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"For many conservatives, Trump's character is no longer a glitch … it’s what they love" — Charlie Sykes, from the old, now-defunct school of actual conservatism
In his latest online entry, Sykes quotes fellow anti-Trumper Ben Shapiro: "Trump’s character is now a thoroughly accepted positive good" among conservatives. "Trump isn’t the engine, he’s the hood ornament for a certain movement that now feels liberated from traditional rules of decent behavior."
Sykes also quotes National Review's Jonah Goldberg: Trump's "petty vindictiveness" has been "redefined" by conservatives "as leadership."
All of which is somewhat superfluous. From the vile hood ornament himself, just three hours ago:
And there you have it, straight from the once-dignified office of the U.S. presidency: leadership as petty vindictiveness — embraced and cheered on by modern conservatives, who've lost all sense of decency.
Via the NY Times, a mind-bending non sequitur, from Jared Kushner:
In his prepared remarks [to the Senate Intelligence Committee], Mr. Kushner said that his efforts during the transition to establish communications with Mr. Putin were proof that there were no communications with senior Kremlin officials during the campaign.
"The fact that I was asking about ways to start a dialogue after Election Day should of course be viewed as strong evidence that I was not aware of one that existed before Election Day," Mr. Kushner said.
Of course.
It gets better.
"Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak] asked if there was a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation," continues Kushner. "I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use." Here we move from the non sequitur to rather splendid understatement. "That request," reports the Times, generated suspicion that maybe Kushner "was trying to avoid American surveillance."
From there we land at absurdity. "Days later, Mr. Kushner met Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, a lender that is under American sanctions. Mr. Kushner said that Mr. Kislyak had described Mr. Gorkov as someone 'with a direct line to the Russian president who could give insight into how Putin was viewing the new administration and best ways to work together.'" A Russian banker — not the Russian ambassador, not Russia's foreign minister — would be Kushner's "direct line" to the Russian president?
And finally we arrive at ultimate absurdity. "Kushner … did not immediately disclose [these meetings] on federal forms required for his security clearance. Mr. Kushner said that his staff members had inadvertently filed an incomplete form, leaving off all foreign contacts."
Which leaves me with only one question. Is it the Senate Intelligence Committee or the Senate's Moron Committee that Kushner is meeting with today?
Trump "has really good karma," said, on Friday, the president's third communications director inside of six months — a staffing fact that pointedly reflects just how "good" Trump's karma is, in terms of it being extraordinary, but in no way sublime. In fact Trump's karma is so extraordinary, it embodies his party's craven past and miserable fate.
Has destiny ever been more perfectly manifested?
In a laughable attempt to portray Trumpian, uh, complications as but the normal course of partisan events, the founder of the right-wing American Spectator, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., tells the Washington Post: "In the 50 years I’ve been involved, Republicans have yet to figure out how to support each other."
I suppose the historical knowledge of Spectator readers would, in its absence, endorse such a self-serving hallucination. Reality, however, differs.
Roughly 50 years ago, Republicans supported the thoroughly corrupt President Nixon to the very end, notwithstanding now-prevailing tales of Sen. Goldwater & Republican Friends bravely telling him he had to go. They told him all right, but there was no courage in the telling; Nixon's fate was already and inescapably cooked.
Later came the utter fiscal irresponsibility of Ronald Reagan, which the GOP swallowed willingly, even enthusiastically, and whole.
From there the party turned en masse on its only fiscally responsible leader of the last 30-some-odd years, George H.W. Bush, for he violated the precepts of delusional Reaganomics.
Then came comprehensive party support for yet more fiscal recklessness — as well as foreign policy madness — under H.W.'s offspring.
Finally, the Republican Party aligned behind an ignorant, narcissistic sociopath whom so many in the party knew was an ignorant, narcissistic sociopath. But kowtowing to an ignorant and gullible base has, for 50 years — pace Tyrrell — been the basis of the GOP's mutual support. And now, at long last, populist kowtowing has provided the basis for the GOP's implosion.
In the Post's reporting there is a peculiar passage. The "burden, some Republicans say, is to overcome a dynamic of disunity in the party that predates Trump and the current Congress. During the Obama years, it took the form of tea party-vs.-establishment struggles." The story throws in a quote from former RNC Chairman Michael Steele: "There was a separation between Republicanism and conservatism long before [Trump] won the White House." Added Steele: "The glue has been coming apart since Reagan."
There's some truth to Steele's chronology. Yet with historical hindsight one can see that the triumph of the tea-party, pseudoconservative types came at least in the mid-1960s. Such was the victorious era of the reactionary, anti-intellectual, beyond-paleoconservatism conservatives — the Goldwaterite Richard Vigueries and Phyllis Schlaflys — who hijacked the party through a breathtakingly ignorant populism. Fundamentally, for the GOP there has been no "dynamic of disunity" to speak of ever since. The radical nurturing of populist ignorance laid the basis for party-wide support of Reaganism, hostility toward the anti-voodooism of H.W. Bush, inexhaustible loyalty to Bush II, and now the embrace of sociopathic Trumpism — which is doomed.
Karma, baby. Karma.
Looks as though Trump's spiffy new communications team is working smoothly.
"We support where the [sanctions] legislation is now" — Sarah Sanders, WH press secretary, today on ABC's "This Week"
"[Trump] hasn’t made the decision yet to sign that bill one way or the other" — Anthony Scaramucci, WH communications director, today on CNN's "State of the Union"
***
Oh, almost forgot. Also today on CNN's "Reliable Sources," fellow WH hack Kellyanne Conway "argu[ed] the network shouldn’t be so critical toward the president because Donald Trump simply doesn’t know any better." So, there is a chance the WH "communications" team got something right today.
Trump's new communications director, Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci, said in a 2012 tweet that Hillary Clinton is "incredibly competent." Three years later, appearing on Fox Business, Scaramucci said that Donald Trump is a "hack politician” who nevertheless transcends mere hackdom: His rhetoric, added Scaramucci, is "crazy" and "anti-American."
Those were two conspicuous truths uttered by a man whose job now is to slaughter the truth with equally conspicuous falsehoods. If he failed to fully comprehend that truth on Friday afternoon, his new boss showed him the way on Saturday morning. Trump tweeted that Scaramucci had only said nasty things about him in August of 2015 because he had backed another Republican presidential candidate and "didn't think I was running!" In fact, Trump had been running for two months.
Scaramucci, however, is a quick learner. Those who have lost the confidence of the bumbling narcissist in the White House have done so only because they failed to genuflect often and assiduously enough. Scaramucci is determined to avoid that pitfall. "I should have never said that about him," he said in Friday's press conference. "Mr. President, if you're listening, I personally apologize for the 50th time for saying that." Scaramucci has quickly grasped that his target audience is not the American people or the WH press corps, but the president's insatiable ego.
In line with his occasional, past utterances of the truth, Scaramucci has, from time to time, also let slip that he's totally sympathetic with Trump's deepest need. Reports Politico: "A few years ago, while interviewing PR firms, [Scaramucci] was blunt about what he was looking for: 'I need someone who’s prepared to go to the mat and lie for me.'"
In Scaramucci, Trump has his post-Spicer hyperliar — and branching out in fields of unfiltered lying appears to be, in part, Scaramucci's communications strategy. His first interview was with Breitbart.com's Matt Boyle, whom Axios characterizes as the site's "most unrestrained attack dog." In the interview, Scaramucci related that he and Trump believe "there are "enough outlets, whether it's Breitbart, the President's social media feed, all of the different apparatus that we have where people will allow us to deliver our message to the American people unfiltered."
Said a WH official of Scaramucci: "He gets that we have a First Amendment in this country and that reporters are just trying to do their jobs." That may be. But Scaramucci's revealed strategy is that mainstream reporters are to be denied the fulfillment of their First Amendment responsibilities. Trump and The Mooch will simply bypass all the traditional means of communication — and go with unrestrained attack dogs.
In brief, the communications strategy of the new communications director is, fundamentally, not to communicate.
Why are we not surprised?
I think there’s been, at times, a disconnect between the way we see the president and how much we love the president and the way some of you perhaps see the president. I certainly see the American people probably see the president the way I do.
—Anthony Scaramucci, 21 July 2017
The Scaramucci episode originally aired more than a half-century ago.
"Tonight's story on 'The Twilight Zone' is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a map of the United States, and there's a little town there called Washington, D.C., and in that town is the White House. On a given morning not too long ago, the rest of the world disappeared and Washington was left all alone. Its inhabitants were never sure whether the world was destroyed and only Washington left untouched or whether the village had somehow been taken away. They were, on the other hand, sure of one thing: the cause. A monster had arrived in the White House. Just by using his mind, he took away the truth, reality, every dram of honesty — because they displeased him — and he moved an entire community back into the dark ages — just by using his mind. Now I'd like to introduce you to one of the people in the White House. This is Sean Spicer, who probably had more control over the monster in the beginning than almost anyone. But one day he forgot. He began to sing aloud. Now, the monster doesn't like singing, so his mind snapped at him, turned him into the smiling, vacant thing you're looking at now. He sings no more. And you'll note that the people in the White House have to smile. They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because once displeased, the monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque, walking horror. This particular monster can read minds, you see. He knows every thought, he can feel every emotion. Oh yes, I did forget something, didn't I? I forgot to introduce you to the monster. This is the monster. His name is Donald. He's six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. This is the Twilight Zone."
—Rod Serling, 3 November 1961
"You're a good boy, Donald. We all love you. Don't we, Anthony? Don't we love Donald. We sure do love him. We love that boy."
"I hate anybody that doesn't like me."
To answer my own, just-posted question — "Is there anyone in this administration with any self-respect?" — it seems there is, or rather was, one: Mark Corallo, the spokesman for Trump's sprawling legal squad.
He "has resigned within two months of being on the job," reports Politico.
"[Corallo] had grown frustrated with the operation and the warring factions and lawyers," he "was concerned about whether he was being told the truth about various matters"; and he "didn't like the strategy to attack [Robert Mueller's] credibility."
So they're back to zero.
That would be Sean Spicer (trailing Trump and Vladimir Putin), the heretofore acting White House communications director, who is being replaced by — who else? — a hedge-fund manager (Anthony Scaramucci).
Even weirder: "The development surprised Trump's chief of staff Reince Priebus, who was not previously aware of the decision." Is there anyone in this administration with any self-respect?
In other news, the world's fourth greatest liar, Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has casually informed NBC that his boss and Trump "might have met even much more than just three times" at the G-20 meeting.
If this White House and its incoming fifth greatest liar deny that, there's your proof that the world's fourth greatest liar is in fact telling the truth.
I hope Trump soon considers himself duly "violated," so we can all move on to the inexorable constitutional crisis he is cultivating.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into "possible money laundering" by Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. (As are the Senate intelligence committee, the House intelligence committee, New York's attorney general, and Manhattan's district attorney. The Senate committee is also looking into Trump’s businesses that "may have financial ties to Russian interests.") Trump has to know that Manafort has the same loyalty to Trump as Trump has to others; thus Manafort will make the perfect jailhouse rat, thus Trump — the target — is surely panicking.
Mueller, reports the Washington Post, is also investigating "the business activities of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law." Trump has told the NY Times that "if Mueller examined his family’s finances beyond any relationship with Russia he’d consider it 'a violation'" of the special counsel's mandate. Trump has said the same of any Mueller investigations into "the president’s personal finances."
Now for the week's most comical reporting (also from the Post): "[Trump] has told aides he was especially disturbed after learning Mueller would be able to access several years of his tax returns." Oh, shit, as they say.
And now for the week's most logical reporting (again from the Post): Trump has his lawyers "discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons," including one for himself. That, in itself, is an admission of culpability.
Meanwhile, continues the Times, the Trump crime organization is "scouring the professional and political backgrounds of investigators hired by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, looking for conflicts of interest they could use to discredit the investigation — or even build a case to fire Mr. Mueller."
Mueller's firing would ignite the constitutional crisis which Trump seems determined to inflict on the nation. Indeed it appears inevitable, since Trump has always regarded himself above the law. The only question, then, is how the constitutional crisis that is the criminal Trump presidency would be confronted by congressional Republicans.
For now, denial is one method. Said Sen. Bob Corker to CNN: "There is no possible way anybody at the White House could be seriously thinking about firing Mueller,” since such an act would be "so far out of bounds." Another method is unresolved horror. Said a Republican senator, anonymously: "Any thought of firing the special counsel is chilling. It's chilling. That's all you can say." Yet another Republican senator, Susan Collins, properly said more than the other senator could say: "It would be catastrophic if the President were to fire the special counsel."
Catastrophic? Or cathartic? I'd go with the latter. But I'd do so only if congressional Republicans were to preemptively endorse impeachment and conviction (probably preceded by Trump's resignation), were the president to impose his constitutional crisis — which he will. He fears Mueller only because he has so much to hide. And catastrophe would come only if congressional Republicans dismissed Mueller's firing as a kind of innocent obstruction of justice, as they did when Trump manifestly and criminally obstructed justice when he fired James Comey.
In short, the responsibility for any real crisis lies at the feet of congressional Republicans — not Trump.
By a hefty 14-point margin (52-38), registered voters prefer a Democratic over a Republican Congress in 2019, says the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. That's not quite the same as a generic poll finding — "In your congressional district, do you plan to vote for the Democrat or the Republican?" — but it's close. Last month, the University of Virginia's Center for Politics estimated that merely a 6-point Democratic advantage in the generic poll question would likely cause Republicans to lose the House. Taking these findings together it would seem, then, that Democratic recontrol of the House is an odds-on favorite, right?
Maybe right, but maybe no. For one must also ponder the present reality of this graphic obscenity.
The more important and enduring question is, What does it take to motivate Democratic voters to turn out in midterm elections? Here we have a Republican Congress from Hell and Beelzebub himself waiting to sign any damn-fool sinister piece of legislation that springs from its subterranean bowels. And yet by a more motivated margin of 8, Republicans say they'll vote in 2018 — and by a staggeringly superior margin of 11, strong Beelzebub supporters intend to drag themselves zombielike to the polls and thus swamp the virtuous.
What's more, says the WaPo-ABC poll, "among Americans who did not cast ballots in the last midterm elections, in 2014, Democrats and Republicans are about equally as likely to say they plan to vote in 2018 — suggesting there is not a disproportionate number of newly motivated Democrats ready to come off the sidelines next year."
If the infernal, ruling triumvirate of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan can't motivate Democrats to vote, what in God's name could? What greater conceivable evil would light the dim bulbs of the Democratic base and incite them to do what the right's demonic legions have been doing for decades? — Voting.
In the Republican Party, honesty and loyalty to human decency just don't pay.
From The Hill:
The Republican National Committee isn't spending big for New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno because the RNC doesn't think she has been loyal to President Trump….
"[The president] is unhappy with anyone who neglected him in his hour of need," an RNC insider reportedly said, referring to Guadagno's public disavowal of Trump last fall after the surfacing last year of the 'Access Hollywood' tape, in which Trump brags about sexually assaulting women….
Guadagno … also won’t be getting support from Christie’s top fundraisers, who reportedly said they are sitting out the race because she has been deemed disloyal to Christie after criticizing him on his visit to the beach that was closed to the public during the state shutdown.
One decent Republican pol — and she's out, because of her decency.