PMC Commentary

Dining with Donald: First, get stoned.

I simply had to share the thrust of this HuffPost post.

Actor Woody Harrelson has recalled the "brutal" meal he once had with President Donald Trump.

On Friday’s broadcast of "Real Time with Bill Maher," [Harrelson] explained how he was invited … to a 2002 dinner with [Trump]….

"I never met a more narcissistic man. He talked about himself the whole time. You could see the standard he was going to bear.

"I had to walk out halfway through to smoke a joint just to like steel myself from the rest of it," he added.

I don't think one joint would have done it for me.

 

"It's time to wake up."

John McCain has often disappointed me, but nearly as often he has turned around and said or done something truly admirable.

 

Blowing up Trump

That "we live in interesting times" is a stark and euphemistic understatement, if "interesting times" means, which it does, Donald Trump's era of bloated demagoguery, dazzling unfitness for office, unprecedented presidential ignorance, reactionary policy vindictiveness, perpetual mendacity, weekly threats of mass annihilation — a kind of permanent Cuban Missile Crisis — and proliferating proofs of a United States president as a weak-minded puppet of a hostile foreign power.

And where we go from here — from this abysmal hellhole of fetid Trumpism — presents two starkly antipodal worldviews, even though both are essentially correct. Things don't get much more interesting and intellectually intriguing than that.

In one corner we have the pithiness of the superb blog Lawfare: "As opening salvos go, [Bob Mueller's] is a doozy." Yesterday's bombshells obliterated Trump's twaddle that "he and his campaign had 'nothing to do with Russia.'" The three were acting in concert, as Mueller's mere opening salvos have demonstrated. "Any hope the White House may have had that the Mueller investigation might be fading away vanished Monday morning," deduces Lawfare. "Things are only going to get worse from here."

In the other corner we have National Review's David French, who, writing for the NY Times, bluntly declares that "On Monday, nothing changed…. Trump’s supporters will stand by their man." In the main that is true, though the fraying of his support will also continue. Reports NBC News on its latest poll: "The drop [in Trump's approval rating] has come from independents (who shifted from 41 percent approval in September to 34 percent now), whites (who went from 51 percent to 47 percent) and whites without a college degree (from 58 percent to 51 percent)." I suspect that as Mueller's artillery blasts away over the coming months, Trump's debased support will ultimately settle in Nixonian territory of 20s-something percentages. The real diehards will never fade away, since, as French notes, "partisans are now motivated mainly by antipathy toward the other side," and Trump "fights hard against the people they dislike the most."

Somewhere between Lawfare's professed doom and French's protective base is Elizabeth Williamson, of the NYT editorial board. She asks that which interests and intrigues the most: "The question now is: Will the Republican Party help get to the bottom of this, or will it give the president cover if he continues to try to undermine [Mueller's] investigation?" Darkly coloring her question is her observation that "At times Republican lawmakers echo Mr. Trump’s charges that the investigations are a 'witch hunt'…. This is a shameful and transparent effort to turn an investigation rooted in national security into a rank political spat and to tar Mr. Mueller." Nonetheless, Williamson then concludes with some goo-goo wistfulness. "Republicans should do everything in their power to ensure that this investigation continues to help Americans learn the truth."

That congressional Republicans would do everything in their power to uncover the truth of Trump's undeniable squalor is, as suggested above, a fetching but farcical notion. That does not dictate, however, that the thick red wall of Republican indifference to the manifest truth will stand undisturbed. Going into the 2018 midterms, it will be mountingly hazardous for purple-district Republican pols to defend a president whose approval rating is bottoming out in the 20s (if my projection is correct), or, at the very least, the lowest of 30s. They'd be tying themselves to an indefensible, even ludicrous, position in the general election — assuming they survived the primary, which of course would be more feasible in a swing district. Otherwise, what's the point of surviving a primary by going full crackpot to fend off a hard-right challenge if one will then surely lose the general?

Thus, while not denying the emotional essence of David French's yawn, I resolutely agree with Lawfare's prediction that for Trump, "Things are only going to get worse from here."

 

Site title

How do like the site's new name? — some wordplay, of course, on "commentariat." I can take credit for neither the title nor tag; both were suggested by good friends who knew I never liked "p m carpenter's commentary." I've always wanted a site title a bit less personal, and I thought "The Carpentariat" was just perfect, as was "Credible carping …" (My URL remains pmcarpenter.com.)

Thoughts? if you care to share them.

 

Chirp of the day

John Boehner, speaking to Politico:

I had a conversation with [Sean] Hannity, probably about the beginning of 2015. I called him and said, "Listen, you’re nuts."

 

Sing, Paul Manafort, sing

This morning, as you know, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, perhaps the lone human being capable of preventing America's permanent slide into the president's tacky authoritarianism and bumbling organized crime, indicted Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, on money laundering charges, tax charges, foreign lobbying charges, conspiracy charges, charges of lying to federal authorities, and spitting on the sidewalk. Mueller has loaded them up so he'll have plenty to trade.

I suspect he'll find a willing partner in the trading business. As the NY Times reminds us, "Mr. Manafort has expected charges since this summer, when F.B.I. agents raided his home and prosecutors warned him that they planned to indict him. That warning raised speculation that Mr. Manafort might try to cut a deal to avoid prosecution." Oh, might he ever.

Ty Cobb, one of Trump's criminal defense attorneys, countered that "there were no concerns that Mr. Manafort would offer damaging information about the president in exchange for a deal." Would, or could?

Trump has "denied any contacts with Russians during the campaign, only to have journalists uncover one undisclosed meeting after another," such as Trump Jr.'s long-concealed meeting, attended by Manafort, with a "Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer" who was offering campaign smears against Hillary Clinton.

Aside from his former boss, Manafort is the king of sleaze who will soon serve up oodles of damaging information about the president, because that's what consummate sleazes honestly do to save their own hides, as the ship is going down. For Trump's criminal organization, this is the end of the beginning.

***

p.s.: Politico reports that "a former foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign," George Papadopolous, "secretly pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI about his outreach to Russian officials."

 

Flake and Corker can be adorably right in despising Trump and still be egregiously wrong on taxes

Three days ago I wrote that "while Never Trumpers seldom disagree with [Jeff] Flake & Friends' political ideology, liberals needn't excuse any of it merely to pause and applaud the Flakean break with Trumpism" — a group break that includes Bob Corker, as well as John McCain and Ben Sasse. I can't say that I gave abundant thought to my words about advisable liberal conduct; it seemed self-evident to me that applauding this senatorial insurgency for its trashing of Trump in no way implied either a liberal accommodation with its still-backward political views, or an expectation that Flake, Corker et al. would — or should — suddenly soften, modify or reverse those views.

The militant group's detestation of Trump and lingering blindness on policy — such as joining their colleagues' current fraud of benevolent tax cuts — are entirely unrelated; thus, from the group's anti-Trumpism, no salubrious effect on the group's policy views should be anticipated. Flake & Friends can loathe Donald Trump with the wisest of them, but it's a peculiar illogic for liberals to expect that their loathing of Trump would, or should, disrupt and alter the anti-Trumpers' long-held political ideology. Again, the one has nothing to do with the other.

It seems, however, that some, many, perhaps most liberals have failed to connect what I rather casually thought were these two self-evident dots. This morning's column by Christine Emba, of the Washington Post, perfectly exemplifies liberals' aforementioned peculiar illogic.

She first writes that "It’s time to extend at least a bit of credit: Flake and Corker are leading by example…. All but the most jaded critics should find something of value in Flake and Corker’s willingness to recognize and stand up for a greater good than the phantom prize of tax reform: that of a democracy with standards and an America with a conscience."

Quite reasonable, no? But then comes the unreasonable whiplash. "That said," continues Emba, "these congratulations still remain conditional. Further lauding remains dependent on what the two senators choose to do next. Will Corker and Flake use the remaining months of their tenures for good? In a Senate chamber where the Republican majority remains knife-thin, well-considered conscience votes could prevent all manner of bad legislation."

In other words, if the rooster's crowing isn't causing the sun to rise, it damn well could. Which is to say, Emba somehow envisions a preposterous conservative causation: opposing Trump should lead to Flake & Friends' abrupt acquisition of a "well-considered conscience" that "could prevent all manner of bad legislation" — notably, imbecilic tax cuts. Why, I ask you, would anyone believe that the latter should flow from the former? The Senate's insurgents can genuinely bemoan the atrocity of a Trump presidency while just as genuinely adhering to manifestly backward macroeconomic ideas. In no way should voting for the party's inane tax cuts diminish the credit due to "Flake and Corker’s willingness to recognize" the evil of Trump.

And yet many liberals confuse and conflate the two, as Ms. Emba does. I don't understand it. Such a conflation violates fundamental logic — and liberals should know better.

 

Odds and ends

First off, I awoke this morning to the most depressing news from the Hollywood Reporter — not one of my usual a.m. stopovers, but there it was, seductively displayed by an online aggregator: "Roger Stone Banned From Twitter After Threatening CNN Anchors."

Oh my. One of my few Twitter pleasures was monitoring the mental crackup of Trump's close friend and adviser, since Stone's deterioration seemed to mirror Trump's. But now Stone "has been banned from Twitter permanently after a vulgar meltdown Friday aimed at CNN reporters" — after the network "reported Robert Mueller approved the first charges into his investigation on the Russian meddling of the 2016 presidential election" — "which included threats."

As a private voice reflecting Trumpian sentiments, Stone generally missed the mark of intellectual sophistication by a rather wide margin. To wit: ".@donlemon stop lying about about the Clinton's and Uranium you ignorant lying covksucker !!!! You fake news you dumb piece of shit." On occasion I would even be moved to engage Mr. Stone, such as my last tweet to him: "Nice touch, very revealing, you're quite the intellect." Alas, no longer, for Stone is no more.

I then encountered the curious news that Alexandria, Va. parishioners of Christ Church are now secure from the unbearable assaults of history. "This week the church announced it was pulling down a memorial to its one-time vestryman and the country’s first president, saying he and another famous parishioner, Robert E. Lee, have become too controversial and are chasing away would-be parishioners." Said the church's most right and divinely revered leaders: "The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome. Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques."

Would not accompanying plaques elucidating that George Washington was tormented by slavery and that Lee wrote in 1856 that "slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil" have been a mitigating compromise? Perhaps an additional note explaining that both men were captives of their cultural times — that we mustn't project our multicultural modernity onto ghosts of misbegotten eras, and that 200 years from now we will be seen in some ways as nearly as barbaric. Exhibit A — that in 2017 we would tolerate the presence of a cruel, racist ignoramus in the White House.

Speaking of whom, finally I ran across a Hill story that informs, "Trump traveled to his Virginia golf club on Saturday for the fourth consecutive weekend…. This is Trump's 76th day spent at one of his golf properties since taking office." Slaving away at selling those idiotic tax cuts, I see. Anyway, as of this writing the cruel, racist ignoramus has been in office for 281 days, 17 hours, 3 minutes and 57 seconds. Would that he had spent all that time at this Virginia golf club, rather than listening to Scott Pruitt in the White House.

(By the way, if he's such a "great" golfer, what in hell is he doing knee-deep in the rough?)

 

Trump is going down, courtesy Bob Mueller

What a fascinating way to end the week. "A federal grand jury in Washington on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller," reported CNN. "It is unclear what the charges are," and against whom they've been filed. We'll know Monday or Tuesday, when the defendant turns himself in.

Meanwhile, speculation abounds as to the accused's identity, because patiently waiting for revealed facts is not a virtue among political commentators. If there's a consensus, it's that Mueller is inaugurating his rolling indictments by going after a low or even lower-level buffoon such as Carter Page, who seems to be obliviously enjoying his 21 minutes of fame. My money however is on Paul Manafort, whose perfect coif and facade of innocence have been mussed for months. His home was dramatically raided by the FBI and his money laundering has been systematically uncovered. As the Economist puts it in defense of my impatient speculation: "One rule to follow is that 'good prosecutors don’t do bullshit cases'. That means avoiding weak cases, but also small ones against minor figures that do not provide accountability when great wrongs are alleged." But of course my speculation is worth precisely what it's costing you to read it.

Nearly as fascinating as Mueller's opening gambit against the astonishingly corrupt Donald Trump is the latter's propaganda machine's pathetically resolute efforts to obfuscate Boy Scout Bob's divine judgment, if not wrath. Fox News has taken the embarrassing lead. Scribbles one of its hacks: "Mueller is facing a fresh round of calls from conservative critics for his resignation from the Russia collusion probe, amid revelations that have called into question the FBI’s own actions and potentially Mueller’s independence. This week’s bombshell that a controversial anti-Trump dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign has Republicans asking to what extent the FBI … used the politically connected material. Hill investigators also are looking into a Russian firm’s uranium deal that was approved by the Obama administration in 2010."

Here is Soviet-style agitprop that would have tested the editorial forbearance of Pravda. There was no "bombshell" this week about Clinton and the DNC's rather routine funding of opposition research that ultimately produced "a controversial anti-Trump dossier" whose findings are less and less controversial by the day, and whose origin lay in the red-faced lap of the Washington Free Beacon, an ultraconservative website. That "conservative critics" have dyspeptically refueled their low-flying calls for Mueller's resignation is but another instance of pseudoconservative psychopathology unbound, and that Republican Hill investigators are re-beating the dead nag of Obama-Clinton's uranium-deal skulduggery is so patently partisan as to give the once noble art of political hatcheting a bad name.

Extraordinary in its echo-chamber blindness is that to buttress its "reporting," Fox News cites one of Trump's universal offenses against veracity — a tweet: "It is now commonly agreed, after many months of COSTLY looking, that there was NO collusion between Russia and Trump. Was collusion with HC!" Hey, I told you Fox News' story was pathetic.

And then there's the Washington Examiner, which is also under the fabricated impression that the Clinton campaign's oppo-research financing is a "bombshell." Again, the product of that research — the Steele dossier — "that launched the Russian collusion investigation against President Trump must accordingly be thrown out." The Examiner fails to note that the dossier wasn't what launched Mueller's investigation. Trump's justice-obstructing sacking of James Comey did that. Finally, the Examiner concludes with laughable indignation that "After more than a year of turning up no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia" — evidence that in the real world is mounting by the day — "there is more than enough reason to justify disbanding the witch hunt once and for all." This, just as Mueller's meticulously scrupulous grand jury indictments are coming down. One almost feels sorry for editorializing that stupid.

Going down is Donald Trump. Firing Mueller would be a politically suicidal act that would, accordingly, thrust Trump's approval rating into the 20s. The Republican Congress would also be thrust under immense, irresistible pressure to simply reinstate Mueller's official capacity, hence Trump's sacking of him would be as useless as it would be suicidal.

This Christmas the nation's sublime present will be an increasingly besieged Donald Trump — and to my previous speculation I'll add his resignation, sometime in 2018. With Mueller dogging and cornering him, there is no way out, notwithstanding the hysterical rubbish being tossed by his factually alternative propaganda machine. This corrupt, traitorous, mendacious, misogynistic, racist demagogue is going down.

Happy holidays.

 

Another heads-up. I just visited a surgeon about another possible surgical procedure, one unrelated to recent surgeries but in the same neighborhood. The problem at hand, so to speak, is severe, yearslong urethral strictures — I have more internal barricades than Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. The even deeper problem is that these strictures have of late limited my nighttime sleep to roughly one-hour blocks (because I can't empty my bladder), of which I generally get two or three. This, as you might imagine, becomes intolerable after several, uninterrupted weeks of sleeplessness. I can function normally with four hours sleep as a standard, but two or three hours of sleep, week after week, tend to scramble by brain. I'm expecting an audible loss of verbal language skills any day now, and after that, drooling. Indeed, if any of my recent posts have struck you as incoherent, I have a medical excuse. The fix for all this, as I understand it, is reconstructive surgery in which tissue taken from my mouth substitutes for damaged urethral tissue. That's OK. I'd rather have my mouth in my penis than a penis in my mouth. (Sorry.) Anyway, if this surgery occurs, my hospital stay in November or December would be considerably shorter than the recent five; probably only one day, maybe two. As noted, just a heads-up. (Oh, geez, sorry again.)

 

Cheer up, Andrew Sullivan

Although I agree with much of Andrew Sullivan's assessment of the disheartening present, the poor man is sinking ever deeper into a hopeless, helpless, dystopian funk about the future.

What does the ostensibly conservative party in America - the Republicans - propose we do? They propose that we make all of this de-legitimization of democratic capitalism much, much worse. I’m referring primarily to their proposed massive tax cut to the super-wealthy, the abolition of the estate tax, and their bid to add over a trillion dollars to the debt….

Now, there is a credible argument that … tax relief for many in the lower half of the earning population is a good idea. I agree. So why not give it to them, rather than the obscenely wealthy?… You could indeed pay for big middle class tax cuts or an increase in tax credits for the working poor if you doubled the estate tax, or add[ed] a new tax bracket - say, 45 percent - for those earning over $1 million a year….

If the Democrats were smart, they would propose something like this themselves - and get ahead of the GOP, using it as a platform for 2018. And if the Republicans could abandon zombie Reaganism, they could rescue themselves from the electoral oblivion they so richly deserve. There’s a win-win here for both parties and the country. So why do I suspect it will once again be lose-lose?

There exists a significant pile of polling that suggests the Democrats, a year early and yet absent any concrete "platform," are in fact winning the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans will of course not abandon zombie Reaganism in the foreseeable future, which is inclined to bring them the "electoral oblivion they so richly deserve." That combination sounds like a spectacular win-win and not a dispiriting "lose-lose," does it not?

That Democrats have not presented a unified front is largely the result of the moaning we hear about the out-of-power party every four off-years: Where is the singular voice, the coherent plan, the leadership? It's two years off — that's where. There will be no unified Democratic front until it has a presidential nominee to present one. And that's not all bad, since in 2018 435 Democrats will need to craft a campaign message tailored uniquely to 435 disparate congressional districts.

Despised as he is by so many progressives as an unprincipled mossback, Rahm Emanuel nevertheless held the conceptual key to victory in 2006: Play to the homefolks and forget what some other Democrat is saying two districts away. The Dems seems to "get" that once again, and that gives me hope.

Turning around the waterlogged behemoth of Trumpian depravity can't be done on a dime. These things take time, and what Sullivan sees as an accumulating "abyss" of worthy despair, I see as the set-up for the way out.

 

It's getting weirder and weirder

This is remarkable. George Will essentially endorses the Democrat, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, in Virginia's gubernatorial race.

"Today’s campaign dramatizes the difficult calculation confronting people who want the Republican Party restored as a vehicle for conservatism but who know that this requires expunging the political style" of Trump, which has been virulently absorbed by the party's candidate, Ed Gillespie.

"If Gillespie wins," concludes Will, "Republicans elsewhere will conclude that the derangement of their party does not hinder its prospering."

 

The enemy of my enemy …

David Brooks adds a largely overlooked exception to Trump's tweeted claim that his luncheon with Republican senators this week "was a love fest with standing ovations." Writes the NYT columnist: "The Republican senators went to the White House and saw a president so repetitive and rambling, some thought he might be suffering from early Alzheimer’s."

Brooks' conservative counterpart at the Washington Post, Michael Gerson, then adds that "many" of these senators see in Trump — outside of his brain's very possible physical deterioration — a "dangerously unstable, divisive, childish, nasty, deceptive, self-deluded, morally unfit, deeply unconservative [president] and thus badly wrong on some of the largest issues of our time" (as far, that is, as genuine conservatives are concerned). Corroborating Brooks and Gerson is a Hill story: Some "senators were [dismayed] by the meeting, which they complained lacked substance and focus. 'He said the tax cuts are "going to be great," without going into any detail,' said one GOP senator [anonymously]…. 'He just went on and on, talking about his accomplishments and going off on tangents. It was inane,' the lawmaker added."

These are the lawmakers primed to publicly turn on Trump. Should their tax-cut bill fail on Capitol Hill, they simply wouldn't need him any longer. Same with the tax-cut bill's success; once done, their sham of tolerance for the "dangerously unstable," "morally unfit," "inane" Donald Trump will become a superfluous inconvenience, especially given that Trump's popularity in purple states is evaporating. For swing-state senators who for reelection purposes must contemplate more than the pro-Trump rabble, this president will become an unbearable burden.

Several Republican senators — Flake, Corker, McCain, Sasse — who for different reasons no longer worry about reelection, have already publicly blasted either Trump or his overnight, deranged authoritarian ally, Roy Moore. But, observes Gerson, their anti-Trump apostasy has been greeted by some hardcore Never Trumpers with no little derision. In Gerson's opinion, to which I am vastly sympathetic: "The objections of some Trump critics to Republican politicians attempting to join them — they awakened too late, they are risking too little, their words are not direct enough, they are halfhearted hypocrites — are pure lunacy."

This lunacy is — or should be — self-evident not because there isn't some truth to the Never Trumpers' criticisms, but because it is self-defeating. "Any serious, successful political movement welcomes converts," continues Gerson in a profoundly pragmatic vein.

Such counterproductivity extends to some leading Democrats as well. Thomas Edsall, of the NY Times and Columbia's School of Journalism, remarks that "After Flake denounced Trump on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, issued a statement making the point that Flake, like Corker, had waited until he was no longer seeking office to break Republican ranks." Edsall collects reactions to such actions, and here he passes along two of them by notable political observers. "Nolan McCarty, a political scientist at Princeton, tweeted: 'When Dems attack those GOP pols who stand up to Trump, perhaps they are the ones putting party before country,' a comment picked up by Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, who added, 'Yes, this seems to be a case of tribal loyalties coming out at the worst possible time.'"

In sum, it is lunacy indeed for both Never Trumpers and liberals to belittle the Republican Party's Jeff Flakes because "they awakened too late, they are risking too little," etc. While Never Trumpers seldom disagree with Flake & Friends' political ideology, liberals needn't excuse any of it merely to pause and applaud the Flakean break with Trumpism. Because "any successful political movement" — in this case anti-Trumpism, in which conservative Never Trumpers and liberal Democrats are philosophically united — "welcomes converts."

The movement needs all the friends it can get — and alienating potential allies is unhelpful.

 

Trump's base: disapproving but loving

From a Fox News poll:

Thirty-eight percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing in a new Fox News poll, down from 42 percent last month. At the same time, disapproval is up 4 points to a high of 57 percent.  That includes 49 percent who "strongly" disapprove….

Some of the drop comes from white men without a college degree, as 56 percent approve of the
president, down from 68 percent last month.

Also, his approval among white evangelical Christians went from 74 percent last month to 66 percent now. Eighty percent backed him in the election.

The biggest drop in approval came from independents; it's down to 30 percent, although 46 percent of them voted for Trump.

Still, "Republican support held steady at 83 percent approval."

Go figure. In majority parts Americans know he's dishonest, unknowledgeable, calamitously defective in good judgment and uncaring about "people like me," as the Fox poll and many others tell us. But, even though Trump's base is similarly splintering negatively, four in five Republicans continue to give him a thumbs up.

It is said in physics that there are no absolutes. But the above, gentle reader, is absolutely nuts.

 

Corker's two consistencies

For those who believe Bob Corker's (or Jeff Flake's) detestation of Trump will spill over into resentful opposition to Trump's tax cuts, Tennessee's senator of part-time sanity declared on "Morning Joe" today that "I'm all in; I'm excited about" the fiscal wreckage and exacerbation of wealth inequality of said tax-cut proposals.

If Trump were to somehow promote an invasion of North Korea as a tax cut for the American middle class, Corker would support it while simultaneously denouncing Trump as an untruthful, nation-debasing scalawag.

It's all quite simple. Tax cuts are the opiate of all Republican pols, for which there is no known treatment.