Rudy’s Bizarre Adventure (Candy and Nuts)

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Oh, come on:

In a recent interview with HuffPost, Giuliani initially disputed the notion that Trump’s daily citing, in the final month of his campaign, of Russian-aligned WikiLeaks and its release of Russian-stolen emails constituted “colluding” with Russia.

“It is not,” Giuliani said.

Then he switched tacks.

“OK, and if it is, it isn’t illegal… It was sort of like a gift,” he said. “And you’re not involved in the illegality of getting it.”

(Date)

This is a test of a principle. The analogy here is the idea that for a generation, at least, Americans pretended our supremacist heritage wasn’t, and that it was unfair to let a proverbial few bad seeds have any defining influence about the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. And toward that end, we must also admit the observable fact that supremacism is one of about two things President Trump’s voters actually get in return for electing him; the other, of course, is a living mortal demonstration of the Republican thesis that government does not and simply cannot work. For our purposes, though, we might consider a period before Mr. Trump won the presidency, nested sometime in the forty-eight years ‘twixt the Democrats losing the South and the 2016 election, and the idea that you just don’t talk about people that way, unless.

Unless what? Unless you have proof. But what does proof of supremacism mean to a roomful of supremacists? In the end, the abiding standard is that you just don’t say that about people. It is also true that if we ask around, we will find a lot of that in society, and the common aspect is the stake perceived by by those who would posture themselves as well-intended and upright, except.

Except what? Well, therein lies the hook. Except nothing. They are upright, well-intended people, and that is all there is to that, and, besides, it is all everybody else’s fault, anyway; if only black people would; if only women would; if only hellbound infidels would.

Which, in turn, reminds that any given analogy only goes so far. At some point, #DimensionTrump seems to proscribe certain aspects and vectors of inquiry, yet it seems only to the president’s peril.

The Pruitt Watch (#WhatTheyVotedFor)

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Miserable: Jonathan Swan offers a glimpse “Inside Scott Pruitt’s ‘miserable’ bunker”, and what is unbelievable about the article is that it might be written at all. Starting with the incendiary report from The Atlantic about intracabinet political attacks and the typical Axios brief on “why this matters”—approximately that for whatever reasons, Administrator Pruitt still has his job—but then lays an ugly string of points from “behind the scenes”, starting with the idea that EPA senior staff apparently being surprised by a photo of the Administrator at lunch with “members of his team” emerging in a lobbyist’s tweet.

Gravity is gravity; the slope is uncertain, but something about downhill goes here.

• Over the last few months, Pruitt has walled himself off from all but five EPA political appointees: ​Millan Hupp, Sarah Greenwalt, Hayley Ford, Lincoln Ferguson, and Wilcox. Of those five, only Wilcox is over 30. Hupp, Greenwalt and Ferguson came with Pruitt from Oklahoma. Wilcox is the only press aide Pruitt appears to trust.

• Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, runs the agency’s operations but rarely knows where his boss is. Pruitt has frozen Jackson out of his inner circle—a disaster for a chief of staff. Pruitt and Jackson don’t trust each other, multiple sources told me.

• “All of us have been frozen out over time,” one EPA political appointee told me. “It’s absolutely unreal working here. Everyone’s miserable. Nobody talks. It’s a dry wall prison.”

And the band plays on as EPA tumbles down the rabbit hole: “Pruitt never trusted the EPA’s career staff”, writes Swan, and the understatement about the sentence is nearly unavoidable; the point is highlight the Administrator having “frozen out” political appointees as administrative paranoia apparently grows and staff morale similarly continues its plummet.

Rudy’s Bizarre Adventure

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

In truth, the problem with calling Rudy Giuliani the gift that keeps on giving is not the fact of its politic, but, rather the disaster that statement represents. Caroline Orr, for instance, noted yesterday—

Speaking about the Mueller probe, Rudy Giuliani tells Judge Jeanine: “Maybe they think Manafort’s somebody they can flip faster.”

… hence implying that Manafort has incriminating evidence on Trump that would give him leverage to flip.

—and that ought to be hilarious except for the fact that it is real. And toward a certain political objection we might simply note that regardless of aesthetics and sincerely held beliefs, there really are investigations afoot, and one of President Trump’s attorneys really is putting on some extraordinary manner of flaming excremental spectacle.

The lede from Zeke Miller for Associated Press is striking insofar as it is a lawyer saying it instead of some conservative pundit on cable news—and, sure, go ahead and make the obvious point about Rudy Giuliani as a pundit, but what, really, is anyone to actually do with it?—but then we also face the prospect that this is an attorney for the President of the United States, which ought to be significant in and of itself even before begging the question of a sitting president pleading the Fifth:

President Donald Trump’s new attorney, Rudy Giuliani, won’t rule out the possibility that the president would assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the swirling Russia investigation.

“How could I ever be confident of that?” the former New York City mayor and U.S. attorney said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Giuliani said despite Trump’s openness to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller, he would strongly advise Trump against it.

“I’m going to walk him into a prosecution for perjury like Martha Stewart?” Giuliani said. Stewart was convicted in 2004 of lying to investigators and obstruction in an insider trading case.

Giuliani suggested that Trump wouldn’t necessarily comply with a subpoena from Mueller, but he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of the president sitting for an interview with Mueller.

“He’s the president of the United States,” Giuliani said. “We can assert the same privileges other presidents have.”

That last is, technically, true; many critics will rightly point out it is also functionally meaningless; asserting privilege is different from actually exercising them insofar as one must make the assertion stick, and history does in fact seem clear on this point, which in turn means invoking and asserting a constitutional right: The President of the United States will not convey any true information that would incriminate him.   

Whitewashing History (Ben Carson Revisionist Remix)

#AlternativeFacts | #WhatTheyVotedFor

“If we use Ben Carson’s logic, Frederick Douglass made it big after his plantation internship, Harriet Jacobs went into servitude for the sole purpose of memoir research and Harriet Tubman was the best tour guide of her time. Carson’s actions have prompted many, including myself, to label him as an Uncle Tom. But we might be wrong about that: ‘Uncle Tom’ may be too good of a title for the HUD secretary.”

―D. Watkins

____________________

Image note: Ben Carson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 12 at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. (Zach Gibson/AP file)

Watkins, D. “Ben Carson’s infinite fall from grace”. Salon. 7 March 2017.

A Brief Sketch (Not Quite Caviar)

#nihil | #WhatTheyVotedFor

We should probably sketch this detail of the cycle:

• Press Secretary defends Attorney General:

Sessions called the report “false” in a statement last night, saying he “never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign.” He repeated this morning that he would recuse himself wherever it is appropriate to do so.

However, Spicer said that would not apply in this case.

“There’s nothing to recuse himself [from]. He was 100% straight with the committee,” said Spicer, adding that Democrats should be “ashamed of themselves” for playing “partisan politics” on this issue.

(FOX News)

• President defends Attorney General:

President Trump defended Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday night, insisting that the former Alabama senator “did not say anything wrong” amid swirling criticism over his testimony earlier this year about contacts with Russian officials.

Trump appeared to be referring to Sessions’ statements before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation, when Sessions said he had not spoken to Russian officials. It was revealed this week that Sessions twice spoke with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. last year.

“Jeff Sessions is an honest man. He did not say anything wrong,” Trump said in a statement posted on Facebook. “He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not intentional.”

(Greenwood)

• The Attorney General runs to FOX News for a friendly interview:

Sessions explained that the question he received from Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) at his January confirmation hearing focused specifically on whether he had spoken with Russia continually about the presidential campaign. While Sessions has now admitted he met twice with the Russian ambassador last year, he said they did not have any such conversations about political campaigns.

Why, though, Carlson wondered, did former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s own Russian scandal not raise any red flags with him? After all, Flynn was eventually pressured to resign.

“It was never a thought,” Sessions insisted. It was “unrelated.”

The Russian officials and any one else in the room at the times of his meetings would corroborate that he “did not say one thing that was improper.”

(O’Brien)

#DimensionSteve (Theme Song Edition)

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Notes and quotes from Steve Benen, at MaddowBlog, 20 February 2017:

• #ProbablyNot: “If it makes Sweden feel any better, many Americans often have no idea what Trump is saying, either.”

• #WatersEdge: “As a factual matter, the senator is a Maverick in Name Only.”

• #WhatTheyVotedFor: “There’s no reason to go along with this as if it were somehow normal.”

• #GettingWorseNotBetter: “Republicans may be eager to blast Democratic ‘obstruction’ and partisan delays, but the truth of the matter is simple: Democrats can’t block nominees who don’t exist.”

• #McCarthysMouth: “That’s the kind of quote that could use some clarification.”

• #Backfill: “The era of ‘fuzzy math’ is back with a vengeance.”

• #WhyGovernmentDoesntWork: “So, the nation’s Education Secretary, even now, isn’t sure the position she now holds should exist―apparently because she’s still not on board with the idea of having a federal Department of Education, which she now leads.”

• #MatthewFifteenEleven^α: “The president is himself on board with the ‘Never-Mind-What-Trump-Said’ approach to foreign policy.”

• #PutiPoodle: “Why Cohen would tell two very different stories to two different newspapers is unclear.”

• #YesWeHave: “Have we really reached the point at which Trump World is so accustomed to pushing bogus and misleading information that even the president’s golfing is fair game?”

A Musical Moment (#SinisterMinister)

#SinisterMinister | #WhatTheyVotedFor

The great angst needs a new great release.

Good morning, children! How nice to see you again! I hope you’re ready for your lesson today, hey-hey! To build your spiritual self we’ll start erasing the self; suppress those tiny Devils boiling in your bone! Your whole life you’ve been softly fading. Once you were strong, but now degrading and searching for a light to lead the way. That’s me, I’m a holy spastic. I’ll make you feel you’re made of blood in a world that’s plastic; take my hand, ’cause only I can show you the way, and all the way. The sinister minister’s grinning: What have I got to offer? What have you got to lose in your alcohol haze, in this soft disgrace, when you could be mine and even God needs lambs, and I am the Shepherd? I am the Shepherd! I hate to see you cry: place your hand in mine, and I’ll hate it. And why do you want to suffer? What are you trying to prove in your sick little phase? You’ve got your hands upraised. You could be clean, and you know I need lambs, and I am the Shepherd. You know I’m the Shpeherd! I hate to see you cry: Bleach that soiled life and take your place in line. And now you know all the way. I will be grinning, oh!

―Floater, “Minister” (1998)

#DimensionSteve

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

A day in the life―a.k.a., #DimensionTrump―quotably courtesy Steve Benen of msnbc:

• #AlternativeFacts: “If only that made sense, it might be easier to take the White House press secretary seriously.”

• #Priorities: “It’s worth pausing to appreciate the fact that Trump can apparently be baited into doing almost anything.”

• #Spicy: “I have no idea if Spicer was lying or simply ignorant, but either, his defense is completely at odds with the facts.”

• #Ironicish: “Given the circumstances, it seems the obvious Democratic response is simple: They should promise to be every bit as constructive and cooperative as McConnell was when there was a member of the opposing party in the White House.”

• #Prerogative: “As a rule, people who are eager to dismiss specific, quantifiable economic measurements tend to believe the ‘stats’ will be unflattering for them.”

• #AlternativeFactsRedux: “Smith’s bizarre speech from the floor of the House serves as a reminder: for much of the country, the fact that Trump has been caught telling ridiculous lies isn’t a fact at all.”

• #AlternativeFactsReduxSequel: “Maybe everything will be fine.”

• #AnotherBrickInTheWall: “Or put another way, the president now plans to have a plan to someday have a wall that Mexico will someday pay for.”

• #WhatTheyVotedFor: “I remember when Trump ran against Goldman Sachs”.

It is possible to let the game show host take up too much of one’s time, except it’s President Trump, these days, so … yeah, y’know … make the adjustment, get used to it, whatever. Or perhaps it’s worth taking a moment to recall, if we can, the number of unbelievable escalations we witnessed during the Obama presidency. That is to say, if Republicans were willing to take it that far over the last eight years, maybe we should consider ourselves lucky if these are the days for the next four.

____________________

Image note: Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

A President Stupid Enough to Invite War with the Press

#AlternativeFacts | #WhatTheyVotedFor

The headline from the New York Times comes with its own implications: “News Media, Target of Trump’s Declaration of War, Expresses Alarm”. Meanwhile, on the west coast, the Seattle Times ran the article on the right column of the front page―

Trump’s war with journalists boils over

CREDIBILITY UNDER ATTACK

White House blasts media for challenging falsehoods; defends ‘alternative facts’

―and we might, again, say something about implications. Locally, people tend to view the Seattle Times as tending more toward the conservative, but this is President Donald Trump, and this is what happens, to the one, when one is actually the President of the United States, and, to the other, goes out of his way to pick a fight with the Press.

How do you like them apples, Mr. President?

Yeah … we know. You don’t give a damn. You are, after all, President Donald Trump, and this is #WhatTheyVotedFor.

____________________

Image note: Detail of front page for the Seattle Times, 23 January 2017.

Ember, Sydney and Michael W. Grynbaum. “News Media, Target of Trump’s Declaration of War, Expresses Alarm”. The New York Times. 22 January 2017.

————. “Trump’s war with journalists boils over”. The Seattle Times. 23 January 2017.