They have just two jobs on “Saturday Night Live”: to be funny and somehow capture the American zeitgeist. The 2019-20 version of the show has mostly been a letdown on that first mission, although no o...
Even as prominent Republicans are starting to signal that Trump's latest scandal is too much to justify their continued support, the President's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani maintains his loyalty.
Writing in New York magazine, columnist Jonathan Chait suggests why this might be based on a Wall Street Journal report. The report contained shocking details.
"Mr. Giuliani has known the president for decades, but bolstered his standing with Mr. Trump with his loyal support of his campaign in 2016," the WSJ wrote. "Mr. Trump didn’t always return the favor. He often needled the former mayor for falling asleep on long flights, and joked about whether Mr. Giuliani was looking at cartoons on his iPad, a former aide said.
Mr. Trump also berated Mr. Giuliani in front of others at the wedding of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in 2017," the report adds.
"The president complained that Mr. Giuliani was spitting while he was talking and ordered him to stand elsewhere," according to an aide interviewed by reporters.
"Trump’s method of leadership typically involves demanding absolute fealty of his aides and then mocking them for the sycophancy," Chait writes.
"He has used this style to humiliate such figures as Michael Cohen and Chris Christie, and he surely has derived particular joy from transforming a former national hero, who was once so admired for his alpha-male persona that he could write a book titled Leadership, into his lickspittle."
He does not predict good developments for Giuliani and others who continue to support the president.
"Nobody is going to escape this administration with their dignity intact," he writes. "It’s gratifying that even though he was denied a position in its Cabinet, Giuliani will be one of its most prominent victims anyway," he continues.
"As Irin Carmon has theorized, all of us have at least some small part inside that likes Trump, because he sometimes turns his horrible bullying on the other horrible people who are attracted to him."
On Wednesday, the White House released a partial transcript of a conversation between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine, hoping to dissipate suspicions that the president had demanded dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for military aid. Democrats have launched an impeachment investigation over the allegations.
But the transcript only raised more questions. Even though Trump does not explicitly ask for dirt in exchange for cash, the transcript hardly exonerates him. Writing in the Daily Beast, columnist Matt Lewis outlines why the transcript doesn't prove Trump innocent of wrongdoing.
"What to say about the transcript? First, it’s not verbatim," Lewis writes. "I’m not suggesting that there is a Nixonian 'missing tape' here, but let’s not forget how misleading the Barr memo was when compared to the Mueller report."
Lewis points out that the story is incomplete without the whistleblower's complaint, which launched the controversy.
"Second, we have yet to see the complete unredacted whistleblower complaint. What we do know about it is that the Inspector General of the intelligence community deemed it to be 'urgent' and 'serious.'"
He also notes that the transcript is an extremely limited record of Trump's dealings with the president of Ukraine.
"Third, the transcript covers one phone call. We do not know if there were other calls with Trump—or his associates. What we do know is that Trump suggests that President Volodymyr Zelensky should cooperate with Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney, and take a call from Attorney General Barr, when they reach out to him. In fact, this is a central theme of the transcript."
He observes that Republicans are being hypocritical in their continued support of Trump, given their likely reactions if Barack Obama had been accused of something this serious.
"If Barack Obama had done anything this egregious, Republicans would be echoing my sentiments," he concludes. "At this point, any Republican defending Trump is probably beyond redemption."
The latest Trump international scandal emerged when an anonymous whistleblower in the intelligence community lodged a complaint related to President Trump's discussions with a foreign leader. Although not much is known about the content of the complaint, speculation has arisen that Trump offered the president of Ukraine foreign aid in a way that could be interpreted as quid pro quo for dirt on Vice President Joe Biden.
Writing in the conservative publication The Bulwark, columnist Jonathan V. Last outlines the Republicans' options. They can continue to do nothing to rein in the president. They could try to make the story about Biden. Or they could dare to impeach.
Last makes the case for trying to remove the president from office.
"Would impeachment be the worst thing for Trump?," he asks.
"The general public does not seem to appreciate what a deep hole Trump is in electorally. The guy he is most likely to face next November is on track to beat him like a drum," Last says. "He trails most of his other possible opponents, too. The economy is softening. And Republican office-holders are retiring left and right, because whatever Conservatism Inc. says, the rats always know when the ship is taking on water."
"Imagine that Democrats decide to pursue impeachment. Maybe it turns out badly for Trump. But how much worse could things get? In some polls against Biden he’s not even breaking 40 percent. Could he drop to 35 percent? I guess. But so what?" Last says.
"My point is that his downside is limited. When your approval rating is as low as Trump’s, you only have so far to fall."
Beyond impeachment, Last wishes Republicans would try to remove him from office, like some GOP lawmakers convinced Nixon to give up. "There are only two reasons that Republican officeholders would take sides against Trump from here forward: Because they care about the long-term health of the party and because they think it’s the right thing to do," he says.
"There are incentives along these vectors, to be sure. But they’re pretty far down the list for the Republicans left in national office."
But Last doesn't predict that kind of braver.
"They’re probably going to stick with Trump. To the end."
On Thursday, Fox News host Neil Cavuto went on an explosive rant against President Donald Trump, reminding him that the network is not his private propaganda channel.
“To fact check him is to be all but dead to him,” Cavuto said. Even more disturbingly, he pointed out that many Trump supporters had contacted him to tell him that “I am either with him totally, or I am a Never Trumper fully.”
Given that Trump supporters have targeted the president's perceived enemies in the past--whether immigrants at the border, the Obamas or media networks like CNN--that response could be seen as intimidating.
Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Greg Sargent explains how the feud between Fox News and the president exposes Trump's most insidious form of corruption.
He starts by pointing to the many problems at Fox. "My purpose here is not to defend Fox. Yes, its news anchors sometimes do cover the administration aggressively, but the news coverage also has a heavy pro-Trump tilt, and its opinion hosts regularly traffic in outright pro-Trump agitprop and white nationalist conspiracy theories," Sargent notes.
Nevertheless, it's disturbing for the president to attack them.
"Rather, what’s interesting here is Cavuto’s declaration that many Trump supporters have come to expect and demand from Fox absolute fealty to their leader."
Sargent praises Cavuto for standing up to Trump on this issue.
"Cavuto deserves some credit. In his rebuke, he exposed many of the false storylines that intertwine in Trump’s preferred narrative of the last few years: Russia never tried to sabotage our political system on his behalf," he writes.
"Trump expects and demands that Fox News hew to this propagandistic narrative entirely. But, even more to the point, he publicly and unabashedly tells his supporters that he expects and demands it."
"The whole point here is the open declaration that something meant to be a news network should function as his personal 24/7 propaganda and disinformation outlet," Sargent writes. "It’s a double-fisted declaration of impunity: Trump must be immune from journalistic scrutiny and be permitted to operate and lie with absolute impunity, and he will publicly assert that an ostensibly journalistic institution should be entirely subservient to him with absolute, shameless impunity as well."
Although Trump is hardly the first politician to lie, he's taken misinformation to a whole new level.
"This is a form of insidious corruption — corruption of our discourse. All politicians shade the truth; politics inescapably involves artifice of one kind or another," Sargent observes.
"But most hew to some kind of underlying belief that gaslighting voters too shamelessly treats them with a form of deep contempt; that at some point, factual reality has to matter; that journalism plays a legitimate institutional role in restraining political dishonesty; and that all this is a necessary foundation for deliberative democracy to function."
Next week, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are poised to question members of the Trump administration about the dangerous rise in white nationalist violence.
Just last weekend, a man slaughtered dozens of people in El Paso, Texas, after citing an "invasion" on the Southwest border.
In addition to questioning senior national security officials about the rise in white nationalism violence, they also plan to ask them whether they think President Donald Trump is instigating violent acts with his rhetoric, reports Greg Sargent in the Washington Post.
"A series of mass shootings carried out by deranged men animated by white nationalist ideology — along with the arrests of others allegedly hellbent on carrying out their own carnage — has raised two critical questions," Sargent writes.
"First, does the Trump administration have a comprehensive plan to combat the rising threat of white supremacist and white nationalist terrorism?" he says.
"And second, to what degree does President Trump’s regular trafficking in racist and white nationalist language and tropes — and his tacit winking at such activity — fuel the threat?"
Sargent spoke with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who told him that Democrats intend to probe whether national security officials who work for Trump think his rhetoric is dangerous.
"The threat has grown tremendously,” Raskin told Sargent. “We want to find out from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI what are their strategies and tactics for identifying and preempting white supremacist-inspired violence. We want to know that there is a plan.”
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump once again ripped into The Squad, this time to undercut an emotional press conference in which Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MN) described the conditions her Palestinian relatives live under.
“Sorry, I don’t buy Rep. Tlaib’s tears. I have watched her violence, craziness and, most importantly, WORDS, for far too long,” the president tweeted. “Now tears? She hates Israel and all Jewish people. She is an anti-Semite. She and her 3 friends are the new face of the Democrat Party. Live with it!”
It's become shockingly common for the president to wade into global policy by tweet--unthinkable under an Obama presidency.
Writing in the Washington Post, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin reminds us of when Republicans criticized virtually everything the president did, painting him as weak on the world stage.
Rubin wonders what it would look like if Republicans even bothered holding President Donald Trump to similar standards.
Rubin, who tends to be interventionist on foreign policy, says Obama wasn't forceful enough at times.
"Obama didn’t have the example of a what happens when you stage a precipitous pullout from Iraq, but Trump has Obama’s example," Rubin writes. "Obama was far too passive and hesitant to act in Syria, but he never suggested that Russia take care of matters and never announced a troop withdrawal by tweet."
Still, although he may had made errors on the global stage, he did far better than Trump.
"Obama initially thought he might negotiate a better relationship with Russia, but he never repeated Russian propaganda that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was a defense action, nor did Obama ever take Russian President Vladimir Putin’s word over that of the U.S. intelligence community," Rubin continues.
"He never raised doubts about Russian responsibility for assassinations after our and our allies’ intelligence services found Russia responsible. He surely never bad-mouthed NATO, nor suggested we extort ransom from allies to “pay for” forward- positioning of troops overseas."
The hypocrisy extends to members of the two men's administrations.
"Republicans found plenty to criticize in then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s performance, but in comparison to the parade of yes-men, sycophants and the merely unqualified national security officials that Trump has appointed, Kerry, Susan E. Rice and the rest during the Obama years looked like diplomatic geniuses," Rubin writes. "(And they managed to fill the political posts at Foggy Bottom!) Obama’s secretaries of state never tried to mislead Congress about the assassination of an U.S.-based journalist."
Conservatives like herself who are critical of the president find themselves disconnected from the GOP, she says.
"NeverTrumpers who blasted Obama’s foreign policy missteps and saw excessive reticence in leading the West are somewhat stumped now," Rubin writes.
"Why aren’t identical or worse actions undertaken by Trump and the contempt he shows for American values grounds for Republicans to blast away and ultimately to break with him?"
"Gosh, I can remember the good old days when Mitt Romney’s identification of Russia as the most important geopolitical threat required a resolute defense," she continues.
Rubin digs in deep to expose the hypocrisy of the GOP establishment.
"There are a couple possibilities. Either Obama needs to be recognized as the best foreign policy president — next to Trump — or Trump is a nightmare who underscores all the criticisms that the GOP once directed at Obama," she says.
"Either way, Republicans who fancy themselves as serious on national security have a whole lot of explaining to do. Alternatively, they could simply admit they are partisan hacks for whom hypocrisy is second-nature."
Donald Trump ruthlessly attacked The Squad -- four young lawmakers of color -- throughout the summer, directing them to go back to their home countries even though all four are U.S. citizens.
In response, Republicans continued to largely rally around the president despite his loud and unapologetic racist rhetoric.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, conservative columnist Heather Mac Donald says that Trump himself is a victim of racist attacks.
In a story headlined "Trump Isn’t the One Dividing Us by Race," Mac Donald claims that "He hardly mentions it, while his adversaries are obsessed with ‘whiteness’ and ‘white privilege.’"
"It is the media and Democratic leaders who routinely characterize individuals and groups by race and issue race-based denunciations of large parts of the American polity," Mac Donald claims.
Like many conservatives, MacDonald lays the blame on academia. "America’s universities deserve credit for this double standard," she writes.
"Identity politics dominate higher education: Administrators, students and faculty obsessively categorize themselves and each other by race. “White privilege,” often coupled with “toxic masculinity,” is the focus of freshmen orientations and an ever-growing array of courses."
She also argues that the embrace of identity politics will naturally lead white people to embrace their white identity. "If “whiteness” is a legitimate topic of academic and political discourse, some individuals are going to embrace “white identity” proudly," Mac Donald claims.
The columnist, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, also suggests that identity politics might increase the likelihood of mass violence.
"To note the inevitability of white identity politics in no way condones the grotesque violence of men like the El Paso killer," she says. "But the dominant culture is creating a group of social pariahs, a very small percentage of whom—already unmoored from traditional sources of meaning and stability, such as family—are taking their revenge through stomach-churning mayhem," Mac Donald argues.
"Overcoming racial divisiveness will be difficult. But the primary responsibility rests with its main propagators: the academic left and its imitators in politics and mass media."
On Friday's Fox and Friends, Fox contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy suggested that Medicare for All would increase the likelihood of mass shootings by lowering access to mental health care.
Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.) noted the lack of mental health care in his state, noting that if mass shooters got the treatment they need, they might not go on murderous rampages.
"And I would just say, Medicare for All is going to make that worse. You're going to have less reimbursement for people in the mental health profession," Campos-Duffy said.
"We already have a shortage of that. So, if you're worried about mental health -- which we should be -- in light of all those events that we're seeing, then we really should consider, what will Medicare for All do to our mental health services?"
Suffice it to say, countries that provide government-run public health care do not have higher rates of mass shootings than America.
Watch:
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump spoke before Turning Points USA, a right-wing group primarily composed of young people. As expected, Trump went off on another rant about "The Squad" going so far as to falsely suggest that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an anti-Semite.
Even as some members of his party have cautioned Trump about targeting the four lawmakers, he's continued to ramp up his attacks.
Writing in The Bulwark, conservative columnist Jonathan V. Last wonders if Trump is a symptom or an aggravating factor of our rage-filled times. He highlights a reader's letter, who makes the point that Trump is both a symptom of our angry, divisive culture and that he also makes everything worse. The reader, E.P., observes that Trump's brand of politics can be thought of as akin to meth addiction.
"I see Trump as a symptom so powerful that it becomes its own cause, kind of like a political hard drug," E.P. says. "Let’s pretend that Trump is political meth. (Heroin is a more timely analogy, but meth is perhaps more closely associated with rural whites and—like Trump—it makes you want to fight people.)"
"If you’re deep into meth addiction, you’ve probably lost your job, friends, family, and self-respect," he writes. "All you have is the meth," he says. "This makes you cling even tighter to the very thing that has ruined your life, because despite its terrible long-term effects, every hit (tweet) gives you another burst of that sweet, sweet power that first drew you to the drug."
"The meth doesn’t fix your old problems," he says. "Whatever problems you had before you got hooked on it, they get bigger. But the meth also creates new problems in entirely different categories, too. Again: The analogy with the Republican party here seems pretty on point."
The metaphor extends to the entire GOP, which has done virtually nothing to reign in Trump.
"Was the GOP’s metaphorical descent into meth addiction inevitable? I don’t think so," he says.
"What if Chris Christie hadn’t suicide-bombed Rubio in that debate? What if the Access Hollywood tape had come out during the primaries? What if Hillary had made one more trip through the Midwest? A lot of things could have changed. Maybe the party would have ended up with a less destructive addiction, like political caffeine pills. Or maybe it would have gone straight to Fentanyl and been dead by now."
Read the story here.
On Wednesday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller held a press conference in which he confirmed that he had not charged the President with a crime because it was against Justice Department policy to indict a sitting President. But he also emphasized that his findings did not exonerate the president.
That led political observers to say that Democrats now have the ammunition they need to impeach. Yet, high-level Democratic lawmakers continue to hesitate. On MSNBC Wednesday, host Chris Matthews said it was high time for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to make a decision about whether to start impeachment proceedings.
"Pelosi's gotta make the move now," Matthews said. "This is it. The train whistle's blowing a Pelosi's got to make a decision."
"And it can't be a waiting game like being audited. It can't be a game of kicking the can down the road."
Watch:
The US prosperity gospel preaches that wealth is God's reward. The teachings seem to fly in the face of more traditional Christianity, which advocates humility and helping the poor and vulnerable.
Writing in Christianity Today, Reverend Sam Kim writes about being haunted by the modern Evangelical Christian church's moral vacuity.
"There’s a controversial Instagram account that calls out megachurch pastors for wearing exorbitantly-priced designer sneakers," Kim writes. "The account, @PreachersNSneakers, posts photos of celebrity preachers taken from their social media accounts or public appearances."
"It then pairs up their “swag attire” with a price tag. One pastor can be seen wearing $6,000 Yeezys and $2,500 Hypebeast grail sneakers."
"How does a pastor end up wearing shoes that exceed the annual amount an average American contributes to their retirement?" Kim wonders. 'Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.' This is the consummation of the unholy marriage between American consumerism and the church in America."
He notes that the cultural consumerism that's infect the Church requires that as a Christian he repents.
"These questions haunted me. It was as if they were asking me directly and I had to repent in tears," he writes.
"The goal was always to make disciples; this is what Jesus commissioned in a time before Constantine in Rome and the Church Growth Movement, a time before the church’s ontological identity subtly shifted from being a place from which you were sent out to a place you sat down!"
True Christians need to take the harder road than promoting the worst of American consumerism, even if it might be less popular.
"Jesus said to make disciples, not crowds. The current crisis in the Church is that we have great crowds, but few disciples."
As 2020 approaches, the Trump campaign is gearing up to re-elect the president and team Trump appears to be staking their message on one of the president's biggest lies.
Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Greg Sargent points out that the president is trying to claim a victory on trade -- one that appears to largely be in the president's head.
"President Trump has spent the past 24 hours tweeting manically about trade, repeating the absurd falsehood that China is paying us billions in tariffs" he says. "We keep hearing that this shows Trump 'doesn’t understand' how tariffs work."
Sargent has a better explanation. The president is lying and trying out his re-election campaign strategy.
"But this is better seen as a straight-up, deliberate lie — a lie upon which Trump is staking his reelection," he says.
"A long-term trade war with China now looks plausible. Trump hiked tariffs to 25 percent on $200 billion of Chinese goods on Friday. Monday morning, China announced it will retaliate with new tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods," he continues.
"If this does continue, Trump’s lie about China paying us billions in tariffs will become ever more imperative for him," Sargent says.
"That’s why it’s such a big deal that Fox News’s Chris Wallace debunked this falsehood by getting economic adviser Larry Kudlow to admit that China is not paying the tariffs."
The pitch to American workers is a myth, but possibly an effective one, Sargent says.
"Central to this whole tale has always been the idea that Trump will take back for U.S. workers what this alliance of elites and foreign workers is stealing from them — he will take back what is rightfully theirs," he writes.
"Given all this, failure on China could be catastrophic for Trump. So he’s just swapping in a new story: He’s making China pay restitution to Americans it has ripped off for so long by forcing it to “pay” us in tariffs."
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