CNN Suspends Paris Dennard After Past Sexual Misconduct Revealed
The network has suspended the GOP
contributor following a Washington Post report saying Arizona State
University fired him over harassment allegations.
“We are aware of reports of accusations against Paris Dennard,” a network spokeswoman said in response to a Washington Post report on the allegations, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported. “We are suspending Paris, effective immediately, while we look into the allegations.”
Dennard got canned as events director for Arizona State University’s McCain Institute for International Leadership “for making sexually explicit comments and gestures toward women,” the Post reported, citing a university official and documents.
In one incident, Dennard reportedly told a recent graduate who worked for him that he wanted to have sex with her. The Post cited an ASU report indicating Dennard had “pretended to unzip his pants in her presence, tried to get her to sit on his lap, and made masturbatory gestures.”
Dennard did not deny the claims in the report at the time, according to the Post, but said he had been joking. But he told the Post that he believed the allegations were false and declined to discuss specifics.
He did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Dennard, who has also contributed to The Hill and NPR, was a vocal supporter of Trump during the presidential campaign and later insisted that Trump’s alleged sexual indiscretions should have no impact on his presidency.
In a CNN broadcast earlier this year, Dennard argued with a Republican strategist who asserted that Trump’s alleged hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels were relevant: “You can dig up dirty laundry and I pray to God that nobody goes back in your past,” Dennard said.
When white privilege is not in
full effect, some Caucasians have a breakdown. This was the case for a
59 year old doctor at a Florida airport on Thursday.
Jeffrey Epstein, a doctor from Lakeland, Florida, was “frothing at
the mouth while yelling obscenities” in a ticket line at the Orlando
International Airport, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
He was removed from the line and told he could not fly before throwing a
loud temper tantrum and refusing to leave the airport.
Police attempted to arrested him but he refused and was thrown to the
ground and pepper sprayed.
When he hit the ground, the doctor yelled,
“You’re treating me like a fucking Black person!”
Here’s a hint: If he was really treated like a “Black person,” he
would have been fatally shot the millisecond he resisted arrested, which
he most certainly did. Lucky for him, his white privilege saved his
day, and life.
Epstein was charged with battery, resisting arrest, trespassing and disorderly conduct before being released on bond.
“I’m a provocative guy, and I do it on purpose,” Epstein told My9NJ.com.
“You know why? Because people don’t say stuff. If you say it, people
will debate it and talk about it. Maybe we’ll get a solution.”
He continued: “I figured a white guy getting arrested at an airport
might get some attention to these Black people who I think are
legitimately concerned. If I was a Black person, I’d be terrified.”
Police said they found cannabis on him, but Epstein claimed he was
“not under the influence of any drugs when the incident happened.”
Again, if he was really being treated like a Black person, he would
be locked up for longer than he needs to be and forced to take a plea
deal that could ruin the rest of his life. He might also have a
“terrorist ” charge slapped on his record because the incident was at an
airport. But we doubt this will happen, as Dr. Epstein’s white
privilege has already kicked in, which means he will more than likely be
cleared of all charges.
Mr. Brennan was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2013 to 2017.
When
Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s internal security service,
told me during an early August 2016 phone call that Russia wasn’t
interfering in our presidential election, I knew he was lying. Over the
previous several years I had grown weary of Mr. Bortnikov’s denials of
Russia’s perfidy — about its mistreatment of American diplomats and
citizens in Moscow, its repeated failure to adhere to cease-fire
agreements in Syria and its paramilitary intervention in eastern
Ukraine, to name just a few issues.
When
I warned Mr. Bortnikov that Russian interference in our election was
intolerable and would roil United States-Russia relations for many
years, he denied Russian involvement in any election, in America or
elsewhere, with a feigned sincerity that I had heard many times before.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia reiterated those denials numerous
times over the past two years, often to Donald Trump’s seeming approval.
Russian denials are, in a word, hogwash.
Before,
during and after its now infamous meddling in our last presidential
election, Russia practiced the art of shaping political events abroad
through its well-honed active measures program, which employs an array
of technical capabilities, information operations and old-fashioned
human intelligence spycraft. Electoral politics in Western democracies
present an especially inviting target, as a variety of politicians,
political parties, media outlets, think tanks and influencers are
readily manipulated, wittingly and unwittingly, or even bought outright
by Russian intelligence operatives.
The very freedoms and liberties that
liberal Western democracies cherish and that autocracies fear have been
exploited by Russian intelligence services not only to collect
sensitive information but also to distribute propaganda and
disinformation, increasingly via the growing number of social media
platforms.
Having worked closely
with the F.B.I. over many years on counterintelligence investigations, I
was well aware of Russia’s ability to work surreptitiously within the
United States, cultivating relationships with individuals who wield
actual or potential power. Like Mr. Bortnikov, these Russian operatives
and agents are well trained in the art of deception. They troll
political, business and cultural waters in search of gullible or
unprincipled individuals who become pliant in the hands of their Russian
puppet masters. Too often, those puppets are found.
In
my many conversations with James Comey, the F.B.I. director, in the
summer of 2016, we talked about the potential for American citizens,
involved in partisan politics or not, to be pawns in Russian hands. We
knew that Russian intelligence services would do all they could to
achieve their objectives, which the United States intelligence community
publicly assessed a few short months later were to undermine public
faith in the American democratic process, harm the electability of the
Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, and show preference for Mr.
Trump. We also publicly assessed that Mr. Putin’s intelligence services
were following his orders. Director Comey and I, along with the director
of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael Rogers, pledged that our
agencies would share, as appropriate, whatever information was
collected, especially considering the proven ability of Russian
intelligence services to suborn United States citizens.
The
already challenging work of the American intelligence and law
enforcement communities was made more difficult in late July 2016,
however, when Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, publicly called
upon Russia to find the missing emails of Mrs. Clinton. By issuing such a
statement, Mr. Trump was not only encouraging a foreign nation to
collect intelligence against a United States citizen, but also openly
authorizing his followers to work with our primary global adversary
against his political opponent.
Such
a public clarion call certainly makes one wonder what Mr. Trump
privately encouraged his advisers to do — and what they actually did —
to win the election. While I had deep insight into Russian activities
during the 2016 election, I now am aware — thanks to the reporting of an
open and free press — of many more of the highly suspicious dalliances
of some American citizens with people affiliated with the Russian
intelligence services.
Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash.
The
only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place
constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice
occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members
of “Trump Incorporated” attempted to defraud the government by
laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets. A
jury is about to deliberate bank and tax fraud charges against one of those people, Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman.
And the campaign’s former deputy chairman, Rick Gates, has pleaded guilty to financial fraud and lying to investigators.
Mr.
Trump clearly has become more desperate to protect himself and those
close to him, which is why he made the politically motivated decision to
revoke my security clearance
in an attempt to scare into silence others who might dare to challenge
him. Now more than ever, it is critically important that the special
counsel, Robert Mueller, and his team of investigators be allowed to
complete their work without interference — from Mr. Trump or anyone else
— so that all Americans can get the answers they so rightly deserve.
John O. Brennan was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from March 2013 to January 2017.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump’s Claims Are Hogwash. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
John Brennan says that he believes the resident's increasingly erratic
behavior is because special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation is
closing in on the resident and people close to him. Mieke Eoyang, Ron
Klain and Stuart Stevens join Lawrence.
Let me tell you a story about Stephen Miller and chain migration.
It begins at the turn of the 20th century, in a dirt-floor shack in
the village of Antopol, a shtetl of subsistence farmers in what is now
Belarus. Beset by violent anti-Jewish pogroms and forced childhood
conscription in the Czar’s army, the patriarch of the shack, Wolf-Leib
Glosser, fled a village where his forebears had lived for centuries and
took his chances in America.
He set foot on Ellis Island on January 7, 1903, with $8 to his name.
Though fluent in Polish, Russian and Yiddish, he understood no English.
An elder son, Nathan, soon followed. By street corner peddling and
sweatshop toil, Wolf-Leib and Nathan sent enough money home to pay off
debts and buy the immediate family’s passage to America in 1906. That
group included young Sam Glosser, who with his family settled in the
western Pennsylvania city of Johnstown, a booming coal and steel town
that was a magnet for other hardworking immigrants. The Glosser family
quickly progressed from selling goods from a horse and wagon to owning a
haberdashery in Johnstown run by Nathan and Wolf-Leib to a chain of
supermarkets and discount department stores run by my grandfather, Sam,
and the next generation of Glossers, including my dad, Izzy. It was big
enough to be listed on the AMEX stock exchange and employed thousands of
people over time. In the span of some 80 years and five decades, this
family emerged from poverty in a hostile country to become a prosperous,
educated clan of merchants, scholars, professionals, and, most
important, American citizens.
What does this classically American tale have to do with Stephen
Miller? Well, Izzy Glosser is his maternal grandfather, and Stephen’s
mother, Miriam, is my sister.
I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an
educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect
of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our
family’s life in this country.
I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers
had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the
radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their
parents, and even talk of limiting
citizenship for legal immigrants — been in effect when Wolf-Leib made
his desperate bid for freedom. The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few
years before the fear and prejudice of the “America first” nativists of
the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees.
Had Wolf-Leib waited,
his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis along with all
but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage
Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of
Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do
not envision a similar fate for him.
Like other immigrants, our family’s welcome to the USA was not always
a warm one, but we largely had the protection of the law, there was no
state-sponsored violence against us, no kidnapping of our male children,
and we enjoyed good relations with our neighbors. True, Jews were
excluded from many occupations, couldn’t buy homes in some towns,
couldn’t join certain organizations or attend certain schools or
universities, but life was good. As in past generations, there were hate
mongers who regarded the most recent groups of poor immigrants as scum,
rapists, gangsters, drunks and terrorists, but largely the Glosser
family was left alone to live our lives and build the American dream.
Children were born, synagogues founded, and we thrived. This was the
miracle of America.
Acting for so long in the theater of right-wing politics, Stephen and
Trump may have become numb to the resultant human tragedy and blind to
the hypocrisy of their policy decisions. After all, Stephen’s is not the
only family with a chain immigration story in the Trump administration.
Trump's grandfather is reported to have been a German migrant on the
run from military conscription to a new life in the United States, and
his mother fled the poverty of rural Scotland for the economic
possibilities of New York City. (Trump’s in-laws just became citizens on
the strength of his wife’s own citizenship.)
These facts are important not only for their grim historical irony
but because vulnerable people are being hurt. They are real people, not
the ghoulish caricatures portrayed by Trump. When confronted by the
deaths and suffering of thousands, our senses are overwhelmed, and the
victims become statistics rather than people. I meet these statistics
one at a time through my volunteer service as a neuropsychologist for
the Philadelphia affiliate of HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid
Society), the global nonprofit that protects refugees and helped my
family more than 100 years ago. I will share the story of one such man I
have met in the hopes that my nephew might recognize elements of our
shared heritage.
In the early 2000's, Joseph (not his real name) was conscripted at the
age of 14 to be a soldier in Eritrea and sent to a remote desert
military camp. Officers there discovered a Bible under his pillow which
aroused their suspicion that he might belong to a foreign evangelical
sect that would claim his loyalty and sap his will to fight. Joseph was
actually a member of the state-approved Coptic church but was
nonetheless immediately subjected to torture. “They smashed my face into
the ground, tied my hands and feet together behind my back, stomped on
me, and hung me from a tree by my bonds while they beat me with batons
for the others to see.”
Joseph was tortured for 20 consecutive days before being taken to a
military prison and crammed into a dark unventilated cell with 36 other
men, little food and no proper hygiene. Some died, and in time Joseph
was stricken with dysentery. When he was too weak to stand, he was taken
to a civilian clinic where he was fed by the medical staff. Upon
regaining his strength, he escaped to a nearby road where a sympathetic
driver took him north through the night to a camp in Sudan where he
joined other refugees. Joseph was on the first leg of a journey that
would cover thousands of miles and almost 10 years.
Before Donald Trump had started his political ascent promulgating the
false story that Barack Obama was a foreign-born Muslim, while my
nephew, Stephen, was famously recovering from the hardships of his high
school cafeteria in Santa Monica, Joseph was a child on his own in Sudan
in fear of being deported back to Eritrea to face execution for
desertion. He worked any job he could get, saved his money and made his
way through Sudan. He endured arrest and extortion in Libya. He returned
to Sudan, then kept moving to Dubai, Brazil and eventually to a
southern border crossing into Texas, where he sought asylum. In all of
the countries he traveled through during his ordeal, he was vulnerable,
exploited and his status was “illegal.” But in the United States, he had
a chance to acquire the protection of a documented immigrant.
Today, at 30, Joseph lives in Pennsylvania and has a wife and child.
He is a smart, warm, humble man of great character who is grateful for
every day of his freedom and safety. He bears emotional scars from not
seeing his parents or siblings since he was 14. He still trembles, cries
and struggles for breath when describing his torture, and he bears
physical scars as well. He hopes to become a citizen, return to work and
make his contribution to America. His story, though unique in its
particulars, is by no means unusual. I have met Central Americans
fleeing corrupt governments, violence and criminal extortion; a Yemeni
woman unable to return to her war-ravaged home country and fearing
sexual mutilation if she goes back to her Saudi husband; and an escaped
kidnap-bride from central Asia.
Trump wants to make us believe that these desperate migrants are an
existential threat to the United States; the most powerful nation in
world history and a nation made strong by immigrants. Trump and my
nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots. Yet, they repeat the
insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these
refugees to make them seem less than human. Trump publicly parades the
grieving families of people hurt or killed by migrants, just as the
early Nazis dredged up Jewish criminals to frighten and enrage their
political base to justify persecution of all Jews. Almost every American
family has an immigration story of its own based on flight from war,
poverty, famine, persecution, fear or hopelessness. Most of these
immigrants became workers, entrepreneurs, scientists and soldiers of
America.
Most damning is the administration's evident intent to make policy
that specifically disadvantages people based on their ethnicity, country
of origin and religion. No matter what opinion is held about
immigration, any government that specifically enacts law or policy on
that basis must be recognized as a threat to all of us. Laws bereft of
justice are the gateway to tyranny. Today others may be the target, but
tomorrow it might just as easily be you or me. History will be the
judge, but in the meantime the normalization of these policies is
rapidly eroding the collective conscience of America.
Immigration reform
is a complex issue that will require compassion and wisdom to bring the
nation to a just solution, but the politicians who have based their
political and professional identity on ethnic demonization and exclusion
cannot be trusted to do so. As free Americans, and descendants of
immigrants and refugees, we have the obligation to exercise our
conscience by voting for candidates who will stand up for our highest
national values and not succumb to our lowest fears.
Omarosa Manilow or whatever the fuck was hired for one reason and one
reason only: to be black near Donald Trump. That's it. She was hired as
an accessory, a bauble that Trump could flaunt whenever anyone declared
him a racist, like that gold-framed fake Renoir he
insisted was real, projecting something about the man that simply
wasn't true. She wasn't just a token; she was a shield. And she
willingly allowed herself to play that role, which she has copped
to. But, basically, fuck her. She was content to suckle at the teat of
whatever fame Trump had and line her purse. Now that she was kicked out
of the Big Brother: DC house, she's gonna get paid. It doesn't mean she's lying. It just means, you know, fuck her.
With that said, much of what Omarosa has revealed is the sadly standard
"The President is a dumb fucking racist" shit that we've heard before.
I'm pretty sure there is no one in the nation who doesn't think that
Trump says, "Nigger" on a regular basis. And, frankly, some of it sounds
crazy, like making a recording in the situation room of the White
House.
I don't necessarily believe her when she says she walked in
on Trump eating paper in order to destroy whatever was written on it.
It's more believable that Trump sits at his desk in the Oval Office,
staring ahead blankly, tearing off bits of intelligence reports, and
devouring them mindlessly, washing them down with Diet Coke. In fact,
I'd bet that Trump has to constantly be told to stop eating the paper.
Also, there's the stuff that ought to be shocking but isn't, like that Gene Simmons of KISS openly talked
about fucking Ivanka in front of dear ol' dad, but Trump just laughed
and egged him on. I mean, unless you've got a video of Trump boning his
daughter while Jared weeps and jacks off in the corner, you've really
got nothing. And even then, most of us would think, "Yeah, I totally
expected to one day see Trump boning his daughter while Jared weeps and
jacks off in the corner." What would be surprising? Add a goat? A shit
fetish? Crucifixion? Who knows anymore? We have lost the capacity for
shock.
However, what's more interesting than the Omarosa revelations (because,
as mentioned above, fuck Omarosa) has been Trump's reaction to those
revelations. In a few tweets, he ended up saying that Omarosa was terrible
at her "job" but he kept her on "because she only said GREAT things
about me," as if that makes him look good instead like the incompetent,
pathetic, narcissistic goon that he is, and he confirmed
that he uses non-disclosure agreements, which has gotta be a violation
of every kind of open records law there is, but, you know, that would
require someone checking and balancing the Executive Branch.
In a recording of a phone call, Trump acts completely fake surprised
that Omarosa was fired by John Kelly. And his defense is that he's just
so fucking stupid: "You know, they run a big operation, but I didn’t
know it. I didn’t know that. Goddamn it! I don’t love you leaving at
all." First off, "I don't love you leaving" is what a goddamned child
says when a parent is going on a business trip. Second, if Trump legit
didn't know about her firing, that means everyone in the White House
knows he doesn't give a shit about what goes on there.
He just wants to eat his paper and drink his Diet Coke and watch Fox
"news" and wait until he can get in front of some audience so he can
pretend he's in charge.
Update: A couple of further notes here. First, if Omarosa was
just begging for a job, Trump had (and, fer fuck's sake, still has) a
corporation where he could have hired her. But that wouldn't have
achieved the primary objective of being "my African American" while he's in the White House.
Also, Trump is obviously freaking the fuck out because he went further
in attacking her, calling her a "lowlife" and a "dog," which you know
was "bitch" before someone told him to change it. Either way, it's
still occasionally, in the abstract, weird to think, "Um, that's the resident of the United States saying that shit."
Always remember that should we ever hear a recording where Trump spouts
racial slurs (I mean, we already heard him be sexist in the Access Hollywood pussy tape), his idiot hordes will love him for it.
Trump
lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Sunday that he definitely didn’t say what he
said resident Donald Trump said last month, but that if he did say what
he said Trump said — which he did — he was saying what former FBI
Director James Comey said Trump said, and that he would never have said
Trump said that himself.
Huh?
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper
Sunday, Giuliani denied ever saying that Trump had at one point asked
Comey to give fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn “a break.”
In fact, Giuliani did say that to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos last month. Here’s a transcript(emphasis added):
GIULIANI:
Comey’s testimony is hardly worth anything. And nor did he ever — James
Comey never found any evidence of collusion. And [he] rules out
obstruction by saying the President had a right to fire me. So all the
rest of it is just politics. I mean, the reality is Comey, in some ways,
ends up being a good witness for us, unless you assume they’re trying
to get him into a perjury trap by, he tells his version, somebody else
has a different version. STEPHANOPOULOS:
How is he a good witness for the President if he’s saying that the
President was asking him — directing him, in his words — to let the
Michael Flynn investigation go? GIULIANI: He didn’t direct him to do that. What he said to him was “Can you give him a break?” STEPHANOPOULOS: Comey says he took it as direction. GIULIANI:
Well that’s OK. I mean, taking it that way — I mean by that time, he
had been fired. And he said a lot of other things, some of which have
turned out to be untrue. The reality is, as a prosecutor, I was told
that many times. Can you give the man a break, either by his lawyers, by
his relatives, by friends. You take that into consideration but, you
know, that doesn’t determine not going forward with it.
“There
was no conversation about Michael Flynn,” Giuliani said at the start of
the interview Sunday.
He added, referring to Comey’s claim that Trump had confronted him about Flynn: “We maintain the resident didn’t say that.” When
Tapper specifically brought up Giuliani’s comments to ABC News,
Giuliani protested: “I never told ABC that. That’s crazy. I’ve never
said that. What I said was, ‘That is what Comey is saying Trump said.’”
But that’s simply not true. Giuliani
never told ABC News that he was characterizing Comey’s version of
events. In fact, Giuliani not only said last month that Trump had asked
Comey to give Flynn “a break,” he justified the resident doing so by
recalling times he’d been asked to do the same as a prosecutor.
Giuliani
told CNN Sunday that “it’d be easier for me if the resident did say
that,” because, he said, Trump asking Comey to go easy on Flynn is
“hardly an obstruction.”
“So you’re saying that President Trump and James Comey never discussed Michael Flynn?” Tapper asked.
“That is what he will testify to if he is asked that question,” Giuliani responded.
Later in the interview, Tapper played the ABC News clip.
“I
said it, but I also said before that I’m talking about their version of
it,” Giuliani said after seeing the video. “Look, lawyers argue in the
alternative. I know it’s complicated, but my goodness, we’ve been over
it long enough that — I mean, why would I say something that isn’t
true.”
“The resident didn’t say to him, ‘Go easy on Flynn,’ or anything about Flynn.”
Watch below:
Rudy Giuliani has a habit of saying some crazy and outlandish things about during TV interviews about his client, Donald Trump, and those claims have sparked speculation among some current and former Republicans as to whether or not Giuliani is suffering from some kind of mental decline.
This weekend, Fox host Howard Kurtz asked Giuliani, in the context of a comment made by Joe Scarborough, if these claims have any merit. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Melania Trump spent her first few weeks in the United States working
illegally. Her parents were just sworn in as citizens through chain
migration.
These are both items that Trump has said have to go, and
under the new proposed rules for immigrants that become citizens,
Melania would technically be up for having her citizenship revoked.
The
rules, however, aren’t meant to target people that look like Trump, as
Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.
Laura Ingraham goes full nazi with the same kind of bigotry her polish
immigrant grandparents faced. Hasan Piker breaks down why David Duke and
other nazis loved her commentary!
I don’t know if you heard but that terrible reality television
Iago, Omarosa Manigault-Newman, has a new book out. It’s about that
terrible reality television spoiled dummy Donald Trump and the
misanthropic world inside of the White House.
Huckabee Sanders put this refrigerator poetry together in a statement,
attacking some of the more wild—and entirely believable—claims made by
Manigault-Newman in her new book UNHINGED.
I got a couple of robo calls yesterday, and tracked them back, thanks to
their lame phone number spoofing. The organization that called me is
the American Veterans Honor Fund. It's new, and based in Virginia.
They're just getting started in scamming people out of their hard-earned
money.
Here's what they're up to: The organization claims to be funding
veterans who are candidates for public office. Their website offers
little information, but has a two-post blog on it. One of those
candidates, who may well be behind the scam, is a right-wing militia
leader from Ohio. He was thrown out of the only office he has held, but
he's back in the race again. To his credit, he admits that he has never
served in any branch of the military of the United States, after naming
all of his medals and honors from his militia group.
They don't say their name when they call. My guy said, "Hi! I'm Mark
with the veterans." I hung up and back called him and got the
organizations name and then Googled it.
In the MSNBC exclusive secret audio recording, Rep. Devin Nunes says
Republicans need to keep the House in November to protect the resident
from investigations into any unlawful activity. Lawrence O'Donnell says members of
Congress have not always been willing to betray their oath of office.
Jesse Dollemore addresses the disgracefully hateful rhetoric on Fox News last
night from Laura Ingraham about America's shifting demographics...
followed by the retweet and endorsement from former KKK Grand Wizard,
David Duke.
There are few things that are more of a bitch-ass argument than the whole "white genocide" thing that racists have been screeching about. The idea isn't that there will be concentration camps of white people being exterminated by legions of blacks and Hispanics and Asians and other scary non-white groups. Oh, no. See, white genocide is a gradual process by which a combination of demographic changes, migration, and white people not having babies will eradicate whiteness, causing white culture and beliefs and what not to disappear. See, it's like a genocide except no one is watching their family get mutilated by machetes or sent into gas showers. So it's not like a genocide at all save for in the delusional minds of white supremacists who don't fucking get that their whiteness is a construction of so many non-white forces that they wouldn't have a culture without it.
Grow the fuck up, you pussies. This is what happens. Populations move. People fuck people of other races. That shit just happens. Look at Mexico. Not because of undocumented migrants, but because of how it dealt with an influx of another race. You know that there are over a million people of Arab descent in Mexico? No, you didn't fucking know that, you stupid assholes. A whole bunch of them are Lebanese. Did you know that? No, you didn't fucking know that because you're a dumb fuck racist fuckball. And you know why you don't hear about it? Because the people from Lebanon and Yemen and Syria and elsewhere who moved to Mexico in the 1930's and 1940's married Mexicans and they have Arab Mexican kids and that's the way shit goes, man, and no one gives a single goddamn about it anymore. The best kibbeh I ever had was in Merida, Yucatan, and it was made by the Mexican wife of a Lebanese friend. How fucking great is that? The world's a goddamn miracle when you're not a total dick about shit like this.
Which gets us to Fox "news" host and noted Nazi saluter Laura Ingraham, who, you may have heard, went off about shifting racial populations in the United States last night on her show, The Ingrown Toenail. You've likely seen this quote, which sounds like something you hear before a cross is set on fire: "[I]n some parts of the country it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn't exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people. And they are changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don't like." Does anyone vote for demographic change? How would that work? I guess she supports keeping black people out of her neighborhood. Anyways, Ingraham had been mocking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the self-professed socialist who won the Democratic nomination for Congress in a district in New York City.
But you may not have heard the other shit Ingraham said during her xenophobic rant last night. She continued, "From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically in some ways the country has changed. Now, much of this is related to both illegal and in some cases legal immigration that of course progressives love." Then, after getting in the usual shots at undocumented migrants and bringing up the scary ones who committed crimes and scary sanctuary cities (also known as "cities"), Ingraham got to her real fear, which is not crime at all: "[T]his is a sure way over time to remake and reshape America. This is exactly what socialists like Ocasio-Cortez want. Eventually diluting and overwhelming your vote with the votes of others who aren't, let's face it, too big on Adam Smith and the Federalist Papers."
Oh, Laura, c'mon. You really think your viewers know jack shit about Adam Smith and the Federalist Papers (which, by the way, great name for a terrible band)? Most of them wouldn't know The Wealth of Nations if Smith himself was whispering it in their ears as he made sweet, sweaty love to them, fucking them in the ass while watching your show.
More important than the stupidity and pliable sphincter of the average Ingraham viewer is that Ingraham is using the threat of non-white immigrants voting in order to demonize those immigrants even more than crime and job-taking might. She's saying, "Understand this, my fellow racist shit heels. They will elect people with scary names like Ocasio-Cortez and then they will pass laws that will strip your whiteness of its privilege."
Isn't that what this all really is about? The gut-wrenching fear that whiteness won't be powerful in and of itself? Or maybe it's just that there are a bunch of white people who are scared shitless that they might get treated like they've treated non-white people for centuries.
Demographic changes are gonna happen. The pure white Aryan blood will become "diluted" (which is an interesting dog-whistle of a word). Wait until climate refugees start pouring into the country, along with the economic migrants and asylum seekers from increasingly violent places. The most hilarious, fucked up part of all this is that the way that the cowardly white conservatives could have kept the nation whiter would have been to help the rest of the world with economic incentives, climate action, and more. But it's too late now, you pasty motherfuckers. You shouldn't have been listening to people like Laura Ingraham all this time.
That said, this is the country we have. We're not going back. No matter how many immigrants the Trump administration gets rid of, the demographic shift is here, man. This is the America we have. I love it. I love this crazy richness of identities. It's fucking fascinating and fucking fun. Bring on the white genocide. It sounds like a party.
You've heard it over and over from Republicans: they are just concerned
about undocumented immigrants (or "illegal aliens," as the Justice
Department has been ordered
to say). If you ignore the fact that Customs and Border Protection
treated asylum seekers who presented themselves as such at the proper
border crossings - doing everything legally - like they were
undocumented migrants, and if you ignore the mostly-Muslim ban, well,
you could maybe sort of believe Republicans if you squinted and stuck
your fingers in your ears.
Of course, mistreating the undocumented was never the full plan.
Because, see, White House adviser and Man Most Likely to Be Caught
Eating Hamsters Whole, Stephen Miller, is a fucking ghoul, and he's
getting the Trump administration to change
how legal immigrants are treated. And if you're thinking, "Oh, they
must be getting extra nice to documented immigrants because they've been
such pricks to undocumented ones," then you're a fucking idiot who
doesn't understand the level of cruelty for cruelty's sake these
shit heels exist on.
What they want to do now is get rid of legal immigrants and they're
gonna contort the fuckin' law to do it so they don't need congressional
approval. The plan: "immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever
used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children's
health insurance, food stamps and other benefits could be hindered from
obtaining legal status in the U.S." You got that? You have a kid who's a
U.S. citizen and is on CHIP? No green card for you. You have a green
card and get an Obamacare subsidy? No citizenship and, hey, we'll take
that green card away. Back to the unstable visa system for you or, the
real goal, deportation.
How fucked do you have to be to believe that this is in any way good for
the country? You gotta be some bullshit white genocide-believing,
Nazi-loving motherfucker to go along with this. Or, you know, an average
Republican in this worthless age of Trump.
So you can live in this country legally for years, have kids here, and
pay your taxes. But if you avail yourself of something that your taxes
are helping to fund, you can go fuck off back to Mexico or whatever
shit hole you came from. You're a "public charge" now, even if you're
just getting the barest of help from the government.
Trumpistas also say that they are targeting people who did something
else wrong at some point in their lives, like lie on a visa application.
But, as is the way with Donald Trump, who never met a contract he
wouldn't violate, even people who had an agreement with the government
are finding that the deal has been broken by this administration.
In one example, a Haitian man who has a green card "had used a fake
passport given to him by smugglers when he entered the U.S. from Haiti
in 1989, but confessed to border officers and received a waiver from
USCIS absolving him of his wrongdoing and allowing him to obtain a green
card in 2011." Now, though? Fuck the waiver we gave you. "When he went
for his citizenship interview in August 2017, the USCIS officers told
him they were going to revisit the decision to waive the fake passport
incident, meaning he could potentially lose his green card as well." And
then he found out he was denied citizenship. The man works 80 hours a
week and takes care of a disabled daughter. He's further fucked because
he has used public assistance to help with his American kid. How does
this make America great again? If "great" means "whiter," then, sure,
goal met.
Here you go, Republicans. Another shot to stand up and say to Trump,
"No. Fuck this. This is too far. Fire that Miller cockhole and act like
you're a goddamned human being." Except you won't. Because it is you. It
has been you for decades. You're just finally getting to be your worst
selves.
As it turns out, there are
secret masters of the government, pulling the strings without the
benefit of an election, nomination, or appointment. As a Propublica investigation has discovered,
Donald Trump handed off control of the Department of Veterans Affairs
to three members of his Mar-a-Lago golf resort. These three have been
issuing orders to the people who are supposed to be running the
department forming a “previously unknown triumvirate that hovered over
public servants without any transparency, accountability or oversight.”
Known within the VA as “the Mar-a-Lago Crowd,” the three were Marvel Entertainment chair Ike
Perlmutter, New York attorney Marc Sherman, and Bruce Moskowitz a
“concierge” doctor who runs a service catering to the Palm Beach elite.
What reporter Isaac Arnsdorf discovered, through
interviews and thousands of documents obtained through Freedom of
Information Act requests, is that these three have been ordering members
of the VA around for over a year. At the beginning of the year, Trump’s
appointment of Ronny Jackson, the doctor
who had proclaimed that Trump has “great genes,” as the VA secretary
ran into issues when reports of both abuse and incompetence surfaced
around Jackson. After leaving the position vacant for months, Trump finally nominated acting director Robert Wilkie in
May. But as it turns out, little of that maneuvering matters. Because
when Trump wants to talk to the man in charge, he calls Perlmutter.
The documents turned up by Pro Publica don’t just show Perlmutter
issuing orders to VA, but reviewing policy, and making personnel
selections. VA officials, at taxpayer expense, traveled to Mar-a-Lago to
“consult” with Perlmutter and get his approval.
“Everyone has to go down and kiss the ring,” a former administration official said.
If the idea that the chairman of Marvel Entertainment is running the
VA makes it sound that there at least might be an injection of
creativity into the agency, that’s not this guy. Perlmutter mounted a
series of hostile takeovers—Revco, Coleco, Remington—and gained control
of Marvel during a series of buyouts and bankruptcies. He was paid $800
million by Disney when that company bought out Marvel, mostly to go
away. The company was specifically split in half so that Perlmutter had
nothing to do with the films—because he’s famously abusive and bigoted.
Perlmutter also has a history of behavior that’s distinctly odd. That
includes turning a fight with a neighbor over the condition of a
private tennis court—surely one of those issues that affects all
Americans—into a hate mail campaign in which Perlmutter accused the
neighbor of, among other things “illegally harvesting his DNA.” As the Hollywood Reporter explains, Perlmutter
sent out unsigned mailings around the exclusive community attacking his
neighbor, then turned his attention to the man’s workplace, where he
accused the neighbor of being a Nazi and covering up sexual assault. And
then … Perlmutter really did show some creativity.
One series of mailings allegedly went out to more than a thousand
inmates in prisons across Florida and Ontario, Canada, in [neighbor Harold] Peerenboom’s name,
with provoking statements like, "While your [sic] in jail, I am writing
to your mom, telling her exactly what kind of scumbag you are."
The guy who tried to get his neighbor killed by sending provocative
notes to over 1,000 inmates … that’s the guy Trump has secretly put in
charge of the VA.
It was Perlmutter who put together the “troika” now running the VA. Of the other two, at least Moskowitz
is a doctor, and while his specialty of finding pricey experts to pay
house calls on nervous Palm Beach millionaires may be miles away from
providing service for millions of veterans, at least it’s health care
adjacent. Sherman is a lawyer who specializes in white
collar crime. As in, defending those accused of it. That’s likely
endeared him to both Perlmutter and Trump, but none of his background
indicates any knowledge of health care, veterans, or running a large
organization.
The troika has been in place from the beginning of Trump’s time in office. With former VA chief David Shulkin forced to fly down to Mar-a-Lago
for his ring-kissing in February of 2017.
Moscowitz then nicely
informed Shulkin that he didn’t have to make a monthly appearance before
the three actual heads of his agency. Instead, they would “set up phone
conference calls at a convenient time.”
All those stories about how Shulkin was resisting implementing
Trump’s policies, really boil down to his growing reluctance to take
orders from the secret masters of his agency, who were ruling on the
lives of wounded and ailing veterans between tee times. And they didn’t hesitate to bypass Shulkin.
The Mar-a-Lago Crowd bombarded VA officials with demands, many of
them inapt or unhelpful. On phone calls with VA officials, Perlmutter
would bark at them to move faster, having no patience for bureaucratic
explanations about why something has to be done a certain way or take a
certain amount of time, former officials said.
Much of what the troika kicked off seemed to be generated by hearsay,
antecedents picked up from TV, and cases mentioned by friends. That
included one example Perlmutter was particularly keen on that originated
with ... the woman in charge of the disputed tennis court.
At the moment, he doesn’t appear to have written to thousands of
inmates attempting to get them to murder David Shulkin. But at least
that was some out of the box thinking. If sanity is a box.
Conservative Rod Dreher on the Trump-as-Lincoln claim: "What kind of crackhead do you have to be to take that seriously?"
If nothing else, Donald Trump
is a one-of-a-kind occupant of the Oval Office. His jaw-dropping
corruption, staggering incompetence, mind-numbing policy ignorance,
puerile penchant for payback, and unprecedented deceit put the Trump residency in a class by itself.
Nevertheless, Trump’s courtiers, sycophants, and water-carriers have
tried to elevate his leadership to a place among the greatest figures in
human history. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. was not alone in comparing Donald Trump to King David,
who “may have committed adultery and arranged the death of his
mistress’s husband in battle, but despite these considerable failings he
had still retained the full favor of God.”
After Trump announced his decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel
to Jerusalem, Benjamin Netanyahu joined American evangelicals in
declaring Trump a 21st century version of Persian King Cyrus,
who 2,500 years earlier “proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon
can come back and rebuild our temple in Jerusalem.” And no Republican
president can last long without the inevitable comparison to Ronald Reagan. In Trump’s case, the task was perhaps best performed by the Rev. Robert Jeffress.
Having previously accused Barack Obama of “paving the way for the
future reign of the Antichrist,” Jeffress explained last week that
evangelicals knew that the thrice-married, serial adulterer Trump was
“no altar boy.”
“The reason we supported President Reagan was not because we were supporting womanizing or divorce. We supported his policies.”
But no conservative hagiography of the current Republican resident
can ever be complete without the invention of parallels to the first
one. (After all, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Fox News anchor
Bret Baier and Dubya himself equated President George W. Bush with President Abraham Lincoln.) Within days of Donald Trump’s inauguration, The Federalist offered “5 Ways Donald Trump Is Abraham Lincoln’s True Successor.” Fellow thrice-married, serial adulterer Newt Gingrich
agreed, telling Sean Hannity on July 23, “I think the person whose
situation is most like President Trump's was Abraham Lincoln, adding,
“Lincoln is fighting to preserve the Constitution. He's fighting to
preserve the union and he's having to do a lot of different things that
are very bold and in some cases very radical.” Dishonest Donald himself went a step further, boasting “Wow, highest Poll Numbers in the history of the Republican Party. That includes Honest Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.”
At the head of the “45=16” pack is pardoned campaign finance fraudster Dinesh D’Souza.
But D’Souza’s paeans portraying Trump as the new Lincoln aren’t
merely an expression of gratitude for the man who voided his conviction.
Donald Trump plays a vital role in D’Souza’s ongoing project to
whitewash history by falsely claiming Democrats were, are, and forever
will be the party of slavery, the Klan, Jim Crow and racism. (That history didn’t end in 1965 when the parties’ role-reversals on civil rights began in earnest is well-documented. Despite his repeated historical bludgeonings by Princeton’s Kevin M. Kruse, D’Souza has continued to advance his bogus claims.)
Lincoln united his party and saved America from the Democrats for the
first time. Can Trump—and we—come together and save America for the
second time?
That is the premise of D’Souza’s new book and ersatz documentary, Death of a Nation. But
reality, as Stephen Colbert famously told George W. Bush to his face in
2006, “has a well-known liberal bias.”
Republicans are now the party of
states’ rights, nullification, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and white
rage. The Democrats are the party of civil rights, equal protection of
the laws, Dr. King and John Lewis. In 2018, Donald Trump is the Divider,
not the Uniter. And that means the shoes Trump now fills would be more
likely to fit Jefferson Davis than Abraham Lincoln.
For starters, consider the xenophobia and nativism at the heart of
Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” appeal. His diatribes against
“thugs” and Mexican “rapists and drug dealers,” his disdain for those
from “shithole countries” and fondness for (obviously white) immigrants
from places like Norway are just the latest updates to Nixon’s 50-year old “Southern Strategy.” In stark contrast, Abraham Lincoln had little use for the “America Firsters” of his day, the Know-Nothings. As he wrote to Joshua Speed in 1855:
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any
one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading
classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be
rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created
equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except
negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are
created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it
comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make
no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where
despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy
[sic].
The obvious problems with the myth of Abraham Lincoln Trump hardly end there. Trump, after all, has repeatedly come to the defense of Confederate monuments and statues.
In the wake of the violence triggered by white supremacists last August
in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump tweeted that it was “sad to see the
history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the
removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.” But those supposedly
“beautiful” monuments were primarily erected in the early 1900's and
again during the Civil Rights era precisely to glorify the Lost Cause of the Confederacy
and to act as powerful symbols of white supremacy. In 1855, Lincoln
proclaimed that “the slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small,
odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate
the course of all of you.” In 2017, Donald Trump defended those who
would celebrate the leaders, fighting men and the cause of that “odious
and detested class” by applying the “both sides do it” argument to the alt-right instigation in Charlottesville:
“You’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people
– and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists,
because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in
that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the
press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group
also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you
see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the
baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too…
The other group didn't have a permit. So I only tell you this: there
are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible
moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to
the country.”
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the
will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and
against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is
quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the
purpose of either party.
This was a central theme of President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address delivered on March 4, 1865. As
he so eloquently put it just six weeks before his assassination,
slavery was the national tragedy and the Civil War the inevitable and
necessary price America had to pay for its extirpation.
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses
which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having
continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that
He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to
those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure
from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always
ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills
that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until
every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still
it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether." [Emphasis mine.]
If Lincoln was quick to admonish both North and South for believing
they each enjoyed God’s providence, the 16th president was also able to
show understanding and compassion for those on either side of the
Mason-Dixon line. Even as seven states has already seceded from the
Union, Lincoln closed his First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861 this way:
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is
the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you.
You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You
have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I
shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of
affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every
battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all
over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
With the war nearly won four years later, Abraham Lincoln
nevertheless extended the hand of brotherhood to those who sought to
destroy the country he had fought so hard to preserve:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who
shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves
and with all nations.
It is inconceivable that Donald Trump could ever imagine, let alone
utter, words like these. (That goes for his son Donald Jr. as well, who co-hosted the opening of D’Souza’s fictional film.) His speeches, rallies, and tweets are designed only for the consumption of his base. On July 1, Trump told Maria Bartiromo
of Fox Business, “I hope the other side realizes that they better just
take it easy," he said. "They better just take it easy because some of
the languages, some of the words you —even some of the radical ideas, I really think they’re very bad for the country." Asked what he would do to bring the country together, Abraham Lincoln Trump responded:
" Our people are so incredible. Do you know, there's probably never
been a base in the history of politics in this country like my base."
Not, at least, since Jefferson Davis’s backers in 1861.
If Trump’s base wants anything, it is to keep things the way they
are. Or, rather, were. “Make American Great Again” is by definition a
backward-looking worldview to a time when a white, post-war America was
militarily and economically unchallenged. “Our ancestors tamed a
continent,” Trump proclaimed in May,
adding “We’re are not going to apologize for America.” But in the
second decade of the 21st century, the United States is at a crossroads.
The rise of China as a military and economic superpower, the
transformation of the worldwide economy, and global challenges like
climate change, international terrorism, and transnational criminal
enterprises mean the United States cannot withdraw into itself. More
than ever, the U.S. needs allies in Europe and the Pacific along with
strong global institutions led by America. From trade policy, the
withdrawals from the Paris Climate Accords and the Trans-Pacific
Partnership to the threats to NATO and North American allies, Trump is doing the reverse.
In his time, Abraham Lincoln faced even more difficult choices for a
nation literally at a life-and-death crossroads. Certainly no firebrand
of abolitionism, he soon understood there was simply no going back to
the United States of America as it had been. As President Lincoln said in his message to Congress on December 1, 1862, just one month before the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect:
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the
occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and
this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No
personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of
us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor
or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The
world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union.
The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold
the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free
-- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall
nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. [Emphasis
mine.]
In the Gettysburg Address
in November 1863, Lincoln explained to his countrymen not just the
meaning of thinking and acting anew, but of the Civil War itself.
America wasn’t merely being saved, but reborn. And the definition of
“American” would necessarily and rightly include the four million slaves
still held in bondage by the rebels.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to
that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that
we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain --
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.
(Abraham Lincoln was successful; government of the people, by the
people, for the people, did not perish from the earth. It’s no wonder
that Frederick Douglass
said of him in 1876, “Infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the
world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln.” Such words
will never be spoken about Donald Trump, even if he believes Frederick Douglass is “an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.”)
If Abraham Lincoln’s project extended the notion of the American
family to include black citizens, Donald Trump’s has been its
restriction. His Muslim ban, draconian immigration crackdown, his wink
and a nod to foes of equal rights for LGBTQ Americans, and his campaign
to limit women’s reproductive rights constitute a mockery of the
14th Amendment’s guarantees that “all persons” shall enjoy due process
and equal protection of the laws. Trump’s ban on transgender troops in the U.S. military and his executive order ending protections for the 700,000 immigrants brought as children (the “Dreamers”) to the United States represent promises broken by the federal government.
While Donald Trump has double-crossed tens of thousands of people for
political gain, Abraham Lincoln kept his promises to a group despised
by most in both the North and the South even as America’s national
survival was in doubt. In August 1863,
months before he used the Gettysburg Address to declare America
"dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," Abraham
Lincoln defended his Emancipation Proclamation as inextricably linked to
the preservation of the Union. Noting reports from some of his
commanders that "the emancipation policy, and use of colored troops,
constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion," Lincoln
reminded his critics:
"You say you will not fight to free the negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you."
Lincoln did not waiver in his commitment to a "new birth of freedom"
even as he endured the darkest days of the Civil War in the summer of
1864. With Grant stalemated in front of Petersburg after the brutal
fighting that spring and summer, Lincoln's re-election seemed an
impossibility. But when Northern War Democrats and some in his own party
were urging him to abandon the emancipation of the slaves, Lincoln was having none of it.
"I am sure you will not, on due reflection, say the promise being
made must be broken at the first opportunity...As a matter of morals,
could such treachery escape the curses of Heaven or any good man? As a
matter of policy, to announce such a purpose would ruin the Union cause
itself. All recruiting of colored men would cease and all colored men
now in our service would instantly desert us. And rightfully too. Why
should they give their lives for us, with our full notice of our purpose
to betray them?"
Were he to return black soldiers to slavery, Lincoln declared:
"I should be damned in time and eternity."
Donald Trump would do well to heed Lincoln’s warning. So, too, would Dinesh D’Souza.
Given his mugging by the reality above, D’Souza is feebly left to assert
of his “provocative analogy between Lincoln and Trump” only that “not
that they’re the same people, but that they’ve fallen into the same
situation.” Lincoln detested slavery because, D’Souza explains,
of his belief in free labor.
“As each man has one mouth to be fed, and
one pair of hands to furnish food,” Lincoln said, “It was probably
intended that that particular pair of hands should feed that particular
mouth.” Et voila, Lincoln is a modern-day free-market Republican who
hates big government and handouts for the undeserving just like … wait
for it … Donald Trump. Unfortunately, President Abraham Lincoln also said this in his First Annual Message to Congress:
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the
fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first
existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher
consideration.
But in the bigger picture, Lincoln dramatically expanded the scope of
the government in Washington.
He not only introduced the first national
income tax to help pay for the war, but signed the Homestead Act in
1862. Those federal land grants to western settlers constituted one of
the biggest—and most effective—handouts in American history. As Kruse
put it in one his many D’Souza beat-downs:
Yes, Republicans in the 1860s *did* end slavery and promote civil rights.
They also significantly expanded the federal government, built up the
income tax, funded a huge system of public colleges, embraced
reparations for slavery and, um, impeached an incompetent president.
Which brings up another point in the demolition of the
Trump-as-Lincoln comedy. Donald Trump has, after all, threatened to
arbitrarily fire cabinet officials and given aid and comfort to white
supremacists all while embracing an American adversary in Vladimir
Putin’s Russia. As Manisha Sinha, the Draper Chair in American History
at the University of Connecticut, recently detailed, once before in our
history the president of the United States behaved this way. He wasn’t Abraham Lincoln, but his successor Andrew Johnson. And back then, Republicans in Congress impeached him for it.
In any event, some Trump defenders will continue to peddle the
jaw-droppingly ridiculous notion that Donald Trump is the reincarnation
of Abraham Lincoln. Some, like Dinesh D’Souza, will profit from
propagating that pathetic falsehood. (Apparently, you can fool some of
the people all of the time, and that’s his target market.) Mercifully,
even some conservatives are red in the face over this butchery of
American history for the red party. As an incredulous Rod Dreher said of D’Souza’s “right-wing porn” in the American Conservative:
What kind of crackhead do you have to be to take that seriously?
I would say that Dinesh D’Souza ought to be ashamed of himself, but you can’t shame the shameless.
Now that sounds a lot like Donald Trump. NOTE: There is a modern American president one could more plausibly argue is Abraham Lincoln’s heir.
Senate Democrats are trying to get $250 million in grants to states
as soon as possible to upgrade their systems and make necessary fixes.
Republicans say they've got enough money, ignoring the reports from the
intelligence community that Russia is interfering right now. Ignoring
the Russian hacker attack on Sen. Claire McCaskill's campaign. Ignoring the discovery by Facebook of a new "sophisticated" attack possible from Russia showing that they are at it again. That's not to mention the infrastructure hacking they've been doing.
That gives plenty of fodder for Democrats to turn this into a sustained floor fight, which is precisely what they intend to do.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) is sponsoring an amendment to a
"minibus" spending bill the Senate is considering, a bunch of smaller,
less controversial spending bills Congress hopes to dispense with before
dealing with the remainder in a continuing resolution to keep
government open past September 30. "The Trump budget would ZERO OUT
election security funds," Leahy tweeted. "My Senate amendment, blocked
by House GOP, would continue much-needed funding for election security
grants. The Senate should be allowed to vote on it."
It's needed. A bipartisan group of 21 states
attorneys general is pleading with Congress to pass this funding. "The
integrity of the nation’s voting infrastructure is a bipartisan issue,
and one that affects not only the national political landscape, but
elections at the state, county, municipal, and local levels," they wrote
in a letter
to Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security
Committee and Sen. Roy Blunt, Senate Rules and Administration Committee
Chairman.
The only reason Republicans could possibly have for opposing this is
that they think they’ll need all the help they can get to win in
November.
