Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, planter, JML9999, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
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From the Washington Post: Trump’s lack of discipline leaves new chief of staff frustrated and dismayed
As the new White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly routes all calls to and from President Trump through the White House switchboard, where he can sign off on them. He stanches the flow of information reaching the president’s desk. And he requires that all staff members — including Trump’s relatives — go through him to reach the president.
But none of those attempts at discipline mattered this week. Instead, Kelly stood to the side as Trump upended his new chief of staff’s carefully scripted plans — pinballing through an impromptu and combative news conference in New York in which he inflamed another self-inflicted controversy by comparing the actions of white supremacist groups at a deadly rally in Charlottesville last weekend with the counterprotesters who came to oppose them.
The uproar — which has consumed not only the White House but the Republican Party — left Kelly deeply frustrated and dismayed just over two weeks into his job, said people familiar with his thinking. The episode also underscored the difficult challenges that even a four-star general faces in instilling a sense of order around Trump, whose first instinct when cornered is to lash out, even self-destructively.
From Political Wire: Steve Bannon, Unrepentant
White House adviser Stephen Bannon called Robert Kuttner at the American Prospect to discuss his article on China but apparently didn’t realize the entire conversation was on the record.
Among the highlights:
- He admitted he was fighting with colleagues: “That’s a fight I fight every day here. We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying… We gotta do this. The president’s default position is to do it, but the apparatus is going crazy. Don’t get me wrong. It’s like, every day.”
- He undercut the president’s threats on North Korea: “There’s no military solution, forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”
- He explained his strategy towards race: “The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
- On white nationalists: “Ethno-nationalism—it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more. These guys are a collection of clowns.”
From The Hill: Fox's Shep Smith: We couldn't find a Republican willing to come on and defend Trump
Fox News host Shepard Smith said Wednesday that the network tried and failed to get a Republican on-air to defend President Trump's controversial comments on violence in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend
"Our booking team — and they're good — reached out to Republicans of all stripes across the country today," Smith said on his show "Shepard Smith Reporting."
"Let's be honest, Republicans don't often really mind coming on Fox News Channel. We couldn't get anyone to come and defend him here because we thought, in balance, someone should do that," he continued.
"We worked very hard at it throughout the day, and we were unsuccessful. And of those who are condemning the president's condemnable actions, I've not heard any prominent leaders, former presidents, members of the House or the Senate use his name while speaking in generalities," he said.
From Talking Points Memo: Foxer Breaks Down in Tears Over Alt-Righters Being Judged
A Fox News talking head, Melissa Francis, breaks down in tears over everyone on the “unite the right” side of the Charlottesville march being ‘judged’.
From CNN: Report: Trump lawyer sends email touting Robert E. Lee, warning of 'terrorist' infiltration of Black Lives Matter
A personal lawyer to President Donald Trump forwarded an email comparing Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to founding US President George Washington, and saying that the activist movement Black Lives Matter "has been totally infiltrated by terrorist groups," The New York Times reported Wednesday evening.
The email, with the subject line "The Information that Validates President Trump on Charlottesville," was forwarded by Trump lawyer John Dowd to conservative journalists, government officials and friends, the Times reported,
citing a copy of the email that was provided to them by one of its recipients.
Dowd, a well-known DC-based attorney, joined Trump's personal legal team
in June.
On Washington and Lee, the email argues that "both owned slaves," "both rebelled against the ruling government," "both men's battle tactics are still taught at West Point," "both were great men, great Americans and great commanders" and "both saved America."
"There literally is no difference between the two men," the email says, according to The Times. "You cannot be against General Lee and be for General Washington."
From Yahoo! News: McConnell weighs in — 'There are no good neo-Nazis' — without mentioning Trump
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared Wednesday that neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups “should not be welcome anywhere in America” and that “we all have a responsibility to stand against hate and violence, wherever it raises its evil head.”
Unlike some Republicans, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, McConnell made no direct mention of President Trump. But his statement seemed — and was viewed by one White House adviser — as a pointed rebuke to the president’s press conference remark Tuesday that “you also had some very fine people on both sides” in the violent protests in Charlottesville over the weekend.
“There are no good neo-Nazis, and those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms,” McConnell said in a statement released by his press office.
“He’s basically saying f*** you to the president,” said one White House adviser when he was read McConnell’s statement by a reporter.
From Stat: White nationalists are flocking to genetic ancestry tests. Some don’t like what they find
It was a strange moment of triumph against racism: The gun-slinging white supremacist Craig Cobb, dressed up for daytime TV in a dark suit and red tie, hearing that his DNA testing revealed his ancestry to be only “86 percent European, and … 14 percent Sub-Saharan African.” The studio audience whooped and laughed and cheered. And Cobb — who was, in 2013, charged with terrorizing people while trying to create an all-white enclave in North Dakota — reacted like a sore loser in the schoolyard.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, just wait a minute,” he said, trying to put on an all-knowing smile. “This is called statistical noise.”
Then, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he took to the white nationalist website Stormfront to dispute those results. That’s not uncommon: With the rise of spit-in-a-cup genetic testing, there’s a trend of white nationalists using these services to prove their racial identity, and then using online forums to discuss the results.
But like Cobb, many are disappointed to find out that their ancestry is not as “white” as they’d hoped. In a new study, sociologists Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan examined years’ worth of posts on Stormfront to see how members dealt with the news.
From Raw Story: ‘I’m terrified’: Neo-Nazi blubbers like a baby in video reporting he’s wanted for arrest in Charlottesville
Neo-Nazi Christopher Cantwell — who was one of the “Unite the Right” Charlottesville marchers interviewed by Vice.com — released a weepy, rambling video of himself discussing the fact that a warrant was issued for his arrest.
“I called the Charlottesville Police Department,” Cantwell said, “and said, ‘I have been told there’s a warrant out for my arrest.’ They said they wouldn’t confirm it but that I could find this out I could go to a magistrate or whatever.”
“With everything that’s happening, I don’t think it’s very wise for me to go anywhere,” he continued. “There’s a state of emergency, the National Guard is here!”
He kept breaking off to wipe away tears, saying, “I don’t know what to do. I need guidance.”
“Our enemies will not stop, they’ve been threatening us all over the place,” he whined before freaking out that Chelsea Manning is threatening to “curb stomp” Nazis.
From Vice: Doxxing White Supremacists Is Making Them Terrified
In the days since the Charlottesville rally and as white nationalists have been identified in photos on social media, white supremacists have fretted —often self-pityingly—about the risks posed by social media mobs bent on exposing their identities. In one forum thread on the Daily Stormer, which recently went dark after being cut off by both Google and GoDaddy, a user lamented that the peril of doxxing made attending a rally too scary for him. "The thought of getting outed as 'white supremacists' to our employers and possibly losing our jobs is a horrifying prospect," the user Ignatz wrote. If forced to choose between a rally, which could bring him unwanted exposure, or supporting his white family, he says he would choose the latter.
It isn't any safer for those doing the doxxing or identifying. Logan Smith, the Twitter user behind Yes You're Racist, had been helping reveal the identities of white supremacists at the Charlottesville Rally. Smith told the News and Observer that his reporting had led to death threats. "They have been threatening my family, too. The overall response of course has been 99 percent positive, but there's always that extremely small but extremely loud and extremely angry minority that bites back." Logan's account also tweeted photos that were misidentified.
Sometimes alt-righters doxx each other, which isn't a surprise to Hankes. "The alt right is a group of malignant contrarians so they're constantly bickering with each other," says Hankes. "Charlottesville was an outlier in many respects because of how coordinated they were, and how they kept infighting to a minimum."