A home health care nurse in Maine said this week that supporters of President-elect Donald Trump have attacked her and her family with more than 100 calls because conservative websites published the wrong number.
Debbie Oram explained to the Bangor Daily News that the callers are upset at the owner of Turner LP Gas, who said he would not deliver gas to anyone who voted for the president-elect because he believes Trump is the antichrist.
Although Oram has no connection to the gas company, she has received more than 100 calls since Friday. It turns out that her number is one digit off from the number of the gas company. While some of the callers have been polite, the nurse said others have been downright scary.
“I’d appreciate anything you can do to put it out there so these calls will stop,” Oram told the paper. “I would hate to change my number but that’s what I’ll have to do if this doesn’t stop. We’ve had our number for years.”
According to Oram, some of the calls threatened her 21-year-old daughter and her 11-year-old son. Her son was so frightened that he began sleeping in his mother's bedroom.
“They’re saying rude and disgusting things,” she remarked. “I had to go to my doctor today for more anxiety medication because of it.”
Two days after the U.S. presidential election, Marine Le Pen – the leader of the right wing French National Front – tweeted out congratulations to Donald Trump.
During a controversial BBC interview that aired a few days later, Le Pen summed up how she believes the American election will affect her own electoral chances. She said Trump’s victory “renders possible what had been presented as impossible – that what the people want, the people can have.”
Brexit and the election of Trump have given hope not only to Le Pen, but also to her European confrères, such as leader of the Dutch nationalist right Freedom Party Geert Wilders, as they look forward to their own elections in spring 2017. As savvy politicians, they are exploiting the American election for their own purposes.
Yet, despite the temporal coincidence and surface similarities, I believe the election of Trump in the U.S. is fundamentally different from what is occurring in Europe. The Trump phenomenon is not simply an American iteration of European populism. It’s also potentially more dangerous.
populism – or extreme nationalism – began to gain ground in Europe during the 1990s as a reaction against the accelerated process of European integration. European populists sought to preserve their national institutions against encroaching Europeanization – a term they use sometimes interchangeably with globalization. Globalization is a force that has contributed to putting large numbers of people, particularly young people, out of work and facing a bleak future on both sides of the Atlantic.
In contrast, Trump questions the legitimacy of political institutions and the reality of facts in a manner that European populists do not.
Let’s consider the important ways that America and Europe differ by first turning to the European example.
An imperfect union
Le Pen has been gaining ground since the 2012 French presidential election. Recent polls place her on track to move to the final round in the 2017 presidential elections, although most analysts agree she’s unlikely to win the presidency.
For years, scholars have debated whether the lack of direct popular participation in EU governance mattered.
They got their answer beginning in 2008 when economic crisis and austerity politics proved that democracy did matter. European citizens began voting in national parliamentary elections for parties that advocated economic protectionism. For example, in 2011 the True Finns scored 19 percent of the vote. In 2010, the Swedish Democrats had their first breakthrough. In 2012, the Greek left populist party Syriza polled at 16.8 percent and is currently the main party in Greece, and the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn broke through at 7 percent.
The festering European economic crisis was joined by two additional crises in 2015 – the refugee crisis and the security crisis that public terrorist attacks generated. All of this was played out in mass media and provided the final push for nationalist parties across Europe to come close to achieving political power.
An all-American election
Donald Trump is more than an Atlantic Ocean away from Marine Le Pen.
As I see it, Trump’s electoral victory is a peculiarly American product of working-class unemployment, a deep distrust of and resentment of educated elites and a celebrity culture that valorizes street smarts.
We should not forget that Trump was elected at the margins – razor-thin layers of non-college-educated voters living in rural Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania appear to have tipped the outcome of the election.
Trump tapped into what Richard Hofstadter identified in 1966 as “anti-intellectualism” in American life in a way that his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton never could.
Trump’s 3 a.m. tweets exploited social media. His tweets and retweets generated many more millions of followers than traditional media. In a popular cultural world where “Dancing with the Stars” and “American Idol” tell their audience anyone can be a “star,” Trump reigned supreme. On his reality television show “Celebrity Apprentice,” he was the uber-successful billionaire and alpha male who lived in a golden tower – an image that is arguably more accessible to the average person than the closeted world of Hamptons cocktail parties that Clinton was portrayed as inhabiting.
Trump exploited the fears, feelings of neglect and fantasies of his voters. He deployed rhetoric that combined a cadence of danger with megadoses of emotional empathy. Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention invoked law and order and was replete with descriptions of violent acts that victimized ordinary Americans – particularly those who live in inner cities. Trump claimed that he was the “only one” who could save ordinary Americans. He would be their “champion.” He would “fight” for them. He would “win” for them.
A different reality in Europe
In contrast to Trump, European populists are committed conservative nationalists. They are responding to a crisis of management on many levels in EU governance – debt, migration and security. Many are experienced politicians who have held office and have thought out policy positions – no matter how one feels about those positions.
The media often emphasize the anti-immigrant positions of European populists. But these politicians are more than single-issue xenophobes. When European populists say they want to express the will of the people, they have some specific issues in mind. They want to exit the European Union and reestablish national governance. They want to return to the “social Europe” that began to crumble in the 1970s.
An American rootlessness
Trump has tapped into what sociologist Emile Durkheim identified as anomie – a state of profound rootlessness and dislocation that occurs when institutions such as family and work break down. The salesman in Trump seemed to have grasped this instinctively. He was willing to say what perhaps others were thinking and to shatter verbal taboos.
Mussolini inspects athletes at a stadium in Rome on Oct. 31, 1927.
AP Photo
Pundits have also compared Trump to another European figure I’ve studied – Benito Mussolini. Some see similarities in the men’s physical appearance, personal style and authoritarian ways.
This may be a more apt comparison.
The motto of the Italian fascist party was “Believe, Obey, Fight!” – an injunction to action without a defined object – a command to do anything that the leader requires. In other words, style without content.
“Make America Great Again” is a similar slogan. It opens the door to virtually anything. So far it has encouraged white nationalists to justify public attacks on Americans of color which have risen since the election.
It is a rare event when citizens turn their back on things that even basic civics teaches about good governance – such as the legitimacy of political institutions, the free press and the electoral system. This, to my mind, is the true American exceptionalism, and it is profoundly dangerous. Europeans have some idea what the populist script will be; Americans do not.
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) CEO Damon Hininger said this week that he expects profits to soar under the new president's immigration policy.
Although CCA's stock dipped over the summer after the Justice Department announced plans to phase out the use of private prisons, Donald Trump's win caused the company's share price to skyrocket 43 percent on election day alone.
In a Tuesday interview with CNBC, Hininger said that CCA, which recently began rebranding itself as CoreCivic, saw a several opportunities in the first year of Trump's presidency, including a need for increased detention capacity for the housing of undocumented immigrants.
"You guys profit if there's more people in jail," CNBC host Brian Sullivan noted. "And that's not a way any company should be run. You have contracts and limits that say, well, you need to have 90 percent occupancy in a prison."
Hininger argued that Sullivan's charge was "baloney" because the company encourages inmates not to re-offend by offering education and vocational programs.
"We're providing a great service!" the CEO insisted. "We're making sure these individuals once they're released, they can support themselves and their family and not come back into the criminal justice system. That's great value to the government."
Hininger said that the company could "look forward to" a number of favorable circumstances in the next year under the new president.
"First of all, there's immigration," he explained. "If there is a need for more detention capacity on the border, we can provide that solution or if there's a unique population that we need to help serve with ICE."
Additionally, Hininger sees an upside in Trump's promise to rebuild infrastructure, which he believes can be provided by the private prison industry.
"A lot of discussion with the Trump administration about criminal justice reform," he promised.
Watch the video below from CNBC, broadcast Dec. 20, 2016.
Former covert CIA agent J.C. Carleson has predicted that President-elect Donald Trump's disdain for intelligence collected by the the agency will mean that foreign assets eventually refuse to help the United States.
In a column for Fortune this week, the spy-turned-author reacts to reports that Trump is refusing to participate in daily intelligence briefings, which she concedes are not as exciting as "Breitbart headlines" that "create lurid stories out of thin air."
"I fear that Trump’s rejection of both the content and the conclusions offered to him by the intelligence community will have a profound chilling effect on the recruitment of new assets, and the willingness of existing assets to continue to provide information," Carleson writes. "Because, why should someone risk his or her life to provide sensitive information that the world now knows will go unread in our highest office?"
According to the former CIA official, Trump's disregard for human intelligence has "consequences beyond Trump’s own dearth of information, because once again, it serves to erode the motivation of those who might provide us with information we desperately need—information that may include details of threats to American lives and infrastructure, for example."
"The world knows that, in the incoming administration, facts will be ignored, and reasoned analysis will be rejected," she writes. "On an individual level, the why determines the what, and without the motivation of knowing that their sacrifices will ultimately make a difference, CIA sources may choose, in Trump’s parlance, to walk away from the deal."
Oregon City School District officials vowed this week that there would be "consequences" after video began circulating on social media showing two students using racial slurs while complaining about black students enrolling in school.
KATU reported that Snapchat video of the Oregon City High School students was first shared on Twitter over the weekend by former student Marcus Hasan.
In the video, the students also use a racial slur to describe to Principal Tom Lovell.
"What do you think about n****rs?" one student is seen asking. "Tom Lovell is a f*cking n****r who arranges five n****rs a day coming into the school at OCHS. F*ck him. N****r."
Hasan told KATU that the video "made me feel kind of sick because no one should be using [the N-word]."
"When I saw the video I just felt like I needed to post it because all the racist stuff that's been going around in Oregon City," Hasan explained. "And I don't think like everybody really knows what that word means and why they shouldn't be saying that."
Earlier this year, Hasan's girlfriend contacted KATU after someone left a racist note at her house, reading, "Go back to picking cotton, n****r." In October, another student was caught sharing a sign on social media that said, "Welcome back to the farm, n****r."
In a message posted to Twitter on Monday, Lovell said that the most recent video represented "[e]xactly the type of negative behavior we are trying to stop."
"It won't be tolerated," the principal insisted. "There will be severe consequences for this."
"An investigation is underway and individual students will face disciplinary action up to and possibly including expulsion," a statement from the district explained on Monday. "School administrators will also work with the students involved to make this situation a teachable moment and assist them in efforts to repair the pain caused by their actions and words."
The parents of one of the students seen in the video apologized in a statement to KATU.
"The incredible lack of respect displayed for Principal Lovell and others in that video is deplorable," the statement insisted. "We do not condone that kind of speech or hateful message about any race, religion, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation."
"Our son apologizes for his role in this event and deeply regrets the part he played in disseminating that hateful message. He has never used that kind of language or expressed views similar to those in our presence," the parents continued. "By not exercising good judgment, this mistake has taught him an invaluable life lesson about the power of words and the responsibility to use your words to build a better society for all to coexist."
"We apologize for our son’s actions and want you to know that we take this incident seriously. As a result, we have made some decisions for our son that will drastically change his current social circle. He will be engaged in organizations and/or programs that promote equality and tolerance."
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow lamented on Monday that President-elect Donald Trump's transition picks were like the unsavory characters in the bar scene from the 1977 movie Star Wars.
Maddow noted on her Monday show that Trump's staffing choices were particularly troubling in light of the news that Russia's ambassador to Turkey was shot dead in Ankara and that 12 people had been killed during a terrorist attack in Berlin.
"I'm sorry to say it but it's just been a hell of a day," Maddow said, adding that The Guardianreported on Monday that the White House was trying to "prevent a crippling exodus of foreign policy staffers eager to leave before the arrival of the Trump administration."
To make matters worse, Trump has picked Gen. Michael Flynn to be his national security adviser, even though Flynn was dismissed by the Obama administration after the Army said that he shared classified information with foreign military officers. And Trump's pick of Fox News contributor Monica Crowley to be his senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council has pushed conspiracy theories about whether President Barack Obama was a U.S. citizen.
Flynn "was on the payroll of the government of Turkey while serving as a top adviser to the Trump campaign without ever disclosing that fact," Maddow observed. "And the Gong Show/Star Wars bar scene quality of the Trump transition, particularly on national security issues, honestly to me most days it is usually something approaching funny."
"But it is national security and it is hard and dangerous and fraught with peril even in good times," the MSNBC host continued. "But right now, what they are inheriting, these are not good times."
"On national security, I am literally praying that the transition gets better than what it is right now."
Watch the video below from MSNBC, broadcast Dec. 19, 2016.
A group of Republican electors in North Carolina marched and sang "God Bless America" before casting their votes for Donald Trump on Monday.
WRAL reporter Julia Sims tweeted video of North Carolina's 15 electors marching in the rain while they sang. The electors held a sign which read, "Thank you President-elect Donald Trump. Make America Great Again."
Sims also shared video of people in Raleigh protesting Trump with signs like "Fascism is not Freedom" and "Electors Deliver Us From Evil."
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and emerging threats, told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell on Monday that he was not bothered by Russian attacks on the U.S. election because Americans had a right to know what was in private emails sent by Hillary Clinton's campaign staff.
"I've never expressed doubt that Russia hacked into these emails and made them available to the American people," Rohrabacher explained. "I don't care who provided us those emails. The emails were factual and thus the emails -- it did not hurt the American people to have more factual information available to them. This is just a frantic effort to discredit an election because the American people rejected the liberal left effort, the massive campaign against Trump."
Mitchell pointed out that multiple intelligence agencies had come to the same conclusion, and that "a foreign power for the first time tried to not only hack and succeeded, but also leaked to Wikileaks."
"It's not the issue of the output," she insisted. "The issue is the interference and whether or not that kind of hacking needs to be retaliated against or should have been prevented."
"If people are giving the American people are more information, why are you so upset about it?" Rohrabacher laughed.
"Because it's stolen!" Mitchell exclaimed.
Rohrabacher countered with the assertion that Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy "went to Moscow in 1984, met with the head of the KGB and asked if we could arrange some kind of an event that would dislodge Reagan's support in the upcoming election." It's a claim that Politifact has rated as false.
"Now that was treason!" the congressman insisted.
"So, you're saying that stolen information from private emails is an appropriate thing to be leaked by a foreign power?" Mitchell pressed. "Would you like it if Russia hacked into your emails and produced 10 years of your Gmail account?"
"When you're a public official, you know that you are the target of such hacking," Rohrabacher scoffed. "And when we're talking about this particular case, let's figure out what is worse? Hillary destroyed emails that were under subpoena -- she destroyed them. What's worse? That's worse than the Russians hacking in and giving us those emails?"
"No, the destruction of the emails by Hillary was a far worse crime against the America people," he added. "She's trying to keep information from the American people. And if the Russians or whoever it was hacked into that system and gave the American people that information that Hillary had tried to destroy, more power to whoever."
Mitchell attempted to clarify that Rohrabacher was conflating Clinton's private email server with emails Russia stole from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Rohrabacher, however, said that both things were "exactly the same issue."
"You have someone destroying evidence and running for office," he stated. "And they don't expect that their emails can then be hacked into and the American people are not then going to get to know about what she destroyed. That's the real issue here."
Watch the video below from MSNBC, broadcast Dec. 19, 2016.
A student at Kansas State University revealed over the weekend that he quit college after the first semester even though he earned a 4.0 GPA.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, Billy Wilson said that he was withdrawing from the university because he was "being put thousands into debt to learn things you will never even use."
"Yes I have dropped out after finishing my first semester (with a 4.0 GPA)," Wilson wrote. "And it's one of the best choices I've ever made. Not because I am adverse to learning, but actually the exact opposite."
"YOU ARE BEING SCAMMED. You may not see it today or tomorrow, but you will see it some day," he continued. "Heck you may have already seen it if you've been through college. You are being put thousands into debt to learn things you will never even use."
"Wasting 4 years of your life to be stuck at a paycheck that grows slower than the rate of inflation. Paying $200 for a $6 textbook. Being taught by teacher's who have never done what they're teaching."
According to Wilson, "[a]verage income has increased 5x over the last 40 years while cost of college has increased 18x."
"You're spending thousands of dollars to learn information you won't ever even use just to get a piece of paper," he said. "Colleges are REQUIRING people to spend money taking gen. ed. courses to learn about the quadratic formula (and other shit they will never use) when they could be giving classes on MARRIAGE and HOW TO DO YOUR TAXES."
Wilson's conceded that not everyone would agree with his opinion, which sparked more than 3,000 replies on Facebook.
According to Time, college tuition alone has skyrocketed 42,930 percent in the last 100 years, while inflation has risen 2,263 percent.
Morgan Ortagus, a frequent Fox Business pundit and national co-chair of Maverick PAC, asserted that First Lady Michelle Obama should "just smile and be helpful to Melania Trump" instead of voicing her concerns about the president-elect.
While speaking to Oprah Winfrey last week, the first lady reflected on the emotions of some Americans who she said were "feeling what not having hope feels like" after Donald Trump's 2016 victory.
Quoting a phrase often used by Michelle Obama, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo opined on Monday that Trump "went high while she went low."
"You could really hear the disdain in her voice," Ortagus agreed. "People need to understand the American people spoke, the Electoral College voted and it's time to move on. And the American people actually decided that it was a repudiation of the past eight years of the type of presidency that Barack Obama [had] and the policies he's ensued [sic]."
"You didn't hear Laura Bush saying anything eight years ago," the pundit continued. "She was gracious, she was classy, she was warm and welcoming to the new first family. And I think that Ms. Obama needs to take a cue from Laura Bush and probably just smile and be helpful to Melania Trump."
Recon Capital CIO Kevin Kelly snarked that "there is no hope for those people that rely on the government for everything."
"There is no hope for the last eight years," he insisted. "Whatever happened under it is gone."
"What really just irked me about the [Michelle Obama] interview is I thought it was really inappropriate," Ortagus remarked. "If I were in her position, I would think she should be helping the incoming first lady, the incoming administration. It's a huge transition for the first family. Melania Trump has a young son, she had young children. Let's focus on the positive and help the new first family transition."
"It doesn't feel like the other side understands or really cares what the American people just voted for," Bartiromo concluded.
Watch the video below from Fox Business, broadcast Dec. 19, 2016.
Seven-year-old Bana al-Abed, whose Twitter account has offered a tragic account of the war in Syria, was evacuated from the divided Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday, a Turkish NGO announced on social media.
"This morning @AlabedBana was also rescued from #Aleppo with her family. We warmly welcomed them," the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) wrote on its Twitter account, sharing an IHH aid worker's selfie picture with the girl.
For her tens of thousands of followers, Bana is a symbol of the tragedy unfolding in Syria, although Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime has slammed her and her mother's nearly daily tweets as propaganda.
Bana's account has posted pictures of the destruction in Aleppo including her rubble-littered street, while people have tweeted messages of support and concern, notably fearing for her life when tweets became less frequent.
At least 15,000 children are among the more than 300,000 people who have been killed in Syria's five-year war.
Tarakji Ahmad, president of Syrian American Medical Society, also posted a picture of Bana, with an aid worker.
"@AlabedBana and many children arrived to #Aleppo countryside. @sams_usa@UOSSM and partners arr coordinating the response plan there," he tweeted, also announcing the evacuation.
Bana's last tweet with her mother Fatemah before the evacuation made an appeal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for putting a fragile ceasefire back on track after frequent delays.
"Dear @MevlutCavusoglu & @RT_Erdogan please please please make this ceasefire work & get us out now. We are so tired. - Fatemah #Aleppo."
Responding in a tweet Monday, Cavusoglu wrote: "Difficulties on the ground won't deter us sister. Rest assured that we are doing all to get you and thousands of others to safety."
An IHH spokesman confirmed to AFP that the young girl was among the first batch of evacuees Friday morning, and was at Rashidin region at the moment.
"She is likely to be transferred to the camps in Idlib province," he said.
The Islamic charity IHH is playing a large role in the transport of aid for Aleppo as well as the transfer of evacuated Syrians into camps in the Idlib province near the Turkish border.
Evacuation from the rebel-held areas of Aleppo has restarted after further delays, which put on hold the ceasefire agreement brokered by Turkey and Russia.
Over 3,000 people -- in two convoys of around 20 vehicles -- left eastern sections of Aleppo on Monday, after around 350 people got out during the night, marking the first departures since Friday.
The state of Texas this week reportedly began implementing $350 million in Medicaid cuts, which federal agencies have warned will be "devastating" to services provided to disabled children.
KXAS reported on Sunday that the $350 million in cuts to Medicaid program passed by the GOP-controlled legislature had taken effect.
Texas Health and Human Services Commission spokesperson Carrie Williams told the station that the cuts had been implemented to "achieve savings."
But a letter from the U.S. Department of Education earlier this month warned that 12 of the 47 providers participating in the Early Childhood Intervention program could discontinue offering services.
"If these groups do pull out of the program, it will be devastating for kids with autism, speech delays, Down syndrome, and other disabilities and delays," Texans Care for Children CEO Stephanie Rubin told the Herald Democrat in an email. "We know that these groups want to keep serving children and we know staff at [the Texas Health and Human Services Commission] is working hard on this, but the Legislature needs to make sure the funding is in place."
Williams, however, insisted to KXAS that the state's Health and Human Services Commission would "monitor the reduction of rates to ensure access to care is not impacted."
Pennsylvania electors assigned to vote for Donald Trump have been given police protection ahead of Monday's Electoral College vote.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazettereported on Sunday that plainclothes police officers had been assigned to all of state's 20 electors after a torrent of "nasty" emails and phone calls.
"I'm a big boy," elector Ash Khare told the paper. "But this is stupid. Nobody is standing up and telling these people, 'Enough, knock it off.'"
Elector Mary Barket said that her office had received a flood of emails, phone calls and letters expressing fear of a Trump presidency. She said that many people asked her to read Alexander Hamilton's The Federalist Papers No. 68, which asserts that electors have a duty to verify the qualifications of a president.
"I take my job as an elector very seriously, and in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump won," Barket insisted. "So any argument thereafter, especially about the nature of him being a president, is not going to have an effect on me."
