Rolling Stone: Trump's Repeal of Bipartisan Anti-Corruption Measure Proves He's a Fake

By Matt Taibbi:

Among the measures proposed: new restrictions on lobbying, including a five-year ban on White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists after leaving office.

Months later, with the self-proclaimed "existential threat" to special interests in office, the "establishment" has it better than ever. Not only has the money-over-principle dynamic not changed inside the Beltway, it's ascendant. Under "outsider" rule, Washington has never been more Washington-y.

Tuesday, for instance, Trump signed a repeal of a bipartisan provision of the Dodd-Frank bill known as the Cardin-Lugar Amendment. The absurd history of this doomed provision stands as a perfect microcosm of how Washington works, or doesn't work, as it were.

The election of a billionaire president who killed the anti-corruption measure off is only the brutal coup de grace. The rule was stalled for the better part of six years by a relentless and exhausting parade of lobbyists, lawyers and other assorted Beltway malingerers. It then lived out of the womb for a few sad months before Trump smothered it this week.

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Ask Trump supporters about this episode, and many would say they won't weep for the loss of any government regulation.

But they should ask themselves if, when they were whooping and hollering for the man who promised to end special interest and lobbyist rules in Washington, they imagined the ExxonMobil chief in charge of the State Department cheering as the new president wiped out anti-bribery laws. The "establishment" sure is on the run, isn't it?

The Full Story (February 16, 2017)

Rolling Stone: The End of Facts in the Trump Era

By Matt Taibbi:

Commentators wondered aloud if Conway's "Alternative Facts" routine had marked the beginning of a new Orwellian dystopia. Fears in this direction even rocked the publishing industry, where 1984 hit number one on Amazon, triggering a new printing practically overnight.

Facts are the closest thing we have to a national religion. In America, where sex-tapers become royalty and monster trucks massively outdraw Shakespeare, even advertisers aren't supposed to just lie. The truth is the last thing here that isn't openly for sale. This is why so many people responded to Conway not as if she'd said something stupid – we're used to that from our politicians – but more as though she'd said something irreligious.

The Washington Post reported with alarm on this crumbling of the Church of the Fact. As a test, they showed a group of Americans aerial photos of the Trump and Obama inaugurations. An astounding 15 percent of Trump supporters identified the clearly emptier Trump inaugural photo as the one containing a bigger crowd. We're now such a divided people that we literally see the world differently.

A primary characteristic of any authoritarian situation, from East Germany to high school, is the total uselessness of facts and evidence as a defense against anything. Trump is in the White House because he and his people understood this from the start. His movement isn't about facts. All that matters to his followers is that blame stays fixed in the right direction.

The Full Story (February 8, 2017)

Rolling Stone: Extreme Vetting, But Not for Banks

By Matt Taibbi:

Donald Trump, the man who positioned himself as the common man's shield against Wall Street, signed a series of orders today calling for reviews or rollbacks of financial regulations. He did so after meeting with some friendly helpers.

Here's how CNBC described the crowd of Wall Street CEOs Trump received, before he ordered a review of both the Dodd-Frank Act and the fiduciary rule requiring investment advisors to act in their clients' interests:

"Trump also will meet at the White House with leading CEOs, including JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman, and BlackRock's Larry Fink."

Leading the way for this assortment of populist heroes will be former Goldman honcho Gary Cohn, now Trump's chief economic advisor.

Dimon, Schwarzman, Fink and Cohn collectively represent a rogues gallery of the creeps most responsible for the 2008 crash. It would be hard to put together a group of people less sympathetic to the non-wealthy.

Trump's approach to Wall Street is in sharp contrast to his tough-talking stances on terrorism. He talks a big game when slamming the door on penniless refugees, but curls up like a beach weakling around guys who have more money than he does.

* * *

These companies are now so enormous that they can't keep track of their own positions. Also, in sharp contrast to the propaganda about what brainy people they all are, many of them lack even the most basic understanding of the potential consequences of deals they might be making.

The leadership of AIG, for instance, basically had no clue how its derivatives portfolio worked, despite the fact that they had $79 billion worth of exposure. Similarly, then-CEO Chuck Prince of Citigroup told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that a $40 billion mortgage position "would not in any way have excited my attention." Both companies ended up needing massive bailouts.

Not only can they not keep track of their own books, they already blow off regulators whenever they get the chance. Take JPMorgan Chase's "London Whale" episode, in which some $6.2 billion in losses in one portfolio accumulated practically overnight. In that case, Dimon simply refused to give the federal regulators routine, required reports as to what was going on with his bank's positions, probably because he himself had no idea how big the hole was at the time.

"Mr. Dimon said it was his decision whether to send the reports to the OCC," a regulator later told the Senate.

This is the same Jamie Dimon about whom Trump said today, "There's nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie Dimon, so thank you, Jamie."

The enduring lesson of the financial crisis is that in markets as complex as this one, the most extreme danger is in opacity. The big problem is that these egomaniacal Wall Street titans want markets as opaque as possible.

This is why they want to get rid of the fiduciary rule, because they don't think it's anyone's business if they choose to bet against their clients (as Cohn's Goldman famously did), or overcharge them, or otherwise screw them.

The Full Story (February 3, 2017)

Rolling Stone: The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence

By Stephen Rodrick:

During my travels across the self-proclaimed Crossroads of America, I learned that Mike Pence had once paid his mortgage with campaign funds, dragged his feet during an HIV epidemic and a lead-poisoning outbreak, signed an anti-gay-rights bill that nearly cost Indiana millions of dollars, lost his mind on national TV with George Stephanopoulos, and turned away Syrian refugees in an unconstitutional ploy laughed out of federal court. And he ended his gubernatorial term unpopular enough that his re-election bid in a Republican state seemed dicey at best.

Pence is the nation's 48th vice president. Nine vice presidents have assumed the presidency as a result of death or resignation. That's a 19 percent ascendancy rate. Between Trump's trigger-happy Twitter persona, the ethical nightmare of his business empire, his KFC addiction and possible entanglements with Vladimir Putin, I'd say the chances for Mike Pence are more than 50-50.

So what do we know about Pence? The governor benefited greatly from the wall-to-wall "Trump is a crazy monkey throwing feces" media coverage during the fall campaign, in that his record was undercovered, but it's out there and suggests that his impact as vice president will screw African-Americans, women, the poor and any other square peg in round America. His concerns for the parts of Indiana outside his comfort zone toggled between disinterest and disdain.

And here's the frightening thing: Unlike his boss, Mike Pence has an actual ideology. Pence proclaimed at the 2016 GOP convention that "I am a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order." However, his actual record – including turning down up to $80 million in federal pre-K funding – is the antithesis of Jesus' "whatever you do for one of the least of my brothers, you do for me" theology.

Here's a quick story.

While Mike Pence was governor, his relationship with the Democratic minority in the legislature was crap. Someone on his staff suggested having the Democratic leaders over to the governor's mansion for dinner. The table was set for 20, but there were only around seven in attendance. One unlucky legislator stuck next to Pence tried to make conversation, but found even at dinner she couldn't shift Pence off his talking points. Gov. Pence shouted to his wife, Karen, his closest adviser, at the other end of the table.

"Mother, Mother, who prepared our meal this evening?"

The legislators looked at one another, speaking with their eyes: He just called his wife "Mother."

Maybe it was a joke, the legislator reasoned. But a few minutes later, Pence shouted again.
"Mother, Mother, whose china are we eating on?"

Mother Pence went on a long discourse about where the china was from. A little later, the legislators stumbled out, wondering what was weirder: Pence's inability to make conversation, or calling his wife "Mother" in the second decade of the 21st century.

The Full Story (January 23, 2017)

Rolling Stone: Trump Nominee Jay Clayton Will Be the Most Conflicted SEC Chair Ever

By Matt Taibbi:

That Clayton has been a devoted legal slave to the usual Wall Street monsters over the years is obviously concerning, though not terribly unusual.

What makes this situation somewhat unique is the fact that this incoming SEC chief is also married to a broker at Goldman Sachs – his wife Gretchen is a wealth management advisor. This means that a significant portion of Clayton's family income while in office will presumably be coming from a company he is charged with policing.

This is both far less common and a much bigger problem than you'd think. As one former congressional aide put it to me today, "Clayton will be the most financially conflicted SEC chairman in history."

Remember, at the Republican convention last year, Trump supporters heckled Ted Cruz's wife, Heidi, for being a Goldman Sachs employee.

Where are all those furious Trump supporters now that their idol has put the husband of a Goldman broker in charge of the SEC? Pretty quiet. You can hear the crickets chirping all across America today.

The Full Story (January 5, 2017)

Rolling Stone: The Fury and the Failure of Donald Trump

By Matt Taibbi:

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the Mohegan Sun Arena, two days later. As he has done multiple times in the past year, Trump has seemingly rebounded from certain disaster. A second debate with Hillary Clinton did not go quite so disastrously as the first, despite horrible optics (he appeared obese from stress and stalked Clinton onstage, as if wanting to bite her back á la Marv Albert) and even worse behavior (he threatened to jail his opponent, a straight-up dictator move you'd expect from a Mobutu, Pinochet or Putin).

Whether or not he "won" the debate was immaterial. He at least impressed pious Mike Pence, Trump's sad-sack running mate, who reportedly had been considering withdrawing from the ticket over the whole pussy thing. "Big debate win!" Pence tweeted, ending rumors of an internal mutiny. "Proud to stand with you as we #MAGA!"

That's hashtag Make America Great Again, in case you didn't believe Mike Pence is hip. (The new white-power movement, like a lot of fraternities, is short on brains, but long on secret passwords and handshakes.) The man who once opposed clean needles on moral grounds was now ready to march through history with a serial groper and tit-gazer.

In Wilkes-Barre, home to a recent Klan leafleting, and a key electoral-map battleground, the turnout for Trump's rally was a vast sea of white faces and profane signage. SHE'S A CUNT – VOTE TRUMP read the T-shirt of one attendee. BILL! MONICA GAVE YOU WHAT? read the caption over a photo of a grinning Hillary, plastered on the side of one of a scary triad of 18-wheelers decked out in anti-Clinton invective. On line going into the event, some more mild-mannered visitors explained why there was nothing that could dissuade them from voting Trump. "Even if it's small, there's a chance that he's going to do something completely different, and that's why I like him," said Trent Gower, a soft-spoken young man. "And when he talks, I actually understand what he's saying. But, like, when fricking Hillary Clinton talks, it just sounds like a bunch of bullshit."

* * *

In the far-right world, every successive villain has always been worse than the last. It's quaint now to think about how Al Gore was once regarded as the second coming of Lenin, or that John Kerry was a secret communist agent. Then the race element took Obama-hatred to new and horrifying places. But Trumpian license has pushed hatred of Hillary Clinton beyond all reason. If you don't connect with it emotionally, you won't get it. For grown men and women to throw around words like "bitch" and "cunt" in front of their kids, it means things have moved way beyond the analytical.

The Full Story (October 14, 2016)

Rolling Stone: Trump Slunk Under the Lowest of Low Bars at the [First] Debate

By Jeb Lund:

On actual issues, Trump was almost entirely a shambles. His answers on nuclear weapons never rose above the level of gibberish. He described America as a third-world country, an assertion rejected by almost any measure of prosperity you can cite. He again asserted that African-Americans and Hispanics are "living in hell," which – America's treatment of minorities notwithstanding – might be news to many of them.

More importantly, Trump appeared completely unprepared to handle the most obvious attacks that would be directed against him.

Trump had no satisfactory explanation for his years of enthusiastic birther conspiracy mongering, and his attempt to obfuscate the issue relied on the sorts of conspiracies familiar only to voters who spend a lot of time reading right-wing websites plastered with ads for dick medicine, gun hoarding and Atabrine tablets. If you already knew who Sidney Blumenthal is, you either already knew that the Hillary Clinton campaign didn't invent the Obama birther rumors, or you are someone who expects Clinton to have Sid rubbed out like Vince Foster and a bunch of Arkansas prostitutes.

Once more, Trump deemed his birther crusade a great success, citing Obama's release of his long-form birth certificate in 2011. Unfortunately, Holt pointed out that "you continued to tell the story and question the president's legitimacy in 2012, '13, '14, '15, as recently as January."

Holt continued, "I'm just going to follow up. I will let you respond because there is a lot there. We're talking about racial healing in the segment. What do you say to Americans—"

"I say nothing because I was able to get him to produce it," Trump said. "He should have produced a long time before. I say nothing, but let me just tell you."

The Full Story (September 27, 2016)

Rolling Stone: How Donald Trump Cashed in on 9/11

By Tessa Stuart:

In the years that followed, [Senator Hillary Clinton] was instrumental in crafting legislation addressing health care needs for first responders and called hearings to discern whether the White House and EPA intentionally misled New Yorkers on the safety of the air quality at Ground Zero. But in the immediate days and weeks after the attacks, she spent her time spearheading, with fellow New York senator Chuck Schumer, a furious lobbying effort to get federal funding for recovery efforts.

In January 2002, four months after the attacks, Clinton and Schumer stood in the White House Rose Garden, where George W. Bush thanked them for their work as he signed into law a budget containing some $20 billion in dedicated funding for New York's recovery.

A not-insignificant chunk of that federal funding, $2 billion, was earmarked for distribution by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Empire State Development Corporation. About a quarter of that – some $500 million – was explicitly set aside for helping small businesses in the area recover. Among the 8,214 early recipients was 40 Wall Street LLC, the most valuable building in Donald Trump's portfolio of properties, a skyscraper that sits less than a mile from Ground Zero. (An additional $350 million was later allocated to the same cause, bringing the total number of businesses impacted to more than 14,000.)

Trump applied for and accepted the money, despite the fact that – as he acknowledged in an interview with a German news show immediately after the attacks – the property "wasn't, fortunately, affected by what happened to the World Trade Center."

Technically, 40 Wall Street LLC (if not its parent company, the Trump Organization) did meet the criteria for the funds: It had fewer than 500 employees, and was located south of 14th Street. And, as the agency that administered the funds said, eligibility wasn't necessarily determined based on damage incurred; rather, the goal was "to keep businesses and jobs from deserting the city and moving to other States or overseas."

The Full Story (September 9, 2016)

Rolling Stone: Trump's Assassination Dog Whistle Was Even Scarier Than You Think

By David S. Cohen

But it's really irrelevant what Trump actually meant, because enough people will hear Trump's comments and think he's calling for people to take up arms against Clinton, her judges or both. Though most of the people hearing that call may claim he was joking, given what we know about people taking up arms in this country, there will undoubtedly be some people who think he was serious and consider the possibility.

In other words, what Trump just did is engage in so-called stochastic terrorism. This is an obscure and non-legal term that has been occasionally discussed in the academic world for the past decade and a half, and it applies with precision here. Stochastic terrorism, as described by a blogger who summarized the concept several years back, means using language and other forms of communication "to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable."

Let's break that down in the context of what Trump said. Predicting any one particular individual following his call to use violence against Clinton or her judges is statistically impossible. But we can predict that there could be a presently unknown lone wolf who hears his call and takes action in the future.

Stated differently: Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn't know which dog.

The Full Story (August 9, 2016)

Rolling Stone: How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable

By Matt Taibbi:

It's a few minutes after that when a woman in the crowd shouts that Ted Cruz is a pussy. She will later tell a journalist she supports Trump because his balls are the size of "watermelons," while his opponents' balls are more like "grapes" or "raisins."

Trump's balls are unaware of this, but he instinctively likes her comment and decides to go into headline-making mode. "I never expect to hear that from you again!" he says, grinning. "She said he's a pussy. That's terrible." Then, theatrically, he turns his back to the crowd. As the 500 or so reporters in attendance scramble to instantly make this the most important piece of news in the world – in less than a year Trump has succeeded in turning the USA into a massive high school – the candidate beams.

What's he got to be insecure about? The American electoral system is opening before him like a flower.

The Full Article (February 24, 2016)