Trump 38: Donald Trump and the Wall of Lies

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Trump-Pelosi war just intensified. We’re in for two years of crisis."

Spoiler

There are a few things common to all presidents, whichever party they come from. They all think they get unfair media coverage. They all feel like prisoners of the White House and wish they could just go for a walk by themselves or head down to the corner bar. And they all chafe at the constraints on their power, the fact that despite occupying what appears to be the most powerful office in the world, there are all kinds of forces, institutions and people they can’t control and that limit their ability to do what they want.

Few presidents have felt those constraints more acutely than Donald Trump, who spent his professional life leading a private company (with no board of directors watching over him), who plainly views rules and laws as something only little people have to worry about, and who knew almost nothing about how government actually works before taking the job. The idea that some lowly member of Congress can tell him what he can or can’t do is positively infuriating to him. Knowing this, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently asked him to delay the State of the Union address until the government shutdown has been resolved; as we all learned, without Congress’s permission, the president can’t give the speech.

And of all the things to keep him from doing, this is among the most painful. At no other moment will Trump have the entire country’s eyes trained on him, with an hour or more to say what he likes and bask in the pomp of the ceremony and the adulation of his servile party. So this will not stand:

President Trump said Wednesday that he is pressing ahead with plans to deliver his State of the Union address at the Capitol next week, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s request that he postpone the speech amid the partial government shutdown.

In a letter to Pelosi, Trump dismissed the California Democrat’s concerns about security due to the shutdown.

“It would be so very sad for our country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!” he said.

It was unclear how Trump would address lawmakers Jan. 29 as the House and Senate must pass a concurrent resolution for a joint session of Congress to hear the president.

Pelosi just responded with a terse letter of her own, telling him in no uncertain terms that the speech will not go forward until he agrees to end the government shutdown:

“I am writing to inform you that the House of Representatives will not consider a concurrent resolution authorizing the President’s State of the Union address in the House Chamber until government has opened,” Pelosi wrote to Trump. “Again, I look forward to welcoming you to the House on a mutually agreeable date for this address when government has been opened.”

One imagines a dramatic scene as Trump arrives at the House and is told that the speaker is not granting him permission to deliver his address. What happens then? Will he push past everyone (though presumably only Republicans will have shown up), climb up on the dais and start talking? Among other things, Pelosi controls the microphones and the TV cameras, so there wouldn’t be much point.

So what is he actually up to? I’d refer you to this excellent article in Tuesday’s Post from Damian Paletta and Josh Dawsey, which describes how throughout his career Trump has employed a particular mode of negotiation: “He creates — or threatens to create — a calamity, and then insists he will address the problem only if his adversary capitulates to a separate demand.”

That is precisely what is happening with the shutdown right now. Trump created the calamity, then demanded his wall to bring it to an end. In return, he offered a temporary reprieve for “dreamers” — the very ones whose future he put in jeopardy when he tried to cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. It’s like me stealing your car, then saying if you give me a bunch of money, I’ll give it back to you, but only temporarily.

It’s much like how Trump used to deal with vendors and contractors as a builder: Order the work, then when it’s done, refuse to pay for it and eventually offer them some fraction of what he had agreed to pay in the first place. They often gave in because they were small-business owners who couldn’t match his legal resources and needed the money they were owed.

The State of the Union address is of far less practical consequence than the shutdown, but Trump is being driven by the same impulses. Except Pelosi turned things around on him, exercising her own power to deprive him of something he wanted. You can argue that Pelosi was being petty, though we contend that given the magnitude of the shutdown crisis it was perfectly appropriate for the SOTU to be delayed until the government reopens. But either way, it was utterly intolerable for him.

Trump has an evident need to dominate everyone around him, not just to get what he wants but to show that he’s the big man, the one who deserves everyone’s attention and regard. The flip side is that those in his favor must be almost comically obsequious (as his staff and Cabinet have learned), and those he opposes must be not just beaten but humiliated. (“Who’s going to pay for the wall? Mexico!”) Becoming president has not dimmed that need at all; if anything, he feels it more urgently than ever.

When Pelosi poked him in the way she did, he had to reassert his dominance, to make sure everyone knows that he's the one who decides if the State of the Union happens, not her. The trouble is that in this case, she does get to decide. Given what we know about her, it's unlikely that the threat to just show up is going to make her back down.

I’ve argued that for all his self-regard Trump is actually a dreadful negotiator, but this episode shows that it goes further than just being bad at getting what he wants. A negotiation with Trump might not just fail, it can turn into a catastrophe. We’ve already suffered through a few of them, and in the next two years, with Democrats running the House and the special counsel breathing down his neck, Trump will feel more and more constrained. In response, he’s likely to create more crises and more chaos, in the hope that he can emerge from it all on top.

 

[AnywhereButHere]

Oh look, Someone blinked. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/whitehouse/its-off-pelosi-says-no-state-of-union-while-govt-shut/2019/01/23/79a982b2-1f6b-11e9-a759-2b8541bbbe20_story.html

Quote

— President Donald Trump said Wednesday night he is postponing his State of the Union address until the partial government shutdown ends, yielding after a weeklong showdown with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Following a high-stakes game of dare and double-dare, Trump conceded that “no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House Chamber” and that he was not looking for an alternate option after Pelosi served notice earlier Wednesday that he won’t be allowed to deliver the address to a joint session of Congress next week.

I shudder to think of the rage Tweets to come.

[Dandruff]

1 hour ago, AnywhereButHere said:

I shudder to think of the rage Tweets to come.

And maybe a game of "I've Got a Secret"?

[fraurosena]

When the presidunce has a shovel, he just has to keep digging that hole for himself deeper and deeper, doesn't he. Here he goes again with the witness-tampering. The man just can't help himself.

The House committees will be thankful though. More ammo for an impeachment.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The president is the paralyzer-in-chief. He must be stopped."

Spoiler

This must be the last shutdown, ever. No president or group of politicians should be able to wreck government and inflict suffering on its employees as a form of brute force to get their way.

Any deal to end this nonsense must therefore include a measure akin to the no-more-shutdowns proposal from Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) disarming those who so disrespect government that they’re willing to throw the country into chaos.

It also means that continuing to resist President Trump’s intransigence is not a radical position. It is the moderate position.

There is longing for “moderates” of one kind or another to come up with a solution to this crisis. Yet what’s more moderate than saying that everything related to border security should be on the table for negotiation, but in a considered, thoughtful way? A border wall should not be privileged just because we have a president obsessed with symbols that rally his base.

And, by the way, that base is shrinking, as a CBS News poll released Wednesday showed.

The pollsters asked: “Do you think the issue of a border wall is worth the federal government shutdown, or not?” Overall, 71 percent of Americans said that the border wall is not worth the shutdown, including 92 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of independents and 43 percent of Republicans. GOP senators facing Thursday’s scheduled votes on competing proposals — with and without Trump’s $5.7 billion in wall money — should note that this fight is uniting Democrats and dividing their own party.

Let’s be clear: Trump’s opponents are not refusing to negotiate. In fact, House Democrats said Wednesday that they’re willing to offer additional money for border security, though not for the wall.

As Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Tuesday in an interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin: “Democrats — I certainly am, and my colleagues are, too — are glad to have the discussion about the elements in the president’s proposal.” All they are asking, he said, is to “treat it like every other item of business we have, rather than a take-it-or-leave-it.”

In other words, don’t let Trump use a shutdown to override the normal process of governing. Republicans are “saying people’s lives are the leverage they want to use, and we want to discredit the use of government shutdown as a negotiating tactic,” Kaine told Martin. “Why take paychecks away from FBI agents? Why shutter food-stamp offices because the president’s not getting his way on border security?”

Why, indeed?

And Trump has shown that negotiating with him is a fool’s errand. His proposal on Saturday was presented as a “compromise.” It was no such thing. His “concession” to legalize — temporarily — the status of some 700,000 immigrants brought across our borders when they were children essentially ratifies the status quo forced on Trump by lower court decisions that the Supreme Court left in place on Tuesday.

His supposed step toward more openness for asylum seekers turned out to be exactly the opposite, once its more stringent provisions were made clear. Trump’s approach to negotiating is: Give me what I want, and if you don’t, I’ll ask for even more.

This is lunacy. It has to stop, which is why Warner’s end-shutdowns bill is so important. As The Post’s Aaron Blake summarized it: “In the event of a lapse in government funding, the act would reinstate funding levels from the previous fiscal year — except for Congress and the office of the president, which would not receive funding until they reached an agreement.”

The idea would work best with a modest inflation adjustment.

Warner calls his bill the Stop STUPIDITY Act, standing for “Shutdowns Transferring Unnecessary Pain and Inflicting Damage in the Coming Years.”

Trump wants rational people to be so horrified at the damage he’s willing to inflict that they’ll cave in. It’s his M.O., as Damian Paletta and Josh Dawsey noted in The Post: “He creates — or threatens to create — a calamity, and then insists he will address the problem only if his adversary capitulates to a separate demand.”

Giving in to such behavior is not moderate, reasonable or sensible.

What would be moderate is a suggestion from my friend, former Capitol Hill staffer Bruce Wolpe — reopen the government and name a bipartisan commission to assess border and immigration issues, with a 60-day deadline to report.

Yes, Congress regularly resorts to commissions when government seems paralyzed. But with the president assuming the mantle of paralyzer in chief, we need a resolution that does not empower a leader so selfish he’s quite happy to tear our government apart, piece by piece.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"For two years, Trump has been undermining American democracy. Here’s a damage report."

Spoiler

Can U.S. democracy survive when between 35 and 45 percent of the population cheers a president who behaves like an autocrat?

When Donald Trump took office two years ago, I and many others began sounding the alarm — not out of partisan worry but out of concern for democracy. Trump, we argued, was an existential threat to the republic. For the first time in American history, the president of the United States was an authoritarian-minded demagogue who viewed checks and balances as outdated nuisances rather than sacred principles.

I even wrote a book explaining how Trump was behaving like a “lite” version of the thin-skinned authoritarian leaders I have interviewed and studied in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. I called Trump a wannabe despot. In return, some Trump fans called me an alarmist — a person suffering, perhaps, from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Others acknowledged that Trump had autocratic tendencies but argued that he had become such a weak and unpopular president that those impulses were meaningless.

Now, two years later, should we still be alarmed? Or was I an alarmist?

The United States is still a democracy. The Constitution and its checks and balances still exist. And even though Trump swoons at even the mention of a foreign dictator or despot, he is not one himself. Yet Trump has done immeasurable damage to U.S. democracy. That damage can be broken down into three categories: damage to institutions; damage to norms; and normalization of authoritarian tactics within the Republican Party.

First, Trump has chipped away at the institutional pillars of democracy. On a near-daily basis, Trump tries to undercut rule of law to advance political goals or to save his own skin. He’s called for the jailing of political opponents while pardoning political allies. He has fired investigators because there was an investigation into him. He forced an attorney general out because he wouldn’t sabotage an independent investigation. All these actions implicitly undermine the rule of law — the ultimate basis of any democracy. Trump has gotten away with it, so far.

Trump has also relentlessly attacked the free press, another pillar that allows democracies to stand above authoritarian regimes. He has echoed the worst dictators in history, calling journalists the "enemy of the people.” Trump defended Saudi Arabia’s government after it murdered Jamal Khashoggi, then went on to endorse beating up journalists. Days later, a die-hard MAGA disciple sent pipe bombs to Trump’s favorite media targets. All presidents loathe the press; Trump is the first who has publicly condoned acts of violence against journalists.

Trump has even tried to undercut the integrity of elections, both by spreading lies about voter fraud to sow doubt in the system itself and by doing nothing to deter foreign attacks aimed at disrupting U.S. elections.

Second, Trump has taken a buzz saw to democratic norms, the soft guardrails of democracy. Democratic norms — the unwritten guidelines of political behavior — give meaning to democratic institutions. Without the norms, the institutions might as well just be ink on parchment. Trump has violated countless ethics norms while simultaneously introducing a level of nepotism and cronyism more befitting of Uzbekistan than the United States. It’s hard to decide which screams “banana republic” more: the president’s unqualified daughter helping to pick the next World Bank president, or putting Eric Trump’s wedding planner in charge of all federal housing in New York and New Jersey?

Third, and most important, Trump has injected authoritarianism into the bloodstream of the Republican Party. Polls have shown that a majority of Republicans now agree that the press is an “enemy of the people” rather than “an important part of democracy.” Less than half of Republicans now have a favorable view of the FBI, a drop of 16 percentage points since Trump took office. And 74 percent of Republicans wrongly believe Trump’s lies that voter fraud is widespread, rather than the truth. (It’s vanishingly rare.) Even when Trump leaves office, those destructive views will linger.

That’s why the most chilling part of the president explicitly praising a congressman for violently assaulting a reporter wasn’t the depraved comment — it was the crowd. The thought of violence against journalists — who they saw as the “enemy” — sent the red-hat-wearing mob into a frenzy. They cheered and whooped and clapped with glee.

American democracy has decayed during Trump’s time in office, even though his deficit of discipline and surplus of scandals have weakened him considerably. But the biggest tests are yet to come: How much more damage will Trump do if he faces impeachment or indictments? Can the pillars of democracy be salvaged if the new normal involves 40 percent of the country yelling their approval every time a politician hits them with a sledgehammer? And will the next Republican nominee be a slicker and savvier demagogue who can capitalize on the groundwork laid by Trump? I don’t know the answers. But as someone who has studied how democracy dies across the globe, I remain deeply worried about Trump’s America.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"There is only one way to break Trump’s pathology. Pelosi has found it."

Spoiler

When Nancy Pelosi initially let it be known that President Trump would not be invited to Congress to deliver his State of the Union speech until he reopened the government, the widespread media take was that Pelosi had sunk to Trump’s level. “Washington these days represents nothing so much as an unruly sandbox,” sniffed one New York Times analysis, in which “septuagenarian politicians are squabbling like 7-year-olds.”

This overall narrative, which has been everywhere, purported to hold both sides accountable for the standoff, but it put the thumb on the scales for Trump in an insidious way. It did not permit space for a reasonable judgment as to whether one side’s use of the levers of power (Trump shutting down the government to force massively lopsided concessions from Democrats, versus the House speaker denying Trump a platform to profoundly mislead the country about that destructive act in the midst of carrying it out) might be more legitimate, mature and considered under the circumstances than the other.

Now Trump has capitulated. In two tweets on Wednesday night, Trump conceded that it’s Pelosi’s “prerogative” to decline the invitation, and allowed that he’d give the speech “in the near future." That is, after the shutdown is over.

The result of this is that the obscuring fog of both-sidesism lying atop this whole situation has been dissipated. What has been laid bare, instead, is a simple reality: Democrats actually do control one chamber of Congress, after having won a major electoral victory, and that actually does give them some veto power over Trump’s conduct and agenda.

Pundits can claim all they want that Pelosi is being “as petty as Trump,” as if this is all just a matter of interpersonal conduct. That objection is now irrelevant: What really matters is that Trump will not deliver the speech. He will not use this ceremony as a platform to browbeat Democrats or to spread gales of disinformation about the shutdown and about the wall fantasies driving it. He will not use its pomp and elevating power to, in effect, launder his profound bad faith and the resulting deep imbalance of the situation. Perhaps the only antidote to the false-equivalence fog machine is the reality of power — the power of “no.”

I don’t mean to overstate the long-term significance of this capitulation. Instead, my point is that it gets at the deeper problem we all face here: Trump and his GOP enablers are proceeding as if the 2018 elections never happened.

What’s really driving Trump’s shutdown

This is the whole reason for shutting down the government: To break the influence that the Democratic House has over whether Trump’s wall will be funded, by threatening severe harm to the country until Democrats rubber stamp what he’s demanding as the price of ending that damage. The theory is that they will care more about that damage than he does. The true nature of the staggering malevolence driving Trump’s misconduct here is also being obscured by a great deal of both-sides media coverage. Once again, the only antidote to it may be the power of “no.”

On Thursday afternoon, the Senate will vote on two bills reopening the government: the Trump sham compromise, which packages Trump’s wall funding with fake concessions to Democrats; and the Democratic proposal to reopen the government with no strings attached.

Both of these will almost certainly fail. It is widely assumed that this will open the way toward a new compromise push. But that compromise cannot happen unless Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proceed from an acceptance of the fact that Democrats now control the House.

Trump must leave Foxlandia

And this requires Trump to venture outside of what I have called “Foxlandia,” the place where Trump always possesses all the leverage; where any and all polls showing him cratering are fake news; and a glorious victory, entirely on Trump’s own terms, is always lurking in the next news cycle. As Simon Rosenberg notes, no real compromise can happen until Trump leaves Foxlandia behind and enters the new Washington.

Foxlandia, to be clear, is not a place where Trump is immune from criticism. Right-wing media pounded him mercilessly when he offered temporary reprieve to 700,000 “dreamers” in exchange for wall funding. But they did this to warn Trump off of giving Democrats any more in this regard, such as permanent protections for them. Importantly, the temporary reprieve is not a real concession to Democrats — it only undoes the damage Trump himself is trying to inflict — whereas permanent protections would be a real concession, i.e., an acknowledgment that Democrats now control one chamber and must be given something. Thus, even when it is criticizing him, Foxlandia remains the place where the last election never happened.

There is a compromise to be had

But outside of Foxlandia, there really is a compromise to be had. It might look something like this: Hundreds of thousands of dollars to unclog courts (instead of the poison-pill restrictions on asylum seeking that Trump wants) and to upgrade border infrastructure to handle the crush of migrant families, including better care for distressed migrant children, which both sides want. Democrats would get permanent protections for dreamers and people who stand to lose temporary protected status — not merely a reversal of Trump’s damage.

Trump would get much more money for border security — perhaps even the full $5.7 billion he wants — and, yes, this could include additional barriers, provided they are in keeping with a serious accounting provided by the Department of Homeland Security, illuminated by fact-finding via legitimate congressional processes. That would give Trump what he means by the “wall,” as you’ll note from his downgrading of it to “steel barriers in high-priority locations.” All this actually would address the border crisis — including the humanitarian crisis Trump keeps claiming to care about.

But again, this would require Trump to make actual concessions in exchange for Democrats giving him his barrier money, as opposed to Trump using the damage of a government shutdown to extract it unilaterally from them.

Democrats are now operating from the premise that this is really what’s at stake: Whether Trump and McConnell will recognize the outcome of the last election going forward. As Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) put it: “This is no longer just about the wall, it’s about how Donald Trump operates with the Democratic majority in the House.” Rep. Tom Malinowski (N.J.) adds: “If we give in to this tactic in any way we will validate it, and there will be no end to these shutdowns.”

These basic stakes have been badly obscured by the both-sides fog machine. Perhaps the only thing that can cut through that fog is the power of “no.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting perspective: "The shutdown is Trump’s ultimate attack on American intellectual life"

Spoiler

Today marks day 33 of the government shutdown. Some 380,00 government employees are furloughed, and an additional 420,000 are required to work without pay, with many of them pressed to find temporary jobs, start GoFundMe pages or hawk their personal possessions. Those hurt by the shutdown include the employees who work for America’s federally funded archives, museums and research centers. Some of our nation’s greatest intellectual resources have their lights off and “We’re sorry … closed” signs posted on their locked entrances. These signs communicate to our citizens and the world that the American mind has been deemed a “nonessential” service and thus closed for business.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and most presidential libraries that serve as museums and research archives are closed. The National Science Foundation, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Agricultural Statistics Service, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Geological Survey are closed. NASA’s funding stream for scientific research has been cut off, and the Food and Drug Administration is unable to collect all of its data. Then there is the “collateral damage” of the work of university researchers — some graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck — and private government contractors who draw resources from or do work for these agencies.

These closures are simply the latest episode in the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the public intellectual infrastructure of our country. In 2018, it sought to eliminate federal funding for the NEA, NEH, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and we have every reason to expect Trump’s administration will try to do it again in 2019. The cost of such attacks on knowledge production and dissemination goes beyond dollars, however. It threatens the very foundation of democratic life that has been central to the founding, and flourishing, of the country.

Our nation’s founders roundly agreed that the free diffusion of knowledge was the key ingredient that distinguished free citizens from imperial subjects. They understood that the work of democratic politics required a collective effort at knowledge production and dissemination. This impulse led John Adams, John Hancock and James Bowdoin to create the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1780. It also led Adams, when he became president, to oversee the establishment of the Library of Congress in 1800, which initially aimed to guide legislators in enlightened governance and eventually opened to serve the entire body politic.

This belief transcended political divides. At the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson confessed to Adams, his former rival: “I cannot live without books.” And the new nation couldn’t either, he thought. After the British burned down the U.S. Capitol in 1814, Jefferson sold his personal collections to the Library of Congress to ensure its survival.

Though a passionate bibliophile, Jefferson also believed in the importance of gleaning knowledge from the study of the natural world. He thus commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the lands west of the Mississippi River in 1804. This famous voyage was an early federally funded scientific research expedition, and an indication of how Jefferson and his fellow founders believed that scientific exploration and inquiry opened American’s mental — not just geographical — horizons. He shared James Madison’s sentiment that “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge … is the only guardian of true liberty.”

Almost half a century later, the vital connection between intellectual inquiry and the practice of democratic freedoms led President James Polk to support the founding of the Smithsonian Institution. From its creation in 1846 to today, the Smithsonian has funded and coordinated scientific, humanistic and artistic research programs; facilitated dialogue between professional researchers and the public; and built collections that are storehouses of knowledge as well as sites of democratic exchange. The first secretary of the Smithsonian, scientist Joseph Henry, insisted that “the worth and importance of the Institution is not to be estimated by what it accumulates within the walls of its building, but by what it sends forth to the world.”

Almost a century later, the long-standing commitment to bring knowledge to bear on democracy remained fierce during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that “books [were] weapons” in the Allies’ fight against totalitarianism. If Nazis burned books and tried to “put thought in a concentration camp,” then it fell to American democracy to bring books that can liberate the mind into the hands of as many readers as possible. The Office of War Information (OWI), together with the nonprofit Council on Books in Wartime (CBW), thus coordinated to produced English- and foreign-language editions of American books to provide to foreign readers liberated by the Allies.

Roosevelt also tapped engineer Vannevar Bush to head the Office of Scientific Research and Development during the war to expand scientific understanding, seeing it as instrumental for exploring and safeguarding American democracy. In his landmark report “Science — the Endless Frontier” (1945), Bush stressed that scientific research is the “proper concern of Government,” and such a view “is in keeping with the American tradition — one which has made the United States great. . . . Without scientific progress we could not have maintained our liberties against tyranny.” In 1950, such a sentiment was axiomatic, leading Congress to fund the National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent federal agency devoted to scientific research.

And yet, these institutional bulwarks of democracy are now closed. The Smithsonian’s approximately 154 million artifacts, documents and specimens are not being sent “forth to the world,” but are inaccessible to researchers and the public. A particularly troubling closure is the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which also has been turned into a sealed vault. As Americans confront growing political divides today, they are being denied access by their own elected officials to the vital sources of their past to understand and navigate inequality and polarization.

And while the NSF’s record of accomplishment has been extraordinary, and its contributions to the U.S. economic leadership, technological prowess, national security and way of life are unmistakable, it too has been deemed “nonessential” in today’s shutdown battle. Now, instead of providing support to researchers in the sciences, the NSF offers an orange “ALERT” message on its website: “Due to a lapse in appropriations, NSF is closed.”

There is no way — nor a reason — to weigh which closure is the most painful for its staff or will have the most deleterious effects on Americans’ well-being and productivity. But the closure of the National Archives is a particularly disturbing symbol of a democratic culture that has lost its way and is sorely cut off from its past. Locked within the archives and out of reach of the nation they helped bring into being are the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Perhaps this is fitting, because it is a lack of historical consciousness, a failure to recognize that the dissemination of knowledge is the only safeguard for democracy, that got us into this mess in the first place.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[Destiny]

Hahaha. I’ve never claimed to be brilliant and I’m gonna call bullshit on knowing more about tech than me. 

I don’t even math bro and I can see the fail in his math too. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Bluster, bombast, backing down: What happens when someone says no to Trump?"

Spoiler

As president and during four decades in business, Donald Trump has built his brand by promoting himself as someone who never backed down. When he was hit, he often said, he’d hit back a hundred times harder.

But at pivotal moments throughout his career, when confronted by people wielding equal or greater power, Trump has proved to be someone who does back down.

This week, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pulled her invitation to President Trump to deliver the State of the Union address in the House chamber this coming Tuesday, the faceoff between congressional leader and president seemed to portend a rift that could extend well beyond the government shutdown.

Trump’s first instinct was to double down on delivering the speech, as he told Pelosi in a letter Wednesday, “on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!”

But hours later, the president retreated: Postponing the speech “is her prerogative,” he tweeted. “I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over.”

Trump has always painted himself as an eager combatant against anyone who says no to him. And his ability to hold grudges against those who reject him is legendary.

“There are people — I categorize them as life’s losers — who get their sense of accomplishment and achievement from trying to stop others,” he said in his 1987 bestseller, “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” “As far as I’m concerned, if they had any real ability they wouldn’t be fighting me.”

In 1976, just as Trump was about to land his first development deal, a powerful person told him no in a very big way. Trump had crossed the bridge from his father’s real estate empire in New York’s outer boroughs into Manhattan, where the young developer got a contract to buy the Commodore Hotel building, a sad structure near Grand Central Terminal.

Now he had to pay for it. He approached Richard Ravitch, head of a state agency that had the power to give him a huge tax break. Sorry, Ravitch said: The hotel should be able to succeed on its own, without an assist from the taxpayers. No tax exemption.

Angry, Trump lashed out at Ravitch. “I’m going to have you fired,” Trump said, storming out of the office, the agency head later recalled.

Trump eventually won his tax exemption, thanks to one of his first big PR stunts: He had construction workers cover the hotel’s clean windows with dirty scrap wood to make it look like a dangerous eyesore in desperate need of rehabilitation — by Trump, with the help of public dollars.

Still, Trump never forgot Ravitch’s rejection. Five years later, Ravitch got a call from New York Mayor Ed Koch. “What did you do to Donald Trump?” the mayor asked. “He wants me to fire you.”

At other times, Trump has been much less pugnacious. In 1990, deep in debt and with no clear way to crawl back to solvency, Trump was summoned to a middle-of-the-night showdown with his bankers, accountants and attorneys. He stood to lose much of his casino empire.

At first, Trump was his usual bold and bragging self, insisting that he didn’t need a bailout, that he would rally and win. Then, suddenly, he dropped the insults and boasting. People in the room said he became quiet, respectful, apologetic.

He argued that the banks needed him — his name, his celebrity were what gave his properties value. The bankers agreed to bail him out, but on their terms. They put him on a monthly allowance, put liens on his house and his yacht.

But Trump got what he wanted most: He saved face. His name stayed on the buildings.

He declared victory.

In the confrontation with Pelosi, Trump plays two roles — personal and presidential. On a personal level, his lifelong determination never to be seen as a loser pressed him toward a combative stance, leading him to declare that Pelosi “doesn’t want to hear the truth” and that he would push ahead with the speech.

But as president, Trump was hemmed in by law, tradition and political reality. So when he tweeted late Wednesday that he would yield to Pelosi’s prerogative and postpone the address, the move came as no surprise to longtime Trump watchers and scholars of the presidency.

“He caves when people are tough with him,” said Jeffrey Tulis, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies presidential rhetoric.

He pointed to the language Trump and Pelosi used in their Oval Office confrontation last month, when Trump called the speaker “Nancy” and needled her over what then seemed like her precarious hold on House leadership.

The speaker sharply replied, “Mr. President, please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats.”

Tulis said: “I can’t imagine any other president calling the speaker of the House by first name in public. But she called him ‘Mr. President’ and she’s remained formal in her letters to him. People talk about how Pelosi is throwing down the gauntlet, but pay attention to how carefully written and institutionally respectful these letters are.”

The effect of the formal language in Pelosi and Trump’s letters about the State of the Union address has been to constrain the president’s behavior, Tulis said: “It has forced him to act more presidential.”

Presidents and speakers of opposing parties can make life miserable for each other. They can block each other’s agendas and generally gum up the works. Or they can reach an arrangement that gets stuff done, as President Ronald Reagan and Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill famously did in the mid-1980s, after they had spent a couple of years going at each other, hard.

Reagan attacked O’Neill’s “sheer demagoguery,” and the Massachusetts Democrat returned fire, saying the president had “no compassion for the poor.” But in 1982, they came together and agreed to raise taxes and overhaul Social Security.

The two went out of their way to portray their partnership as a genuine friendship, but aides to both men said the relationship was more a delicate balancing of political power than a personal embrace.

Similarly, the emerging Trump-Pelosi relationship, now that she and her fellow Democrats have gained control of the House, is more about the battle between the executive and legislative branches of government than it is about two people who have little in common.

“The question of when and where the State of the Union address is given is not hugely important, but the testing of the balance of power between the branches is,” said Joanne Freeman, a historian at Yale who has written a book, “The Field of Blood,” on moments when tempers in Congress have led to violence.

“In this time when so many norms are being tested, we’re seeing two branches asserting power and now Congress claiming, as it should, that it is a coequal branch of government,” she said. “This is really in a very concrete way the will of the president against the will of Congress.”

The struggle between presidents and Congress goes back to the nation’s beginnings. President George Washington knew the Constitution required him to get the advice and consent of the Senate before signing any treaties, but he didn’t know what that directive actually meant he should do.

So when Washington made a deal with Indian tribes, he walked the text over to the Senate and read it aloud to the senators. When one senator asked the president to read the treaty again, and then said the Senate would have to take some time to think about it, “Washington gets upset and storms off and never returns to the Senate to seek advice and consent again,” Freeman said.

More recently, Congress has ceded significant authority to the presidency. Republicans and Democrats have called for Congress to reassert its power. So Pelosi’s decision to draw a line and bar Trump from delivering the State of the Union while the shutdown is still paralyzing the government may win some quiet support from Republicans, Tulis said.

“Many Republicans now are from districts where they will be besieged if they stand up clapping for the president in the middle of a government shutdown,” Tulis said. “They may not say it in public, but many of them are pleased to see Congress reasserting its authority.”

Trump, like those congressional Republicans, is highly unlikely to cede any rhetorical ground to Pelosi. And even if he stands by his position that he will delay the State of the Union until after the shutdown, he will almost surely find another way to score points against the speaker.

After all, public battles have always been the lifeblood of his branding strategy, which is in turn the core of his approach to business. People who have said no to Trump have learned through the years that he never forgets and that he often finds a way to score late, if petty, wins.

By the mid-1980s, Trump and Koch, two of New York’s most notorious mouths, had been sniping at each other for years. The developer called the mayor a “moron” and a “disaster.” Koch squawked back, calling Trump “piggy, piggy, piggy.”

In 1986, Trump saw a way to ingratiate himself with the public and diss the mayor at the same time. From his Trump Tower office, the developer could look down at the city’s long-shuttered ice-skating facility, Wollman Rink.

For six years, the city had tried and failed to reopen the rink, once a municipal gem in Central Park. After $13 million had been wasted on failed repairs, Trump offered to fix and reopen the rink in four months, free of charge — if he was then allowed to manage the facility and name it for himself.

Koch accepted the repair offer but said no to Trump managing the facility or giving it his name.

Undeterred, Trump got the job done way ahead of schedule and under budget — and the city ended up paying the bill. At the grand-reopening news conference, he posted a large sign: “Owner: TRUMP ICE INC.” The city parks commissioner ordered his staff to take down the sign.

Trump portrayed the episode as a single-handed triumph, even though the repair of the rink was well underway before he got involved. Trump’s version became the standard narrative, and his popularity soared.

For years after the rink reopened, Trump pummeled the mayor in one TV interview and newspaper story after another. Koch accused Trump of being a serial exaggerator and called him a “supreme egotistical lightweight.” But mostly the mayor backed away from further rhetorical battle with the developer.

Today, the facility is still technically named Wollman Rink. But the signage and marketing materials tell a different story. “Wollman” appears in light, thin lettering, dwarfed by the big, bold, bright red “TRUMP.”

 

[Howl]

Re: Jack Ohman's tweet: That sounds like a title from the North Korean Ministry of Propaganda as translated from Russian.

And he can't even brag about the worker's his Base's  glorious soybean harvest because there isn't anybody to sell it to. 

 

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

 

Oh, please! I bet you $20 that if someone reprogrammed Trump's television remote to block out Faux, he couldn't figure out how to change it back.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Koch network tells donors it plans to stay out of 2020 race, once again declining to back Trump"

Spoiler

The conservative Koch political network has told donors that it plans to once again stay out of the presidential race and will not work to help reelect President Trump in 2020, a move that sidelines a major player that has been pivotal in mobilizing voters on the right for more than a decade. 

The decision reflects a narrow path that the influential network led by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch has sought to walk in the Trump era: aligning with the president on some policy issues while withholding its electoral firepower on his behalf.

The network’s plan to stay out of the 2020 race was quietly relayed to major donors in recent months, according to people familiar with the conversations. It comes as the network has sought to shift attention from its political activities to its investments in education and philanthropy. Donors say they expect to discuss the issue at a retreat for top network contributors this weekend.

The network’s stance — a confluence of frustration with Trump’s rhetoric and trade policies and a desire to shed its partisan image — is not a total surprise. But it will deprive the president of the assistance of one of the most sophisticated grass-roots operations on the right in what is expected to be a hard-fought reelection battle.

The Koch operation is still expected to be a player in 2020: Koch-backed groups such as Americans for Prosperity plan to support candidates for U.S. Senate and governor, as they did in 2016, when the network pointedly declined to endorse Trump. 

Spokesman James Davis said the network plans to make a “significant investment to support policy champions in Senate, House and state races, build broad-based policy coalitions, and to launch a major new initiative to fight poverty in America.” 

“This is where we can make the biggest difference for millions of Americans,” Davis said.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee referred a request for comment to an August letter the party sent donors criticizing the Koch network after it announced it was considering backing Democrats.

“Some groups who claim to support conservatives forgo their commitment when they decide their business interests are more important than those of the country or Party. This is unacceptable,” the letter said, adding that the party had “been prepared for this for years” and had a stronger data and digital operation than the Koch network.

In the past year, the libertarian-leaning operation has increasingly stressed the importance of working with both parties, saying that closely aligning itself with the GOP in recent years has not netted the policy gains it hoped to achieve. 

In a Jan. 2 email to donors obtained by The Washington Post, Koch network chairman Brian Hooks highlighted a list of policy priorities the network plans to tackle in 2019, including income inequality, education initiatives, an overhaul of the criminal-justice system and a permanent solution for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, known as “dreamers.” 

In the letter — which never mentioned Trump — Hooks said the network plans to launch new PACs in support of those policies and work with politicians from both parties in their effort. 

The snub of the president is likely to reinforce the personal divide between Trump and Koch.

At a meeting of top Koch network donors last summer, senior network officials criticized the “tremendous lack of leadership” in Trump’s Washington, saying “the divisiveness of this White House is causing long-term damage.”

Trump responded on Twitter, calling the Koch network a “total joke” and “highly overrated.” 

Late last year, network officials were left off the invitation list for some White House events and briefings that included conservative leaders from other groups such as the Heritage Foundation, according to people familiar with the gatherings.

Despite that, top Koch and Trump administration officials have forged partnerships during the past two years on issues such as tax cuts, a criminal-justice overhaul and judicial nominations. 

[How the Koch network learned to thrive in the Trump era]

Last weekend, when Trump proposed a shutdown compromise that offered a temporary reprieve for dreamers in exchange for border wall funding, the network called it “an important first step toward a real deal.”

On Wednesday, Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden participated in a conversation with Trump and other conservative leaders at the White House about shutdown negotiations.

The network has “built a level of trust working with the White House” on issues such as criminal justice, Holden said in an interview. He noted that the network welcomed Trump’s initial proposal as a first step toward a permanent solution for dreamers and “said thank you for leading and getting the ball moving here.”

“We’ve shown working with these broad coalitions that we can get good things done, left and right, even in this really partisan political climate that we live in these days,” Holden added.

Still, senior network officials have made it clear to donors that their support for Republicans has been taken for granted in recent years and that they will be more selective about their political endorsements. 

The network’s role in 2020 is among the topics expected to be discussed at a retreat this weekend in California, several donors said. 

Many donors have said they want the network to be more supportive of Trump, and officials fear they will divert some funds they would normally contribute through the network to pro-Trump groups, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Among those who objected to the decision to withhold support from the president was Arkansas poultry executive Ron Cameron, a strong Trump ally, according to people familiar with his reaction.

Late last year, Cameron was invited to the White House to watch midterm election results with Trump, according to people with knowledge of the visit. The visit was arranged by Nick Ayers, formerly Vice President Pence’s chief of staff, these people said. Ayers did not respond to a request for comment. Cameron did not respond to a phone message left at his office. 

Mary Beth Weiss, a Florida-based Koch donor along with her husband, money manager Richard T. Weiss, said she was displeased that the network did not back Trump as the GOP nominee in 2016. Since then, she said she has been happy with the Trump administration and was disappointed that the network criticized his tariff policies ahead of last year’s midterm elections.

But she said she remains a fan of the network and its nonpolitical work. 

“The Koch brothers are amazing people doing amazing things. If that’s the direction they want to take, I’m thrilled for them,” Weiss said. 

Stanley Hubbard, a Minnesota media mogul and Koch donor who supported Trump in 2016, said he was hoping the network would come around on the president, noting that the administration has been aligned with the network on certain policies. 

But Hubbard said he’ll “stick around the network” even if it does not endorse Trump, saying he believes in the portfolio of work that the Koch operation is involved in, particularly overhauling the criminal-justice system.

Some donors said they share the Koch network’s stance on the upcoming presidential election.

Art Pope, a prominent donor from North Carolina, said he plans to stay on the sidelines in the 2020 presidential race until “trade and tariffs work out.” 

“I see the efforts of the network, and my own, as well, much longer-term-oriented than just the next election,” said Bill O’Neill, a retired transportation company executive in Ohio. “I think we all wish that we could achieve the goals we’re trying to achieve with a little less sound and fury.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Pelosi is schooling Trump. He’s a slow learner."

Spoiler

Contrary to legend, Marie Antoinette probably never actually said “let them eat cake.” The Trump administration is saying it loud and clear, though, to government workers who have now gone more than a month without a paycheck.

“I don’t really quite understand why” unpaid employees are resorting to food pantries and other forms of charity, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC on Thursday. They should just take out loans from banks or credit unions to pay for necessities, he advised. Of course they’d have to pay some interest, but “there’s no reason why some institution wouldn’t be willing to lend.”

Ross, who is a billionaire, should try supporting a family on less than $45,000 a year, like most Transportation Security Administration airport agents do. He would be shocked to learn that banks do not treat every prospective borrower the same. Where is the red carpet? Why are rose petals not being strewn in my path? What do you mean by “no”?

At least Ross didn’t advise unpaid employees to do what President Trump did whenever his real estate schemes threatened to collapse in ruin: borrow millions of dollars from Dad.

Meanwhile, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told a reporter that federal employees who are being forced to work without pay are “volunteering.” The truth is, of course, that if they don’t work, they could lose their jobs.

This is the heartless, clueless worldview with which Republicans in Congress have aligned themselves. They demonstrate no sympathy whatsoever for the 800,000 government employees — plus the likely thousands of contract workers — who are being made to suffer because Trump does not understand how the Constitution works.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is teaching the president, but he’s a slow learner.

Trump got his latest lesson Wednesday when he sent Pelosi a letter arrogantly demanding that he be allowed to deliver his State of the Union address next Tuesday in the House chamber as originally scheduled. He was, in effect, daring Pelosi to follow through on her threat to postpone the speech until the government was reopened.

Pelosi’s response reminded me of another San Francisco enforcer, the fictional Dirty Harry, who told miscreants: “Make my day.” She gave Trump notice that she will not take the formal steps necessary to arrange the speech, period, until the shutdown is over. End of discussion.

Trump grumbled about how Pelosi — “or Nancy, as I call her” — “doesn’t want . . . the American people to hear the truth,” and he had made defiant noises about giving the speech in some alternate venue. But finally he crumpled like a cheap suit, accepting Pelosi’s decision that the address will take place after the shutdown ends. That’s “her prerogative,” he acknowledged.

Just as he threatened not to surrender over the speech, Trump insists he will never cave on his demand that Congress give him $5.7 billion for a border wall. As I said, he’s a slow learner. A deal that would let him claim some measure of victory has always been available. The only question is how much more political damage he wants to do to himself and his party before he takes it.

Leading Democrats have strongly indicated that they are willing to give Trump $5.7 billion for “border security.” Some portion of that money could be vaguely earmarked for barriers and fencing — allowing Trump to tell his base that Congress gave him money for his border wall, and Democrats to say they did no such thing.

This would be a great deal for Trump because — and I can’t say this often enough — the “big, beautiful wall” that he ridiculously promised during the campaign is totally unfeasible and will never be built, much less paid for by Mexico. And it would be a great deal for the president because the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to decide how public money is spent.

All Trump is accomplishing with the shutdown is to send his approval numbers lower, even as measured by friendly pollsters such as Rasmussen. And if the government remains closed much longer, he will be hanging millstones around the necks of Republican senators who must run for reelection in 2020.

The fact that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has emerged from hiding tells me that he’s ready to end this farce. He should start by explaining to Trump that the president doesn’t always get his way — and that instead of referring to Pelosi as “Nancy,” he really ought to try “Madam Speaker.”

 

[Ais]

Roger Stone has been arrested on seven Mueller probe charges.

 

Spoiler

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=undefined&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwj2nrLi-ojgAhXh6eAKHZl6B1wQzPwBCAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-us-canada-47002713&psig=AOvVaw24c2oA0CLYTxoAZj4121qQ&ust=1548506605463929

 

[Howl]

11 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Oh, please! I bet you $20 that if someone reprogrammed Trump's television remote to block out Faux, he couldn't figure out how to change it back.

Both provocative and subversive!  I like the way you think! 

Hopey's long gone and his über charming and hunky personal assistant/aide/"body man" John McEntee got the boot over legal gambling (he was into $10,000 bets) last March.  

Excerpt from Politico's Dec. 2017 article: The Trick-Shot QB Who Played His Way Into Trump’s Inner Circle

Spoiler

At age 27, John McEntee, a former University of Connecticut quarterback and star of a viral YouTube trick-throw video, former low-level Fox News staffer and campaign official, now makes $115,000 a year as Trump’s personal aide and body man. How he rose to this level of prominence is in some respects the quintessential tale of success within Trump’s organization, where loyalty and looks often matter more than résumé. Athletically handsome and a sharp dresser—one former campaign official called him “so pretty”—McEntee arrived at Trump’s doorstep in August 2015 with no more qualifications than his determination to make the boss happy.

Excerpt From WaPo's March 15 ,2018  article:  Trump’s personal aide apparently lost White House position over gambling habit

Spoiler

 

President Trump’s personal assistant, John McEntee, lost his White House job this week because an investigation found he was a frequent gambler whose habit posed a security risk, according to two people familiar with his departure.

A background investigation found that McEntee bet tens of thousands of dollars at a time, making him unsuitable for a sensitive position close to the president, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. There was no indication his gambling was illegal, but there was concern that the 27-year-old could be vulnerable to outside influence, the person said.

 

McEntee was making $115,000 a year and was pretty upset when he was informed of his firing and immediately escorted from the WH.  Random detail: is cousin works as a aide to Steve Mnuchin. 

[Penny]

Trump is looking more orange these days. Looks like he is using one of those self tanners and not applying it evenly

[fraurosena]

Awww, the presidunce is upset about the Stone indictments.

 

[onekidanddone]

Congressional leaders, Trump reach tentative deal to temporarily reopen government without wall funds, according to Hill officials

Quote

Congressional leaders and President Trump have reached a tentative deal to temporarily reopen the government and continue talks on Trump’s demand for border wall money, Capitol Hill officials said Friday.

With Trump’s approval, the pact would reopen shuttered government departments for the three weeks while leaving the issue of $5.7 billion for the U.S.-Mexico border wall to further talks.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The White House announced that Trump would speak from the Rose Garden of the White House at 1:30 p.m. The officials said the tentative deal was subject to change until announced by Trump.

The developments came as Senate leaders scrambled Friday in search of a short-term deal to end the partial government shutdown as major delays at airports around the country produced a heightened sense of urgency.

As the shutdown stretched into its 35th day Friday, about 800,000 government workers missed another paycheck.

The impetus to reach a solution had clearly increased among lawmakers of both parties in recent days, as the mushrooming effects of the shutdown have become more apparent.

That included reports Friday of significant delays at key airports in the northeast because of absences of unpaid air traffic controllers that could multiply across the country at other airports. Federal officials temporarily restricted flights into and out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport, while travelers were grounded for extended periods in other cities, including Newark and Philadelphia.

The shutdown was also creating a strain on the Internal Revenue Service. At least 14,000 unpaid workers in the IRS division that includes tax processing and call centers did not show up for work this week despite orders to do so, according to two House aides.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Friday that the airport delays in particular “ratchets up pressure tremendously” to reopen government, saying the developments could prove “very damaging to the American economy.”

Talks between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) began Thursday following the chamber’s failure to pass either of two competing bills to end the impasse.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said earlier Friday that House Democrats were holding off on plans to unveil a border-security proposal expected to match or exceed the $5.7 billion Trump has demanded for a southern border wall — but one that focuses on other initiatives and does not direct funding for the wall Trump is seeking.

Pelosi said, “We want to see what’s happening on the Senate side.”

She later went on Twitter, writing that the “#TrumpShutdown has already pushed hundreds of thousands of Americans to the breaking point. Now it’s pushing our airspace to the breaking point too.”

“.@realDonaldTrump, stop endangering the safety, security and well-being of our nation. Re-open government now!” Pelosi added.

 

[AmazonGrace]

He's hinting at the national emergency thing saying that he doesn't want to use it at this time. But it seems to me like the longer he hangs it out as an option the less it will seem like an emergency if/when he finally uses it.

[fraurosena]

Rage tweets ahead. Faux is reporting he lost and Nancy won. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

But, but, the wall is already being built. I read it on @realDonaldTrump

[AnywhereButHere]

So he blinks again. Some amazing deal maker he is. Let the post-cave tantrumming begin!