Trump's Machado Meltdown

Trump's attacks on Alicia Machado are just like his attacks on the Khans were. They are a perfect distillation of his depravity. His treatment of them shows us exactly who and what he is--which is a person unfit for society, much less for the office of the presidency. 

Look at what happens when regular, American citizens dare to point out that he has behaved badly, which is all Machado or the Khans did. He doubles down, won't apologize or admit error, levels ludicrous excuses for attacking them, starts to savage them, and then goes increasingly berserk in his compulsion to destroy them. This need need to inflict damage on others for daring to criticize him is twisted.  If this is what he does to ordinary citizens for speaking their minds, trying to warn the public about his character, what do you think he will do to ordinary citizens, or journalists, who dare to voice criticism when he holds the most powerful office in the world?

Democracy requires, at a minimum, the ability and willingness to tolerate different views, including criticism. It is messy, annoying, painful, often maddening, and necessary for a free state. Authoritarian states require compliance and subservience. Trump has had the latter his whole life and compliance and lack of criticism are what he wants. His contempt for democracy oozes from his very pores.

This is an absolutely grotesque human being. The spectacle of his cruelty and unhinged self-love are nauseating. Picture them in power. Know fear. Know shame. And get the hell out and help defeat him.

Trump Is A National Security Threat

On September 14th, when Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek reported on the Trump Organization's extensive business interests in regions around the world, and the potential conflicts of interests between the Trump Organization and the United States, few other news outlets seemed to care. There was little beyond some thin coverage on MSNBC, mainly in the form of a pre-publication "scoop" of the article's contents. Major papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post did not carry the story. This should have been major news: the Trump Organization's business interests extend well beyond its problematic ties with Russia (itself disturbing in light of Trump's statements and proposed policies; more below) into zones that are political hotbeds and, as a result, Trump and his family would have a personal, financial stake in the outcome of virtually every foreign policy decision that he would make as president, including decisions affecting our national security.
Trump's conflicts of interest are an unprecedented and extraordinary issue, and raise fundamental questions about whether he would, or even could, make decisions that are in the best interests of the United States, rather than in the best interests of himself. These conflicts also raise questions about whether he is even capable of recognizing that his own personal business interests are not necessarily aligned with the broader interests of the United States. That these questions need to be raised at all would (like so many other issues involving Trump) either sink a regular candidate, or, at a minimum, result in wall-to-wall press coverage, increased scrutiny, and overwhelming pressure on the candidate for explanations and transparency, including the release of his tax returns.

Yet this has not happened.

I've previously suggested that the Trump birther press conference held two days after the Newsweek article came out was a tactic to shift the narrative from the question of his conflicts of interest (i.e., where his loyalties lie) to the familiar territory of racism and dominance politics (classic Trump). But since few pundits even carried the Newsweek story, maybe I was wrong. What the networks and newspapers were focused on just before the birther nonsense was the increasing revelations about Trump's abuse of the Trump Foundation for personal gain. This is a genuine, bona fide scandal that merits the substantial news coverage it is finally receiving and further inquiry. But while the misconduct in which the Trump Foundation is mired stands on its own, the deeper significance of Trump's abuse of the Trump Foundation is what that misconduct says about his likely approach to governance.
It's therefore critical to consider the Trump Foundation abuses together with the Trump Organization's conflicts of interest, as well as the campaign's responses to the reporting on these issues, and the GOP's response as well. The reason I say this is that, taken together, they reveal more about what we can likely expect from Donald Trump's approach to potential governance than any statements he has actually made about a specific goal or "policy" -- and they further reveal how the party he now heads would respond to the near-certain abuses and ethical if not legal breaches that a Trump presidency would bring. And what looking at all of these together reveals is -- this will shock you --that Trump is even more unfit for the presidency than his temperament, ignorance, cruelty, bigotry, and narcissism already indicate. Trump appears to be constitutionally incapable or willing to either to recognize, or act within, ethical boundaries, just as he seems also to be constitutionally incapable of or willing to tell the truth.

A lifetime of apparent lying, self-dealing, cheating, and fraud is more than force of habit; it's just that, a way of life, and there is no evidence from which one can conclude that he has the capacity or the desire to make a change at the age of 70 years. To the contrary, the serial lies, denials, non-disclosures, and deflections that the campaign deploys in the face of scrutiny tell you that the lying, cheating, defrauding, and self-dealing that have defined his life will continue if he is elected.

These traits make Trump not merely morally repugnant and unfit for office; they make him a profoundly disturbing and dangerous threat to our national security. And the fact that most of the Republican leadership, from Mitch McConnell to Reince Priebus to Paul Ryan to John McCain to Ted Cruz to Marco Rubio, does not discuss or acknowledge this threat tells you all you need to know about the likelihood that the GOP will be willing or able to hold Trump to account if he is elected. Do not expect a Republican-controlled Congress to rein in this man's conflicts and abuses, when they will not even acknowledge that those conflicts and abuses exist.

The Trump Foundation Looks Like a Scam

So let's take a look at the Trump Foundation, and what it reveals about Trump. The Washington Post has reported that Trump hasn't personally contributed to the Trump Foundation (which is public charity, not "foundation" per se), since 2009, but instead has repackaged donations from others to make himself look like a philanthropist without actually contributing his own money. We also know that Trump used the Trump Foundation to make a political donation to Florida attorney general Pam Bondi while she was considering whether to open an investigation into Florida residents' allegations of fraud against Trump University, and that she declined to investigate Trump after receiving the $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation. We know this because the Washington Post broke the story that the Trump Foundation had paid the IRS a penalty for using Trump Foundation funds to make that political contribution. We know that Bondi and Trump have given conflicting public statements about the issue. We know that NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into the Trump Foundation and that the issue of whether Trump bribed Bondi is a real question that is also being investigated. And last week it was revealed, again by the Washington Post, that Trump used over $250,000 of Trump Foundation funds to settle Trump's personal legal disputes and engaged in other acts of self-dealing.

These all seem like pretty clear-cut cases of self-dealing/tax fraud. Other than the possible Bondi bribe, I'm not sure that this conduct is criminal, though it is certainly not lawful -- after all, all that happened after the Trump Foundation used charitable funds to make a contribution to Bondi was that it paid a fine, and everything I've read about the potential consequences of self-dealing and misuse of charitable funds for personal benefit points to the payment of penalties and (maybe) the shut-down of the foundation, but not criminal charges.
What matters here is not so much whether the conduct carries criminal versus civil penalties, but the fact that Trump has engaged in illegal conduct through his foundation and doesn't even seem to get or care that he did. Indeed, the Trump foundation adviser Lynne Patton's purported defense of Trump's naked self-dealing is shocking: she said that the money is "his" and therefore whatever he does with it is okay. This is both untrue and most certainly not okay: first, the money is not "his" (he's donated nothing since 2009, so the funds used come from others); second, the funds, once donated for charitable purposes, are not taxed; third, even if he had donated funds in the last six years, once donated, the funds belong to the foundation; fourth, foundation funds cannot be used for campaign contributions; fifth, foundation funds cannot be used for the personal benefit of those who run it. So this is just an absurd response, which reveals either flagrant ignorance of or disregard for legal constraints. Neither is okay and either is shocking coming from a presidential candidate. When you accompany this conduct with the use of Trump Foundation funds to disguise a political contribution to a sitting AG who has a Trump-related investigation in front of her her desk, it looks very bad indeed. And when you further combine this with the fact that Trump's claims of having given millions to charity were outright lies -- WaPo found evidence of only $10,000 in giving over seven years -- and that he will not even make good on public promises to give until he is publicly exposed as a liar or sued, then it starts to look more and more like the Trump Foundation is not a vehicle for charitable contribution by Trump but instead a tax-avoidance, Trump-branding, self-dealing scam.
And to the extent Trump himself engages in charity at all, as he claims, the reporting on the Trump Foundation indicates not only that that charity is done with other people's money, but that (i) Trump has grossly exaggerated the amounts; (ii) Trump makes these claims for his own personal benefit; and (iii) Trump's supposed gift-giving both starts and finishes with whether or not the spotlight/publicity is trained on Trump. Meanwhile, when reporters uncover the gap between his bragging and his deeds, Trump repeats the exaggerated claims and attacks Clinton. In other words, investigative reporting yields neither explanation nor apology from Trump, but instead, denial and deflection.

The broader questions raised by Trump's illegal and duplicitous conduct, as well as by his and advisers' apparent indifference to the misconduct, seem to be lost on his supporters. Maybe it's not surprising that they don't understand, or don't care, that it is not okay for Trump to use Trump Foundation money for these purposes -- kind of in the same way Trump himself does not seem to understand or care. But if Trump does not see or care that he engaged in illegal conduct concerning the Trump Foundation, what possible basis do we have for concluding that Trump will see or care about other potentially self-dealing situations when he is in the White House?

The Trump Organization's Business Interests Raise Major Conflicts of Interest With the U.S.

This brings me to the Trump Organization. The reporting to date indicates that potentially self-dealing situations will abound in a Trump White House based on his extensive business interests -- or desire to expand his business interests. Some of that reporting involves some speculation, because Trump has refused to disclose either his and the Trump Organization's tax returns, or any other information indicating the nature and scope of his business interests. The fact that Trump has raised a litany of false and ever-shifting rationales for his lack of transparency is a red flag of duplicity in and of itself, but here's what we do know: After Trump's pro-Russia policy preferences, encouragement of Russian hacking of Clinton's emails, lavish praise for Putin, and employment of multiple advisers with financial interests with Russians raised eyebrows and gave rise to widespread concern as to whether he is a Manchurian candidate or an unwitting agent of Putin or his stooge, the Trump campaign claimed that Trump does not have business interests in or ties to Russia. Investigative reporting by Kurt Eichenwald, ABC News, the Washington Post and others reveals that Trump's claims that he does not have business interests in Russia is a lie. We knew this anyway given that Trump's son Donald Jr. gave an interview in 2008 discussing the family's extensive business ties to Russia ("we see a lot of money pouring in from the Russians").

Trump's lie about his lack of Russian business interests should be a "danger Will Robinson" moment for the country, including for the entire GOP. This is lying on steroids, a lie that could endanger the country. It is a lie that displays Trump's potential for a treasonous willingness to pretend no conflicts of interests exist when they do, thereby precluding the American public, Congress, and career foreign policymakers and advisers from learning about, assessing, and dealing with those conflicts of interest for the good of the United States. Embedded in that lie, moreover, is the potential for Trump to appease Russia's interests or worse, all for the benefit of Trump's financial interests, at the potential expense of our country's.

Now, it could be that Trump believes that we need better relations with Russia, including the easing of sanctions; indeed, I know several Russian-language experts with business ties to Russia who feel the same way. And that is a perfectly legitimate view to hold. But what is not legitimate is for a presidential candidate to lie to the American public about whether he stands to gain millions of dollars from improved relations with Russia, and to refuse to provide the public, national security experts, and our allies with the information necessary to enable us all to consider whether and the extent to which Trump's foreign "policy" will be shaped by his own financial interests.

When you look at Trump's advisers -- the now-gone Paul Manafort, with his shady ties to pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, and the mysterious Carter Page, who may or may not have actual ties to Russia and with whom, the campaign said today, it has cut ties --as well as the change to the GOP platform on the Ukraine, his oft-repeated, vocal hero-worship of Putin, his suggestion that as president he might not adhere to U.S. obligations under NATO to provide support in the face of Russian aggression, his apparent support for Russia's annexation of Crimea, and his invitation to Russian hackers to interfere in the election by hacking and publishing Clinton's emails), a deeply, deeply, deeply disturbing picture emerges of a man who does not seem to put the interests of the United States first.

And when you combine that picture with the reporting that confirms Trump Jr.s prior statements about the Trump Organization's business interests in Russia, the fact that Trump lied that he has no business interests in Russia is shocking and must be spotlighted and put under a microscope -- because, frankly, this is nuts. Why is Trump lying that he has no business ties to Russia when he does? Is it because he wants to preserve and enhance those interests while president, without disclosing them? Every single thing we know about the man suggests he will use the White House for personal gain first, and only secondarily, if at all, for good of the country. He has made money on his campaign, including off the U.S. taxpayer through the Secret Service's reimbursements to his campaign; he used his disgraceful birther press conference as an ad for his hotel in D.C; his campaign has paid to use his hotels and more, which means the contributions of his supporters are lining his pockets.

But that's child's play compared to the ways in which he and his family stand to gain and enrich themselves if he is elected -- not just through business ties to Russia, but in countries throughout the world, because his money is built off of his brand-name, a brand that will be enhanced exponentially if he becomes the president. And that gain will come at the expense of our national security. As Eichenwald elaborated in a follow-up article on September 16, 2014:

"The Trump Organization sells two things: the Trump name and, until he began his national campaign, the reality television show The Apprentice, for which Trump was host and executive producer. The global conflicts that could undermine national security are in Trump's branding business. He has many overseas partners with undisclosed ties to factions within their governments, a troubling number of them are criminals or under indictment. All of them are paying, have paid or are about to start paying millions of dollars to the Trump Organization for the privilege of putting his name on their buildings.

"So, if Trump gets into the White House, the president of the United States will be in a business deal with an Azerbaijani billionaire whose father is a prominent government official identified by American intelligence as a money launderer for the Iranian military. The Trump Organization's partners in India would place America's crucial but shaky alliance with Pakistan at risk. Relations between Trump and Turkey's government are deteriorating in part because of his business connections there, and that country's president has told people close to him that he will not allow a Trump-led America to use a military base that has been a critical staging area for the bombing campaign in Syria against the Islamic State group, known as ISIS. In other words, all these entanglements would imperil the national security of the United States."

While Eichenwald's reporting tells part of the story, no one knows the full extent of Trump's financial interests, and thus his potential conflicts of interest, and the risks they pose to the U.S., because he refuses to release his tax returns or other information. And on top of this nondisclosure, we have the spectacle of the Trump campaign's flat-out denials of any business ties to Russia, and, by extension therefore, of any conflicts of interest arising out of those ties (since the supposedly do not exist). We could not rely on any nominee's mere word about such potential conflicts -- but with Trump in particular, there is no basis for his "word." Politico's most recent review demonstrates that in the last week Trump told a lie once every three minutes and fifteen seconds, and the New York Times found he told 31 major lies over a 6 day period, often repeatedly. There have been multiple other fact-checking organizations demonstrating that Trump lies about 80% of the time. Accordingly, the probability that he is lying in any given statement he makes -- including about the existence and extent of his potential conflicts of interest -- is exceptionally high.

Trump's pathological lying constitutes its own form of national security threat. How can we be secure when Congress, the cabinet, our allies, and we ourselves cannot rely on the word of the President, and indeed, we will need to assume that he is lying whenever he speaks, and fact-check his every word? How will allies and enemies alike respond to a man whom they know they cannot trust to honor our treaties, or even our less formal agreements?

And what's almost impossible to get your head around here is that in addition to actively preventing anyone but the most dogged reporters from even beginning to piece together his conflicts of interests, Trump simultaneously simply blithely says there is no issue because if elected, he will put his business in a "blind trust" run by his kids, -- "trust me," it will be okay. First, a trust administering the business that you and your kids own, by those very kids, is not a blind trust. A blind trust is administered by an independent trustee. So if his kids run it, all the same conflicts will remain. Second, even if such a trust were independently administered, Trump will still know what is in the trust, and, because its beneficiary will be himself and/or his family, the same conflicts of interest will remain. Third, the trust cannot solve the national security conflicts, as Eichenwald demonstrates, because the arise from the nature of the Trump Organization's branding business, and its relationships in foreign countries -- which will not go away merely because that business is administered by a trustee. The national security threats posed by a Trump presidency are therefore profound. When Trump says he wants to ease sanctions on Russia, do you really think there is any basis for that viewpoint other than his own business interests with the country? Even if he is informed of the likely political and international ramifications of easing those sanctions, can we have any confidence that his business interests, in addition to shaping his views, would not take precedence over every other consideration? When Trump is asked to weigh in on policy concerning countries in the Middle East where he does business, what do you think will drive his decision-making? And his and his kids' risible answer to this -- the supposedly "blind trust" run by his business partner children -- demonstrates (i) a lack of understanding of the depth and nature of those conflicts, or (ii) an indifference to adequately addressing those conflicts, or (iii) worst of all, a concerted effort to maintain those conflicts while pretending to address them.
I don't know which of these three options is the basis for Trump's blind trust suggestion, but I do know that his refusal to release his tax returns, his failure to pledge not to be beneficiary of any such trust, and his failure to offer any mechanism for verifying his business holdings and potential conflicts of interests all point toward the third one. Our choices -- that Trump cannot properly address these conflicts of interest because he either does not see them, or does not understand them, or will not disclose them -- are unacceptable. We must not accept them. How can we have a commander in chief who fails to understand a conflict when he sees one, or, when he does, who lies about it to protect his own financial interests? How can we feel any comfort or confidence in the Republican Party, which is willing to look the other way when their nominee's potential conflicts could endanger the country, placing their desire to win the presidency over the security of the United States itself?

If Trump is elected, all available evidence suggests that he will use the office as a method to further line his own pockets without regard to the geopolitical or national security interests of the United States, and that his party will do nothing to try to stop him. Indeed, I haven't been able to find anyone of note in the GOP going on record to acknowledge, much less express a plan for addressing, Trump's conflicts of interest or his pathological lies. And that should both disgust us and make us all very afraid. I can tell you that, like so much else about Trump and the party that serves increasingly as his lapdog, it disgusts and terrifies me.

Blinkered and Selfish

More truth from Charles Blow on the blinkered and selfish idiocy of people who care about racial justice voting third party or not voting at all. I wish he had also made the affirmative case for Clinton on issues of racial justice, rather than just cataloguing the myriad ways in which Trump will affirmatively harm people of color and stymie the cause of racial equality for generations. Blow's argument is applicable to any issue at all in this election, however; you could write the same argument whether it's on reproductive choice, or health care, or the environment -- you name it. It's amazing this has to be spelled out, and how many people can't or refuse to see it.

In fact, it's both maddening and terrifying the way "progressives" wrap themselves in Hillaryhate like a warm cloak of false moral superiority, immune to fact or reason, gleefully vomiting out rightwing smears, wilfully ignorant of historical context, and then calling anyone who points out the underlying practical realities and the context a tool and a stooge. Blow and umpteen others have demonstrated that the practical consequence of voting for a third party will either put Trump in office, or substantially weaken Clinton and downstate Democrats, making it much harder for her and them to enact the progressive agenda of the Democratic platform if she is in fact elected, and that neither of these results can be squared with a "conscience" that cares about end-results for actual people. This is so blindingly obvious, I can't believe it needs to be said, much less over and over, and why it does not make a dent.

I don't know where we go from here, because, as I said back in April, this cancerous line of thought goes deeper than any election -- it's about bias confirmation and rejection of reason, fact, analysis and science, and it's no longer just the right that is infected with it. You see it in the vitriolic and hate-filled language that the Hillaryhaters on the left deploy; in the binary reasoning; in the willful misreading of information to serve a pre-existing agenda; in the intransigent disgust of compromise; in the refusal to acknowledge that issues are complex and that addressing them requires dealing with and trying to satisfy multiple competing constituencies; in the use of personal attacks, labeling and trolling to shut down discourse and even dissent; in the total disregard of and disrespect for other viewpoints. It occurs on both the left and the right, and it's goddamned scary.

Trump, Dominance Politics, and Impulse Control

Josh Marshall of Talkingpointsmemo had another really insightful piece over the weekend, which I missed until today. As Bill Moyers pointed out in another excellent piece (arguing that the Presidential debates are a functional charade riven by conflicts of interest and rather than educate the public, do a serious disservice to our democracy) quoting from it, Josh has done incredible analysis this election season explaining that Trump's need for dominance is a driving aspect, if not the driving aspect, of his conduct throughout the campaign.  (If you've not read these analyses, you're missing out -- check out examples his work here, here and here., though you should be reading him daily.)  And James Fallows's superb discussion of what to look for in the upcoming debates -- assuming the format doesn't change despite Moyers' persuasive plea -- also draws on Josh's analyses of Trump's dominance-seeking.

In his piece on Saturday, Josh broke slightly with his past theme of Trump's drive for dominance, making the following argument:


 "The salient fact about Trump isn't his cruelty or penchant for aggression and violence. It's his inability to control urges and drives most people gain control over very early in life. There are plenty of sadists and sociopaths in the world. They're not remarkable. The scariest have a high degree of impulse control (iciness) which allows them to inflict pain on others when no one is looking or when they will pay no price for doing so. What is true with Trump is what every critic has been saying for a year: the most obvious and contrived provocation can goad this thin skinned charlatan into a wild outburst. He's a seventy year old man with children and grandchildren and he has no self-control."


It's hard to quarrel with this. However, I quibble with it in that I think the most salient fact about Trump is his need for dominance, which in turn manifests itself in the form cruelty, violence and aggression.  He lacks the ability or desire to rein in the more self-defeating aspects of his need to display his dominance, but I think the dominance-drive is paramount.

Josh says plenty of sadists and sociopaths exist, and they are not remarkable.  I'm not sure I agree, but even if that's so, there are also people who lack impulse control, and their impulses don't lead them to this type of behavior.  For example, all children who lack impulse control do not all behave with violence, cruelty, and aggression, although some certainly do.  In other words, I don't think Trump's impulse control character flaw can be disaggregated from his need for dominance at all costs to build himself up.

And what no one ever seems to examine is where the need for total dominance comes from. I've thought for awhile that it is a function of an utterly pathological insecurity -- the mirror image of the bully's ultimate cowardice -- because he has to know what a despicable excuse for a human being he is. Possibly I give him too much credit in assuming that somewhere in the recesses of his narcissist's mind there is a tiny hint of self-awareness that he tries to insulate himself from.  It's just hard to believe he, or anyone else, could really think he is anything but an execrable fraud.

Bigotry As Campaign Strategy Seems to Be Working

Great piece from Josh Marshall this morning on the latest round of birther garbage coming from the Trump campaign,  Money quote:

"Birtherism is a racist smear and a lie. And yet Trump has been repeating it for literally years. As recently as last night. If someone says for years that blacks have smaller brains and are only fit for menial labor or that Jews are parasites and greedy by nature and then finally says "Okay, maybe not, I'm not gonna say that anymore", who cares? If such racist agitation is ever to be forgiven it's only with a true recantation and apology and an explanation of why that person said and did such terrible things for so long. If you're now apologizing, well, why did you say such a thing? You must have known it was wrong, right? Have you really had a change of heart?" 


But of course, Trump is not addressing the real issue (his own behavior), even if he now admits Obama was born here.  And what even the incisive Josh Marshall leaves out of this analysis is that Trump did far more than merely been "repeat" birtherism for years:  in 2011 he became its most active and virulent promulgator, demanding the birth certificate, elevating the racist birther lie to greater prominence, and claiming he had sent a "team of investigators" to Hawaii  and that "Well I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding.".

What were the results of this so-called investigation?  Who was on this "team"?  What "unbelievable finds" did they make? Why have we never heard from them?  When was the press conference announcing the team's results?  Never, because it never happened -- either because Trump lied when he said he had assembled such a team (presumably paid) or because the "investigation" yielded nothing.  Either way, there was nothing, because Obama is an American citizen.  But Trump never admitted it, never backed down, never recanted, never apologized.   Instead, he kept repeating it, even as he promised new "bombshell" information that never materialized, in an active attempt to capitalize on Republican voters' racist doubts and engineer Obama's defeat in 2012.   And he continued to raise the issue over the years.

Reporters, meanwhile, do not seem focused on the fact that Trump's claim that he sent investigators to Hawaii and had found something is a bald-faced lie. CNN did note in 2011 that the only evidence of such a team was Trump's own statement, and in July of this year, New York Times reporters observed  that it appears that Trump never sent such a team.  But the issue is not highlighted.  And it matters, for three reasons:  

1. Trump repeatedly said he had a team, they could not believe what they were finding, and that the team went to Hawaii.  If there was no team and no one went to Hawaii and there were no findings, these are all lies.   
2. If Trump did send a team, then Trump also lied, because if those investigators or team had ever found anything to support the birther lie, you can be sure we would have heard about it. We never heard about it, because there was nothing.  
3. The pattern of lying in 2011 is the same pattern he has deployed throughout the campaign, and it is a deeply defamatory, McCarthy-esque smear tactic that is reprehensible in a ordinary person, but deeply dangerous coming from a potential (or God forbid, actual) president.  This is exactly what he did with the so-called security briefings. It is what he does all the time:  makes a claim, state he has secret information that will reveal some bombshell about the target (Obama, Clinton, whoever); and cause unending negative speculation about the target.  The fact that the bombshell never materializes is beside the point, because he is sowing doubt, which then allows the speculation itself to become the story -- and even when the truth comes (as it did for the birther lie) , the speculation and doubt remain.  (Look at the insane health garbage about Clinton. Trump tapped into the rightwing fever swamp where planted and ludicrous rumors were swirling about Clinton's health, from claims that she had brain damage to epilepsy to palsy, and brought them mainstream.  Those rumors play on longstanding gendered beliefs that women are weaker than men.  There was no basis for the rumors about Clinton's health, but now that she had a mild illness the Trump base questions her health, says the speculation is confirmed, and rumors take on the sheen of truth.)  This is how Trump deploys gender bias coupled with innuendo  to attempt to undermine and delegitimize Clinton just as he has deployed racial bias and innuendo to attempt to undermine and delegitimize Obama. He knows full well that whites don't examine their conscious or unconscious biases toward African-Americans and that men and women won't examine their attitudes toward women.  So this 2011 birther conspiracy is a template for how Trump channels McCarthy, racism and sexism on a near daily-basis in this campaign. 

And Trump's lies and smears also matter because now Trump's campaign has put out an utterly putrid piece of Orwellian filth, falsely claiming (i) that he did America a service by "forcing" Obama to release his long-firm birth certificate and (ii) that Clinton had something to do with this right-wing  fever swamp vileness that subsumed the 2008 election on the right and continues to this day, as polls show that a huge percentages of Trump supporters do not believe that the President is an American citizen and further believe he is a Muslim (the latter of which should not matter anyway).   So now it's a "service" to the country when a racist celebrity crackpot seizes on a debunked rightwing conspiracy theory that was used to undermine and delegitimize Obama in 2008, and which worked so well that huge swaths of Republican citizens actually believed it, and re-stokes the racist lie for his own benefit to water-test a 2012 presidential bid?  It is a "service" now that even more Republican voters believe Obama is not a citizen than did in 2008 and 2011, thanks largely to Trump?   In fact, more Republicans believe Obama was not born here now than did in 2008 and 2011. 

Make no mistake, Trump's game here is several-fold:

1.  Dominate the news cycle by pretending to not be racist while doubling-down on and repeating the racism for the benefit of his racist supporters, all the while further pretending that he cares about people.   He gets to try to "pivot" and ignore the birther issue while fanning the flames, suggesting that it is the press who is concerned with irrelevant old stories and not focused on "real issues," unlike himself.

2.  Simultaneously attack Clinton in a consummate act of combined mendacity and projection, in order to tar Clinton with his own racism, and to play into narratives of her as venal and calculating.  This in turn allows him to deflect his own conduct, and absolve himself and his racist supporters by blaming it all on her.  It has the added benefit to Trump of perhaps sowing doubt in the minds of those already disinclined to support Clinton. Will those people go to factcheck.org or politifact.com and see what a scurrilous lie this is?  Don't hold your breath.  Will the news media call Trump out for the liar that he is on this issue? Again, don't hold your breath. Meanwhile, the lie gets airtime, like all the other lies about Clinton, and after awhile the truth becomes irrelevant, a subjective toy to be played with depending on where you political proclivities lie, another reprehensible meme that takes longer to refute than to repeat, and whose refutation will not be believed by those who do not want to believe it. 

3.  Stop the media discussion and inquiries about the monumental and insurmountable conflicts of interest that are detailed in Kurt Eichenwald's Nesweek story, which ought to be front-page news and dominating the news cycle.  His willingness to get in bed with dictators -- not just fawning on Putin from afar, but his seeking to actually do business with Qaddaffi in New York, despite his being a known terrorist murderer -- ought to give rise to questions across the country, but we get nothing from the press.   He is fine with continuing in the narrative of the "bigot" because he has seen from the polls and the conduct of his own party that bigotry, while unappetizing for many, is apparently not a true impediment to his election.  The bigot narrative is better for him because it allows the press to continue in the false dichotomy that it has developed to describe the two candidates:  he's the bigot, she's the liar. 

This narrative is itself a huge lie, but perpetuating it lets Trump avoid the narratives that ought to be following him like the plague:   he is the most dishonest, secretive, untrustworthy, selfish, fraudulent lying liar in the history of modern politics, a person who cannot be trusted to tell the truth about a single thing, or even to put his country before himself and his own greed.  Donald Trump does not want news reporters and interviewers focusing on his conflicts of interest, refusal to release the tax returns, illegal housing discrimination, failed companies, Trump University scam, bankruptcies, conflicts of interest, or hypocrisy surrounding the questionable circumstances of his third wife's immigration, among other things.  

The bigot narrative energizes his base, and allows him and the media to paint Clinton as the liar.  Even the people who hate Trump and won't vote for him have believe that Clinton is dishonest and untrustworthy, and that they face an impossible choice between a lying hater (Trump) and someone then have been led to falsely believe is an even worse liar (Clinton).  For a politician, Clinton is honest, as has been repeatedly shown.  


So Trump today says finally that Obama was born in the U.S.?  Who cares, as Josh says in his article?   His bitherism is and was always a tool, a racist campaign strategy founded on lies. And so the real story should not be that he has finally backed off this racist claim; it should be his lies and all the other issues I mentioned above.  Like I said before, don't hold your breath. 

Clinton-Trump Debate Showdown

Highly recommend this excellent piece from James Fallows.  He looks at the ways in which past presidential and vice-presidential debates have been won or lost, and it's often been not so much a question of substance as of the candidate fitting within -- or confounding -- pre-existing narratives.

He also takes an in-depth look at four key Trump attributes that will be at play in the debates:  simplicity (of both spoken language and body language), ignorance, dominance, and gender.

He discusses how each candidate can win and lose the debates. 

Really worth a read.

False Equivalence: Eat Shit!

You can place a steaming pile of shit on a scale, and balance it out with a slice of cake. The two may balance perfectly, but they are not equivalent choices. One is literally shit and the other is a piece of cake.

Maybe the cake is not your favorite -- maybe it is carrot cake and you don't like carrots. Maybe you prefer pie.  But the thing on the other scale, all balanced out with the cake, is still a steaming pile of shit.

The press treats the cake and the steaming pile of shit as if they are the same, and in fact, it comes down harder on the cake for being carrot cake and not being an angel food cake or a red velvet or a donut; "this cake tastes like shit."

The headlines scream and blare how nobody likes carrot cake (except for those who do, but they don't matter or count) and how can we possibly have carrot cake and OMG the icing is not cream cheese icing, It's just regular icing and we were promised cream cheese icing and where did that icing come from and who paid for the icing and cake is not healthy for you and this is the shittiest cake in the world, how can we be possibly be stuck with this awful shit-cake? This carrot cake is a pile of shit! It's just dressed up to look like a carrot cake.

Reporters:  "Hey, everyone! Do you want the carrot-cake-shaped shit or the steaming pile of shit?"

Voters:  " At least the steaming pile of shit is honest about its shittiness!"

Steaming pile of shit to voters:  "The carrot cake is a steaming pile of shit."

Reporters:  "The shitty carrot cake is pretending it is not a steaming pile of shit too!  Voters don't believe the carrot cake is not a steaming pile of shit.  The carrot cake cannot be trusted."

Let's take a poll now: do you want the carrot cake or the actual steaming pile of shit?

Now the carrot cake is weakening in national polls, because really, what's the difference?
NB:  Wise Women for Clinton has created a short comic based on this post. Check it out here
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Trump Gaslights America

Guess I am in good company with Jamelle Bouie, who also notes that Trump is gaslighting not only Clinton, but the entire country.

Initial Thoughts on Eichenwald's Article and Trump's End Game

I don't think he was in it to win it at the beginning; like many others, I assumed it was a vanity project that he would use to leverage his brand.  It's been clear for some time that a Trump presidency would be a national security threat with negative implications on a global scale -- due to the combination of his infantile temperament, mind-numbing ignorance of world affairs and how government works, and unfettered Islamophobia, his election would likely de-stabilize the world and upend U.S. alliances, among other negative consequences.

This striking piece of journalism from Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald takes a different look at the national security threat that Trump poses to this country.  It's a truly critical read that exposes the unavoidable corruption and conflicts that the Trump family's personal financial interests would infuse into geopolitics were he to be elected.  It also exposes, once again, what a deeply despicable person Trump is:


But for the Trump Organization, Qaddafi was not a murdering terrorist; he was a prospect who might bring the company financing and the opportunity to build a resort on the Mediterranean coast of Libya. According to an Arab financier and a former businessman from the North African country, Trump made entreaties to Qaddafi and other members of his government, beginning in 2008, in which he sought deals that would bring cash to the Trump Organization from a sovereign wealth fund called the Libyan Investment Authority. The following year, Trump offered to lease his estate in Westchester County, New York, to Qaddafi; he took Qaddafi’s money but, after local protests, forbade him from staying at his property. (Trump kept the cash.) “I made a lot of money with Qaddafi,’’ Trump said recently about the Westchester escapade. “He paid me a fortune.”

These conflicts and this attitude standing alone are insupportable, but combined with Trump's extraordinary list of other disqualifications, it should be inconceivable for him to win.  In fact, the man ought to be a pariah, drummed out of society, rather than the nominee of the Republican party.  Yet not only is he the nominee, he most certainly could win, and I doubt this article will sway a single supporter. But for those on the fence, or trying to thread the needle of not endorsing and not supporting but not disavowing him, like John McCain and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, this has got to be the end of the line, at long last, of their equivocation.  Will they demand he at a minimum shut it down or sever all ties?  And even if he were to promise to shut his business interests down and keep his family members away from the Trump Organization, where would the proof come from? How could he be prevented from picking it right back up again after leaving office, with the biggest brand of all time?

Though there is a very real risk of his winning here, the more likely outcome remains that he loses.  What then?  He will still be around, his brand bigger than ever, burnished by his nomination and his having nearly beaten a seasoned candidate of superior qualifications, experience, intellect, ideas, and character; he will not have released his tax returns or medical records; he will not be made the pariah he should be; and he will likely continue to be, as he likes to brag, "very, very rich."

One other thing:  Kurt Eichenwald is already getting anti-Semitic death threats with overt oven references. Will reporters demand that Trump denounce the hatred?  Or will he, as he did with the Julia Ioffe piece on his wife Melania, refuse, and instead praise the "passion" of his supporters.   I want those reporters to ask whether the anti-Semitic threats are deplorable. And let's see what he says.

We Need New Words

We almost need a new language to address what is going on in this election. The words "gaslighting" and "projection" are correct, yet are inadequate to describe what Trump's campaign has been doing: HRC delivers a masterful speech on a Thursday morning a couple of weeks ago making a documented, unassailable, point-by-point case of Trump's bigotry and repeated appeals to the white supremacist, Jew- and Muslim-hating right and the elevation within his campaign of alt-right sympathizers, and the danger this poses for the country, as well as the campaign's basic immorality, indecency, and betrayal of democratic values. Trump responds by calling Clinton a "bigot." [News coverage on the front page of one paper: "Clinton, Trump trade barbs about racism" The MSM repeated Trump's response, but didn't discuss that Clinton's speech was entirely factual, and Trump responded like a five-year old, "no, you are" without any basis.]

Unpack this for just a moment. HRC's campaign theme is "Stronger together." The Democratic Party's convention was a celebration of our nation's diversity, featuring people of every race, creed, color, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. Bigotry, racism, misogyny, xenophobia are the opposite of what Clinton's campaign is based on.

By contrast, the Trump campaign is explicitly founded on denigration of Latinos (Mexicans are "rapists" who bring drugs) and Muslims (ban them from the country; make them "register" -- pages taken from the Hitler playbook early on his campaign against the Jews, which did not start out as "exterminate the Jews" but rather used language and proposed policies the way Trump does; just substitute "Muslims" for "Jews"). It is less explicitly but equally founded on denigration of African-Americans, from Trump's life spent discriminating against African-Americans in his businesses to his treatment of African-American peaceful protesters at rallies to his embrace of the alt-right to his comments about BLM and "my African American" and "what do you have to lose" and his birtherism, etc. Trump's loathing of immigrants is the foundational premise of his campaign and other than discrimination against Muslims on the basis of their religion (which is patently un-Constitutional and abhorrent), his principal ideas are deportation and building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico (never mind all those immigrants who don't come here via the Mexican border...).

Trump's misogyny is omnipresent, expressed repeatedly over his lifetime in print interviews and on the radio and on TV; through his treatment of women as nothing but objects to be rated and commented on based on whether they are attractive enough for him, the apotheosis of which is his treatment of Miss Universe contestants. His contempt for women fuels and animates his campaign, whether in claiming Megyn Kelly had blood coming out of her "wherever" or attacking Carly Fiorina's face or doubling down on calling Rosie O'Donnell a fat pig or hiring Roger Ailes (serial and contemptible sexual harasser) and Steve Bannon (domestic abuser and publisher of Breitbart news, which openly advocates that women should stay in the kitchen in addition to its anti-Semitic and white supremacist agenda, and who employs Milo Yiannopolis to write hate speech directed at women and gays, and who was permanently banned from Twitter for his vicious, racist, sexist attacks on Leslie Jones), or calling for women to be punished for having abortions, or in the repulsive way in which Trump and his campaign use misogyny to attack and undermine Clinton, whether by claiming her only qualification is her gender and accusing her of "playing the woman card" or never once denouncing the "bitch" and other memes that saturate his rallies, or by suggesting his supporters assassinate her and the Russians hack into her emails, or making up foul rumors about her health to suggest she is "weak."

So, to go back to it: HRC correctly calls Trump a bigot without even mentioning his misogyny -- no need to "play the woman card" there. She focused on his hate speech and appeals to white supremacists. It was a spectacular and necessary and wholly damning indictment based on Trump's own statements, and not a word of criticism of it came from the GOP; how could they, since everything she said Trump had said or done, he had in fact said or done? But no one cared except the usual fantastic bloggers and maybe Joy Reid on MSNBC. No GOP leaders said anything, but no one from the press asked them whether they disagreed with Clinton's assessment, and if they did not disagree, how they could support him to be the president of the United States of America. The press simply did not press the GOP leadership on Clinton's unassailable case, and the issue just melted into the background noise of the parade of horribles and basket of deplorables that is Trump. [They've asked Paul Ryan about Trump's vile statements about Judge Curiel, and tried to ask Mitch McConnell, but the press is letting the entire GOP leadership get away with their nominee being Trump. They should be forced to own their nominee, or disown him.]

So, this past weekend, HRC "grossly generalized" to say that half of Trump's supporters are xenophobes, racists, etc. This is true, and the percentage is higher if you take out his supporters who are not necessarily misogynists or racists and focus on those who would like to enact anti-Muslim policies and are deeply suspicious of Muslims -- that percentage is in the 60s for all Republicans. So as many (Coates, Bouie, Marshall, Vox, etc.) have pointed out, "half" understated the case.

Trump responded by claiming Clinton insulted people by naming what they are, called her campaign "hate-filled" and devoid of policy ideas, and called on her to apologize and drop out of the race. This is, of course, totally upside down (and not in a fun Stranger Things kind of way). Trump's campaign, not Clinton's, runs on hatred.  And Clinton has a gazillion point-by-point meticulously researched and thought-out plans on a host of issues and micro issues, from animal rights and Alzheimer's to climate change and gun safety and tax policy and mental health and family leave and equal pay and additional financial industry regulations and on and on and on. Trump has build a wall, deport, negotiate better "deals", and a slogan about making America great again -- you know, back like it was when women, people of color and gays knew their place in the white male hierarchy -- with no information or data or ideas or bullet points on the details of any of this, because the first two are ridiculous, and the second two are not policies.

So everything that Trump accuses Clinton of, he does. He is the bigot and everyone knows this. He has no policies, and everyone knows this. He is manifestly unfit and unqualified for office by every conceivable metric there is, and all but his base know this. And he is weak and a coward. He shows his weakness and his cowardice every single day, through his insults, his bluster, his thin-skinnedness, and his lies. It would be laughable were this country not on a precipice.

But to call what he does mere projection, or gaslighting, or rank hypocrisy, all of which it is, just isn't adequate, because the fake criticisms he levels are so transparently applicable to him and not her, that for him to attack her for the things that he, and not she, is guilty of, takes either a mind of unsurpassing juvenility, or else a kind of brazen contempt for reality that is almost unfathomable. What words are there to deal with his puerility and his fundamental, seemingly bottomless, indecency?

And what words are there to deal with the press, and most of the GOP, who all know that a Trump election would be a singular catastrophe for this country, but who repeat Trump's campaign lies for him, who give him a megaphone for his lies and his hate, who breathe life into Trump's every conspiracy theory and rumor, who literally turn Clinton's cough into a scandal, who report on investigations clearing her name as if she has been found guilty, who once they report on something terrible Trump has done, let it SLIDE, over and over and over, who do NOT relentlessly press him on his failure to turn over his taxes, on the Trump U fraud, on his preposterous doctor's letter, on the 3,500 lawsuits against him for stiffing regular guys of the money he owes them, on his possible bribe of Bondi, on his bigotry, on his endless, endless, piling up lies? Clinton is asked about three emails every day of the week, and the press is relentless, constantly on the attack and looking to pounce and creating fake stories to make the benign look sinister all the time. What are the words to deal with this? "False equivalency" isn't enough.

I will tell you the words for the press and the GOP who together conspire wittingly or unwittingly to enable this reprehensible man-toddler and his deplorable followers, who see what he is but who are more concerned with the horse race and "winning" than with their country and their countrymen's lives. Hannah Arendt had the words for this. The reality is that Donald Trump hasn't had to lift a finger to expose and exploit the seething white male resentment in this nation and set it loose, and he can't succeed without the complicity of the mainstream media and the GOP.

We don't have adequate words for how galling Trump is, but we do have the words for what's going on with a press that is incapable of challenging his lies and for naming those lies for what they are, and that attacks Clinton for naming that bigotry what it is, and the GOP that does not disavow him. We have the words thanks to Arendt: "the banality of evil." All it takes for a man like Trump and his haters to succeed is the refusal of regular people to call it out and stand up to it, and for the press to keep doing what it's doing in the dichotomy between how it covers Clinton and how it covers Trump.