied for asylum in Mexico, authorities say.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Friday offered temporary work permits, medical care and other benefits to migrants if they agree to register with authorities and remain in the Mexican states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, far from the U.S. border. But the core group of mostly Honduran migrants, which authorities estimate at 3,000 to 4,000, has rejected his entreaty and continued heading north toward the U.S. border.

The caravan remains at least 900 miles from U.S. territory, so its arrival is not imminent.

In an attempt to limit the caravan’s size, Mexican police clashed Sunday with a smaller, separate group of Central Americans attempting to enter from Guatemala and catch up to the main group. At least one man was killed as police fired rubber bullets and tear gas.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Sunday that he was finalizing details of the rules under which American troops deploying to the border would operate. Mattis said he would make certain that whatever materiel was needed would get to the border, noting that what the military will be providing includes construction items such as Jersey barriers. He said that his staff had been meeting in recent days to determine how many personnel would go but that the deployment would be “phased.”

“On the border, we are preparing what we call defense support for civilian authorities,” Mattis said.

So they're sending 5200 additional troops to the border to stop the invasion of 3000 to 4000 asylum seekers. 

What a way to spend taxpayer money.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s hate and lies are inciting extremists. Just ask the analyst who warned us."

Spoiler

President Trump and Republicans are lashing out at the notion that they bear primary responsibility for the climate of rage and hate that has consumed our politics, now that a man has allegedly gunned down 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, after expressing hate-filled diatribes against Jews for helping settle refugees in the United States, people he referred to as “invaders.”

On Twitter, Trump raged that the “division and hatred” that have been unleashed are the fault of the “Fake News,” which is “doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me,” and repeated that news organizations are the “true Enemy of the People.”

Meanwhile, multiple prominent Republicans are rejecting the idea that Trump’s daily hate and vitriol represent a uniquely toxic threat to the country. They insist Trump isn’t to blame for the Pittsburgh carnage, or for the spate of bombing attempts aimed at Democrats and the media launched by a Florida man with a van festooned in adoring Trump stickers. 

But Trump has adopted a closing midterm argument that has employed all kinds of disgusting lies to hype the Central American migrants as a national emergency, which he has suggested is the work of “corrupt, power-hungry globalists.” He has claimed George Soros is bankrolling Democratic mobs, and numerous Republicans have suggested Soros is behind the migrant exodus.

I spoke to Daryl Johnson, the former Department of Homeland Security analyst who created a big stir when he authored a leaked report in 2009 warning of a rise in right-wing extremist activity. Conservatives reacted with outrage, and the Obama administration decided it needed to do damage control. But Johnson was onto something, and he has since launched a consulting company that studies domestic extremism and advises law enforcement about it.

An edited and condensed version of our conversation follows.

THE PLUM LINE: Your 2009 report talked about the rise in right-wing extremism as a reaction to Barack Obama’s election and the financial crash. What are the ingredients now?

DARYL JOHNSON: We’ve had almost eight years of far-right groups recruiting, radicalizing and growing in strength. Typically during Republican administrations we see a decrease in activity. But under this administration they continue to operate at a heightened level. One reason why is the rhetoric coming from Donald Trump.

Building a border wall, deporting immigrants, a travel ban on Muslim countries — these are themes discussed on white-nationalist message boards and websites for years, now being endorsed and talked about at the highest levels of the government. He’s retweeted messages about Muslims from conspiracy sites. What keeps these groups energized and active is the fact that the administration has mainstreamed their message and tried to put it forth as policy.

PLUM LINE: Why do these groups usually go into decline during other Republican administrations?

JOHNSON: Militias and anti-government groups get energized under a Democrat because of fear of gun control; the hate groups get active because of liberal Democratic policies extending rights to immigrants, gays, and minorities. During Republican administrations the fear and paranoia get dialed back because they feel the administrations are not going to repeal gun rights or extend rights to minority groups.

PLUM LINE: This is different.

JOHNSON: Yup. Because of the viciousness of the rhetoric painting Democrats as evil and corrupt. And the different themes that resonate with extremists.

PLUM LINE: How does the Pittsburgh shooting fit into all of this?

JOHNSON: The conservative media has echoed the president … about how Democrats are contributing to this migrant exodus coming up from Central America. There’s a conspiracy theory that the Jews are controlling that. There’s been a mainstreaming of the extremist narratives. Things that were once on the outer fringes are now being brought to the forefront by Trump.

PLUM LINE: In the 2014 midterms, you did see race-baiting and anti-immigrant messaging from Republicans. But it seems different now, with the Soros angle. Trump has added explicit white-nationalist messaging to it.

JOHNSON: Soros is funding the Democrats and he’s basically in control of all of these things that they attribute to the evil Democrats.

PLUM LINE: The pushback has been “Trump isn’t really an anti-Semite.” But the whole depiction of a globalist plot to manipulate these dark hordes to infest and weaken the “real” people — that is white-nationalist ideology, right? He doesn’t have to be overtly anti-Semitic.

JOHNSON: No. When he says those things, he’s planting the idea, and those who are conspiracy-minded will attribute it to the Jews. He doesn’t have to come out and say it. It’s understood. If you’re a white nationalist, you hear “globalism,” you hear “new world order” and the “Jewish conspiracy to control the world.”

PLUM LINE: Having him do this is what emboldens these groups?

JOHNSON: Yeah, and those who are mentally ill and on the cusp of violence hear this type of rhetoric and it gets them thinking, “Hey, I’ve got to do something about this. I’ve got to retaliate.” That’s when you get people start mailing the mail bombs and shooting Jews.

PLUM LINE: Is Trump’s “many sides” comment also the language of white nationalism?

JOHNSON: It sends a message to the white nationalists that, “Hey, I’ve got your back, I’m gonna deflect the blame from you on to other people.” It doesn’t deter the violence. It actually encourages future violence, by not calling it out for what it was and who instigated it.

PLUM LINE: When Republicans echo the Soros messaging, or when Republicans don’t do enough to call out Trump’s white nationalist dog-whistling, what impact does that have?

JOHNSON: When no one says, “that’s not how we feel as a political party,” that in a sense endorses it through silence. By not condemning or challenging the rhetoric of the president, you’re in a sense giving him a green light to continue making those statements. That mainstreams the message.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump Persuaded Struggling People to Invest in Scams, Lawsuit Says"

Spoiler

A new lawsuit accuses President Trump, his company and three of his children of using the Trump name to entice vulnerable people to invest in sham business opportunities.

Filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, the lawsuit comes just days before the midterm elections, raising questions about whether its timing is politically motivated. It is being underwritten by a nonprofit whose chairman has been a donor to Democratic candidates.

The allegations take aim at the heart of Mr. Trump’s personal narrative that he is a successful deal-maker who built a durable business, charging he and his family lent their name to a series of scams.

The 160-page complaint alleges that Mr. Trump and his family received secret payments from three business entities in exchange for promoting them as legitimate opportunities, when in reality they were get-rich-quick schemes that harmed investors, many of whom were unsophisticated and struggling financially.

Those business entities were ACN, a telecommunications marketing company that paid Mr. Trump millions of dollars to endorse its products; the Trump Network, a vitamin marketing enterprise; and the Trump Institute, which the suit said offered “extravagantly priced multiday training seminars” on Mr. Trump’s real estate “secrets.”

The four plaintiffs, who were identified only with pseudonyms like Jane Doe, depict the Trump Organization as a racketeering enterprise that defrauded thousands of people for years as the president turned from construction to licensing his name for profit. The suit also names Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump as defendants.

A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Garten, said the allegations were completely meritless and relate to events that happened a decade ago. “This is clearly just another effort by opponents of the President to use the court system to advance a political agenda,” the spokesman said. He noted the plaintiffs’ lawyers have longstanding and deep ties to the Democratic Party and waited to file until just before the election. “Their motivations are as plain as day.”

A White House spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The suit is not the first to accuse Mr. Trump of fraud. Shortly after his election in November 2016, he agreed to pay $25 million to settle a series of lawsuits, including one by New York State’s attorney general, that alleged unscrupulous practices by Trump University, another venture that claimed to sell access to his real estate secrets. Mr. Trump settled without acknowledging fault or liability, his lawyer said at the time.

And in June, the New York attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation, claiming the charity had engaged in self-dealing and other violations. The foundation’s lawyers called the suit a political attack.

But the new suit alleges “a pattern of racketeering activity” involving three other organizations. Roberta A. Kaplan and Andrew G. Celli Jr., two lawyers for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that they were not aware of “any prior case against the Trumps alleging consumer fraud on this scale.”

“This case connects the dots at the Trump Organization and involves systematic fraud that spanned more than a decade, involved multiple Trump businesses and caused tremendous harm to thousands of hardworking Americans,” the statement said.

Asked about the suit’s timing, Ms. Kaplan and Mr. Celli said their firms — Kaplan, Hecker & Fink and Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady — had conducted a lengthy investigation and the plaintiffs were eager to file. “The case is being brought now because it is ready now,” the lawyers said.

The lawyers said a nonprofit organization, the Tesseract Research Center, was funding the lawsuit by paying attorney’s fees and costs.

Morris Pearl, the Democratic donor who is the nonprofit’s chairman, said in a statement that his organization hoped to draw attention to the challenges faced by people who sustain losses but cannot seek redress through the courts “ because of the extreme wealth and power on the other side.”

The lawyers said they were asking the court to allow the plaintiffs to proceed using pseudonyms because of “serious and legitimate security concerns given the heated political environment.” The lawyers also declined to make their clients available for interviews.

The four plaintiffs each invested in ACN after watching promotional videos featuring Mr. Trump.

According to the lawsuit, ACN required investors to pay $499 to sign up to sell its products, like a videophone and other services, with the promise of additional profits if they recruited others to join.

Mr. Trump described the phone in an ACN news release as “amazing” but failed to disclose he was being “paid lavishly for his endorsement,” the suit says.

One plaintiff, a hospice worker from California identified as “Jane Doe,” decided to join ACN in 2014 after attending a recruitment meeting at a Los Angeles hotel where she listened to speakers and watched Mr. Trump on video extol the investment opportunity.

For her, the video was the “turning point,” the lawsuit said.

“Doe believed that Trump had her best interests at heart,” the suit said.

Jane Doe then signed up for a larger ACN meeting in Palm Springs, Calif., which cost almost $1,500, and she later spent thousands more traveling to conventions in Cleveland and Detroit, according to the suit.

In the end, she earned $38 — the only income she would ever receive from the company, the suit said.