The Carpentariat

Trump, Mulvaney, and the CFPB, the Consumer-Fucking Plutocrats' Bureau

Paul Waldman, a WaPo Plum Line columnist, takes a look at Trump's unconscionable wreckage of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — contra his campaign protests on behalf of the little guy — via his demolition engineer, Mick Mulvaney, the bureau's director.

From WaPo's meticulous reporting, Waldman quotes: "enforcement actions by the bureau have dropped about 75 percent from average in recent years, while consumer complaints have risen to new highs." In graphic representation, the current bureau's dereliction of duty appears thus:

This Waldman passage is particularly startling, and uncomfortably amusing: "As Mulvaney told his constituents at a meeting of the American Bankers Association, 'I won’t talk too much about regulation by enforcement, but the short version is we’re not doing it anymore.' They must have laughed so hard in glee that their monocles popped out."

Waldman's thesis is that Trump is betraying the very voters he promised to safeguard from the cruel, monied elite. True enough. However my countervailing thesis would be: We — the politically aware — don't deserve Trump's treachery, but his base does, in spades. I wish every one of them a 30-percent credit card interest rate, payday loans at 90 percent, and mortgage brokers stabbing at them from Hell's heart.

I'm not a vindictive man. Just fair-minded. Since the radically backward GOP base wished to saddle all of us with a president most foul, it's only fair that they suffer the worst.

 

Andrew Sullivan's brilliant gimmick

I’m with her. https://t.co/7oEdZaa6DT

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) December 5, 2018

I like Sen. Klobuchar as well. In fact I'd like to see her as Joe Biden's running mate. She's intellectually sharp, politically astute, personally charming and temperamentally subdued. (In the Senate Judiciary Committee's recent confirmation hearings, her undemonstrative reaction to Brett Kavanaugh's outrageous verbal assaults on her person was as impressive as any I've ever seen in such a tense political moment.)

That said, my Klobuchar vp-preference isn't the point of this post — the actual point being, rather curiously, that the Minnesota senator has a lifetime "progressive score" of 90 percent (rounded), reports ProgressivePunch.org. And yet Andrew Sullivan persists in labeling himself a conservative.

Were he back in the immensely troubled land of Brexit madness (cause second, effect first), Sullivan would, I'm sure, rate as a conservative. But in the United States — and he is a naturalized U.S. citizen — an English conservative is an American liberal. Except for his oddly daft, occasionally favorable remarks about some magic-asterisked Paul Ryan proposal (many others have likewise been fooled by the prince of fiscal legerdemain, though), Sullivan consistently writes from the political spectrum's left.

If his self-imposed conservative label did not precede him in reputation, a reader could be forgiven for mistaking his writing as a Nation publication. (Time does not allow me to provide a revealing history of his writings, but anyone who has read them has also recognized their unmistakable liberal slant.) 

Yet if Sullivan came clean and announced himself as the American liberal he is, he would be forfeiting his quite successful, journalistic gimmick: his image as a disgruntled, boldly independent, tell-it-like-it-is conservative, which sets him apart from what would otherwise be rather customary liberal piety.

Good marketing strategies often come with at least a dollop of deceit, so in that sense, I can't blame Sullivan for perpetuating his almost comically inaccurate reputation as a conservative. But let's be clear — he is no such thing.

 

Trump: "I won't be here" when the crisis comes - as though he is now

Whenever we might think that presidential cynicism can't possibly become more savage, a story such as "Trump on Coming Debt Crisis: 'I Won’t Be Here' When It Blows Up," from the Daily Beast, violently emerges:

"Sources close to the president say he has repeatedly shrugged [off the exploding national debt], implying that he doesn’t have to worry about the money owed to America’s creditors—currently about $21 trillion—because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it becomes even more untenable."

It seems graphic evidence of America drowning in rising tides of debt was presented to Trump soon after he snatched the presidency from democratic will. "Yeah, but I won’t be here," said this most callous of U.S. presidents.

Having exacerbated the debt problem with yet more typically ill-advised Republican tax cuts, Trump instructed a spokesmen to do what Trump always does: Pass the buck. "While the president has and will continue to do everything in his power to rein in Washington’s out-of-control spending," prevaricated the White House's Hogan Gidley, "the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse and it’s time for them to work with this president to reduce the debt."

With classic Trumpian logic, the president has ordered Cabinet members to slim down their budgets. "But," writes the Daily Beast, in tune with a bit of Washington Post reporting, "Trump also set strict limits on what sorts of programs could be cut—and quickly proceeded to propose increased spending in other areas of the federal government."

But what's a Trump story without a touch of knee-slapping Laffable humor? By that I mean "economist" Stephen Moore — former Club for Growth president and Wall Street Journal editorialist, now the Heritage Foundation's chief sorcerer of Hogwartian mumbo-jumbo — once "personally assured" Trump that when it comes to the debt and deficits, not to worry. "If you grow the economy," advised Moore, "you don’t have a debt problem."

Trump self-defensively took up this piece of macroeconomic twaddle, telling the debt-concerned that "We’re gonna grow our way out of it." Reality has intervened, however. Of late we've had tremendous Obamian growth; still, the debt grows ever larger — and with menacing speed.

Does this at all trouble the president of the United States? Hell no. Because Trump knows that when the national debt begins to existentially threaten a livable economy, "I won't be here."

 

A Mt. Hood lodge, one of FDR's wonders

1. On the way to Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge, a 1937 W.P.A. project, christened by — some say, meaning me — that greatest of U.S. presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The drive is 90 minutes from Portland.

2. Getting a bit closer.

3. Then very close.

4. At the lodge, one wing of it, anyway. It was 22 degrees with a wind chill of what must have been well into the minus range.

5. Inside the lodge. This is what socialism could build.

6. Again, inside the lodge. Artistry was but one financially wounded profession that socialism supported.

7. The chair built by a lodge artisan for FDR to use while visiting.

8. My chauffeur, mountain guide, sometime skier and magnificent companion, L. Reeves, sitting before the lobby's fireplace.

As the captions hovering over pictures 5 & 6 suggest, the 1930s were, in my book, among the most exhilarating and politically exciting of decades. Roosevelt's taming of capitalism through socialist programs — mostly out of desperate need — demonstrated the possibilities of good government and the splendor of good-government activism.

 

Where's J. Edgar when we could use him?

Now comes the rewarding news that the National Republican Congressional Committee was also hacked — by the Russians, I hope — which, as Politico puts it, is likely to be, ahem, a trifle awkward for the victims. The hack will not, however, be awkward for Trump, since the man has no shame. From Politico:

The fact that the NRCC was hacked and withheld that information is likely to prove embarrassing at a time when Republicans are grappling with an election in which they lost 40 seats and control of the House. President Donald Trump has also claimed that Republicans are better than Democrats at cybersecurity, explaining why one party was hacked in 2016 but the other was not.

"The DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had bad defenses, and they were able to be hacked," Trump told CBS News in July. "I heard they were trying to hack the Republicans, too. But, and this may be wrong, but they had much stronger defenses."

Years ago I heard Trump say that emails are for wimps, that real men use the phone. I suspect Trump's aversion to email communication was less a matter of feared wimpishness than fear of a subpoena-able paper trail.

Of course more eminent — I'd even say more distinguished — mob bosses don't use the phone, either, since they know a dozen FBI agents are huddled somewhere with earpieces, enjoying the conversation. But ever since J. Edgar joined Beelzebub in that netherworld of really harsh police states, the FBI wouldn't dream of bugging the crime-saturated Oval Office. 'Tis a pity.

 

Sympathy for a devil

Michael Isikoff, of Yahoo News, relates the latest from "multiple sources":

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors … are "tying up loose ends" in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks....

The new information about the state of Mueller’s investigation comes during a pivotal week when the special counsel’s prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high profile defendants — [Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen].

A Flynn sentencing memo is due Tuesday, and memos about Manafort and Cohen are slated for Friday. All three documents are expected to yield significant new details on what cooperation the three of them provided to the Russia investigation.

Those "significant new details" will be the stuff merely of past crimes, from the top down — the tangible, concrete acts of a presidential candidate who believed the law is for other people, which he continues to believe as president. I say merely because emotional conflict within the human condition, as it were, is, to me anyway, of far greater interest in this squalid tale of Trumpian corruption.

With what seems no little compassion, the NY Times reports that "[Cohen] has told friends that he is mystified that he is taking the fall for actions he carried out on behalf of Mr. Trump, who remains unscathed." Mr. Cohen was perhaps the most ruthless of Trump's defenders, so it's challenging to sympathize with his psychological hurt and sense of unfairness. Yet sympathize I do.

Cohen is but the latest in a nearly interminable line of those who've been destroyed by befriending, and helping, Donald Trump. The latter is akin to a powerfully venomous spider nesting comfortably in his complex, inescapable web; in human terms, an untouchable mob boss. Cohen is correct that Trump "remains unscathed," and like many a violent gangster who died of old age in his own bed, Trump is likely to remain unscathed — with permanence.

Cohen, and others who have come clean, will take the fall by loss of income and reputation, as well as gaining a mammoth legal bill. Meanwhile, he who sits in the center of Trump's sordid web will remain untouchable — and if ever touched, acquitted. Trump will never pay a price, though he insists that his former friends do: "Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time," retweeted the president yesterday. He then added, with original Trumpian vileness: "You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things … and not serve a long prison term?… He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence."

Cohen's crimes were, of course, in no way "unrelated" to Trump. They were, instead, Trumpian crimes incarnate: lies about his Russian connections, his Moscow project and the campaign-finance-violating payments of hush money to deflowered kittens. For all this, Trump knows he will walk, but demands that Cohen serve "a full and complete sentence." Mobbed-up chutzpah doesn't get any more treacherous than that.

Yes, I sure can sympathize with Michael Cohen.

 

The Dershowitz Dance

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Alan Dershowitz writes:

"Because it is the report of a prosecutor, [the Mueller report] will inevitably be one-sided…. If unrebutted, [it] will probably be quite damaging, even devastating, to the president and his associates. Virtually all reports by special and independent counsels, from Kenneth Starr’s report on Bill Clinton to Lawrence Walsh’s on the Iran-Contra scandal—have been devastating when issued without any rebuttal."

Why wait for Mueller's underhanded "one-sidedness," however, when Dershowitz, in spades, dishes his own?

"This doesn’t mean that the report would survive a well-documented rebuttal," he continues. "I don’t believe that the Mueller report will directly accuse President Trump of any crimes. Collusion—even if Mr. Mueller were to conclude that it occurred—is not a crime. Nor can exercises of a president’s constitutional authority or rights—such as firing an executive-branch official, issuing a pardon or tweeting—be turned into crimes by stretching elastic statutes."

Dershowitz is, of course, well aware that collusion is a crime as framed by 18 U.S.C. § 371, which postulates a criminal act "[i]f two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose." Trump and his team did just that, to the Federal Election Commission, when it accepted a foreign power's electoral assistance — the history of which becomes more vivid by the day — and concealed the candidate's bimbo payments.

In addition, even a first year law student would know that a president's pardon power, as well as his sacking power, is not unlimited. If a president pardons an ally or dismisses a foe for the express purpose of concealing a crime, then that president has obstructed justice, Q.E.D. 

I understand Professor Dershowitz is concerned — on a nonpartisan basis, it should be added — with Trump's civil liberties, and as such is acting as the defendant's necessarily controversial, though unofficial, counsel. But his legal arguments could be shot down in L-One moot court. Is this really the level of thinking we should expect from a Harvard Law professor emeritus?

 

Donald Trump, back in his saddle

Max Boot spoke a bit too soon.

"Grading on the steep curve by which he is judged, President Trump may have had his most successful international outing at the Group of 20 summit that concluded on Saturday in Buenos Aires. But that’s not because he accomplished anything significant. He didn’t. It was simply because he did not commit a massive gaffe."

What Trump did commit (after Boot's column appeared) was not really a gaffe, but more of a characteristically idiotic Trumpian remark. When returning from the G20 summit, where the president of the United States spent most of his time cancelling meetings, dodging once-valued allies and keeping his authoritarian pals at a distance — the cameras, you know — he dictatorially announced:

"I will be formally terminating NAFTA shortly. We get rid of NAFTA. It's been a disaster for the United States. It's caused us tremendous amounts of unemployment and loss and company loss and everything else."

That is, he told Congress to take or leave his NAFTA deal, as is. This greatest of negotiators doesn't do negotiation.

My educated guess is that Trump was autocratically inspired by his recent proximity to Bonesaw bin Salman and Tricky Vlad Putin. They get to have all the fun, pouted the president, while he must suffer an energized opposition party and divided government. It's. Just. Not. Fair.

House Democrats, of course, are delighted to permit Trump his dictatorial moment — and more. For reasons known only to the Great Negotiator, he believes the Dems will take the heat for a NAFTA-implosion and consequent jobs lost. This is palpably, empirically untrue. The chief executive will be blamed by the electorate, in this case as he should be.

So Max, you were almost correct in writing that Trump managed to escape a much-expected, massive stupidity. But for heaven's sake, it had been, what, 48 hours since he had put his big orange foot through his little duck lips?

 

The self-devouring GOP

I need your help.

The Times' Jonathan Martin writes that "Nearly a month after the election, there has been little self-examination among Republicans about why a midterm that had seemed at least competitive became a rout."

Then paragraphs later, there is this: "The Republican response, or lack thereof, to the midterm backlash stands in stark contrast to the shake-ups and soul-searching that followed its loss of Congress in 2006 and consecutive presidential defeats in 2012."

Is my memory faltering?

Leadership shake-ups are common, but I recall no GOP soul-searching subsequent to its congressional and presidential defeats in 2006 and 2012, respectively. I do recall the party's pathetic, insincere "autopsy" following Obama's 2012 thrashing of Romney.

Did the party set out to be insincere? I doubt it. But its sensible autopsy's pained reception made it as ironic as "Arbeit Macht Frei." We must appeal to minorities, saideth the document — duh; and we must appeal to women — duh. Whereupon the party's regulars proceeded to slander all but the nation's Archie Bunkers.

The Times' Martin writes another curious passage. "But now a cadre of Republican lawmakers are speaking out and urging party officials to come to terms with why their 23-seat majority unraveled so spectacularly."

True, there is some discontent among House members. In Martin's reporting, however, roughly an equal amount comes from House members who were just bright enough to understand that their party isn't about to reform — and so they've retired.

If one could somehow quantitatively plot Republican nastiness, ignorance and demagoguery from 1964 on, I'm certain one would reveal a 45-degree upward trajectory. There has been no soul-searching for decades, for the party has been hostage to the very ignorance and nastiness that keeps it alive — the base.

Soul-searching will remain elusive till at least 2021, when Trump and yet more congressional Republicans go down with a thunderous kaboom. Even then, though, the party's remaining members will stay beholden to the base, hence little reform is to be anticipated. The GOP is eating itself alive.

 

Going and coming, in awe

Crossing the Columbia River, entering the state of Washington.

Crossing the Columbia River, reentering the state of Oregon.

As we crossed, I tried to picture flea-bitten, gnat-haunted Lewis and Clark navigating the waterway in its pristine surroundings. The miles they had traveled, the native peoples they had met, all the wonders of the newest of the New World they encountered — it is occasions such as theirs for which the word "awesome" was truly meant. 

 

Is Hillary running?

The picture propels an audible gasp.

The vast indifference to the speakers before the tiny huddle, assembled last week at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena, is photographic evidence of Bill and Hillary Clinton's irrelevance, according to that indefatigable Clintonwatcher, Maureen Dowd. She may be right, although Canadian opinion may not reflect American opinion.

Have the Clintons' fortunes — popular, not material — really plummeted this far? Dowd paid $177 well in advance for a ticket to hear them speak; the tickets were two-for-one, and "On the day of the event," notes Dowd, "some unsold tickets are slashed to single digits."

The Times columnist goes on at some length about Clintonian greed — "They [have] stockpiled a whopping $240 million" — and says, at first, she is "mystified" by the couples' determination to remain in the spotlight. But there's no mystery here, which I could have told Dowd — and which she soon realizes. To wit:

"Some in Clintonworld say Hillary fully intends to be the nominee. Once more, in Toronto, she didn’t rule it out, dodging the question with a lame joke. She carries herself with the air of a president in exile. Her consigliere, Philippe Reines, has prodded reporters on including her name when they write about 2020 candidates.

"And Bill has given monologues to old friends about how Hillary knows how she’d have to run in 2020, that she couldn’t have a big staff and would just speak her mind and not focus-group everything."

Observes Dowd, correctly, I suspect: "The way that the whole thing came crashing down in 2016 is too hard for them to bear. They would like to rewrite the ending, but there is no way to do that."

Yet were I Hillary, I'd do the same. Like Al Gore, she was cheated by the antique, senseless Electoral College — and doubtless she believes there are, yet again, 66 million votes out there, waiting to be cast in her name. Hillary will have her revenge. But she won't play Lady Macbeth. She will do the regicidal deed herself.

That may be delusional on Hillary's part. What's not delusional, I think, is to say that Hillary is in the running.

 

George H.W. Bush, a kinder and gentler example of presidential decency

We have entered an age of not only unprecedented political horrors, but of rather refreshing comparative politics. We can grudgingly thank Donald Trump, that most horrific of U.S. presidents.

Though customary it is by even us enemy partisans to swoon nostalgically about recently deceased presidents, today there is an unmistakable poignancy in our swooning. The contrast between Trump and President George H.W. Bush is so striking — indeed, so ineffably insufferable — we are brought nearly to tears at the present degradation of that highest, once-noble office of the presidency of the United States.

Mr. Bush we can admire, perhaps transcendently. As a shadowy vice president he served the second-most ruinous president in modern American history, but once elevated, he became his own man on a distinctly more honorable plane. Yet, as the Times' Adam Nagourney writes, he "was denied a second term after support for his presidency collapsed under the weight of an economic downturn and his seeming inattention to domestic affairs…. Voters seemed to perceive him as detached from their everyday lives."

He wasn't, if raising taxes on the affluent — so that the deficit dragon could be slain — was a measure of his concern for the Everyman. Doing the right thing, however, bought Mr. Bush an electoral loss. The reasons for his defeat went deeper than the "weight of an economic downturn and his seeming inattention to domestic affairs."

In the last decade of the last century came the reckless birth of the right's ideological absolutism on taxes. Mr. Bush knew he would suffer its wrath. He raised taxes anyway. And therein lies the very definition of political courage, which, in the contemporary Republican Party, is absolutely absent.

What's more, he brilliantly gathered a multilateral force to bear down on Saddam Hussein's Kuwait invasion — a rather quaint invention of the diplomatically astute, which is also altogether absent under Trump's idiotic American Firstism, or rather, America Aloneism.

Last, but as they say, not least, was that Mr. Bush aristocratically practiced "the good manners and graciousness of New England privilege and civic responsibility" (per Nagourney). Again, when contrasted with Trump's vulgarity and inhumanity, we are impressed with Mr. Bush's old-school manners (although not always present on the campaign trail).

Hence we can thank Trump, however grudgingly, for our heightened nostalgia. Whatever Mr. Bush's flaws, he was a man — an authentic president — of engrained decency. Perhaps we had become somewhat forgetful of its historical presence, but the godawful example of Trump has driven it home.

 

Exposing the obvious and freeing the guilty

The malevolent Pat Buchanan famously urged President Nixon to burn the tapes. Buchanan may have been malign, but had Nixon listened to him, the 37th president most likely would have finished his second term. With no recorded smoking gun — Nixon's conspiracy to order the CIA to halt the FBI's Watergate investigation — the Republican Party would have remained loyal, Congress would have had nowhere to go, and Nixon's resignation would have been no more than a Democratic pipe dream.

Likewise, many — including me — are still baffled by Trump's refusal to sack Bob Mueller before Mueller could do inescapable damage to Trump. Months ago I simulated a kind of Buchananesque role in malignantly speculating that Trump's only way out was to fire the special counsel. The public uproar would have been stentorian — but brief, as all Trumpian outrages have been.

Instead, Trump dithered, to put a Cheneyesque spin on it. Now the president is caught in the endless web of exposure spun by that prince of fucking darkness (to malefactors), Robert Mueller. This Dudley Do-Right always gets his man. Thus Trump — an especially dimwitted target who's now delightfully known as "Individual 1" — was ill fated as long as the special counsel was free to investigate.

To substantiate my latest charge of Trumpian dimwittedness, I offer this particularly enjoyable passage in the Washington Post: "During the midterm campaign, the president occasionally told advisers that people had forgotten about the Mueller probe and remarked positively that it was no longer dominating TV headlines." Yes, and Melvin Purvis had ceased looking for Dillinger as he watched Manhattan Melodrama in Chicago's Biograph Theater.

The hell of it all, however, is this: Notwithstanding Mueller's overwhelming evidence of the president's misadventures, mendacity and malfeasance, the latter is likely to walk. As always, his party remains indifferent to presidential crimes far worse than Nixon's, since Trump's base also keeps these partisan buffoons in office.

A nostalgic myth has flowered of late — that of a reputable GOP in 1974, heroically abandoning the president in his criminal high-noon hour of beat-the-rap need. Forgotten is that Nixon retained party loyalty, by and large, until the smoking-gun tape revealed his wrongdoing beyond any reasonable doubt. Only then did Sen. Goldwater & Friends inform the president that it was all over.

Yet the GOP of 1974 was at least comparatively reputable. For no such act of political decency will be replicated by the current Republican gang of Trumpian boosters. In their eyes, there is no crime too great, too offensive, too characteristically Trumpian that justifies abandonment. And so the Republican Senate is his ultimate backstop.

But, dimwitted as he is, Trump tends to forget this fundamental fact of political life today. Rather, he "often grows aggrieved seeing Cohen on TV," as the Post puts it. Why? He'll walk anyway.

 

Geographical Update

Rest assured, gentle reader, that in no one way am I going for the solipsistically oriented here, but visiting the West Coast Mecca of used books, Powell's — on the East Coast, Strand in New York City — is a personally absorbing experience. Over the years I have invested God knows how much in Powell's financial well being, and its expansive book availability made researching my dissertation a breeze. (Heres a bit of information that might intrigue the pecuniarily deficient, as I am. I have recently discovered ThriftBooks.com, which offers free shipping on orders of $10 or more, which is, in a word, fabulous. And $40 less than Powell's.) Anyway, my first stop in Portland was the aforementioned Mecca of reading, which L. Reeves — photo credit — digitally captured. (She's quite the shutterbug.)

A commenter asked earlier that I photograph my "haul." In just half of one aisle out of hundreds I picked up the following, which came to $66. Another hour in Powell's and I would have been bankrupt — although, what a nice way to go.

Here I and my official photographer are, in downtown Portland, surrounded by the lights of Christmas spirit. I actually possess a full head of hair, but the bright lights obscured my Elvis Presleylike crown. Isn't Ms. Reeves lovely? (Photo credit: a passerby.) 

I shan't bore you with daily updates of our doings, but thought you might enjoy seeing the first day's worth. Tomorrow morning I shall return to observing the godawful state of our union, though I must say, Mr. Cohen has lightened my heart considerably.

From the land of sandals and daisies, I am,

Your faithful servant,

PM

 

Housekeeping notice 2

On my first day in Portland, I have decided that seeing the city and absorbing the culture is more advisable than prattling on, again, about Trump and his assorted criminal gangs. First up — and this may be a logistical mistake — is Powell's Books, from which I have ordered many a title. I say "mistake" because I may lose myself in their aisles upon aisles of historical works. Then various venues downtown must be seen and dropped in on, so that I can get my geographical and cultural bearings. So I'll say it again, and with more feeling this time — See you tomorrow.

 

Housekeeping notice

Tomorrow (Wednesday) morning, I'm heading to that far periphery of the deep state, Portland, Ore., to visit my lady friend. There I shall also commune with pony-tailed men in sandals and women with  peace-making daisies.

Together, we shall overcome. Or, now that I'm a wee bit older, overcomb.

I shall learn the world's inner truths through West Coast wisdom, as only the young can know it and aging Baby Boomers knock it. Years ago, we of the latter capitulated to the harder truths of the eternally unchangeable — God forgive us. It's not that we have given up on progress; it's just that we've learned that progress is not always what it's cut out to be. And determining what's progress and what's backsliding is more difficult to discern than we once thought.

But I do intend to refamiliarize myself with youthful hope, if not naïveté. For I'll be in the very heart of — the absolute ground zero of — progressive groupthink.

But with my lady friend in hand and love in my heart, I'll be carrying a few daisies, too. I draw the line at sandals.

See you Thursday morning.

 

The mistake of calling the president

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal's Bob Davis interviewed Trump about trade relations with China. Here's a taste of Trump's presidential sharpness.

Davis: What can you say about the possibility of a deal?

Trump: It all began with the World Trade Organization, a disaster. A disaster. I would actually say that was perhaps – I say NAFTA was the worst trade deal ever made. I would say only – only – challenged by the WTO. That has been – if you look at China, China’s ascension was the day that the WTO was signed. It’s a one-sided deal. They were treated as a – you know, as a growing country, as a – what would you say? How would you say that?

Davis: Developing country. Developing.

Good grief.

Aside from the WTO being a "disaster," and China, too, presumably, Trump said the European Union has also "been a disaster for the United States." And "NAFTA was one of the worst trade deals ever made." Because "Mexico and Canada have been, you know, very, very hard on the United States." Given what Trump believes to be his predecessors' poor governance, how did the U.S. ever become the world's largest economy?

Moving along,

Trump: … I have another $267 billion [in imports] to go if I want, and then I’m also able to raise interest rates. And we have money that is pouring right now, pouring –

Davis: When you say interest rates, do you mean – do you mean tariffs, as opposed to interest rates?

Trump: I’m sorry, the rate…. And here’s the story: If we don’t make a deal, then I’m going to put the $200 — and it’s really $67 — billion additional on at an interest rate between 10 and 25 depending.

Of some students, one just lets go.

 

Paul Manafort, playing the long game

"How do you find the word that means Paul Manafort?" asked Rodgers and Hammerstein, who thereupon answered, "A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!" Perhaps. Or, Manafort may be playing the long game.

The flibbertigibbet financial fraudster and justice obstructor has, as you know, forfeited his plea agreement with Bob Mueller because of his "crimes and lies" to the special counsel about pretty much everything. Hence Manafort now faces a refiling of dropped charges and decades in prison (which, at 69, he'd never see in full).

And so, according to the president this morning, "The Phony Witch Hunt continues," or rather "The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they’ve got nothing but ruined lives." Naturally, Trump's assessment overlooks the gang of former aides who have pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators: Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos. Coming soon to the list are Roger Stone & Friend, Jerome Corsi, both of whom are also facing federal charges of lying to investigators.

That's a whole lot of lying — i.e., covering up — by perfectly innocent chaps who've been sucked into nothing but a Phony Witch Hunt. Why is it that Trump and those around him either demand a truncated end to an investigation of crimes they're innocent of, or lie to investigators about their innocent acts? That is odd behavior indeed by the guiltless.

"Everybody who lies to Mueller gets called on it — so [Manafort] had to know that Mueller would catch him," said former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance to the NY Times. "So the question is: What was he hiding that is worse than going to jail for the rest of your life?… It was likely more than one lie and this would not have been a minor detail — it had to be something material and significant and intentional."

The more material question is: What was he hiding that is worth a presidential pardon? Because that, conspicuously, is what Manafort longs for, and just as conspicuously expects — and will probably get.

If forthcoming, however, Trump would merely be adding another criminal charge to Mueller's upcoming bill of particulars. As the Times reports, "A former lawyer for Mr. Trump broached the prospect of a pardon with one of Mr. Manafort’s lawyers last year, raising questions about whether he was trying to influence Mr. Manafort’s decision about whether to cooperate with investigators."

Now that's somewhat significant, in that dangling a pardon to persuade Manafort to be uncooperative would unquestionably constitute obstruction of justice. One can be just as certain that Trump's "former lawyer" would rat him out — although that's really not necessary, given the overwhelming entirety of charges that Mueller will soon submit.

 

Trump previews his post-atrocities career move

I suspect the below is the conceptual seed of Trump's political media empire, which, according to reports, he had planned on constructing after he lost in 2016. I'd guess he now plans its construction in 2021, just after he gets his deserved comeuppance in 2020. He can spend two years telling the world how the Clinton/Obama machines "rigged" the 2020 presidential race against him, another two years how he beat all the Mueller raps (simple, the Republican Senate), and his final years as the televised headmaster of the School for the Ethically Challenged and Morally Bankrupt.      

....and false way. Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2018

Why even ask?

First Read notes that "the laws of political gravity [finally] applied to Trump in 2018 … [and this] provide[s] an important lesson for 2020: Political fundamentals still matter."

First Read then asks,

"Looking ahead to 2020, can Trump broaden his popularity and raise his job rating?"

It seems to me that one would have to be on a powerful psychotropic to even ask the question. To "broaden [Trump's] popularity" would mean to broaden his base; it means that his outrageous behavior would stop and he'd start behaving like a reasonable human being. Trump has never displayed even the faintest inclination to be anyone other than Trump — loud, ignorant, disrespectful, lawless, unprecedentedly mendacious — and there is zero evidence that he would begin humanizing himself now.

His deplorable traits may have been what put him into office, but they'll also be the traits to take him out.