The last two weeks would seem to demand another advance of the Fascism Watch. After all, we saw Trump and Nunes collaborate on a work of fantasy that was purpose-built to damage the justice system of the United States. Despite objections from both the FBI and the Department of Justice, Trump unclassified it in full and pushed the document back to the House where it was published without a single letter being redacted.
The White House then “considered” a memo drafted by Democratic members of Congress that pointed out the eras in the Nunes memo and debunked the central theme concerning Republican efforts to demean the FBI and halt Robert Mueller’s investigation. After waiting all week, on Saturday, White House counsel Don McGahn emerged to say that Trump would not be releasing the Democratic memo. His excuse — the FBI and DOJ asked that the memo not be released.
In fact, the exact same people appeared before Trump with concerns about both memos. When it came to the memo Trump wanted to release, he was completely deaf to those concerns. When it came to the memo showing that everything Trump had supported was less substantial than hot hair, suddenly those concerns from the DOJ became concerns.
The absolutely asymmetrical, partisan approach to documents on a matter of genuine national import would seem worth at least another minute of movement toward fascism midnight — especially as Trump continued to make false statements about the FBI in general and FBI leadership in particular.
Really, the only thing that stops the Fascism Watch from advancing is … incompetence. The last two weeks were a showcase of incompetence on the Republican side, from Nunes to Trump to Porter to Kelly to … everything. Trump has certainly demonstrated often enough that it’s possible to be both ridiculous and ridiculously destructive, but this past week has also made it clear that even a direct assault on democracy can be so poorly executed that it simply … fails. This week, these jackasses were simply too bad at everything to fear.
I’ll probably regret that when everyone is forced to take part in the All Americans Must Attend, two thousand mile, Pledge Allegiance to Trump Parade, at the end of which Trump will press his giant button while sitting on his golden throne.
But for now, let’s go read pundits.
Authoritarianism Now
Leonard Pitts makes it clear just how far down the line we’ve gone.
So apparently this is now Republican Party doctrine:
You can’t trust the news media. They’re biased.
You can’t trust the CIA. They’re hacks.
You can’t trust the Justice Department. It’s unfair.
You can’t trust the FBI. It’s disgraceful.
But you can trust Donald Trump.
It doesn’t matter whose name you put at the end of that list — take out Donald Trump, put in the name of someone you find far more honorable — and this statement could still be deeply concerning. Because accepting those statements is all it takes to end democracy.
The bizarreness of this cannot be overstated. Nor can the hypocrisy and the gutlessness. But we are here to talk about the danger.
For almost 50 years, Americans have fretted over the erosion of trust in our government. Well, erosion has now become destruction.
As I do so often when giving you parts of a Pitts column, I’m going to make this suggestion — go read the rest. Go read it all.
Yes, there will inevitably come moments when institutions disappoint and yes, one is obligated to challenge them when they do. But this is not that. This is dangerous distrust sown for political gain by an opportunistic narcissist. And it’s working. Already a new Reuters poll says that 73 percent of Republicans now think the FBI is unfair to Trump — 73 percent.
Is this country in trouble now?
You’d better believe it.
Last week I interviewed the authors of How Democracies Die. If that title sounds ominous, it should. But if you missed it the first time, it’s also worth looking at what these guys had to say about the relationship between authoritarians and law enforcement.
Gary Abernathy has a suggestion for Trump’s parade.
Honoring our veterans and the freedoms they have protected on Memorial Day with modest parades in small towns or the humble services that are conducted in cemeteries in almost every town or big city across the nation are open displays of unabashed patriotism, but they are a far cry from the kind of ostentatious, muscle-flexing military review rumbling down Pennsylvania Avenue suggested by President Trump.
The president’s critics believe Trump is trying to glorify himself under the guise of honoring our armed forces. I will be more generous to the president by assuming that he merely wants to pay tribute to the men and women serving our nation in uniform, while perhaps reminding our enemies of the power and might of our military.
If the purpose of the parade is to honor the men and women in the military, then there’s a simple solution. Let them sit in the stands. Have Trump and Pence and the entire cabinet march a few miles in the sun past the veterans, tossing off a wave here and there, and shouting his thank yous.
If there’s a “reviewing stand” where Trump stands still and receives the salute of passing soldiers, they are not the one who is being honored.
Through the years, I have watched televised military parades and demonstrations in places such as Russia, China and North Korea, and they have never served to make me more fearful of those nations, and certainly no more respectful. Instead, I have always felt they represented the hollow threats of insecure leaders attempting to bully the world and inflate their own egos. That is not what America does.
But it’s what Trump does. In fact, hollow threats from an insecure bully is pretty much all Trump does.
Anne Applebaum and the ghost of fascism present.
Anti-Semitism is back. Not just as a nasty little fringe sentiment, and not just in the Breitbart comment sections. Not just in social media either, although anyone who posts or tweets and has a Jewish-sounding surname (and even many who don’t) has had to get used to the fact that social media is a perfect conduit for language that would once have been too filthy to use.
The horrible thing about the Antisemitism Applebaum points out in the UK is that it’s coming from both right and left. But the fire from the right is definitely getting hotter.
On Thursday, the paper ran an extraordinary front-page headline splash about George Soros, the Jewish financier, and his “secret plot to thwart Brexit.” The same story — also reported in more ordinary language in other British papers — in fact concerned a non-secret donation that is by no means unique. There are several anti-Brexit groups in Britain with private funding from wealthy people, just as there are several pro-Brexit groups with private funding from wealthy people. ... The following day, the Daily Mail — a newspaper owned by a billionaire — and the Sun — a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, a nonresident billionaire — picked up the same story with the same imagery. The latter referred to Soros as a “puppeteer.”
The scary thing is that Antisemitism, on social media and in the paper, now speaks with no concern that it will be confronted by authority. It speaks as if it is in authority.
He-Man Woman-Haters Club, White House Chapter
Ruth Marcus on the ugliest couple in Washington.
In the spirit of the Olympics, it has long been clear who takes the gold medal for worst performer in the White House. (Hint: His office has no corners.) Now, it’s time to award the silver medal to an unexpected choice: Chief of Staff John F. Kelly.
People who didn’t expect Kelly to be another vicious bully with a God complex ignored how he ran ICE and how he operated in the military. The “grownup in the room” was always another ass.
Trump’s beef with Priebus, as The Post reported on the occasion of his firing, was that Priebus was “weak, weak, weak.” Kelly’s allure, for Trump Chief of Staff 2.0, was his standing as one of “my generals,” as Trump likes to call them. Just as Priebus revealed Trump’s insatiable desire for stroking, Kelly illustrated his unsettling attraction to strongmen. …
The problem, as it turned out, was that Kelly not only reinforced some of Trump’s worst instincts — he displayed them himself. Where Trump resisted condemning white separatists protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville last summer, Kelly followed a few months later with a paean to Lee as “an honorable man” and asserting that “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.”
Kelly’s not a check on Trump. He’s an enabler who shares Trump’s dismissive attitude toward women, toward minorities, and toward anyone who isn’t John Kelly. It may be cute that he’s occasionally said something about the moron in the next office, but the reason he does that is because he’s just like Trump.
Kathleen Parker on the clear signal that comes from the White House clinging to Rob Porter.
What possible reason could there be to keep someone inside the classified world of the White House under such circumstances? Not only is there reason to question his character, but the overarching message here is that this White House isn’t much concerned about domestic violence.
The simple answer may be that Porter was one of only a few people over on Pennsylvania Avenue who knew how to do anything. For one, he’s well connected in Republican circles. His father, Roger Porter, worked in three administrations and was, I’m told, top drawer. The younger Porter, 40, is a Rhodes scholar who worked for Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), for whom he was chief of staff.
Moreover, he was at Harvard at the same time as Jared Kushner, who took a class from the senior Porter on the American presidency.
So … the argument here is that Porter was a name that Kushner knew, and he made Republicans on the Hill comfy. Oh, and also, that he was the only person around who knew how to do anything. Sure, he’s a serial abuser … but he knows how to handle paperwork, and that’s above the heads of everyone else on Trump’s team.
The shock and awe emanating from the White House about Porter aren’t so much a commentary on the man, but testament to the surreal and potentially perilous incompetence surrounding the president. Nearly every day reconfirms the reality that having once been a chief executive (or a reality TV star) is no recommendation for governance.
Being a business “leader” was always a rotten qualification for political office, and Trump was never even that.
Jessica Valenti on why Porter was such a good fit for Trump.
It’s no secret that Trump respects men who keep women in their place: “You have to treat ’em like shit.” Perhaps that’s why top White House staffer Rob Porter got a hero’s goodbye this week, even as a picture of his ex-wife’s battered face was splashed across the news.
Porter, accused of assaulting both of his ex-wives and a former girlfriend, gave his resignation but “was not pressured to do so”, according to press secretary Sarah Sanders. In fact, Sanders lauded Porter as having the full confidence of the president and Gen John Kelly, and took the time to read , in which he called the accusations “vile” and a “smear campaign”.
It would be nice if one of the reporters at the White House would ask Sarah Sanders if she had a single strand of human dignity remaining, though the answer seems like a foregone conclusion.
At this point perhaps it’s easier if we just sort out which of the president’s men hasn’t been accused of beating women.
Propaganda
Dana Milbank wonders why Trump continues to get away with a lie as an excuse for his wall.
At a Cabinet meeting Nov. 20, Trump announced, with cameras rolling, that “we lost a Border Patrol officer just yesterday, and another one was brutally beaten and badly, badly hurt. . . . We’re going to have the wall.” He also issued a similar tweet.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, offered a reward “to help solve this murder” and to “help us catch this killer.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) declared the incident “a stark reminder of the ongoing threat that an unsecure border poses.”
A Border Patrol agent in San Diego stands near prototypes for President Trump’s border wall with Mexico in November. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
And then there was Fox News, reporting that “a border patrol agent was brutally murdered” and going with the headline “Border Patrol agent appeared to be ambushed by illegal immigrants, bashed with rocks before death.” Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported that Martinez was “attacked at the border in the most gruesome possible way.”
And every last word of that was a lie. The evidence from the beginning was that border patrol agent Rogelio Martinez was the victim of an accident, and every investigation has come to that same conclusion. But an accident doesn’t serve Trump’s narrative.
Most Americans will never learn what investigators found about the border attack — because they were being exposed to a new hoax this week: that the key to the United States’ success is in borrowing more. “JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!” Trump tweeted in celebration after the two-year budget deal cleared Congress Friday morning.
But the economy is already near full employment — exactly the wrong time to enact a stimulus, typically done to jolt an economy out of recession. … The tax cut and spending spree leave the government with less power to combat a recession. And a recession is exactly what Wall Street fears as the overstimulated economy forces up inflation and interest rates.
Nancy Pelosi
Karen Tumulty is looking down to defend Nancy’s shows.
The fact is, for women in politics, footwear is a metaphor — one feminists themselves have embraced.
Shoes on a powerful woman do more than just get her from one place to another. They can declare her female identity and her determination to power through to victory on an uneven playing field.
They can awe. …
At the other end of the statement-shoe spectrum were the rouge-red Mizuno Wave Rider trainers that got Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) through an 11-hour filibuster against an antiabortion bill in 2013. The shoes became a bestseller.
Tumulty is right in that no one would mention the shoes a man was wearing … but then, men wear uniformly blah shoes. As someone who wears pair of REI hiking boots that long ago passed the “would you please throw those things away” line every single day of the year, I’m probably the wrong person to be reading this article.
Dana Houle — that would be former DK guy Dana Houle, appearing this week in the Washington Post, that Dana Houle — has some non-footwear-related statements to make about Pelosi.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke on the House floor for eight hours Wednesday, giving the longest speech in that chamber in at least a century. She did so to pressure Speaker Paul D. Ryan to permit a vote on protecting the roughly 700,000 undocumented “dreamers.” Republicans expressed delight that eyes were on the polarizing Pelosi, but her marathon speech served to energize activists while highlighting that House Republicans will not commit to a vote. Despite having little leverage, she scored a tactical success.
Honestly, how Pelosi became a “polarizing” figure, I’ll never understand. I understand that Republicans have managed to turn her name into a curse, and driven her popularity through the floor. I just don’t understand what it is that they think they’re attacking when they attack Pelosi. Women? Success? Successful women?
Pelosi is one of the most underrated American politicians of the past half-century. Her media and activist critics judge her competence and leadership almost entirely based on her performance in front of a microphone. Pelosi has never tried, as Ryan did, to seduce the press, and what she says in public is occasionally convoluted. Her strength is in what she does away from the microphones.
I know Dana’s piece hit the streets on Friday, so many of you may have seen it earlier. I just didn’t want anyone to miss it.
History
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are having flashbacks.
We’re here again. A powerful and determined president is squaring off against an independent investigator operating inside the Justice Department. Robert Mueller’s mission is a comprehensive look at Russian meddling in the 2016 election — and any other crimes he uncovers in the process. President Trump insists it’s all a “witch hunt” and an unfair examination of his family’s personal finances. He constantly complains about the investigation in private and reportedly asked his White House counsel to have Mueller fired. No wonder many people are making comparisons to the “Saturday Night Massacre” of 1973, when President Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned.
Is there such a thing as an “unpowerful” president? In any case, what Woodward and Bernstein deliver here is a detailed blow-by-blow of the events leading up to the Saturday Night Massacre, the failed attempts by Nixon’s staff to save their boss, and the results generated from putting people in impossible positions. Maybe the most concerning thing is how close the team came to a compromise that would have left Archibald Cox without the power to seek the evidence he needed, while providing cover to Nixon. It just shows that firing Mueller is only one of many options that remain when it comes to Trump’s ability to sabotage the Russia investigation.
Gary Younge on why that truck commercial is more than just bad taste.
When it comes to throwing its arms around a man it once loathed, American capitalism outdid itself last weekend, using a recording of a sermon King delivered about the value of service to sell Ram Trucks – “Built to Serve” – during the Superbowl. ...
Individuals are elevated to icons: Parks is sold as a demure seamstress, ignoring a life of activism in which she insisted on the right to use violence in self-defence. Or they are condemned to invisibility: Claudette Colvin was ejected from a bus nine months before Parks after also refusing to give up her seat, but her cause was dropped after she became pregnant at 15. Until recently, she was left out of the story altogether.
Younge’s point is not that King doesn’t deserve nationwide praise, or that he — or anyone else — should be free from criticism. Only that the whole nature of the past is being distorted by commercial forces that would rather treat men like King as if most Americans always loved them rather than admit the ugly, uneven course of the truth. Sure, there were bad guys with hoses and dogs, but real Americans didn’t do things like that. Except they did. King wasn’t safe enough for most Americans until he was dead.
Using King’s words to sell trucks both diminishes the real importance of the speech, and also robs it of the genuinely radical force that it represents.
… because before radical history can be embraced by the establishment it must be washed clean of whatever ideology made it effective. Radical change is most likely to come from below, be fiercely resisted by entrenched interests from above and achieved through confrontation. “If those who have do not give, those who haven’t must take,” argued the late anti-racist intellectual Ambalavaner Sivanandan. This is not a message those in power are keen to promote, lest their own interests be challenged.
One part of the speech that the folks behind the commercial didn’t include —
In the case of the Ram Trucks ad, this whitewashing couldn’t have been more blatant. In another part of the sermon that was used, King literally tells the congregation not to be fooled into spending more money than necessary on cars by sharp advertisers.