By Jonathan Chait:
President Trump has been obliterating existing norms about using his office for personal enrichment. “Norms” is the key word — federal law strictly regulates conflicts of interest of every federal employee except the president, who is assumed (or was assumed, before Trump came along) to refrain from using his office for personal gain. In their few weeks in office, Trump’s staff have apparently gotten comfortable enough with the arrangement that they are now routinely blending their roles as spokespeople for Trump the president and Trump the brand. Kellyanne Conway used an interview from the White House this morning to officially endorse the Ivanka Trump product line.
* * *
Update: The Washington Post adds more reporting, confirming that Conway appears to have clearly violated federal ethics laws. While the violation seems undisputable, enforcement is typically handled by the employee’s federal agency: “Enforcement measures are largely left to the head of the federal agency — in Conway’s case, the White House,” reports the Post, “One lawyer said a typical executive-branch employee who violated the rule could face significant disciplinary action, including a multi-day suspension and loss of pay.”
Showing posts with label newyork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newyork. Show all posts
Monday, May 8, 2017
Thursday, March 30, 2017
New York: Say Good-bye to the Last Pillar of the Free, Open Internet
By Brian Feldman:
The Trump administration yesterday named Republican Ajit Pai to head the Federal Communications Commission. Pai’s appointment was a foregone conclusion, given that he is the ranking Republican on the five-member body, but it’s important for one reason: Pai is an outspoken critic of net neutrality — one of the fundamental principles of the free, open internet we’ve all been using for the past several decades.
During the Obama administration, the commission was headed by Tom Wheeler, a Democrat who most famously used his majority to pass what is informally known as the Open Internet Order. That order classified broadband internet as a telecommunications utility, though did not subject internet-service providers to the intense regulations that other common carriers often are.
The Open Internet Order bolsters a principle known as net neutrality (the specific term was coined by law professor Tim Wu in 2003). To understand it, we need to first understand how the internet works. The internet is literally a network of data cables that crisscross the globe. When you open your computer, say, you connect to a network most likely owned by one of a handful of private internet-service providers — the dreaded Comcast, Time Warner, and so on. (Same thing on your iPhone: Thanks to smartphones, cellular providers like Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile are also ISPs.) That network communicates with the networks owned and operated by other ISPs, and those owned by a handful of other organizations — government bodies, academic institutions, and independent nonprofits, generally — and those many, global, interconnected networks, some public, some private, make up the internet.
The internet took off, as did the World Wide Web which rests on top of it, because it’s “open.” In other words, if you’re connected to Comcast, you can send data to someone connected via Time Warner, without issue or negotiation. Neither Comcast nor Time Warner is allowed to (or able) to slow down or speed up your connection — or, for that matter, cut it off. Unlike phone service, you don’t have things like long-distance fees either.
Perhaps the single most important aspect of the internet as it was first conceived is that it was designed as a “dumb pipe,” or one that does not give priority to certain types of data or certain sources of said data. Video of a presidential speech gets the same bandwidth as video of a dude getting hit in the nuts.
Market conditions change, however, and the unchallenged freedom under which the internet blossomed is now regarded as a liability for the ISPs — which are, as you probably have experienced, de facto monopolies. If we own the highway, their thinking goes, why can’t we charge tolls? To that end, some have proposed so-called “fast lanes” for companies willing to pony up for faster bandwidth.
In practice, this could radically change our experience of the internet. For example, if Netflix cuts a deal with Verizon for a fast lane and Hulu doesn’t, Hulu loads more slowly, and users would presumably favor Netflix. More likely than that is that video-streaming services owned and operated by the ISPs themselves get preference over independent streaming services. This is a clear pay-to-play system in which an upstart little guy could easily get crowded out by industry incumbents. The most extreme scenario would be one in which businesses have to pay in order to get onto an ISP’s network at all — imagine, let’s say, SBC customers can’t access Google because the company refuses to pay SBC for access.
The Full Story (January 24, 2017)
The Trump administration yesterday named Republican Ajit Pai to head the Federal Communications Commission. Pai’s appointment was a foregone conclusion, given that he is the ranking Republican on the five-member body, but it’s important for one reason: Pai is an outspoken critic of net neutrality — one of the fundamental principles of the free, open internet we’ve all been using for the past several decades.
During the Obama administration, the commission was headed by Tom Wheeler, a Democrat who most famously used his majority to pass what is informally known as the Open Internet Order. That order classified broadband internet as a telecommunications utility, though did not subject internet-service providers to the intense regulations that other common carriers often are.
The Open Internet Order bolsters a principle known as net neutrality (the specific term was coined by law professor Tim Wu in 2003). To understand it, we need to first understand how the internet works. The internet is literally a network of data cables that crisscross the globe. When you open your computer, say, you connect to a network most likely owned by one of a handful of private internet-service providers — the dreaded Comcast, Time Warner, and so on. (Same thing on your iPhone: Thanks to smartphones, cellular providers like Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile are also ISPs.) That network communicates with the networks owned and operated by other ISPs, and those owned by a handful of other organizations — government bodies, academic institutions, and independent nonprofits, generally — and those many, global, interconnected networks, some public, some private, make up the internet.
The internet took off, as did the World Wide Web which rests on top of it, because it’s “open.” In other words, if you’re connected to Comcast, you can send data to someone connected via Time Warner, without issue or negotiation. Neither Comcast nor Time Warner is allowed to (or able) to slow down or speed up your connection — or, for that matter, cut it off. Unlike phone service, you don’t have things like long-distance fees either.
Perhaps the single most important aspect of the internet as it was first conceived is that it was designed as a “dumb pipe,” or one that does not give priority to certain types of data or certain sources of said data. Video of a presidential speech gets the same bandwidth as video of a dude getting hit in the nuts.
Market conditions change, however, and the unchallenged freedom under which the internet blossomed is now regarded as a liability for the ISPs — which are, as you probably have experienced, de facto monopolies. If we own the highway, their thinking goes, why can’t we charge tolls? To that end, some have proposed so-called “fast lanes” for companies willing to pony up for faster bandwidth.
In practice, this could radically change our experience of the internet. For example, if Netflix cuts a deal with Verizon for a fast lane and Hulu doesn’t, Hulu loads more slowly, and users would presumably favor Netflix. More likely than that is that video-streaming services owned and operated by the ISPs themselves get preference over independent streaming services. This is a clear pay-to-play system in which an upstart little guy could easily get crowded out by industry incumbents. The most extreme scenario would be one in which businesses have to pay in order to get onto an ISP’s network at all — imagine, let’s say, SBC customers can’t access Google because the company refuses to pay SBC for access.
The Full Story (January 24, 2017)
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
New York: Gingrich Calls for Abolition of the Congressional Budget Office So Trump Can Cook America’s Books
By Ed Kilgore:
As the Trump era approaches, one of the great imponderables is how well the Trump administration will get along with a Republican-controlled Congress.
The latest signs are not good for a smoothly operating GOP trifecta government. To say that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and Tom Price, Trump’s Health and Human Services appointee, are not on the same page about how to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is a massive understatement. Looking beyond the Obamacare thicket, everybody’s plans on Capitol Hill for 2017 involve major reforms of corporate and individual taxes and also quite possibly undertaking a version of entitlement reform that would functionally wipe out the whole Great Society legacy of anti-poverty programs. Though no one knows exactly where Trump will come out on these broader budget goals, it’s no secret that the agenda his campaign suggests are about 180 degrees away from the debt-and-deficit-shrinking rhetoric so many congressional Republicans have deployed so often in the recent past.
Yes, there are ample grounds for the cynical observation that congressional Republicans only care about budget deficits when a Democrat is in the White House. But there is no question that conservatives really do want to pursue the decimation of “liberal” spending programs as an end in itself, and will agitate the air about debt and deficits to increase the pressure to do so, even if it’s opposed by a Republican administration. So how can the new Trump regime avoid this conflict early in its tenure?
Trump’s friend and adviser Newt Gingrich has a solution: Change the score by abolishing the only independent scorekeeper, the Congressional Budget Office.
* * *
Thus, the CBO is providing a bright-yellow-line guide for Tea Party–style fiscal hawks centered in the House Freedom Caucus to throw a monkey wrench into Trump’s plans. As Gingrich accurately says, the quickest way to put the monkey wrench back into the toolbox is to abolish the CBO, leaving Trump’s Office of Management and Budget as the sole official arbiter of spending, revenue, deficit, and debt estimates. As budget expert Stan Collender notes, this would represent a staggering abdication of congressional independence
The Full Story (January 17, 2017)
As the Trump era approaches, one of the great imponderables is how well the Trump administration will get along with a Republican-controlled Congress.
The latest signs are not good for a smoothly operating GOP trifecta government. To say that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and Tom Price, Trump’s Health and Human Services appointee, are not on the same page about how to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is a massive understatement. Looking beyond the Obamacare thicket, everybody’s plans on Capitol Hill for 2017 involve major reforms of corporate and individual taxes and also quite possibly undertaking a version of entitlement reform that would functionally wipe out the whole Great Society legacy of anti-poverty programs. Though no one knows exactly where Trump will come out on these broader budget goals, it’s no secret that the agenda his campaign suggests are about 180 degrees away from the debt-and-deficit-shrinking rhetoric so many congressional Republicans have deployed so often in the recent past.
Yes, there are ample grounds for the cynical observation that congressional Republicans only care about budget deficits when a Democrat is in the White House. But there is no question that conservatives really do want to pursue the decimation of “liberal” spending programs as an end in itself, and will agitate the air about debt and deficits to increase the pressure to do so, even if it’s opposed by a Republican administration. So how can the new Trump regime avoid this conflict early in its tenure?
Trump’s friend and adviser Newt Gingrich has a solution: Change the score by abolishing the only independent scorekeeper, the Congressional Budget Office.
* * *
Thus, the CBO is providing a bright-yellow-line guide for Tea Party–style fiscal hawks centered in the House Freedom Caucus to throw a monkey wrench into Trump’s plans. As Gingrich accurately says, the quickest way to put the monkey wrench back into the toolbox is to abolish the CBO, leaving Trump’s Office of Management and Budget as the sole official arbiter of spending, revenue, deficit, and debt estimates. As budget expert Stan Collender notes, this would represent a staggering abdication of congressional independence
The Full Story (January 17, 2017)
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
[Special] New York: Why Trump Keeps Making Up Lies About His Refugee Ban
By Jonathan Chait:
Possibly the most interesting defense is that the administration was unable to use the normal interagency review process because it would have tipped off the terrorists. “What we couldn’t do was telegraph our position ahead of time to ensure that people flooded in before that happened, before it went into place,” said White House spokesman Sean Spicer. “If we had telegraphed that ahead of time, then that would have been a massive security problem.”
* * *
This defense suffers from two enormous flaws. First, it assumes that allowing agencies tasked with security to have input on a policy would be tantamount to publicizing the policy. The president is supposed to be able to discuss plans in confidence without assuming they will be leaked immediately. That is how the federal government works. If the only way to announce a foreign-policy move was to keep new policies a closely guarded secret within the administration, then this kind of amateurism would be standard. There is a long record of American presidents announcing surprise foreign policy decisions that were planned in advance by officials other than a speechwriter in his early 30s and a Breitbart lunatic.
The second problem with this defense is that it assumes terrorists were sitting around the world, planning to enter the United States to launch an attack, and able to enter at any time, but lacking any special urgency. (Perhaps they were waiting for the fares to drop.) An announcement of one week’s notice would have given them just the motivation they needed to hop on a plane.
This bears no relation to reality. People from the countries banned by Trump already face an extensive, 20-step vetting process that can take up to two years. None of them could have legally made it through within a week, or anything close.
And once you realize this, it becomes clear that Trump’s policy was not only bungled in its implementation but conceptually flawed. Trump originally proposed a “Muslim ban.” But he had to back away from this policy given that it is both unconstitutional and transparently unenforceable (how do you prevent a terrorist from lying about his religion?). This forced Trump to relabel his policy “extreme vetting.” But the reality is that vetting is already extreme. Trump has not identified any weak points in the vetting procedure. Indeed, there is no connection whatsoever between his policy and any terror incidents in the United States. Radicalized domestic American terrorists have all come from countries not on Trump’s list. His policy grows out of a need to take some kind of action.
In a way, it makes perfect sense that he would skip the normal interagency review — input from security experts would only reveal that Trump’s plan has no relationship to any security objective. The purpose of this policy is to retroactively justify Trump’s campaign fearmongering.
Possibly the most interesting defense is that the administration was unable to use the normal interagency review process because it would have tipped off the terrorists. “What we couldn’t do was telegraph our position ahead of time to ensure that people flooded in before that happened, before it went into place,” said White House spokesman Sean Spicer. “If we had telegraphed that ahead of time, then that would have been a massive security problem.”
* * *
This defense suffers from two enormous flaws. First, it assumes that allowing agencies tasked with security to have input on a policy would be tantamount to publicizing the policy. The president is supposed to be able to discuss plans in confidence without assuming they will be leaked immediately. That is how the federal government works. If the only way to announce a foreign-policy move was to keep new policies a closely guarded secret within the administration, then this kind of amateurism would be standard. There is a long record of American presidents announcing surprise foreign policy decisions that were planned in advance by officials other than a speechwriter in his early 30s and a Breitbart lunatic.
The second problem with this defense is that it assumes terrorists were sitting around the world, planning to enter the United States to launch an attack, and able to enter at any time, but lacking any special urgency. (Perhaps they were waiting for the fares to drop.) An announcement of one week’s notice would have given them just the motivation they needed to hop on a plane.
This bears no relation to reality. People from the countries banned by Trump already face an extensive, 20-step vetting process that can take up to two years. None of them could have legally made it through within a week, or anything close.
And once you realize this, it becomes clear that Trump’s policy was not only bungled in its implementation but conceptually flawed. Trump originally proposed a “Muslim ban.” But he had to back away from this policy given that it is both unconstitutional and transparently unenforceable (how do you prevent a terrorist from lying about his religion?). This forced Trump to relabel his policy “extreme vetting.” But the reality is that vetting is already extreme. Trump has not identified any weak points in the vetting procedure. Indeed, there is no connection whatsoever between his policy and any terror incidents in the United States. Radicalized domestic American terrorists have all come from countries not on Trump’s list. His policy grows out of a need to take some kind of action.
In a way, it makes perfect sense that he would skip the normal interagency review — input from security experts would only reveal that Trump’s plan has no relationship to any security objective. The purpose of this policy is to retroactively justify Trump’s campaign fearmongering.
Friday, November 18, 2016
New York: Obama Is Planning to Give Trump Some Extra Tutoring
By Margaret Hartmann:
By naming Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon as his top two advisers, President-elect Donald Trump set up a battle between the GOP Establishment and the alt-right for control of his administration — and there may be a third voice whispering in the president’s ear. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that President Obama “plans to spend more time with his successor than presidents typically do” because he realized during their meeting last week that Trump “needs more guidance.” Per the Journal:
During their private White House meeting on Thursday, Mr. Obama walked his successor through the duties of running the country, and Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the scope, said people familiar with the meeting. Trump aides were described by those people as unaware that the entire presidential staff working in the West Wing had to be replaced at the end of Mr. Obama’s term.
One would think that Obama would spend as little time as possible with a man who repeatedly suggested that he’s the Kenyan-born founder of ISIS, but what was scheduled to be a 15-minute meeting wound up lasting 90 minutes. “As I said last night, my number one priority in the next two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful,” Obama said.
By naming Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon as his top two advisers, President-elect Donald Trump set up a battle between the GOP Establishment and the alt-right for control of his administration — and there may be a third voice whispering in the president’s ear. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that President Obama “plans to spend more time with his successor than presidents typically do” because he realized during their meeting last week that Trump “needs more guidance.” Per the Journal:
During their private White House meeting on Thursday, Mr. Obama walked his successor through the duties of running the country, and Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the scope, said people familiar with the meeting. Trump aides were described by those people as unaware that the entire presidential staff working in the West Wing had to be replaced at the end of Mr. Obama’s term.
One would think that Obama would spend as little time as possible with a man who repeatedly suggested that he’s the Kenyan-born founder of ISIS, but what was scheduled to be a 15-minute meeting wound up lasting 90 minutes. “As I said last night, my number one priority in the next two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful,” Obama said.
(Editor's Note: I did not post the original Wall Street Journal story for two reasons, 1) the article is behind a paywall and 2) the article mostly focuses on other topics).
Sunday, November 13, 2016
[Special] Editorial Prognostication
Trump may not be a true conservative, but he went and used their talking points and won the White House. Many liberals, progressives and casual observers were shocked by the results, particularly because the polls never had Trump winning. However, Trump's ascension should not be much of a surprise. From the days of the moral majority, the Republican Party has been slowly drifting away from the Rockefeller/Eisenhower model of operation. The Contract With America GOP takeover in the 90s, the Tea Party movement of the 00s, and now the Alt-Right/White Nationalist infiltration of the 10s has brought the GOP to the party of Trump.
Moderates of the party, such as Paul Ryan, may share the fate of Eric Cantor and lose their seats to hard-right conservatives, but all of them are giddy with excitement over the reality of controlling the White House, Senate and House. The GOP will be able to push nearly the entirety of their agenda for the next few years (depending on the midterm turnouts and the next presidential election). It will likely be devastating to all minorities, including women, and we could see serious consequences to the economy and the environment. The Supreme Court is likely lost for a generation or more. However, by 2020, minorities will be the majority for Americans under 18, and sometime around 2045 the US will be a minority majority country (meaning Caucasians will no longer be above 50% of the population). It is not possible for a party which has excluded and marginalized all people of color, all non-Christian religions, and women of any sort, to be successful on the national level beyond that point. This short-term success will be a long term catastrophe for the Republican Party.
The people who supported Trump will also be burned. Ryan is already saying he wants to eliminate Medicare (as explained in New York Magazine), a gut-bunch to Baby Boomers who supported Trump more than any other age group. There will be no wall along the Mexican border. Industrial, mining and manufacturing jobs will not increase. The "swamp" will not be drained.
Conservative Strategist Rick Wilson spoke with the Washington Post in October and warned of the consequences: “For years now, Democrats will be able to roll out TV ads and say, ‘When John Smith says today he’s for a brighter future, remember who he stood by: Donald Trump. He stood by Donald Trump’s misogyny, racism, sexism and stupidity.’” The Republican Party will fall to shifting demographics. It had the chance to be more inclusive, and it went the opposite way. That is not a feasible position. No matter how hard they try to stem the tide of immigration, the idea of a Norman Rockwell white protestant America is a dream that will not become a reality. Per the Post once again, from October 22:
The major demographic changes are well known. The United States is becoming more diverse racially and ethnically, better educated overall and with a population that is aging. Pew’s analysis found the following: “The Democratic Party is becoming less white, less religious and better-educated at a faster rate than the country as a whole, while aging at a slower rate. Within the GOP, the pattern is the reverse.”
By putting together the demographic shifts with changes in party allegiance, the Pew study underscored two big changes — one talked about for some years, the other an ongoing issue for Republicans that Trump’s candidacy has highlighted. Both bode poorly for the Republicans if they cannot adjust their appeal rapidly.
I know Trump fans do not see the writing on the wall, even though they are scared of Sharia law in the U.S. and ISIS attacks on American soil, despite the stupidity of same. Somewhere in their brains, Republicans know the end is near for conservatives of today (holdovers of 20th and even 19th century ideals that are incompatible with a modern world). As seen with Brexit and the rise of the far-right in Europe (via Time Magazine), there is a push back from conservatives, but it is nothing more than the thrashing and flailing of the dying, fighting to maintain relevancy and power. They may jack up the system for a while, they may make life difficult for minorities, women and progressives, but the future belongs to us. They can never change that.
By putting together the demographic shifts with changes in party allegiance, the Pew study underscored two big changes — one talked about for some years, the other an ongoing issue for Republicans that Trump’s candidacy has highlighted. Both bode poorly for the Republicans if they cannot adjust their appeal rapidly.
I know Trump fans do not see the writing on the wall, even though they are scared of Sharia law in the U.S. and ISIS attacks on American soil, despite the stupidity of same. Somewhere in their brains, Republicans know the end is near for conservatives of today (holdovers of 20th and even 19th century ideals that are incompatible with a modern world). As seen with Brexit and the rise of the far-right in Europe (via Time Magazine), there is a push back from conservatives, but it is nothing more than the thrashing and flailing of the dying, fighting to maintain relevancy and power. They may jack up the system for a while, they may make life difficult for minorities, women and progressives, but the future belongs to us. They can never change that.
Further Reading -
The Nation: The Republican Party Created This Monster
New York Times: The G.O.P. Created Donald Trump
Washington Post: Donald Trump is the Monster the GOP Created
Friday, November 4, 2016
[Special] Donald Trump's Sexual Assault Allegations: November 2016 Edition
The flood of sexual assault claims was coming in at such a rapid rate that I decided to compile them and wait until the tide subsided, so I could then drop them in a single post. Since the American media and public are now obsessed with discussing FBI Director James Comey's unprecedented and unusual announcement about additional emails found on Anthony Weiner's computer which may or may not be classified and may or may not have been to/from Hillary Clinton and may or may not be duplicates of emails they already have, the sexual assault business is now merely the echo of a memory. Except here, of course, where I strive to chronicle all of the insanity of Donald Trump.
This post is not an essay so much as a link dump, so apologies for the lack of prose. Also, as a note, despite this being the "November Edition," there are no articles from November, save towards the end, where an article by Vocativ (linked in the last paragraph) highlights the GOP folks who disavowed Trump and then reaffirmed their support for him like the craven, spineless frauds they are. Below is a list of articles relating to Trump's sexual assaults that came out on or after the October Edition was published.
- Talking Points Memo: The Floodgates Open by Josh Marshall (October 12, 2016)
- Talking Points Memo: Four Decades Of Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Trump by Kristin Salaky and Esme Cribb (October 13, 2016)
- New York Magazine: It Doesn’t Take a Conspiracy Theory to Explain the Timing of the New Trump Allegations by Eric Levitz (October 13, 2016)
- Washington Post: Woman Says Trump Reached Under Her Skirt and Groped Her in Early 1990s by Karen Tumulty (October 14, 2016)
- The Guardian: Donald Trump 'Grabbed Me and Went for the Lips', Says New Accuser by Molly Redden (October 16, 2016)
- Washington Post: The Growing List of Women Who Have Stepped Forward to Accuse Trump of Touching Them Inappropriately by Rosalind S. Helderman (October 22, 2016)
- Talking Points Memo: Trump On Adult Film Star Accuser - ‘I’m Sure She's Never Been Grabbed Before’ by Allegra Kirkland (October 24, 2016)
As Dana Milbank wrote for the Post, we knew this Trump all along:
Republicans may be dismayed by the super-predator they saw and heard in the video (just as they purported to be stunned by Trump’s racist attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel despite Trump’s long history of racism), but they have no business being surprised. What’s on that tape is entirely consistent with what we already knew.
Even before this tape emerged, we knew that his wife Ivana accused him at the time of their divorce of raping her (Trump’s lawyer asserted that there is no such thing as spousal rape). We’ve known for months that makeup artist Jill Harth filed a 1997 complaint accusing Trump of attempted rape and of groping her in his daughter Ivanka’s bedroom. We’ve seen complaint after complaint about his lewd behavior on set at “The Apprentice” and at his Miss Universe pageants.
But while people can question the he-said, she-said allegations against Trump, it’s harder to dispute the meaning of his own words.
Here, for the benefit of those Republicans feigning surprise about Trump’s video, is a partial catalogue of reported remarks Trump has made about women — remarks which, by embracing Trump as the GOP presidential nominee, office holders in the party have already condoned[.]
I won't reproduce the large volume of unfortunate quotations here; you can click the link for yourself. Suffice to say, the outrage (which has since subsided, and the opposition mustered by Republican officials has faded as they jump back onto the Trump train) came surprisingly late considering the man that is Donald Trump. As Bill Simmons noted, "But seriously - why did it take today for people to turn on Trump? He's been horrible this whole time."
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
New York Magazine: Final Days Trump’s Advisers Are Working Hard to Plan Their Own Futures While Riding out the Roller-coaster End of the Campaign.
Perhaps the most surprising thing to ponder at this late stage in the election is just how close the race could have been had he taken nearly any of the advice offered to him by advisers. “This thing was doable if we did it the right way,” one adviser told me.
When Paul Manafort, a veteran Republican lobbyist and operative cut from Establishment cloth — he’d worked on Gerald Ford’s, George H.W. Bush’s, and Bob Dole’s presidential campaigns — came onboard to serve as campaign chairman at the beginning of the general-election season, he suggested a strategy that was the exact opposite of the one Trump pursued in the primaries. He wanted Trump to lower his profile, which would force the media to focus on Clinton — a flawed opponent with historic unfavorable ratings who couldn’t erase the stain of scandal, real or invented. “The best thing we can do is to have you move into a cave for the next four months,” Manafort told Trump during a meeting. “If you’re not on the campaign trail, the focus is on her, and we win. Whoever the focus is on will lose.”
As is typical with most campaigns, Manafort wanted the Trump team to perform opposition research on its own candidate, so that the team would know what to be worried about and how to prepare for it. Manafort had known Trump since the ’80s and had heard rumors about his behavior with women, according to a source. He wanted to know what was out there. But Trump — perhaps believing that the Clinton campaign would never bring up women for fear of the specter of Bill’s past, or perhaps believing that it wouldn’t matter if they did (the “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” hubris) — declined. The only information the campaign had to go on was the research the RNC had done into all of the candidates’ public statements.
In late April, Manafort assured RNC members that Trump would pivot to a more presidential “persona.” And for a while, it worked. Trump began using a teleprompter, cut back his TV appearances, and (mostly) avoided courting scandal. His poll numbers climbed, until he was tied with Clinton.
But asking Trump to not be the center of attention is like asking him not to breathe. “His ego couldn’t handle it,” said one Republican close to the campaign. “Hillary understood that Trump needed to be the focus.” As his poll numbers climbed, Trump felt he didn’t need to listen to Manafort. “The worst part about Trump is when he was ahead,” the prominent Republican said. “He’d get into the lead and then he would veer off and start defending his interests and his honor and it had nothing to do with what people actually care about. He’s not disciplined.”
Monday, September 26, 2016
New York Magazine: Joe Scarborough - Donald Trump Repeatedly Asked National Security Expert ‘Why Can’t We Use Nuclear Weapons?’
By Adam K. Raymond:
On this morning’s episode of Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough dropped a bomb about Donald Trump. During a conversation with former CIA director Michael Hayden, Scarborough said a “foreign policy expert on the international level” advised Trump several months ago and the Republican nominee for president asked questions about nuclear weapons that might terrify you.
“Three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. At one point, ‘If we have them, why can’t we use them?’,” Scarborough said that Trump had inquired. “Three times in an hour briefing, ‘Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?’”
On this morning’s episode of Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough dropped a bomb about Donald Trump. During a conversation with former CIA director Michael Hayden, Scarborough said a “foreign policy expert on the international level” advised Trump several months ago and the Republican nominee for president asked questions about nuclear weapons that might terrify you.
“Three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. At one point, ‘If we have them, why can’t we use them?’,” Scarborough said that Trump had inquired. “Three times in an hour briefing, ‘Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?’”
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
New York Magazine: Trump Honors Cinco de Mayo With the Best Tweet of His Storied Career
By Eric Levitz:
Here Trump shifts his focus from the textual to the visual, while retaining — and improving upon — his signature, exclamatory kicker. The shadow draped across his orange face, the stubby thumb pointed skyward, the hovering fork of taco meat, all in their own way serving to express the Donald's final, ecstatic phrase, "I love Hispanics!"
And just when the viewer feels he or she has fully comprehended the meaning of Trump's work, an Easter egg tucked into the corner of the frame reveals whole new layers of hermeneutical possibility.
Here Trump shifts his focus from the textual to the visual, while retaining — and improving upon — his signature, exclamatory kicker. The shadow draped across his orange face, the stubby thumb pointed skyward, the hovering fork of taco meat, all in their own way serving to express the Donald's final, ecstatic phrase, "I love Hispanics!"
And just when the viewer feels he or she has fully comprehended the meaning of Trump's work, an Easter egg tucked into the corner of the frame reveals whole new layers of hermeneutical possibility.
The Full Story (May 5, 2016)Donald Trump is eating a taco salad on top of a bikini-clad photo of his ex-wife, Marla Maples. pic.twitter.com/sW2itGBAOK— Benny (@bennyjohnson) May 5, 2016
Monday, July 4, 2016
New York Magazine: How the Trump Campaign Actually Works
By Gabriel Sherman:
Six months later, Lewandowski and Hicks worked into the early hours of the morning prepping for Trump’s campaign announcement in the lobby of Trump Tower. “It had to be perfect,” Lewandowski said. “We had to build the stage, make sure the flags hung perfectly; the eagles faced out; the carpet was red, and he would wear a red tie.” And hire plants. The campaign paid actors $50 each to wear Trump T-shirts and wave placards.
Later that morning, they watched from the wings as Ivanka introduced her father in front of reporters and photographers and the manufactured crowd. “It looked like the Academy Awards!” Trump recalled. “You saw the cameras, forget it. You couldn’t get another person in.”
Trump didn’t read a prepared speech, but he knew what he wanted to say, which hardly mattered anyway because hardly anyone took his candidacy seriously at the time. “Nobody said anything,” Trump said about the fact that he had accused Mexico of sending “rapists” over the border into the U.S. “Then two weeks later, they started saying, ‘Wait a minute! Did he really say that?’ ”
He hadn’t tested the line, but Nunberg’s deep dive into talk radio had shown him that this was the sort of thing that would resonate with a certain segment of the Republican base. He also knew that this kind of outrageous statement would earn him the free media attention ($1.9 billion worth and counting, according to the New York Times) that would propel his campaign.
This strategy did not go over well in all corners of the Trump empire. Ivanka, Trump’s 34-year-old daughter, had carefully tended her public image as the softer, more refined face of the Trump empire. Now her father’s hard-edged nativist rhetoric risked damaging not only her brand but her business. A few days after the announcement speech, Ivanka received a terse email from Kimberly Grant, the CEO of ThinkFood Group, the holding company behind celebrity chef José Andrés, whose restaurant was supposed to be the anchor tenant in one of Ivanka’s biggest projects: the $200 million redevelopment of the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C., into a luxury hotel.
“We need to talk. Getting crushed over DJT comments about Latinos and Mexicans,” Grant wrote her, according to legal filings.
Ivanka forwarded Grant’s email to her executives.
“Ugh,” one responded. “This is not surprising and would expect that this will not be the last that we hear of it. At least for formal, prepared speeches, can someone vet going forward? Hopefully the Latino community does not organize against us more broadly in DC / across Trump properties.”
Ivanka’s older brother, Donald Jr., also weighed in. “Yea I was waiting for that one. Let’s discuss in the am.”
Ivanka did her best to salvage the partnership. She asked her father to issue an apology, even submitting several drafts for him to release to the press. But he refused. “Rapists are coming into the country! You know I was right,” Trump later told me.
The Full Article (April 3, 2016)
Six months later, Lewandowski and Hicks worked into the early hours of the morning prepping for Trump’s campaign announcement in the lobby of Trump Tower. “It had to be perfect,” Lewandowski said. “We had to build the stage, make sure the flags hung perfectly; the eagles faced out; the carpet was red, and he would wear a red tie.” And hire plants. The campaign paid actors $50 each to wear Trump T-shirts and wave placards.
Later that morning, they watched from the wings as Ivanka introduced her father in front of reporters and photographers and the manufactured crowd. “It looked like the Academy Awards!” Trump recalled. “You saw the cameras, forget it. You couldn’t get another person in.”
Trump didn’t read a prepared speech, but he knew what he wanted to say, which hardly mattered anyway because hardly anyone took his candidacy seriously at the time. “Nobody said anything,” Trump said about the fact that he had accused Mexico of sending “rapists” over the border into the U.S. “Then two weeks later, they started saying, ‘Wait a minute! Did he really say that?’ ”
He hadn’t tested the line, but Nunberg’s deep dive into talk radio had shown him that this was the sort of thing that would resonate with a certain segment of the Republican base. He also knew that this kind of outrageous statement would earn him the free media attention ($1.9 billion worth and counting, according to the New York Times) that would propel his campaign.
This strategy did not go over well in all corners of the Trump empire. Ivanka, Trump’s 34-year-old daughter, had carefully tended her public image as the softer, more refined face of the Trump empire. Now her father’s hard-edged nativist rhetoric risked damaging not only her brand but her business. A few days after the announcement speech, Ivanka received a terse email from Kimberly Grant, the CEO of ThinkFood Group, the holding company behind celebrity chef José Andrés, whose restaurant was supposed to be the anchor tenant in one of Ivanka’s biggest projects: the $200 million redevelopment of the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C., into a luxury hotel.
“We need to talk. Getting crushed over DJT comments about Latinos and Mexicans,” Grant wrote her, according to legal filings.
Ivanka forwarded Grant’s email to her executives.
“Ugh,” one responded. “This is not surprising and would expect that this will not be the last that we hear of it. At least for formal, prepared speeches, can someone vet going forward? Hopefully the Latino community does not organize against us more broadly in DC / across Trump properties.”
Ivanka’s older brother, Donald Jr., also weighed in. “Yea I was waiting for that one. Let’s discuss in the am.”
Ivanka did her best to salvage the partnership. She asked her father to issue an apology, even submitting several drafts for him to release to the press. But he refused. “Rapists are coming into the country! You know I was right,” Trump later told me.
The Full Article (April 3, 2016)
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