“The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not
my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” — Donald Trump, February 17, 2017
A round up of the most interesting, useful and entertaining recent articles and observations on Trump, the Republicans, and politics generally from the enemies of the American People:
Sticking with our headline theme, Trump’s attacks regarding “fake news” and the treasonous press appears to be working with his base:
Most Trump voters, 51 percent, say the media is an enemy to people like them, according to the poll, with 36 percent considering the media unfriendly, and just 5 percent saying it’s friendly or an ally.
That means that 87% of Republicans view the press as some sort of threat. For Democrats, the numbers were 11% (enemy), 8% (unfriendly) and 26% (ally). A Quinnipiac Poll similarly found that 78% of Republicans trust President Trump more than the media “to tell you the truth,” and 73% of Republicans approve of “the way President Trump talks about the media.”
As Greg Sargent warns:
Trump is trying to obliterate the very possibility of agreement on the free press’ legitimate institutional role in our democracy — indeed, he’s trying to obliterate the possibility of shared agreement on reality itself. This has worried some conservatives, too. As Bret Stephens recently put it, Trump is “denying the claim that facts are supposed to have on an argument,” and his overall message is that facts “needn’t have any purchase against a man who is either sufficiently powerful to ignore them or sufficiently shameless to deny them — or, in his case, both.”
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In a perversely related story, Politico has a fascinating/terrifying look at the Trump staffers’ continued need to plant “positive” Trump articles in friendly conservative media outlets — just so they can show the articles to Trump and and hope to contain his own media outbursts:
The key to keeping Trump’s Twitter habit under control, according to six former campaign officials, is to ensure that his personal media consumption includes a steady stream of praise. And when no such praise was to be found, staff would turn to friendly outlets to drum some up — and make sure it made its way to Trump’s desk.
. . . . A former senior campaign official said Nunberg and his successor, former communications director Jason Miller, were particularly skilled at using alternative media like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Infowars and the Daily Caller to show Trump positive coverage.
And once they got the stories published, campaign officials with large numbers of Twitter followers would tweet them out.
They would also go to media amplifiers like Fox News hosts and conservative columnists to encourage them to tweet out the story so that they could print out and show a two-page list of tweets that showed that they were steering the message. While Trump still couldn't contain his Twitter-rage with Machado, and ended up tweeting about a mystery sex-tape of the Hillary Clinton surrogate, aides say they dialed back even more posts.
Count me in on the side that sincerely believes that Trump is mentally ill. Not because of one story like this but because every single back-stage article portrays a figure even more disturbed than the odd figure consistently on public display. At a certain point, we have to be adults and face facts.
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I have no idea why it is so hard for the population to grasp the the gross cynicism and hypocrisy of the Republicans, but here is another example: Republicans have moved to stay their own (to date) successful lawsuit aimed at crippling Obamacare. That’s right. In 2014 House Republicans filed, and had been winning(!), a lawsuit challenging an obscure ACA funding provision which, if Republicans had prevailed on appeal, would have thrown the ACA into immediate financial chaos. Now that a Republican is President? Republicans have essentially told the court: “Never mind . . .”
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Kevin Drum rightly laments the new propensity of Democratically appointed officials to resign after Trump’s election. Among others, SEC Chair Mary Jo White resigned, and now Federal Election Commissioner Ann M. Ravel has resigned, citing inexplicably to the numerous deadlocked votes between the previously three Democrats and three Republicans on the FEC:
Why? With Republicans in control of everything, isn't this precisely the time when Democrats should want to retain as much power as they can muster for as long as they can? Ravel's resignation will break the FEC's frequent deadlocks, but it will break them by almost certainly giving Republicans total control over election policy. This is precisely the thing that Ravel has been fighting against the past three years.
I don't get it. What am I missing here?
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Because the phrase “illegal alien” leads so many to assume that these immigrants are stealing something (or necessarily committing other crimes), pieces like this recent Think Progress article are vital for pointing out the huge economic contribution that the U.S. actually receives from these purported interlopers:
But even if [the Trump administration] were able to deport just the 7 million undocumented workers in this country, out of the estimated 12 million total, it would reduce GDP by 2.6 percent over a decade, according to research from Ryan Edwards and Francesc Ortega at the Center for American Progress (CAP), taking a $4.7 trillion bite out of the economy. (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent project of CAP.) That’s comparable to the job losses experienced during the recent recession.
That lines up with other recent findings from Edwards and Ortega, which calculated that undocumented workers contribute 3 percent of GDP, or nearly $5 trillion in economic growth over ten years. Those contributions would disappear if all of those workers were deported.
The effects could be even more swift. The American Action Forum recently found that deporting all undocumented immigrants could shrink the economy by 2 percent in one year. The organization also found that things get worse the longer the time horizon: over 20 years, GDP would drop by 6 percent.
I believe that the U.S. suffers less from an immigration problem than a citizenship problem. I don't see why most of these immigrants did not have a path to citizenship from the start like my Irish and German ancestors had when they stepped off the boat. The fact that undocumented aliens are this interwoven in our economy, with such huge benefits, shows that their presence was needed. What we have really created is a shadow economy of exploited workers, who lack the vote, the right to organize collectively, and many of the benefits of citizenship such as SS, Medicare, the ACA, a minimum wage and so on. I know . . . these folks are “taking jobs away from Americans” but that is because we wrongly never allowed them to become Americans themselves.
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In the department of “I don’t know what to say,” current NJ Governor and former Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie is reportedly mulling a chance to replace retiring Mike Francesa as the on-air host of WFAN’s drive-time sports radio program:
According to the station's program director, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has a shot.
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"I would certainly at least want to consider him," WFAN program director Mark Chernoff said. "If he's interested and we're interested, it's worth pursuing."
In recent months, Christie has frequently appeared as a fill-in on WFAN's morning show, Boomer and Carton, but hasn't been part of any other day part. With the typical show tenor different between what WFAN's morning and afternoon shows are like, Christie could be in line to net some afternoon fill-in shows this coming summer.
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Some creative folks have seriously stepped up their game with the “Tiny Trump” meme, moving it from photoshopped photos to some terrific live video. You have to take a look: