Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Trial Balloon For A Coup?

By Yonatan Zunger

Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours

The theme of this morning’s news updates from Washington is additional clarity emerging, rather than meaningful changes in the field. But this clarity is enough to give us a sense of what we just saw happen, and why it happened the way it did.

I’ll separate what’s below into the raw news reports and analysis; you may also find these two pieces from yesterday (heavily referenced below) to be useful.
From “The Day After Tomorrow.” I resisted the temptation to use the analogous shot from “Planet of the Apes.”

News Reports

(1) Priebus made two public statements today. One is that the ban on Muslims will no longer be applied to green card holders. Notably absent from his statement was anything about people with other types of visa (including long-term ones), or anything about the DHS’ power to unilaterally revoke green cards in bulk.


A point of note here is that Priebus is the one making these statements, which is not normally the Chief of Staff’s job. I’ll come back to that below.

(2) Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that the intent of yesterday’s order was very much a ban on Muslims, described in those words, and he was among the people Trump asked how they could find a way to do this legally.

(3) CNN has a detailed story (heavily sourced) about the process by which this ban was created and announced. Notable in this is that the DHS’ lawyers objected to the order, specifically its exclusion of green card holders, as illegal, and also pressed for there to be a grace period so that people currently out of the country wouldn’t be stranded — and they were personally overruled by Bannon and Stephen Miller. Also notable is that career DHS staff, up to and including the head of Customs & Border Patrol, were kept entirely out of the loop until the order was signed.

(4) The Guardian is reporting (heavily sourced) that the “mass resignations” of nearly all senior staff at the State Department on Thursday were not, in fact, resignations, but a purge ordered by the White House. As the diagram below (by Emily Roslin v Praze) shows, this leaves almost nobody in the entire senior staff of the State Department at this point.
The seniormost staff of the Department of State. Blue X’s are unfilled positions; red X’s are positions which were purged. Note that the “filled” positions are not actually confirmed yet.
As the Guardian points out, this has an important and likely not accidental effect: it leaves the State Department entirely unstaffed during these critical first weeks, when orders like the Muslim ban (which they would normally resist) are coming down.

The article points out another point worth highlighting: “In the past, the state department has been asked to set up early foreign contacts for an incoming administration. This time however it has been bypassed, and Trump’s immediate circle of Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus are making their own calls.”

(5) On Inauguration Day, Trump apparently filed his candidacy for 2020. Beyond being unusual, this opens up the ability for him to start accepting “campaign contributions” right away. Given that a sizable fraction of the campaign funds from the previous cycle were paid directly to the Trump organization in exchange for building leases, etc., at inflated rates, you can assume that those campaign coffers are a mechanism by which US nationals can easily give cash bribes directly to Trump. Non-US nationals can, of course, continue to use Trump’s hotels and other businesses as a way to funnel money to him.

(6) Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.

Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”

Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.

What does this all mean?

I see a few key patterns here. First, the decision to first block, and then allow, green card holders was meant to create chaos and pull out opposition; they never intended to hold it for too long. It wouldn’t surprise me if the goal is to create “resistance fatigue,” to get Americans to the point where they’re more likely to say “Oh, another protest? Don’t you guys ever stop?” relatively quickly.

However, the conspicuous absence of provisions preventing them from executing any of the “next steps” I outlined yesterday, such as bulk revocation of visas (including green cards) from nationals of various countries, and then pursuing them using mechanisms being set up for Latinos, highlights that this does not mean any sort of backing down on the part of the regime.

Note also the most frightening escalation last night was that the DHS made it fairly clear that they did not feel bound to obey any court orders. CBP continued to deny all access to counsel, detain people, and deport them in direct contravention to the court’s order, citing “upper management,” and the DHS made a formal (but confusing) statement that they would continue to follow the President’s orders. (See my updates from yesterday, and the various links there, for details) Significant in today’s updates is any lack of suggestion that the courts’ authority played a role in the decision.

That is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored.

Yesterday was the trial balloon for a coup d’état against the United States. It gave them useful information.

A second major theme is watching the set of people involved. There appears to be a very tight “inner circle,” containing at least Trump, Bannon, Miller, Priebus, Kushner, and possibly Flynn, which is making all of the decisions. Other departments and appointees have been deliberately hobbled, with key orders announced to them only after the fact, staff gutted, and so on. Yesterday’s reorganization of the National Security Council mirrors this: Bannon and Priebus now have permanent seats on the Principals’ Committee; the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have both been demoted to only attending meetings where they are told that their expertise is relevant; the Secretary of Energy and the US representative to the UN were kicked off the committee altogether (in defiance of the authorizing statute, incidentally).

I am reminded of Trump’s continued operation of a private personal security force, and his deep rift with the intelligence community. Last Sunday, Kellyanne Conway (likely another member of the inner circle) said that “It’s really time for [Trump] to put in his own security and intelligence community,” and this seems likely to be the case.

As per my analysis yesterday, Trump is likely to want his own intelligence service disjoint from existing ones and reporting directly to him; given the current staffing and roles of his inner circle, Bannon is the natural choice for them to report through. (Having neither a large existing staff, nor any Congressional or Constitutional restrictions on his role as most other Cabinet-level appointees do) Keith Schiller would continue to run the personal security force, which would take over an increasing fraction of the Secret Service’s job.

Especially if combined with the DHS and the FBI, which appear to have remained loyal to the President throughout the recent transition, this creates the armature of a shadow government: intelligence and police services which are not accountable through any of the normal means, answerable only to the President.

(Note, incidentally, that the DHS already has police authority within 100 miles of any border of the US; since that includes coastlines, this area includes over 60% of Americans, and eleven entire states.

 They also have a standing force of over 45,000 officers, and just received authorization to hire 15,000 more on Wednesday.)

The third theme is money. Trump’s decision to keep all his businesses (not bothering with any blind trusts or the like), and his fairly open diversion of campaign funds, made it fairly clear from the beginning that he was seeing this as a way to become rich in the way that only dedicated kleptocrats can, and this week’s updates definitely tally with that. Kushner looks increasingly likely to be the money-man, acting as the liaison between piles of cash and the president.

This gives us a pretty good guess as to what the exit strategy is: become tremendously, and untraceably, rich, by looting any coffers that come within reach.

Combining all of these facts, we have a fairly clear picture in play.
  1. Trump was, indeed, perfectly honest during the campaign; he intends to do everything he said, and more. This should not be reassuring to you.
  2. The regime’s main organizational goal right now is to transfer all effective power to a tight inner circle, eliminating any possible checks from either the Federal bureaucracy, Congress, or the Courts. Departments are being reorganized or purged to effect this.
  3. The inner circle is actively probing the means by which they can seize unchallenged power; yesterday’s moves should be read as the first part of that.
  4. The aims of crushing various groups — Muslims, Latinos, the black and trans communities, academics, the press — are very much primary aims of the regime, and are likely to be acted on with much greater speed than was earlier suspected. The secondary aim of personal enrichment is also very much in play, and clever people will find ways to play these two goals off each other.
If you’re looking for estimates of what this means for the future, I’ll refer you back to yesterday’s post on what “things going wrong” can look like. Fair warning: I stuffed that post with pictures of cute animals for a reason.

Note: If you want the full feed of what I write, follow me at google.com/+YonatanZunger and @YonatanZunger on Twitter. There’s too much to put on Medium!

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Congressional GOP Utterly Silent After Jason Chaffetz Busted Using Personal Email Server


In a great ironic twist, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has been promising to lead the investigation of Hillary Clinton even now that Donald Trump has become president, and is now under fire himself for use of an illegal private email server.

The Democratic Coalition Against Trump reported Rep. Chaffetz to the FBI, explaining:

The Democratic Coalition Against Trump reported Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) to the FBI on Wednesday morning for possibly breaking Executive Order 13526 and 18 U.S.C. Sec. 793(f) of the federal code, which makes it unlawful to send or store classified information on a personal email. As was recently resurfaced by the Democratic Coalition’s #TrumpLeaks program, Rep. Chaffetz lists his personal Gmail address on business cards brandished with the Congressional seal. Rep. Chaffetz sits on the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, which has jurisdiction over “internal and homeland security,” among other things.

“The mishandling of classified information that concerns the national security of our nation is something that the FBI takes very seriously,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition. “The irony is unparalleled- Representative Chaffetz, the person who led the charge against Secretary Clinton’s personal email server use, could actually be the one who is breaking the law and putting our national security at risk in the process.”

This coalition brings up several good questions.

First, will Chaffetz be able to lead an investigation of Hillary Clinton while he himself is suspected of doing the exact same thing she’s accused of doing?

Second, why is she the only one being investigated, when there is ample evidence of many, many government officials using private email servers, as well as evidence of Donald Trump and his Russian ties communicating through private servers?

Third, why was Hillary’s email an issue at all.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Donald Trump still, quite literally, doesn’t know anything about anything

In First Network Interview as President, Trump Confirms Things That Aren’t “Tremendous” Are “Disasters”

Thursday, January 26, 2017

A Lie By Any Other Name


This is not a presentation of “alternative facts,” whatever that may mean, as Kellyanne Conway, President Trump’s mistress of misdirection, posited over the weekend.

These are lies; good old-fashioned lies, baldfaced and flat-out lies.

Some have suggested that we in the media should focus a bit less on these lies — some of them issued in tweets and some in interviews or news conferences — and focus more on policies, particularly the ineptitude of the gathering cabinet and the raft of executive orders that Trump himself is signing.

But I take the position that this is all worthy of coverage, that there are simply different kinds of news being unearthed about this administration that exist on different strata.

To take it even further, it may be these seemingly smaller infractions that produce the greater injury because the implications are more profound. Trump does not simply have “a running war with the media,” as he so indecorously and disrespectfully spouted off while standing on the hallowed ground before the C.I.A. Memorial Wall. He is in fact having a running war with the truth itself.

After Trump and his press secretary, Sean Spicer, got called out by the press for lying about Trump’s inauguration crowd size and viewership, Spicer limped back to the mic and whined of Trump’s press coverage: “The default narrative is always negative, and it’s demoralizing.”

No, sir, the default is to call a lie a lie; lies are negative because they are the opposite of the truth; and Trump continuously lies. Also, he who is devoid of morality is immune to demoralization. You can’t wring water from a rock.

The bone you have to pick is not with the press but with the “president.”

Trump’s team seems to need to control narratives and to staunch what they view as negative, even if it’s true. This compulsion may in fact be spilling over into the Trump administration’s approach to government agencies, particularly those with a more scientific leaning.

As The Hill reported Tuesday, “The Trump administration is clamping down on public communications by agencies as it seeks to assert control over the federal bureaucracy.”

The site continued:
New restrictions on social media use and interaction with press and lawmakers at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, Agriculture and the Interior have sparked concerns of a President Trump-backed effort to silence dissenting views.
Although The Hill granted, “it’s not unusual for incoming administrations to seek control over agency communications,” it cited “experts on the federal work force” who said “they have never seen a White House take the type of steps Trump’s administration has to curb public communications.”

And Trump for his part continues to rage about three to five million illegal votes causing him to lose the popular vote in November. This, too, is a lie. A lie. Not the euphemisms you hear on television, like “unsubstantiated,” or “unproven,” or “baseless.” It is a lie, pure and simple.

But Trump won’t let it go. His pride is hurt, his vanity tarnished. The man who prides himself on winning lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million votes, the biggest popular vote loss by a winning candidate in American history. That stings.

So, even after his lie is reported and rejected, he continues to perpetuate it. This is what makes Trump qualitatively different from our leaders who came before him: He believes that truth is what he says it is, and the only reason it has yet to be accepted is that it has yet to be sufficiently repeated.

Unbowed, Trump published two tweets on Wednesday morning that read together:

“I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!”

This is just like Trump, whose inclination is never to admit a mistake, and instead to redouble his self-righteousness even in the midst of his wrong. This statement weakens our democracy and strengthens voter suppression efforts.

We all have to adjust to this unprecedented assault on the truth and stand ready to vigilantly defend against it, because without truth, what’s left? Our president is a pathological liar. Say it. Write it. Never become inured to it. And dispense with the terms of art to describe it. A lie by any other name portends the same.

I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter (@CharlesMBlow), or email me at chblow@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

MSNBC viewers dumping Morning Blow

By


morning joe ratings
MSNBC viewers have spoken loudly as Morning Joe’s ratings continue to slide. The conservative talker is now the lowest rated morning show on cable news.

One statistic from TVNewser tells the story of Morning Joe’s decline, “Last year, “Morning Joe” was ranked #28 of all cable news shows in the demo. This January it is #47, and in fourth place in the demo behind “Fox & Friends,” “New Day,” and ‘Morning Express.'” The numbers for Joe Scarborough’s show have fallen apart, “On weekday mornings, CNN’s New Day registered its highest ratings ever in January and posted its largest monthly share of the cable news morning audience since 2009. The program also easily beat MSNBC’s Morning Joe, topping Joe for four straight months in total viewers and seven consecutive months among A25-54. Fox and Friends posted its lowest delivery since 2001.”

MSNBC boss Phil Griffin has continued to tout Morning Joe as one of his successes, but the reality is that MSNBC viewers have no interest in the program. The collapse of Morning Joe highlights one of the biggest inconsistencies in MSNBC’s strategy. Griffin claims that he wants to attract younger viewers to the network, but he appears to be completely in love with a program that does poorly with the same viewers age 25-54 that he is courting.

Morning Joe, along with the rest of MSNBC, is dying a slow ratings death. MSNBC lost 23% of their primetime viewers and 39% of their younger viewers in comparison to January 2014. The problems at MSNBC continue to be driven by leaders who have no clue who their potential viewers are, and what they want. The strategy of deploying series of Rachel Maddow clones throughout the schedule has chased viewers away while diluting the distinctiveness of their star program.

Loyal MSNBC viewers have been unhappy with Morning Joe for years, and they have finally walked away from the program. A Pew study on media polarization found that CNN has replaced MSNBC as the preferred network for liberal. Morning Joe will continue to hurt MSNBC until they realize the common sense idea that liberals and progressives don’t want to listen to three of Joe Scarborough’s Republican talking points.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Monday, January 23, 2017

‘Morning Blow’ Demands Trump Fire Some Staff: 'The Show Has Begun Really Badly'

“Whoever was encouraging him, goading him to keep fighting about the size of the crowds…should be fired today for the sake of America."

By Alexandra Rosenmann

President Trump’s first 48 hours in office began with a lie, widely criticized by both the left and the right.

"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period," Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced on Saturday, while offering zero evidence to back up his claim.

After the irresponsible announcement dominated the news cycle this past weekend, the Morning Joe team weighed in Monday morning. “It’s show time,” co-host Mika Brzezinski began. “And the [Trump] show has begun really badly.

“Whoever didn’t write, or should have written, or should have edited that [CIA] speech should go today — out, goodbye, done,” she added, referring to Trump's inappropriate bragging of his crowd sizes at the CIA headquarters.

At the same event Trump once again attacked the media.

"I have a running war with the media," President Trump said, calling the press recording him "dishonest."

Co-host Joe Scarborough agreed that this battle should be put to bed.

“Whoever was encouraging him, goading him to keep fighting about the size of the crowds… should be fired today for the sake of America,” Scarborough said.

He then used a boxing metaphor to speak of the turmoil since Trump's inauguration.

"The bell just rang... for the first round," Scarborough said. "We're looking into the crowd and completely over-matched by history."

Watch:


Breaking News

Trump team ‘scrambling to get back on script’ after ‘terrible’ first weekend in office

By

Donald Trump reportedly spent his first weekend in office on an emotional roller coaster as he obsessed over Twitter posts about his inauguration and lashed out at critics — against the advice of his top advisers, who are now “scrambling to get back on script.”

The New York Times said Sunday night that Trump spent a “rocky” first weekend in office as he echoed his campaign trail cycle of “angry Twitter messages, a familiar obsession with slights and a series of meandering and at times untrue statements, all eventually giving way to attempts at damage control.”

“The lack of discipline troubled even senior members of Mr. Trump’s circle,” reported the Times‘ Peter Baker, Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, “some of whom had urged him not to indulge his simmering resentment at what he saw as unfair news coverage. Instead, Mr. Trump chose to listen to other aides who shared his outrage and desire to punch back. By the end of the weekend, he and his team were scrambling to get back on script.”

During the inauguration itself, Trump reportedly became “increasingly angry” as Twitter users posted photos of his inauguration crowd next to Pres. Barack Obama’s much larger audience from 2009.

“But he spent his Friday night in a whirlwind of celebration and affirmation,” the Times said. “When he awoke on Saturday morning, after his first night in the executive mansion, the glow was gone, several people close to him said, and the new president was filled anew with a sense of injury.”

“Several senior advisers urged him to move on and focus on the responsibilities of office during his first full day as president,” but Trump’s need to hit back would not be denied. He devote a major portion of his speech at CIA Headquarters to lashing out at the media for what he perceived as unfair inauguration coverage.

Then he sent out newly minted Press Secretary Sean Spicer at 6 p.m. on Saturday to deliver a hot-faced, defiant press conference in which Spicer flatly stated that Trump’s inaugural audience was the “largest ever,” took no questions and stormed out of the White House Briefing Room.

Even stalwart Trump supporters like L. Lin Wood are concerned that the administration is off to a bad start.

“To someone who believed we might have a good opportunity to change, it’s just a terrible start.

Because he’s got a long way to go,” Mr. Wood told the Times. “This is going to go downhill quickly if it’s not changed, and that’s not good for any of us.”

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Who Is Dumber: Bush Or Trump?

Vote at http://tytnetwork.com/dumb

It’s a tough call... Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola, and Jimmy Dore, hosts of The Young Turks, discuss. Tell us what you think in the comment section below. http://tytnetwork.com/go



"Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said in a radio interview on Tuesday that he thought it was “sad” that former President George W. Bush chose not to vote for him.

“I think it’s sad, you know, when I see George Bush do that,” Trump told host Howie Carr. “Look, I was very critical of him for getting us into Iraq, which was obviously a horrible decision. And getting out the way Obama got us out was a horrible way to get out too — the combination.”

But Trump didn’t seem too worried about losing a couple of votes.

“I don’t think it has any impact, frankly,” he told Carr. “I think it has no impact.”

The former president and his wife, Laura Bush, left the presidential candidate section of their ballots blank, only voting for Republicans in down-ballot races, according to CNN.”*

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-george-w-bush-vote_us_58227bf1e4b0e80b02cdbf59

Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola, Jimmy Dore
Cast: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola, Jimmy Dore

Friday, January 20, 2017

Trump's Presidency Will Be A Fiasco

The president-elect will only get smaller and less influential as broken promises pile up.

By William Greider

For many Americans, Donald Trump’s inauguration is going to feel more like a funeral than a celebration of democratic self-government. Trump is the most unpopular president-elect in at least 40 years. Pew says 68 percent of Americans find him “hard to like.” Only 41 percent approve of the job he’s done explaining his plans for his presidency. His “unfavorables” hover around 50 percent.

If Americans wanted a performer to run the country, why not pick George Clooney? Instead, we got a slightly demented carnival barker with gilded hair and a bloated ego. The fright and gloom are understandable, but I have a hunch Donald Trump has already peaked. He won’t go away, of course—he will be Mr. President—but the air is already seeping out of Trump’s balloon. The president-elect has amassed a huge inventory of dubious promises, and I expect this powerhouse of American politics to get smaller and less influential as the broken promises pile up.

The Trump era is going to be a fiasco for the country, but especially for Donald Trump. He was a brilliant novice on the way up, both funny and tough, astutely attacking the stale dogmas of both political parties. On the way down, he begins to look like a great American mistake and bait-and-switch businessman.

As a salesman, Trump pitched an appealing nostalgia—a breezy promise to restore American “greatness.” “I alone can fix it,” he told the cheering rallies. His self-congratulations were over-the-top, sincerely-felt, though unconvincing.

If Trump expressed his governing vision, it was usually limited to 140 characters. His longer speeches, if you listen closely, are always about the same subject—the greater glory of Donald Trump. We still don’t know how much Trump knows about governing. Or how much he cares.

President-elect Trump doesn’t seem to understand that governing is a team sport. It requires complicated cooperation and fluid policy arguments. Small details produce awesome differences. In other words, for Trump, it’s boring. Trump is a big-picture guy who treats the politics of governing like it’s high-stakes mud wrestling. And it’s all about him. He shows little interest in or knowledge of policy specifics and spews gratuitous scorn and ridicule on his opponents.

What we now know about Trump is he likes to make up stuff. When challenged by fact-checkers, he blames media bias. Then he makes up new facts that are also wrong. We also know Trump likes to hurt people with his words. He gave demeaning nicknames—“Little Marco,” “Crooked Hillary”—to his rivals. He regularly congratulates himself on Twitter, and uses the platform to counterpunch enemies or anyone else who questions his wisdom. He recently labeled Senator Charles Schumer, the Democratic floor leader, the “head clown.” But Trump’s party will need Schumer on some of the big issues, like trade reform and infrastructure spending, where the GOP doesn’t have the votes to prevail. Why dump on someone you need? Trump would rather spank them.

The president-elect is also a prisoner of his own race-tinged ignorance. When Representative John Lewis, hero of the civil-rights movement, called him an illegitimate president, Trump fired back with an ugly and ignorant slur of modern Atlanta, the congressman’s home district.
“Congressman Lewis,” Trump tweeted, “should spend more time on fixing and helping his district which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results.” Never mind that Representative Lewis’s district is neither “crime infested” nor “falling apart,” but how sad it is that Trump seems to have forgotten his own “birther” campaign eight years ago, when he attacked the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency.

 “Where is the birth certificate?” he asked then.

You might say Donald Trump won the presidency by dwelling in his own personal world of “magical realism.” If Trump says it, it must be true… at least until Trump says something new and different. During his campaign, his rude, crude words and wicked falsehoods effectively destabilized the standard language of democratic dialogue. Rival politicians were baffled. The press was late in grasping the incendiary significance of Trump’s candidacy, and so was I.

Others might say the suggestion of “magical realism” is too generous. Trump is simply a con man, a very talented one who succeeded in conning the Republican Party and the American electorate. If Trump was a character in a novel, he might be described as an “unreliable narrator.”

Some writers, like Jim Fallows of The Atlantic, explored a deeper explanation: Trump is a narcissist, totally self-absorbed in his own reality and oblivious to competing facts and understandings. He has an infantile reach of impulse and intellect; his world is self, food, now. This is probably not quite the case, but he seems to lack common traits of empathy and sincerity.

The harshest analysis I read was by Charles Krauthammer, the conservative columnist for T he Washington Post and a psychiatrist himself. In August, he was shocked when Trump attacked the Gold Star mother Ghazala Kahn following her appearance at the Democratic National Convention.

“It reveals a shocking absence of elementary decency and of natural empathy for the most profound of human sorrows–parental grief,” Krauthammer wrote after Trump said Kahn wasn’t “allowed” to speak during her DNC appearance, where her husband spoke of their son’s death in the Iraq War.

Donald Trump, he explained, “is beyond narcissism. I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value—indeed exists—only insofar it sustains an inflates him.”

Now he is to be our president, and Trump’s “magical realism” is about to collide with the hard earth of mortal politics. The president-elect and his staffers are already busy trying to distance themselves from some of his more explosive promises, hoping they get forgotten in the excitement of a new party’s taking power. Trump acknowledged in passing that he is not going to prosecute Hillary Clinton after all. No more “Lock her up!” chants, he told disappointed supporters. Trump is also not going to “Drain the Swamp.” Indeed, some of the creatures from the Wall Street lagoon have been appointed to the important positions in Trump’s first cabinet. Trump still claims he will build the wall to keep out immigrants and make Mexico pay for it, but nobody believes him. He admitted the United States will have to pay for the wall then seek reimbursement from Mexico.

Campaign promises often perish after an election, but even some of his cabinet appointees are disowning Trump’s promises during confirmation hearings. His nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said he opposes Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims during his confirmation meeting. Nikki Haley, Trump’s nominee for UN ambassador, strongly supported NATO, which Trump recently called “obsolete,” during hers. These retreats and the high-risk legislation that lies ahead are part of why I foresee a hard road ahead for Republicans and their less-than-popular president.

Indeed, if Trump doesn’t produce on jobs and trade reform while cutting corporate taxes, I can imagine yard signs in working-class neighborhoods that blame “Double-Cross Donald.”

‘Would-be-dictator’ Trump will fail: George Soros

By

Billionaire George Soros on Thursday delivered a scathing assessment of Donald Trump, calling the US President-elect a “would-be-dictator” who is “going to fail”.

On the eve of Trump’s inauguration in Washington, Soros said Trump was “gearing up for a trade war” which would have “a very far reaching effect in Europe and other parts of the world”.

The “would-be-dictator… didn’t expect to win, he was surprised,” the Hungarian-born financier told an audience of business leaders and journalists at a Hotel in Davos where the World Economic Forum is being held.

“I personally have confidence that he’s going to fail… because his ideas, that guide him are inherently self-contradictory,” said Soros, adding that members of Trump’s cabinet are each fighting for different interests.

But he predicted the loss of the US’ “positive influence in the world in favour of an open society”, which would have “a very far reaching effect in Europe and other parts of the world”.

Soros, who was a supporter of Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during last year’s campaign, lost nearly a billion dollars as a consequence of the rally prompted by Trump’s surprise election victory, according to press reports.

But the positive reaction in financial markets would not last long, Soros predicted, because ultimately they do not like uncertainty.

US stocks retreated and the dollar fell against most currencies Thursday in the final session before Trump’s inauguration on Friday.

On Brexit and Theresa May, Soros predicted the British Prime Minister’s spell in power would not last long and said the UK population were “in denial” about the financial consequences of leaving the European Union.

“It’s unlikely that Prime Minister May is actually going to remain in power,” he said.

“At the moment people in the UK are in denial. The current economic situation is not as bad as it was predicted, they live in hope, but as the currency depreciates, and inflation will be the driving force, that will lead to declining living standards.

“It’s going to take some time but when it does happen, they will realise that they are earning less than before, because wages won’t rise as fast as the cost of living.”

8 inauguration humiliations Donald Trump has already endured

By Kali Holloway

In addition to trying to destroy civilization through sheer will and profound ineptitude, Donald Trump’s hobbies now apparently include party planning. According to a recent New York Post article, Trump is showing far more interest in inaugural trivialities than he does in government policy.

“He’s into every detail of everything,” Tom Barrack, chair of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, told the outlet. “I beg him all the time to go back to running the free world and let me focus on setting the tables.”

Maybe all that fuss is to compensate for the fact that Trump’s inauguration will have half the number of attendees as incoming President Obama’s did, and no big-name draw upon which to base a comparison of the two events. You can bet this infuriates Trump. There are other things he’s probably angry about, too. Steam definitely came out of his ears when he learned his team would be buying up Facebook ads to put butts in seats. So the U.S. president-elect and your local jam band are using the same marketing scheme to gain new fans. Think about that for a second.

Here’s a list of eight inauguration humiliations—and a bonus fact—that are infuriating Donald Trump right now.

1. Tickets are in incredibly low demand.

Miami Herald columnist Lesley Abravanel (aka Savvy Gadfly) recently tweeted that she’s aware of at least one person being paid to make the Trump inauguration look a little less empty. “Thank you @realDonaldTrump for already creating jobs!” Abravanel wrote. “My friend is being paid to be a seat filler at your Inauguration! #TuesdayMotivation.” There’s no official confirmation from the Trump team about this, but there are various other signs that conflict with Trump’s contention that “people are pouring into Washington in record numbers.” One scalper complained he’ll have to swallow losses because “nobody wants” Trump inauguration tickets. There are still plenty of tickets available on Craigslist for a couple hundred bucks, a fraction of the five figures some Obama inauguration tickets were going for, according to a 2008 CNN article. A spokesperson for U.S. Congressman Donald Payne Jr. of New Jersey told a local news outlet, “We had more tickets than demand.” The Trump team is apparently so desperate it’s taken out Facebook and Instagram ads inviting—oh, let’s just call it begging—people to attend. Marina Cockenburg, who works for the Tonight Show, clicked the “Why Am I Seeing This Ad” button and discovered the Trump team had targeted “people ages 27 and older who live in New York.” Another Ohio recipient noted the minimum age had dropped to 18, which suggests they're casting an ever wider net.

2. Women’s March bus permit requests outnumber inauguration requests by 3 times.

As of the last reported count, there were 1,200 requests for bus parking permits for the Women’s March on Washington, being held Saturday, January 21. That’s a little more than triple the number of permit requests the city has received for the inauguration. “All of the city's 1,200 available charter bus parking spaces at RFK Stadium have been filled for the Women's March,” reports the Hill, noting the count might be an underestimate. “There could be more buses coming for the march and parking in other locations.” The president and cofounder of Rally, a shuttle bus company providing transportation to D.C. from around the country told the Chicago Tribune, "In six years of doing business we've never seen buses get sold out so quickly.”

3. Most hotel bookings have been made by anti-Trump protesters.

The Women’s March “is driving significant additional demand” to the Kimpton Hotels chain, according to spokesperson Jack Lindemuth. Elliott Ferguson, who leads the city's tourism bureau, told Fortune that "more rooms being picked up on Saturday than on Friday.” He also noted that with Trump’s inauguration numbers so poor, the Women’s March appears to have unseated it as the main event.

"It's been much, much slower than anyone would have anticipated for a first-term president," Ferguson told the Chicago Tribune, contrasting Trump’s event with the Women’s March. "The moment it was confirmed it was happening in the city our hotels were seeing reservations take place.”

4. Trump is wrong (again): dress shops still have plenty of available frocks. 

“All the dress shops are sold out in Washington,” Trump told the New York Times earlier this month.

“It’s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration.”

The first sign that this was a lie is the fact that it was uttered by Trump. Boutique spokespeople say they not only have plenty of gowns in stock, but dress sales have been particularly poor for Trump’s big day.

“There’s never been less demand for inaugural ballgowns in my 38 years,” Peter Marx, who owns D.C. dress shop Saks Jandel, told People. “Never ever has it been less for the inaugural.”

Other shops expressed similar sentiments.

“We were expecting heavy traffic and it has not been that way,” a D.C. Bloomingdale’s representative told Elle. “The last inauguration was a lot more people shopping."

A spokesperson from Intermix told the outlet, “Usually, it is really big for us, but this year we haven't seen anything yet, surprisingly.”

Elle notes that “among others we called, White House Black Market and Cusp in Georgetown confirmed they have options in stock. So does Neiman Marcus. And Gucci. And Lord & Taylor. And Nordstrom.”

5. More than 60 Democrats and counting are boycotting the inauguration. 

There are a million and one reasons not to legitimize Trump’s presidency, enough that everyone can take their pick and feel more than justified. In addition, add Trump’s recent racialized insults to Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights hero, right in time for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. The list of House Democrats sitting the inauguration out now stands at 65, with a chance that number may rise slightly in the next 48 hours. Most of those lawmakers issued statements about their reasons for bailing, many of them sober, well-crafted rebukes of PEOTUS. I was partial to one from Oregon’s Kurt Schrader: “I’m just not a big Trump fan. He hasn’t proved himself to me at all yet, so I respectfully decline to freeze my ass out there in the cold for this particular ceremony.”

6. The list of celebs who said 'no' is much longer and star-studded than the 'yes' list.

Trump’s desperate tweets about how great his inauguration will be seem as authentic as a high school boy's stories about having a model girlfriend who “lives in another town.” For someone whose entire fragile sense of self is based on approval from others, Trump’s done a piss-poor job of playing it cool, or even just, you know, not acting like a maniac when he gets rejected. With every Twitter tantrum he confirms his dejection and anger over the fact that the list of performers at his party is a poor simulacrum of his A-list dreams. Reportedly, Elton John, Garth Brooks, Bruno Mars, Kiss, Celine Dion, Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, George Lopez, and Moby all said no. Jennifer Holliday, Paul Anka, and the B Street Band (a cover homage to Bruce Springsteen), all made lastminute cancellations. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Radio City Rockettes are still on the bill, but members of both groups voiced loud opposition to performing, with some defectors refusing to take the stage. The final inauguration lineup now includes 3 Doors Down, the Piano Guys, Toby Keith, Jackie Evancho, Lee Greenwood, DJ Ravidrums, the Frontmen of Country, Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave), and Jon Voight. There was also an 11th-hour addition of Chrisette Michele—though Questlove has tweeted that he'd pay the singer money not to perform.

7. The list of celebs attending anti-Trump protest events is quite robust.

One day before Trump’s inauguration, on January 19, Mark Ruffalo, Alec Baldwin, Rosie Perez, Al Sharpton, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio will attend a Michael Moore-launched protest in front of Trump International Hotel in New York City. That same day, Common and the National will be playing a free show at D.C.’s 9:30 club to benefit Planned Parenthood and Solange will be performing at the Peace Ball at the National Museum of African American History Culture. Uzo Aduba, Scarlett Johansson, Danielle Brooks, Cher, Julianne Moore, Katy Perry, Samantha Bee, Diane Guerrero, Olivia Wilde, America Ferrera, and Amy Schumer, among others, will reportedly attend women’s marches in states around the country. On inauguration day just after Trump is sworn in, Judd Apatow, Patricia Arquette, Jamie Lee Curtis, Christopher Guest, Jane Fonda, Tim Robbins, and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy will appear on the Love-A-Thon telethon. Proceeds from the event, to be broadcast via Facebook Live, will go to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Planned Parenthood and Earthjustice.

8. He’s the most unpopular incoming president in the last four decades. 

On Monday, Gallup released a poll showing 55 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, versus 40 percent (surprisingly high, considering) with favorable views. That’s about half the favorability rating President Obama had at his first inauguration, and 20 percent lower than incoming presidents Clinton and Bush. CNN’s survey results indicate roughly the same: 52 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump and 42 percent give him a thumbs-up. A Washington Post-ABC poll released Tuesday showed 54 percent of respondents are not down with Trump, while 40 percent are.

To put this all in perspective, pollster Will Jordan noted on Twitter that Trump's popularity as he enters the presidency is near the level of President Bush's right after Hurricane Katrina.

Bonus fact: Trump will take a vacation on Day One.

Remember how after Obama won a second term, Trump tweeted criticism about his vacationing, promoting a standard right-wing lie?

Trump’s team has insisted that the inauguration will be short, not for lack of star power or attendees, but because PEOTUS wants to get “to work right away.” Except that Trump recently announced he plans to spend the weekend chilling, instead of starting his new job on the day he’s hired. “My day one is gonna be Monday,” Trump told reporters, “because I don’t want to be signing and get it mixed up with lots of celebration.”

Martin Luther King Would And Did Fuck Trump's Shit Up

Posted by Rude One

1/16/2017

As we prepare for an open racist to ascend to the never more aptly-named White House, we need to remember, as this blog does every Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, that King wasn't a conservative, as Republicans and, weirdly, the Washington Post assert. No, King was a radical who made it his job to fuck up the nice little world that whites had constructed. So forget all that bullshit trying to make King into Fuzzy Marty, the Dream Hatchanimal, all ready to cuddle you with his non-violence. And, instead, let King's strength, power, and lack of fucks to give guide you as we head into the Trump era.

For instance, back in July 1966, a little over 50 years ago, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led a march and held a rally in support of the Chicago Freedom Movement, which asked that blacks and whites be treated equally when it came to housing in the city. (The play Raisin in the Sun was based in the housing discrimination endemic to the Windy City.) King had moved into a slum in January of 1966, where he lived several days a week, to shed light on the conditions there. He threatened to lead rent strikes if things weren't improved. "We don't have wall-to-wall carpeting to worry about," King said of his apartment. "But we have wall-to-wall rats and roaches."

On July 10, in the midst of a savage heat wave, King held a rally at Soldier Field, followed by a march to city hall to demand that blacks be allowed to rent and buy apartments in white neighborhoods. Only 30,000 of the expected 100,000 came out to see him in the nearly 100 degree temperature, but King gave a rousing and curiously little-quoted speech about the need for fairness in housing as being one more part of the road to a free and equal United States.

King started, "We are here today because we are tired. We are tired of being seared in the withering flames of injustice. We are tired of paying more for less. We are tired of living in rat-infested slums and in the Chicago Housing Authority's cement reservations. We are tired of having to pay a median rent of $97 a month in Lawndale for 4 rooms while whites in South Deering pay $73 a month for 5 rooms." People forget that King could be incredibly specific and localized in his demands, that he wasn't just seeking blanket "rights." No, he wanted definite wrongs corrected.

He continued further in the speech, "Let me say, here and now, that we are not going to tolerate moves that are now being made in subtle manners to intimidate, harass, and penalize Negro landlords who may own one or two buildings while ignoring the fact that slums are really perpetuated by the huge real estate agencies, mortgage and banking institutions, and city, state, and federal governments. This day we must decide that we will no longer use our dollars to perpetuate segregation and discrimination. We must make clear that we will withdraw our money en masse from any bank that not have a non-discriminatory lending policy. We must affirm that we will withdraw economic support from any company that will not provide on-the-job training, and employ an adequate number of Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and other ethnic minorities in higher paying jobs."

Does that sound fuckin' conservative? Does that sound like someone who is kissing the ass of tradition and power structures? How about this: "This day we must decide to give greater support to Negro-owned businesses which will aid in building our economic strength." He implored non-violence. He said that there were whites that supported the cause. But, ultimately, he said that non-whites shouldn't participate in an economic system that dicked them over.

Then King led people to city hall where, among other things, he demanded an end to police brutality in Chicago. We see how that turned out today. Back in 1966, he was mocked by the Chicago Tribune, which said that King's marches and sermons had become "tiresome" and "stale." A march in Marquette Park in August turned violent, with white onlookers hurling rocks and bottles at the marchers, and King was injured. He said later that he had never seen mobs of whites "as hateful" as he saw in Chicago, not even in Mississippi or Alabama.

King always believed that he had failed in Chicago, especially since Mayor Daley didn't abide by promises he made to King about open housing. But his assassination in 1968 was followed almost immediately by President Lyndon Johnson signing the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited housing discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, and sex. And this is where we get to Donald Trump.

Five years after King's death, in 1973, Trump Management was accused by the Justice Department of violating the civil rights of blacks and Puerto Ricans under the Fair Housing Act. Fred Trump and his son, Donald, were specifically named as defendants. And while the case was settled without an admission of guilt, well, c'mon, the evidence was pretty damning that Trump rental agents deliberately steered non-white clients away from all-white apartment buildings. Trump Management agreed not to discriminate and to advertise that all buildings were open to everyone.

So, remember, on this MLK Day, that when Trump attacks Rep. John Lewis, one of King's closest associates, the President-Elect is also going after the man and the group that fucked his shit up early in his career. That King continues to do so to this day speaks to how much he will always be far more powerful than Trump ever could hope to be.