A dear friend has a brother with Down Syndrome. This year, he voted for
the first time, and he couldn't have been more excited to push a button
for Hillary Clinton. After Clinton lost, my friend, his sister, asked
him how he was feeling. He said, "We're having meatloaf for dinner
tonight."
Goddamn, I want to have that response.
I've gotta be honest here, and feel free to call me a "pussy" or
whatever you need, but very early last Wednesday morning, around 1 a.m.,
when I knew that it was really, truly over (although we all pretty much
knew by 11 p.m.), something broke in me, to the point that I don't know
how to react. In case you haven't noticed, the last week around this
joint, it's been pretty messy and morose.
I have barely been able to watch any of the complicit news networks as
they recalibrate to the reality of a Donald Trump presidency. And when I
do, I hear things, as I did on Saturday, like a Trump supporter on a
CNN panel decrying the protests because they are chanting and marching
about "old news." That's right. The campaign wasn't 5 days over, but, as
far as this sycophantic slug was concerned, it may as well have been
years ago. "We need to look to the future," he explained.
So I watch briefly and I get pissed and then I just feel broken again.
Hell, it's better than the nausea I get, triggered by Trump's voice. I'm
guessing that it comes from the helplessness of the situation, the
feeling that we can't change this, along with the feeling that we did
this to ourselves. I knew the nation was racist and dumb. I just didn't
know how racist and how dumb. Now I do.
I have thought about how ridiculously wrong so many of us had been, we
who blog and pontificate and punditize, rudely or cleanly. And I was
especially angry at myself for not listening to an especially wise
person. That'd be me back in 2008,
when I said one reason that I was supporting Barack Obama over Clinton
was because "somewhere in some cellar in some Little Rock or DC mansion,
there's a machine that's been whirring its gears on low for the last
seven years that's getting greased up and ready to kick into full speed
once more, and it's aching to chew up Clinton, ready to get sticky with
her blood and bones, for once it's really chugging, that fucker needs to
be fed, ready to spew once again to willing, slavering media dogs who
lap up that anti-Clinton vomit like it's kibble from Walter Cronkite's
ass." I knew exactly what would happen. But I let myself think that it
wouldn't. And I don't blame Clinton. I blame pretty much everyone except
her.
Things are gonna be bad. I believe with the fervent faith of a crazed
minister awaiting the Rapture. A fight is coming. A big fucking fight,
possibly the worst in my lifetime, and I've faced down Operation Rescue,
angry cops in riot gear at anti-Iraq War protests, and a raging George
H.W. Bush supporter. I want to be part of that fight. But if I'm going
to be in fighting shape, I gotta tap out for a little while. I gotta get
my head straight and my voice and fists ready.
I'm not gonna do that spending the next couple of months writing
constantly, "Boy, Donald Trump sure is gonna suck" or "Boy, that cabinet
choice sure is gonna dick us all over." Because, really, we don't know
how bad it'll be and what he's gonna do until his tiny moisturized,
manicured orange hands are holding the reins of power. I know that it's
the privilege of whiteness and maleness that allows me to pretend I can
ignore the rise of the Trump-tatorship. But I want to be the best ally
to others that I can be.
So, after over 13 years of almost continuous daily blogging, I'm taking a leave of absence for a while.
I'm not going cold turkey. I will probably post every now and then if
something insane happens (although, c'mon, "insane" is relative at this
point) or if the mood strikes.
I'll definitely still be on Twitter. And I'll be piping up on Facebook, too.
Also, if someone would like me to write for their publication (c'mon, Guardian, you know you want me), I'll pop up there.
Oh, and as long as I'm pimping myself, I've got what I think is a
kick-ass new play, political and feminist as hell, if any professional
theatre or group is interested in checking it out. When there are public
readings, I'll let you know.
Before checking out and switching to a much lighter political diet, lemme leave you with a few thoughts:
1. I believe that the most patriotic thing that President Obama could do
would be to bypass the Senate and appoint Merrick Garland to the
Supreme Court.
2. The members of the Electoral College have a constitutional duty to
save us from someone like Trump. They would be derelict in that duty if
they let him take office.
3. If Clinton had won, the next 4-8 years would have been a nightmare of
impeachment hearings and endless investigations, all emails, all the
time. So that's one small blessing amid the conflagration.
4. Donald Trump is in this to enrich himself and his family. Whether or
not that's what he intended, it's what he will do because it's the only
thing he knows how to do: make himself richer on the backs of others.
5. Trump will do everything that he condemned Hillary Clinton for and
worse. And Republicans will give him a pass. This will be the most
enraging part of the next couple of months.
6. You should give money to organizations like the ACLU, Planned
Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, and others. You should make sure
you donate to local groups that are helping undocumented immigrants, the
homeless, the dis-empowered all around. And you should subscribe to
things like Mother Jones and give money to Talking Points Memo. They are the good guys. They'll need all the support they can get.
That's it. I may come running back here after a short hiatus. It's
entirely possible. Addition is like that. If not, I'll be back by
Inauguration Day in 2017, after this shit year has ended. We've got a
nation to save but, as they always tell you, you have to put your own
oxygen mask on before you can help others do the same.
I need to go wander in the desert for a while. I need to down peyote and
go on a spirit journey. I need to wantonly fuck wayward bikers and
lonely bartenders and rough waitresses and howl at the moon as we orgasm
in the dust.
And then I will come back, righteous rage restored, pieces back
together, ready to face down the motherfuckers who would break us all
again and again.
One of the things I have always faulted President Obama for is that,
when it comes to his domestic political enemies, he has sought to give
them the benefit of the doubt. Even when they greeted his outstretched
hand by waving their dicks at him, Barack Obama has told us for most of
his presidency that Republicans were honorable, rarely ever raking them
over the coals, rarely impugning their motives, rarely calling out the
motherfuckers for fucking their mothers. It has always been to his
detriment that he has tried so hard not to demonize demons.
Even now, as Donald Trump bumblefucks
his way through a bullshit transition into a sad, disastrous presidency
(that he will inevitably get richer from), Obama has avoided
confrontation. Now, you could say that Obama is such a decent man that
he can sit with the orange prick who provoked some of the most racist
responses to him and his family and try to teach that orange prick how
to not blow the joint up. And you can look at Trump's gracious response
to Obama and desperately seek some comfort in it, hoping that it
indicates that Trump is taking his new job seriously.
But you're being a fool. And so is President Obama in this case.
What we know about Donald Trump is that he will lie and lie and lie. He
will fart in your face and tell you it was a ghost. Breitbart will
report it as real. And his idiot hordes will insist that they saw that
flatulent specter. We also know that Trump will say whatever he thinks
his audience at the time wants to hear. He said almost exactly that at
some of his rallies, where the red hats replaced the brown shirts,
testing something on a crowd and when they didn't respond, trying
something else that got applause and cheers. That's his method: say
whatever the fuck people want to hear, agree to just about anything that
isn't legally binding (or that can't be overwhelmed by dickish
lawsuits), and then do whatever the fuck he wants, fuck you if you don't
like it. It's what he's doing right now by refilling the DC swamp with
sewer water instead of draining it. Take that, rubes. And they will.
Trump is playing Obama. As much as you think Obama is flattering Trump's
ego by respecting his election, Trump is using Obama's innate decency
to legitimize his ascendance. It's frustrating as hell because Obama ought to be smarter than this.
Oh, sure, yeah, you can say that this is Obama's patented 11 dimensional
chess game, that he's hoping all this attention will educate Trump and
that, as a result, Trump won't gut the Affordable Care Act and other
accomplishments of the last 8 years. Yeah, that ain't Trump. And any
hope that Republicans will stand up to Trump is pure fantasy. Think of
the most assholish thing they can do. Now multiply it by control of the
entire government.
What Obama can do in his last couple of months in office is push
Republicans into a confrontation.
The easiest one is the appointment of
Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court under the idea that the Senate's failure
to act is a kind of consent, a "we don't fuckin' care, do what you
want." It's like when a president refuses to act on a bill within ten
days while Congress is in session. It becomes a law, no? Presentment
clause, motherfuckers. Let's take it to the Supreme Court for a
decision.
Your Prankster Joe Biden memes are hilarious. But blowing up the GOP's
naked hijacking of the Supreme Court would be the ultimate joke to play
on these America-hating bastards.
When
he took office in 2001, George W. Bush inherited a healthy Republican
Party roughly at parity with its opposition. When he left office eight
years later, Bush had degraded his party’s image and taught a generation
of Americans to loathe the GOP, and members of that generation have
clung to their disgust through every election cycle since (though their
enthusiasm for showing up at the ballot box has waxed and waned).
Bush
was such a comprehensive political fiasco that his only saving grace, in
terms of the brand management of the Republican Party, was handing his
successor a financial crisis so deep it allowed Republicans in Congress
to run against his successor’s attempts to recover from it. The Bush
administration cratered because it was filled with hacks, ideologues,
and business cronies and led by a mental lightweight. Many people
believed that for the Republican Party to recover, it would have to
develop a governing class that grasped science and evidence.
It
is safe to say that this has not exactly transpired. The Trump
administration will make the last failed Republican presidency look like
an age of reason. The United States has never elected a president so
openly contemptuous of democratic norms. There’s no So You’ve Elected a Bullying, Racist, Authoritarian Swindler As President
pamphlet within easy reach. The loyal opposition faces an unusual
paradox. What will almost certainly be a catastrophe for the Republican
Party in the long run will also be a catastrophe for the United States
much sooner. The threat posed by Trump requires a massive counter-mobilization of people and resources with the dual tasks of
safeguarding the large-D Democratic Party and small-D democracy.
A letter to Trump from a first-grade student at Woodland School, Portola Valley, California.Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine
The immediate theater
of action will be in Washington, where the key political dynamic has
been identified by Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. “We
worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” he
toldThe Atlantic
in 2011, referring generally to the agenda of Barack Obama and his
fellow Democrats in Congress. “Because we thought — correctly, I think —
that the only way the American people would know that a great debate
was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the
‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have
been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way
forward.”
Democrats in Congress have to understand this. Most people,
and especially low-information voters who decide elections, pay little
attention to legislative details. Bipartisanship tells them things are
going well. Partisan conflict tells them things are going badly.
McConnell filibustered the first bill that come up in 2009, a
conservation measure with broad bipartisan appeal that ultimately passed
with 77 votes.
The
second element of this dynamic is equally crucial: It is the governing
party that will be held accountable by the voters. Bipartisanship
suggests high presidential approval, which leads to more success for the
governing party in Congress and for the president’s reelection. Helping
the majority govern means helping the majority maintain power. As
McConnell said
in 2010, “The reward for playing team ball this year was the reversal
of the political environment and the possibility that we will have a
bigger team next year.” The conventional wisdom of the pre-Obama years,
that the minority would pay a price for obstruction, was precisely
backward. The minority party pays a price for bipartisanship.
This does not mean Democrats should ape destructive tactics
like shutting down the government or threatening default (which, in any
case, they have no opportunity to do without the majority in either
chamber of Congress). It does not even mean they should rule out all
cooperation. It means they should carefully weigh every policy
concession they can win, assuming that any present themselves, against
the enormous political price they will pay by getting it. A few policy
goals could meet this test. If Trump is somehow willing to abandon his
catastrophic plan to destroy the international climate accords and
unleash irreversible planetary catastrophe, or perhaps rethink his
party’s plan to deny access to medical care to millions of Americans too
poor or sick to afford it, the political sacrifice of offering
bipartisan cover to Trumpian moderation would be worthwhile.
In
the short run, this calculation is almost entirely theoretical. Trump’s
allies in Congress are prepared to collect on their devil’s bargain.
House Speaker Paul Ryan described the election as a “mandate” — a
curious term for an election in which his party will finish second in
the national vote — andRepublicans
will move with maximal haste on plans to cut taxes for the rich,
deregulate the financial industry, and cut social spending for the poor.
There is no other conceivable course of action: The Republican Party in
Washington has been organized over the last three decades as a machine
to redistribute resources upward. It has no other ideas and
automatically rejects any proposals with any other effect. The political
cost of waging class war for the rich will not deter them because it is their reason for existing.
Trump managed to pass himself off to many hard-pressed voters as an
enemy of concentrated wealth, but concentrated wealth mostly knew
better, which is why stock of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and
JPMorgan Chase swelled on the news of the incoming friendly
administration. Democrats in Congress must make it their task to expose
the contradiction Trump has heretofore concealed.
So should anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton. The day after the election, protesters swarmed the streets of major cities
shouting that Trump was “not my president.” Good for them. They were
not expressing the traditional postelection decorum, but then again,
many were simply describing reality: Trump has almost explicitly
promised not to be the president of large swaths of this country. His campaign
was rooted in his belief that Mexican-Americans and Muslim immigrants
cannot become real Americans. There can be purpose beyond catharsis to
theatrical expressions of alienation and anger. Just look at the tea
party.
Trump’s loyal opposition has a duty to respect the law. More than that — for all those who are wondering, everyone must hope he can avoid the worst. It might help Democrats regain power if Trump throws 20 million Americans off their insurance, dissolves NATO, or prosecutes Hillary Clinton,
but that is not an agenda to root for. Less horrible is better. At the
same time, Americans who did not support Trump have no obligation to
normalize his behavior. To the contrary: Upholding the dignity and value
of the presidency means refusing to treat the ascendancy of a Trump
into the office as normal. Trump is counting on a combination of media
weariness and Republican partisan solidarity to allow him to grind
governing norms to dust. Two days after the election, his attorney
reaffirmed his intention to have his children run his business even
while he serves as president — an arrangement creating limitless
opportunity for corruption, as his use of the presidency enriches his
brand and foreign leaders strike deals that curry personal favor.
Whatever
signs of normality he has given since Tuesday’s triumph are, thus far,
purely superficial. To submit to a world where we say the words President Trump without anger or laughter is to surrender our idea of what the office means.
A broader and even
more vital mission, one that should attract support far beyond the
Democratic Party, is to safeguard and expand space for political
dissent. American politics has regularly been stalked by authoritarian
figures, from Charles Coughlin to Joseph McCarthy to George Wallace.
None of them has ever had command of a party with full control of
government. It is now within the realm of imagining that the United
States will come to resemble some sort of illiberal democracy or
quasi-democracy — Berlusconi’s Italy or, eventually, even Putin’s
Russia.
This
is no mere Trumpian personal idiosyncrasy. The GOP is absorbing the
ideological tendencies of other far-right nationalist parties. The
Nevada Republican Party chair raged at evening early-voting in Las
Vegas: “Last night, in Clark County, they kept a poll open till ten
o’clock at night so a certain group could vote … Yeah, you feel free
right now? Think this is a free or easy election?” Alabama’s Jeff
Sessions, Trump’s closest Senate ally, has railed against “a global
intellect — elites with their big money” and “George Soros and his
globalist crowd.” Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke, who spoke at the
Cleveland convention and has been touted as a potential Homeland
Security secretary, tweeted
that anti-Trump protests “must be quelled.” A recent Pew survey asked
whether certain characteristics are important to maintaining a strong
democracy. Fewer than half of the Trump supporters surveyed agreed with
the statements “Those who lose elections recognize the legitimacy of the
winners” and “News organizations are free to criticize political
leaders.” Traditional Republicans in Washington will go along with all
this, provided Trump signs Paul Ryan’s fiscal agenda into law.
American
small-D democrats need to treat the election of Trump’s party in a way
not unlike how we respond to authoritarianism overseas. The nonprofit
sector has a long tradition of subsidizing institutions to safeguard
open discourse, human rights, labor rights, and ballot access. (Not
coincidentally, Soros has made enemies in the Putinsphere by doing
precisely this.) Trump’s government will probably set itself the task of
grinding down all these rights, from union organizing to civil-rights
enforcement to freedom from torture. Philanthropists should subsidize
legal defenses for journalists threatened by the tactic, embraced by
Trump and his ally Peter Thiel,
of bankrupting critics through exorbitant legal action. America already
has a nonprofit infrastructure devoted to safeguarding domestic civil,
human, and political rights, but it will have to scale up radically to
meet the threat of a Trumpist party in full command of the federal
government. Democracy will not disappear overnight, but it can be eroded
over time. The fight to defend it must be joined in full.
There
is one glimmer of — dare I say it — hope. Opposition parties tend to
suffer from a lack of charismatic, high-profile leaders. American
liberals enjoy the unusual good fortune of having the most popular
politician in America on their side in Barack Obama. Obama has floated plans to devote his postpresidency to mentoring young black men. This is both a worthy endeavor and no longer the most high-leverage use of his time.
Obama
very properly offered his deference to the validity of Trump’s election
(proving himself a more committed democrat than the president-elect,
who refused beforehand to bind himself to the outcome and who, in 2012,
took to Twitter on Election Night to call for revolution when it
momentarily seemed that Obama would win the Electoral College while
losing the popular vote). But the political-cultural norm of former
presidents’ steering clear of politics is not rooted in any particular
public interest. All recent living ex-presidents left office either
infirm, unpopular, or in some way disgraced. (A pardon scandal in his
final days, compounded by his sexual dalliance, created an especially
noxious odor around Bill Clinton.) There is no example of a young,
popular former president facing a successor committed to destroying all
of his work.
And
so the man who thought he was through with politics has, it turns out,
one more essential role left: Beginning next year, Obama needs to rally
the opposition, to community-organize his coalition, and to exploit his
celebrity to make the case for saving his legacy. His visibility alone
would serve a vital function. Trump’s election has sent a statement to
Americans and the world about the country’s identity. It has been
received viscerally, by bullies abusing minorities as well as by fearful
allies overseas. Obama is a powerful symbol of rationalism,
thoughtfulness, and pluralism — the ultimate anti-Trump, both
ideologically and symbolically. Women, religious minorities, immigrants
and prospective immigrants, transgender people, young Africans with
iPhones, the beat-down opposition in places like Russia and China, and
the people who bully all the preceding groups and more — the whole
planet, really — need reminding that Obama’s version of America has
prevailed before and will prevail again.
The night after the election.Photo: Andres Kudacki
And prevail we can.
The aftermath of every election plunges the losers into despair and
launches the victors into giddiness, and Trump’s shocking victory has
had an unusually distorting effect. American progressives are burdened
with a habit, stretching back decades, of handling political success
badly — taking power for granted, bemoaning compromised progress, and
collapsing into sectarian cannibalism.
Hillary Clinton suffered from the
same liberal ennui that bedeviled Al Gore in 2000, Hubert Humphrey in
1968, and Harry Truman in 1948. She suffered additionally from the
self-inflicted wounds of bad decisions regarding hired speeches and her
private email server, months of bruising attacks on her ethics from Bernie Sanders,
and a widespread sexism that made her ordinary shortcomings seem
sinister. Add to that a press corps that obsessed over her email lapse
and twin attacks by Russian intelligence and rogue, right-wing FBI
agents. It all culminated with the director of the FBI’s breaking all
precedent to float new insinuations of wrongdoing against
her ten days before the election, sealing her image as an untrustworthy
and even criminal figure. Polls taken at the end of the campaign
demonstrated that voters, astonishingly, believed that she was less
honest and trustworthy than her opponent — a man who is literally facing
trial for fraud.
Trump
will solve the Democrats’ voter-complacency problem for them. He may
also help them solve another problem: massive Republican gerrymandering.
The House map is redrawn every ten years, and Republicans had the good
fortune that the last redrawing followed their 2010 anti-Obama midterm
wave, allowing them to lock into place a map of districts designed to
virtually guarantee Republican control throughout the decade. Should
Democrats generate an effective response to Trump, an anti-incumbent
wave could allow the party to capture governorships in 2018 and
legislatures that year and in 2020. They would then be in a position to
create district maps that are more fair and democratic — and which, more
often then not, would turn more Democratic.
Remember:
When Trump showed the first signs of seriously challenging for the
nomination, the panicked Republican Establishment identified him as a
political calamity — a candidate who appealed to the party’s shrinking
white, non-college-educated base and alienated the minorities and
educated voters whose share of the electorate was growing. Its
calculations were off, but only to a degree. Trump drew every ounce out
of a shrinking coalition.
The
party Establishment was on track to wipe its hands of the foul nominee
after his expected defeat, clearing the way for fresh-faced,
conventionally right-wing figures like Ryan and Marco Rubio to rebuild
their party’s standing. The flip side of a president who will sign
Ryan’s agenda into law is that there will be no more oh-so-earnest Ryan
speeches apologizing from the bottom of his heart for the nominee’s
transgressions. Instead, a man who embodies hateful, misogynistic
bluster will define the party’s imprint in a lasting way. Tens of
millions of young voters, and children too young to vote, will grow up
associating the Republican Party with a man who embodies reactionary
hate against them.
The Trump stink will not wash away easily.
Notwithstanding
his ability to appear reasonable from time to time, Trump has character
traits that are consistent and long-standing. The postelection hope
that his lifelong childlike attention span, monumental ego, obsession
with dominance and vengeance, and greed verging on outright criminality
will abate in his eighth decade is fanciful. More so the notion that the
experience of enjoying electoral vindication against his critics, then
ascending to the most powerful position in the world, will curtail these
tendencies.
Trump’s election is one of the greatest disasters in American history.
It is worth recalling, however, that history is punctuated with
disasters, yet the country is in a better place now than it was a
half-century ago, and a better place than a half-century before that,
and so on. Despair is a counterproductive response. So is denial — an
easy temptation in the wake of the inevitable postelection pleasantries
and displays of respect needed to maintain the peaceful transfer of
power.
The proper response is steely resolve to wage the fight of our
lives.
*This article appears in the November 14, 2016, issue of New York Magazine.
If you are curious about how racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric, and
organizations dedicated to propagating the same are able to slip into
the mainstream, do yourself a favor and listen to NPR's Wednesday
morning interview with Breitbart senior-editor-at-large Joel Pollak.
NPR
apparently felt the need to invite on a Breitbart mouthpiece to put in a
good word for Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s newly announced senior policy adviser.
Bannon previously led Breitbart, a publication beloved by the so-called
alt-right, a loose coalition of white nationalists, “identitarians,”
neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, racists, and misogynists who were ecstatic over Bannon’s appointment.
Pollak’s segment was a master class in obfuscation and a primer on how
to flip the script and turn totally justified accusations of bigotry,
misogyny and anti-Semitism into “reverse racism.”
“Let’s hear a
defense of Steve Bannon,” NPR host Steve Inskeep began, offering a view
of exactly what direction this interview would take. Pollak started by
launching into a gushing assessment of Bannon, calling him “a national
hero,” and talking about how it’s so great we’ll have someone “so calm
under pressure in the White House.” (Maybe this is true, though it
contradicts accusations against Bannon of domestic abuse, sexual harassment and being a “verbally
abus[ive]” “bully” “who is prone to a lot of tirades” by former
staffers.)
When Inskeep interjected to ask about Bannon’s tireless work
to turn Breitbart into the alt-right outlet of choice, Pollak attempted
to distance the site from the movement it has nurtured on a steady diet
of xenophobia, racism, sexism and anti-Semitism.
“The only
alt-right content we have is a single article out of tens of thousands
of articles, which is a journalistic article about the alt-right by Milo
Yiannopoulos, and Allum Bokhari, which basically went into this
movement, and tried to figure out what it was all about,” Pollak said.
“That’s not racist; that’s journalism.”
And just like that,
Bannon’s site was suddenly unaffiliated with the alt-right
movement—though Bannon himself boasted in August that Breitbart is the
"platform of the alt-right.” Inskeep didn’t push Pollak on this point,
though Bannon’s own words suggest that he either disagreed with his
spokesperson or fabricated the link in order to be seen as the voice of
the alt-right.
Either way, aren’t both of these things problematic—that
Bannon is either with the racists or wants to be? Isn’t it worth
questioning why Bannon would seek to tie his publication to a movement
whose founders have been unequivocal in their racism and anti-Semitism?
(Prominent white supremacist Jared Taylor has said that while
there are “areas of disagreement” among alt-righties, “the central
element of the alt-right is the position it takes on race.” Richard
Spencer, who coined the term alt-right, has talked about the "Jewish question,” called for forced sterilization of racial minorities and advanced the idea of “peaceful ethnic cleansing.”)
What
does this tell us about the morals of both Bannon and Breitbart? How
scary is it that this man is advising a volatile, inexperienced
president-elect who found out only
two days ago what a president does? We won’t know, at least not from
this interview, because Pollak’s response went basically unchallenged.
Inskeep
followed up by asking Pollak about a Breitbart article headlined,
“Hoist it High and Proud,” published just two weeks after the Charleston
massacre of nine black churchgoers, which is a very tactful, classy
move. The piece encouraged its alt-right readers to proudly wave the
Confederate flag (as Dylann Roof is seen doing in countless photos). It included this passage:
“While
your supporters are trashing the monuments and reputations of the
forefathers of so many Americans, Barack, you might just want to remind
us again which state of the Union, north or south, your ancestors
resided in during the traumatic years 1861-1865? Or did Kenya not have a
dog in that fight? The Confederacy was not a callous conspiracy to
enforce slavery, but a patriotic and idealistic cause for which 490,000
men were killed, wounded or taken captive.”
Pollak
defended all this as part of a debate about the Confederate flag and
history and heritage, which is fine if you think we should fly the flags
of slaveholders and traitors to the United States, while going on and
on about nationalism. I’ll give him that’s an arguable point; racists
certainly argue it all the time. Inskeep gave a passive rebuttal to the
piece, noting that “Alexander Stevens, the vice president of the
Confederacy, declared the cause was slavery.” Here's when Pollak seized
on the opportunity to pull out the most overused tool in the racist and
racist-apologist’s arsenal: the reverse-racism card.
“NPR is
taxpayer-funded, and has an entire section of its programming, a regular
feature, called Code Switch, which from my perspective is a racist
program,” Pollak said, continuing:
“I’m looking here
at the latest article, which aired on NPR, calling the election results
'nostalgia for a whiter America.' So NPR has racial and racist
programming that I am required to pay for as a taxpayer. So, you know,
you can read Breitbart, you can read something else—I don’t think that’s
racist, to talk about the history of the Confederate flag. There are
people who disagree with that, as a symbol, but you’re picking on one
opinion article. Breitbart is a 24-hour news website that provides
coverage from within a conservative worldview.”
For starters, Trump ran on promises to get rid of Muslims and lawless Mexicans, tweeted erroneous facts about black criminality (just one of his many retweets from white nationalists) and built a coalition among people who, studies show, had negativeviews of blacks
and Muslims. The tagline for Trump’s campaign was “Make America Great
Again.” America has been getting browner, but Trump’s folks voted for a
previous America that was whiter and thus, in their estimation,
"better." There’s little Inskeep could have done here, since I get that
there’s zero chance of winning an argument with a racist who is paid to
deny racism, but there you go.
I could get into all the ways that Code Switch, which
is dedicated to discussions of “race and identity,” isn’t racist.
Talking about issues of race isn’t racism, but people like Pollak use
this argument when it benefits them and trash it when it doesn’t. Never
mind how badly he contradicted himself while absolving Bannon of any
responsibility for the actual racist content that ran on his site, but
pulled out an article from Code Switch and held it up as an affront to
the taxpaying populace, who he probably imagines are all white. In the
topsy-turvy world of Breitbart and racist denial in general, there is no
racism — not in headlines bemoaning diversity, or Bannon's on-the-record complaints about there being too many Asian tech CEO's — except on websites dedicated to issues facing people of color.
Bannon
has spent four years ensuring that Breitbart contains all the red meat
the alt-right can feast on, from an entire section tagged “black crime”
to frequent contributions from Jason Richwine, whom the Daily Beast notes
“resigned from the conservative Heritage Foundation when news broke
that his Harvard dissertation argued in part that Hispanics have lower
IQs than non-Hispanic whites.”
That, Pollak should be told, is actual
racism. Textbook.
But I really want to get to this, the moment just after Inskeep pointed to a 2011 quote from
Bannon in which he labeled feminists “a bunch of dykes that came from
the Seven Sisters schools." In response, Pollak went into a whole spiel
about Bannon’s hiring of gay writer Milo Yiannopoulos—the
same Yiannopoulos he referred to earlier as the author of “the only
alt-right content” on Breitbart, while failing to note that Yiannopoulos
is a celebrated champion of the alt-right. (Yiannopoulos previously
called Richard Spencer “dangerously bright” and was kicked off Twitter for racially terrorizing Leslie Jones, which only upped his alt-right standing.)
But here’s the nugget from Pollak:
“There
is a political correctness in this country that would say that if you
said that once [called feminists "dykes"] on a radio show that you
should be drummed out of public life. I would defy you to find a person
in the LGBTQ community who has not used that term, either in an
endearing sense or in a flippant, jovial, colloquial sense. I don't
think you can judge Steve Bannon's views.”
This is
rife with the same lame things white racists love to repeat. They fault
“political correctness” for every despicable view they hold, pretending
that not being able to utter racist and xenophobic rants makes them
victims; oppressed martyrs marching for free speech and the ability to
publicly call black people the names their daddies did. It’s maybe the
biggest lie ever told, not least of all because it isn’t even true:
Breitbart’s entire catalog of articles is proof. Racists still say
whatever they want, and they are currently shouting it out loud, in ways
both verbally and physically violent. They aren’t opposed to political
correctness, they’re opposed to the consequences of being vile. And
they’re feeling pretty good right now, because two of the worst examples
of their ilk are now in the highest echelons of government.
At
the very least, Inskeep could have pointed out that political
correctness hasn’t seemed to hinder Bannon at all, that this is a man
who now will skulk the halls of the White House and have the
president-elect's ear. As long as media keep letting these people create
an alternate reality where they aren’t challenged, where it is okay to
rant about “dykes,” where it's no biggie to tailor a publishing empire
to avowed racists, where false equivalencies convert discussions of
racism into manufactured reverse racism, we’ll stay here.
Pollak, who says he’s an Orthodox Jew according to Jezebel (and
therefore a perfect spokesperson to trot out at times like this), is on
a press jaunt that will likely last for a while, so we'll probably see
lots more of this. For the record, here’s how the conversation ended:
INSKEEP:
I want to invite a yes/no question, because we’ve just got a few
seconds here. This is a question that’s just on a lot of people’s minds.
Is Steve Bannon—and by extension, Donald Trump—winking at racists? Not
quite embracing their views, but trying to get their support and their
votes?
Yes or no? POLLAK: Absolutely not. INSKEEP: Not at all?
POLLAK: Not at all.
INSKEEP: OK. Joel Pollak, thank you very much, really appreciate the time.
No, thank you,
NPR, for giving this guy a chance to come on and defend hate as no big
deal, and for contributing to the ongoing effort to normalize all this
stuff.
I’m sure it’s very appreciated by the 300 people—and counting!—who've been attacked, harassed and harmed by those inspired by Bannon and Trump.
Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.
There are really no words for how I feel this morning.
America has spoken. I really thought we were better than this. Guess not.
Trump
was the least qualified candidate ever nominated by a major party for
the presidency. Come January, he will become the worst president in
American history, and a dangerously unstable player on the world stage.
And the decimated Democrats, a minority in both House and Senate, do not have the power to hinder him.
Over the next four years, our problems are going to get much, much worse.
Winter is coming. I told you so.
George Raymond Richard Martin, often referred to as GRRM, is an American
novelist and short-story writer in the fantasy, horror, and science
fiction genres, a screenwriter, and television producer. He is best
known for his international bestselling series of epic fantasy novels, A
Song of Ice and Fire, which was later adapted into the HBO dramatic
series Game of Thrones.
Michael Moore: 7 Things We Must Do as Trump Prepares for the White House
1. Must quickly and decisively form an opposition movement, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the 1960s. I will do my part to help lead this as I'm sure many others (Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, MoveOn, the hip-hop community, DFA, etc.) will, too. The core of this opposition force will be fueled by young people…
Time to wake up, you white people of good faith.
Look in the mirror.
See Amerikkka for what it is without the gloss.
See something black folks have been trying to tell you.
It’s not “populism” or “economic anxiety.”
Call it by name — White Supremacy.
I thought the black and brown firewall, with a little help from our white friends would hold back the tide.
I was wrong. My bad.
Thanksgiving is coming. A time many of you gather with friends and family.
Killing racism starts at home.
Maybe it’s time for you to start speaking up and fighting back.
Lord knows we black folks have been doin’ it for centuries.
My people survived slavery and Jim Crow.
We’ll survive Donald Trump too — though I’m sure there will be deaths — there always are.
America has a white supremacy problem.
You are either part of the problem, or part of the solution.
Choose.
P.S. I ain’t leaving. The bones of my enslaved ancestors are buried
here. They helped build this place with blood, sweat, tears, and
laughter. I’ll fight on. In their name.
When President Barack Obama was first elected, Republicans made no
bones about their desire to obstruct absolutely everything on his
agenda. They didn’t even care if it was their own agenda. As
soon as Obama adopted it, it was the second coming of communism—from the
Heritage-created, Mitt-Romney implemented Obamacare, to Republican
James Comey’s nomination to the FBI, to traditionally bipartisan
transportation spending, to the Senate’s Gang of 8 immigration reform
effort.
Their obstruction became so blatant, they even refused to perform
their Constitutional duty to advise and consent to Barack Obama’s final
Supreme Court justice pick. And did they suffer anything for it? Of
course not. They won big in 2010, and again in 2014. And they won big
last night.
Not only did obstruction help hamper Obama’s agenda, but just as
importantly, it sent a message to base Republicans that their party
actually gave a shit. It let them know that their party would fight for
them, even if everyone else thought they were being assholes. It didn’t
matter. That singular focus on obstructing Obama and the Democrats said
they cared.
If Trump wants to pass a new Voting Rights Act, or renominate Merrick
Garland, then we can work with him. Anything else, he can go fuck
himself. Infrastructure spending? Let him get the votes from his own
caucus. Anything else he might propose, even if we might agree with it?
Let him get the votes from his own caucus while we hurl metaphorical Molotov cocktails from the sideline.
They broke it, they own it.
Show our people we are fighting for them, and they’ll fight back for us in return. We are the fierce opposition. And as such, we need to oppose. Full stop. From Day One.
It’s
almost over. Will we heave a sigh of relief, or shriek in horror?
Nobody knows for sure, although early indications clearly lean Clinton.
Whatever happens, however, let’s be clear: this was, in fact, a rigged
election.
The
election was rigged by state governments that did all they could to
prevent nonwhite Americans from voting: The spirit of Jim Crow is very
much alive — or maybe translate that to Diego Cuervo, now that Latinos
have joined African-Americans as targets. Voter ID laws, rationalized by
demonstrably fake concerns about election fraud, were used to
disenfranchise thousands; others were discouraged by a systematic effort
to make voting hard, by closing polling places in areas with large minority populations.
The election was rigged by Russian intelligence,
which was almost surely behind the hacking of Democratic emails, which
WikiLeaks then released with great fanfare. Nothing truly scandalous
emerged, but the Russians judged, correctly, that the news media would
hype the revelation that major party figures are human beings, and that
politicians engage in politics, as somehow damning.
The
election was rigged by James Comey, the director of the F.B.I. His job
is to police crime — but instead he used his position to spread innuendo
and influence the election. Was he deliberately putting a thumb on the
electoral scales, or was he simply bullied by Republican operatives? It
doesn’t matter: He abused his office, shamefully.
The
election was also rigged by people within the F.B.I. — people who
clearly felt that under Mr. Comey they had a free hand to indulge their
political preferences. In the final days of the campaign, pro-Trump
agents have clearly been talking nonstop to Republicans like Rudy
Giuliani and right-wing media, putting claims and allegations that may
or may not have anything to do with reality into the air. The agency
clearly needs a major housecleaning: Having an important part of our
national security apparatus trying to subvert an election is deeply
scary. Unfortunately, Mr. Comey is just the man not to do it.
The
election was rigged by partisan media, especially Fox News, which
trumpeted falsehoods, then retracted them, if at all, so quietly that
almost nobody heard. For days Fox blared the supposed news that the
F.B.I. was preparing an indictment of the Clinton Foundation. When it
finally admitted that the story was false, Donald Trump’s campaign
manager smugly remarked, “The damage is done to Hillary Clinton.”
The
election was rigged by mainstream news organizations, many of which
simply refused to report on policy issues, a refusal that clearly
favored the candidate who lies about these issues all the time, and has
no coherent proposals to offer. Take the nightly network news
broadcasts: In 2016 all three combined devoted a total of 32 minutes to coverage of issues — all issues. Climate change, the most important issue we face, received no coverage at all.
The
election was rigged by the media obsession with Hillary Clinton’s
emails. She shouldn’t have used her own server, but there is no evidence at all
that she did anything unethical, let alone illegal. The whole thing is
orders of magnitude less important than multiple scandals involving her
opponent — remember, Donald Trump never released his tax returns. Yet
those networks that found only 32 minutes for all policy issues combined
found 100 minutes to talk about Clinton emails.
It’s a disgraceful record. Yet Mrs. Clinton still seems likely to win.
If
she does, you know what will happen. Republicans will, of course, deny
her legitimacy from day one, just as they did for the last two
Democratic presidents. But there will also — you can count on it — be a
lot of deprecation and sneering from mainstream pundits and many in the
media, lots of denial that she has a “mandate” (whatever that means),
because some other Republican would supposedly have beaten her, she
should have won by more, or something.
So
in the days ahead it will be important to remember two things. First,
Mrs. Clinton has actually run a remarkable campaign, demonstrating her
tenacity in the face of unfair treatment and remaining cool under
pressure that would have broken most of us. Second, and much more
important, if she wins it will be thanks to Americans who stood up for
our nation’s principles — who waited for hours on voting lines contrived
to discourage them, who paid attention to the true stakes in this
election rather than letting themselves be distracted by fake scandals
and media noise.
Those
citizens deserve to be honored, not disparaged, for doing their best to
save the nation from the effects of badly broken institutions. Many
people have behaved shamefully this year — but tens of millions of
voters kept their faith in the values that truly make America great.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on November 7, 2016, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: How to Rig an Election. Today's Paper|Subscribe
A study conducted by
transportation research labs at Stanford, MIT, and the University of
Washington has shown that Uber, Lyft, and taxi drivers continue to
discriminate based on the ride requester’s race, with black customers
waiting significantly longer for a ride and facing more trip
cancellations than white customers. The study took place in Seattle and
Boston and required research assistants to request trips pre-selected by
the researchers to include a variety of neighborhoods.
The numbers
The study found that black male customers using UberX experience
three times more cancellations than white male customers in Boston. In
Seattle, black customers experienced wait times from 16 to 28 percent
longer than white customers on both UberX and Lyft services.
The researchers weren’t able to study how cancellations affected Lyft
riders, because the two services offer different information about the
rider to the drivers. “A Lyft driver sees both the name and a photo of
the passenger prior to accepting or denying a ride, while UberX drivers
see this information only after accepting a request,” the researchers
wrote. “We find no effect on cancellations for African-American riders
of Lyft because, we surmise, that given that names and photos are
visible to the driver prior to acceptance, any discrimination occurs
prior to accepting the initial request.”
While Uber drivers can get penalized for canceling too many requests, researcher Don MacKenzie wrote on his blog
that “in some cases, drivers would not officially cancel the trip, but
would make no attempt to actually pick up the traveler using a ‘black’
name, or would even drive in the opposite direction for 20 minutes or
more, until the research assistant canceled the trip.”
The researchers also found that female customers were treated
differently than men and were “taken on significantly longer routes than
males for the same origin and destination,” according to MacKenzie. He
added that women in such situations experience “higher fares, wasted
time, and perhaps personal unpleasantness with overly ‘chatty’ drivers.”
Still, the researchers were clear that Uber and Lyft weren’t
distinctly worse than taxis. They asked their research assistants (RAs)
to hail taxis in certain taxi-heavy parts of Seattle and Boston and
count how many available taxis passed them by before one stopped. “The
first taxi stopped nearly 60 percent of the time for white RAs, but less
than 20 percent of the time for African-American RAs.
The white RAs
never had more than four taxis pass them before one stopped, but the
African-American RAs watched six or seven taxis pass them by in 20
percent of cases.”
There’s a little bit of evidence that UberX has improved wait times
for riders over taxi services—the researchers’ paper points out that a
2015 study funded by Uber showed that UberX offered shorter wait times
than taxis for customers requesting rides in low-income neighborhoods in
Los Angeles. A second study in 2016 looking at neighborhoods in Seattle
came up with similar results.
Build a better ride-sourcing app
The researchers admit that “solving” discrimination within Uber and
Lyft is difficult. The ride sourcing companies could omit personal
information about riders completely, but Stephen Zoepf of Stanford’s Center for Automated Research
suggests that this might lead to discrimination manifesting in other
ways, such as prejudiced drivers giving lower ratings to black riders
after picking them up and skewing how those riders' ratings appear to
other, non-prejudiced drivers.
Also, the researchers strained to offer solutions to discrimination
based on drivers refusing to drive into certain neighborhoods.
MacKenzie also suggested that ride-sourcing services like Uber and
Lyft could offer pre-set fares for given rides in an attempt to keep
drivers from taking riders on indirect routes to increase their fares.
This is something Uber began rolling out earlier this summer.
Zoepf also warns that Uber and Lyft can’t yet be considered a
replacement for public transportation, in spite of what some cities are
saying. In Centennial, Colorado, for example, city authorities teamed up with Lyft
to offer free rides to and from a light rail station. At that point,
Zoepf argues, municipal governments run the risk of violating the Civil
Rights Act. “If, on average, a black Uber passenger waits 15 seconds
longer for a ride than a white passenger, does that constitute
discrimination? What about 30 seconds? Two minutes? At what point do we
say that a dis-aggregated system is inadequate to provide service to our
collective communities?”
In a statement e-mailed to Ars, Uber head of North American
Operations Rachel Holt stated, “Discrimination has no place in society,
and no place on Uber. We believe Uber is helping reduce transportation
inequities across the board, but studies like this one are helpful in
thinking about how we can do even more.”
Lyft did not respond immediately to Ars’ request for comment.
Zoepf noted that a first step toward smoothing out car hailing
iniquities would be for private companies like Uber and Lyft to make
their data available to qualified academic institutions. He wrote that
this project initiated 1,500 rides and cost $100,000 to complete. “With
the collaboration of transportation providers, we could have focused our
efforts on analysis rather than data gathering, and our results would
have been undoubtedly more revealing and compelling.”
Filmmaker Brian Gersten writes, "'The Hollerin' Contest at Spivey's
Corner' is a documentary short about the history, characters, and sounds
of the National Hollerin' Contest.
Hollerin' itself is considered by
some to be the earliest form of communication between humans, and the
competition has been held annually in the small town of Spivey's Corner,
NC since 1969. The film follows the stories of three former champions
as they attempt to reclaim their titles, and keep the oft-forgotten
tradition of hollerin' alive."
"This past summer it was announced that the hollerin' contest would be
ending after 47 years. Former hollerin' champions Robby Goodman and Iris
Turner have decided to carry on the tradition and launch their own
'World Wide Hollerin' Festival.'
To honor the tradition of hollerin' and
to celebrate the inaugural Hollerin' Festival, we've decided to release
our documentary on vimeo."
Workers picket across from the Callowhill SEPTA Depot on Tuesday in Philadelphia.
Jacqueline Larma / AP
While commentators digest the latest announcement
from FBI Director James Comey, a story with the potential to have more
of an impact on the election is playing out with little notice in
Philadelphia. Last Tuesday workers for the city division of the regional
transportation authority, SEPTA, began a strike over a new contract. The strike has shut down the city’s buses, subways and trolleys, and snarled the city’s roads since then.
Last Friday, a Philadelphia judge declined to issue an injunction
ending or suspending the strike, but she scheduled a hearing for 9:30
a.m. Monday to take up the strike’s potential impact on the election.
The evidence on the effects of prior transit strikes is limited, but
given what we know about Election Day in Philadelphia, the people who
rely on the city’s public transit network, and about voting in general,
the potential impact on residents’ ability to vote could be substantial.
And that impact is likely to be concentrated on residents of color, as
well as on Philadelphia’s poorer residents.
The nation’s fifth-largest city, Philadelphia is the largest city in
any swing state. There is also no city as populous as Philadelphia with a
larger share of residents in poverty.
It is not surprising, then, that Philadelphia relies heavily on its
public transit network. As it is elsewhere, that reliance is
particularly heavy in poorer communities and communities of color.
Below, for instance, data from the 2014 American Community Survey shows
the relationship between the share of census tract residents who are
black and who ride public transit to work in Philadelphia. The
relationship is substantial: If we go from a census tract with no black
residents to one that is entirely black, we should expect the share of
people using public transit to get to work to rise by 27 percentage
points.
Or consider how the percent riding public transit correlates with a
census tract’s median household income (the panel on the right). Here,
the correlation is strongly negative: As census tracts become wealthier,
they become less dependent on public transit. Imagine moving from
Philadelphia’s first-quartile census tract (with a median household
income of $25,600) to its third-quartile Census tract (where median
household income is $52,270) — public transit ridership should drop by
9.6 percentage points. This relationship is likely to make sense to
people familiar with the city’s demographics, as some of the wealthiest
neighborhoods are in and around the city’s commercial center. The
effects of any Election Day disruption to transportation are likely to
be felt disproportionately in the city’s outlying neighborhoods.
The impacts of the strike are predictable: Without the buses, subways and trolleys — yes, there are really trolleys — people commuting into Center City get up earlier
to drive, bike or walk to work.
But that strategy also has the
potential to mean that many voters on Tuesday will face an unenviable
choice: Vote when the polls open at 7 a.m. or get a jump on the trip
downtown. They’ll also know that lots of other people are facing the
same choice, a fact likely to produce lines at many polling places. Will
that, in turn, dampen voter turnout?
That’s certainly the fear of city officials. On Sunday night, the city filed suit to suspend the strike
and voiced the concern that an “Election Day strike will make it
practically impossible for many Philadelphians to participate in this
election.”
Extensive research on voter turnout suggests that the city is right, and that voters are more likely to vote when it is more convenienttodo so. Voting is to some extent a habitual
behavior, so people are less likely to vote when their habits are
disrupted. When Los Angeles County consolidated its polling places for
the 2003 gubernatorial recall election, for example, in-person voting dropped by a sizable 3.03 percentage points
in precincts that were relocated compared to those that were not. That
decline was partially offset by increased absentee voting, but
Pennsylvania has no early voting, and the deadline for absentee ballot
applications has come and gone.
Philadelphia has actually had a strike during an election before, in
2009. At the time, voters were choosing a district attorney and
controller, as well as several judicial posts. In 2009, some 122,946 voters
cast ballots for district attorney, a number that was actually up from
the 120,424 voters who cast ballots for district attorney in 2005. But
both were paltry turnouts for low-profile elections, and turnout
dynamics in more prominent elections can be very different, as Temple
University professors Kevin Arceneaux and David Nickerson have demonstrated.
For every one Philadelphia voter in 2009, there were 5.6 in the 2012
presidential cycle, and absent a strike, we might expect a similar
number this Tuesday. The 2009 election is accordingly a poor guide to
the would-be impacts of the current strike.
When voting gets easier, turnout increases disproportionately among people who don’t always vote, as evidence from all-mail elections demonstrates. On the flip side, when voting gets harder, those who aren’t habitual voters are more likely to stay home. Poorer voters are less habitual voters. So a disruption as significant as an ongoing public transit strike poses a real threat to turnout on Tuesday.
Dan Hopkins is an associate professor of government at the
University of Pennsylvania, and his research focuses on American
elections and public opinion.
On Friday, FBI Director James Comey set off a political blast when he informed congressional leaders
that the bureau had stumbled across emails that might be pertinent to
its completed inquiry into Hillary Clinton's handling of emails when she
was secretary of state. The Clinton campaign and others criticized
Comey for intervening in a presidential campaign by breaking with Justice Department tradition
and revealing information about an investigation—information that was
vague and perhaps ultimately irrelevant—so close to Election Day.
On
Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid upped the ante. He sent Comey a
fiery letter
saying the FBI chief may have broken the law and pointed to a
potentially greater controversy: "In my communications with you and
other top officials in the national security community, it has become
clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and
coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian
government…The public has a right to know this information."
Reid's missive set off a burst of speculation on Twitter and
elsewhere. What was he referring to regarding the Republican
presidential nominee? At the end of August, Reid had written
to Comey and demanded an investigation of the "connections between the
Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign," and in
that letter he indirectly referred to Carter Page,
an American businessman cited by Trump as one of his foreign policy
advisers, who had financial ties to Russia and had recently visited
Moscow.
Last month, Yahoo Newsreported that US intelligence officials were probing the links between Page and senior Russian officials. (Page has called accusations against him "garbage.") On Monday, NBC News reported
that the FBI has mounted a preliminary inquiry into the foreign
business ties of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chief. But
Reid's recent note hinted at more than the Page or Manafort affairs. And
a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who
specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that
in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent
interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government
has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI
requested more information from him.
"This is something of huge significance, way
above party politics," the former intelligence officer says. "I think
[Trump's] own party should be aware of this stuff as well."
Does this mean the FBI is investigating whether Russian intelligence
has attempted to develop a secret relationship with Trump or cultivate
him as an asset? Was the former intelligence officer and his material
deemed credible or not? An FBI spokeswoman says, "Normally, we don't
talk about whether we are investigating anything." But a senior US
government official not involved in this case but familiar with the
former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible
source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and
important information to the US government.
In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two
decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US
firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was
assigned the task of researching Trump's dealings in Russia and
elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this
American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally
financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before
the former spy was retained, the project's financing switched to a
client allied with Democrats.)
"It started off as a fairly general
inquiry," says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when
he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information
indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government.
According to his sources, he says, "there was an established exchange of
information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual
benefit."
This was, the former spy remarks, "an extraordinary situation." He
regularly consults with US government agencies on Russian matters, and
near the start of July on his own initiative—without the permission of
the US company that hired him—he sent a report he had written for that
firm to a contact at the FBI, according to the former intelligence
officer and his American associates, who asked not to be identified. (He
declines to identify the FBI contact.) The former spy says he concluded
that the information he had collected on Trump was "sufficiently
serious" to share with the FBI.
Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this
former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence
officer's conversations with Russian sources, noted, "Russian regime has
been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years.
Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in
western alliance." It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have
accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on
his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian
intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and
could "blackmail him." It also reported that Russian intelligence had
compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on "bugged conversations she
had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls."
The former intelligence officer says the response from the FBI was
"shock and horror." The FBI, after receiving the first memo, did not
immediately request additional material, according to the former
intelligence officer and his American associates. Yet in August, they
say, the FBI asked him for all information in his possession and for him
to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his
sources. The former spy forwarded to the bureau several memos—some of
which referred to members of Trump's inner circle. After that point, he
continued to share information with the FBI. "It's quite clear there was
or is a pretty substantial inquiry going on," he says.
"This is something of huge significance, way above party politics,"
the former intelligence officer comments. "I think [Trump's] own party
should be aware of this stuff as well."
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment regarding the memos. In the past, Trump has declared, "I have nothing to do with Russia."
The FBI is certainly investigating the hacks attributed to Russia
that have hit American political targets, including the Democratic
National Committee and John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton's
presidential campaign. But there have been few public signs of whether
that probe extends to examining possible contacts between the Russian
government and Trump. (In recent weeks, reporters in Washington have
pursued anonymous online reports
that a computer server related to the Trump Organization engaged in a
high level of activity with servers connected to Alfa Bank, the largest
private bank in Russia. On Monday, a Slateinvestigation
detailed the pattern of unusual server activity but concluded, "We
don't yet know what this [Trump] server was for, but it deserves further
explanation." In an email to Mother Jones, Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, maintains, "The Trump
Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this
email server. The Trump Organization has no communication or
relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.")
According to several national security experts, there is widespread
concern in the US intelligence community that Russian intelligence, via
hacks, is aiming to undermine the presidential election—to embarrass the
United States and delegitimize its democratic elections. And the hacks
appear to have been designed to benefit Trump. In August, Democratic
members of the House committee on oversight wrote
Comey to ask the FBI to investigate "whether connections between Trump
campaign officials and Russian interests may have contributed to these
[cyber] attacks in order to interfere with the US. presidential
election."
In September, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, the
senior Democrats on, respectively, the Senate and House intelligence
committees, issued a joint statement
accusing Russia of underhanded meddling: "Based on briefings we have
received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are
making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election. At
the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of
our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the
election." The Obama White House has declared Russia the culprit in the hacking capers, expressed outrage, and promised a "proportional" response.
There's no way to tell whether the FBI has confirmed or debunked any
of the allegations contained in the former spy's memos. But a Russian
intelligence attempt to co-opt or cultivate a presidential candidate
would mark an even more serious operation than the hacking.
In the letter Reid sent to Comey on Sunday, he pointed out that
months ago he had asked the FBI director to release information on
Trump's possible Russia ties. Since then, according to a Reid spokesman,
Reid has been briefed several times. The spokesman adds, "He is
confident that he knows enough to be extremely alarmed."