The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.
Juan Cole at Informed Comment writes—Did Saudi prince Bin Salman personally Hack Jeff Bezos’s Phone, Vacuuming up Secrets? What about Jared Kushner?
We’ve long known that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone was hacked. Large amounts of data were taken off of it, including intimate photographs and evidence of a romantic affair, which then showed up in The National Enquirer. The tabloid’s publication of this private material led to Bezos’s divorce and the loss of half of his fabulous wealth. A careful forensic investigation of the hack now shows that Bezos’s phone was compromised when he opened a message on Whatsapp from the personal cell phone of Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman. The message contained malicious software that installed itself as soon as Bezos clicked on it to open it. This according to Stephanie Kirchgaessner, reporting for The Guardian.
The revelation that Bin Salman himself played a pivotal role in the attempt to ruin Bezos’s life over the Washington Post‘s reporting on Saudi Arabia and on Donald Trump should send chills down the spine of everyone who has ever chatted with the prince over Whatsapp.
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—The Senate Trial and the Death of Reason:
With Fox News and the rest of the right-wing propaganda network providing the filter through which one side of the political divide viewed the presentations, Senate Republicans are free to take on the role of collaborators in covering up the truth. Charles Pierce nailed it.
In this, no Republican was different from any other Republican. Lisa Murkowski and Tom Cotton were the same. Thom Tillis and Ted Cruz were the same. Cory Gardner and Jim Inhofe were the same. Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse were the same as Mike Rounds and Mike Enzi. And they were all the same as Mitch McConnell. There were no moderate Republicans in the Senate on Tuesday. There were no Never Trumpers. There were only collaborators. There was no independence in the Senate on Tuesday, only complicity. And it was a deadening, sad thing to watch.
In that sense, the House managers and the president’s defense team were, indeed, playing two completely different games. The former were providing facts and evidence, while all the latter had to do was show up and count on their propaganda network to gin up fear and loathing for anyone who dares to challenge the president. That is why we are witnessing the death of reason on the Republican side.
Andrew Gawthorpe at The Guardian writes—Republicans have turned the impeachment trial into a dangerous sham:
While previous presidents tended to seek incremental increases in presidential power in service of what they believed, rightly or wrongly, to be the common good, Trump does the exact opposite. He seeks not just one particular new power but complete freedom from scrutiny for his conduct, and he does so in service not of any plausible national interest but rather purely to shield himself from the consequences of his abuses of power.
Trump appears to give little thought to his actions, but McConnell does. Just as he decided that refusing to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland was worth imperiling the legitimacy of the supreme court, now he has decided that the political survival of Donald Trump is worth creating the precedent that future presidents do not have to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”. The only remedy is to channel public anger into a Democratic seizure of the Senate, and remake a broken institution as an instrument of the public good rather than a rubber-stamp legislature for the would-be authoritarian in the White House. If you want to see the consequences of failing to do so, just tune into the “trial.”
As a colleague of mine who knows farms points out, Pence’s claim is “spectacularly” wrong.
Elie Mystal at The Nation writes—The Republicans Have Revealed Their Impeachment Strategy—Lying:
During his opening remarks at the Senate removal trial of Donald Trump, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone lied. Repeatedly. Cipollone said that Republicans were not allowed in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility to participate in depositions taken during the House’s impeachment investigation. That is a demonstrable lie. He accused Representative Adam Schiff of having “manufactured” a “false version” of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. That’s not true. He played fast and loose with the timeline around the Zelensky call, alleging a controversy over the first phone call that never happened.
We, as a country, are used to President Trump lying almost every time he opens his mouth. We are used to his state-sponsored media sycophants going on television and lying for the president every night. We are used to Republicans lying to stay in lockstep with Trump.
But we haven’t seen the Trump people lie so brazenly in court, or something that appears to be court. We haven’t seen them lie after oaths have been taken. A lot of people thought that a trial presided over by the chief justice of the United States would be the moment where the lying stopped.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Why Democrats owe a debt to Mitch McConnell:
Recall that when Democrats were debating whether to impeach President Trump last year, those opposed to the move argued there was no chance that Senate Republicans would remove him from office, committed as they are to marching off any cliff toward which the president directs them.
The fear was that Trump would inevitably tout acquittal in the Senate as vindication. He’d say that impeachment was, to use a word invoked over and over by his hapless lawyer Pat Cipollone on the Senate floor (because he had little of substance to say), “ridiculous.”
But #MidnightMitch, as the Senate leader was labeled by his Twitter critics, rode to the rescue. By working with Trump to rig the trial by admitting as little evidence as possible, McConnell robbed the proceeding of any legitimacy as a fair adjudication of Trump’s behavior.
Noah Bookbinder at The New York Times writes—The American People Are Being Scammed by Mitch McConnell. Senators have a duty to conduct a fair and full trial. The Republican leader is trying to make sure they can’t:
The removal of a sitting president is the last line of defense provided by the framers of the Constitution against the abuse of power by the leader of our country. When senators take an oath to uphold the Constitution, they assume the grave responsibility to conduct a thorough and fair trial on behalf of the American people.
Dismissing this process set out in the Constitution, President Trump has called the impeachment process a “scam.” That’s his opinion, of course — but this week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing everything he can to ensure that the Senate trial actually is a scam.
An impeachment trial is only meaningful if the American people can have confidence in the fairness of the process; only then will the trial’s verdict be worthy of respect. Mr. McConnell is advocating trial procedures that would undercut any possibility of that.
Michael Winship, Schumann Senior Writing Fellow for Common Dreams was previously the Emmy Award-winning senior writer for Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com. At Common Dreams, he writes—The Imperative of Pulling Together to Beat the Trump Who Would Be King:
That 1972 campaign to defeat Richard Nixon for reelection began with 15 hopefuls seeking the Democratic nod, including Shirley Chisolm, the first African-American woman to run for the nomination, and Rep. Patsy Mink, the first Asian-American.
There was much dissension within the ranks—some of it, we now know, fostered by dirty tricksters from the Nixon campaign—as well as honest disagreements on issues that roiled the primary season. When the dust had cleared, McGovern was the nominee—in part because reforms he helped engineer took a lot of the electioneering out of the backrooms and gave increased power to grassroots organizing.
But sadly, McGovern’s success in ’72 ended there. As the general election race against Nixon began, his campaign was wounded by the discovery that vice presidential pick Tom Eagleton had failed to let McGovern know he had received electroshock therapy for depression. He withdrew and was replaced by Sargent Shriver. What’s more, many party regulars were resentful of the McGovern reformers; some even refused to endorse or vote for him. [...]
No, November 3 will be our best chance and no matter the Democratic candidate, we must band together as one to make it happen—the defeat of a man who, honest to God, reportedly tried to read aloud part of the Constitution and proclaimed, “It’s like a foreign language.”
Matt Ford at The New Republic writes—Alan Dershowitz Hasn’t Changed One Bit. The celebrity attorney has spent much of his career defending the interests of scandal-plagued elites—and profiting from it:
The American legal community has spent the Trump era wondering aloud what happened to Alan Dershowitz. He told me in 2018 that he hadn’t actually changed; it was everyone else who was different. There’s a certain truth to this. Dershowitz’s career is a testament to the effects that celebrity, affluence, and fame can have on even the most formidable legal minds. His client in the Senate trial won’t be Trump, or even the presidency as an institution, but power itself.
Dershowitz, like Trump, also has an ineluctable power to draw media attention. “I’ve discovered that the most dangerous place to be in the criminal justice system is not the Federal Penitentiary at Marion or the holding cell at the Tombs, but between Alan Dershowitz and a television camera,” Brian Wice, a Texas lawyer who worked alongside him in the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker case, quipped in 1991. Dershowitz’s ubiquitous appearances on television made him perhaps the best-known living American lawyer in the 1980s and 1990s. One book reviewer, writing about O.J. Simpson lawyer Robert Shapiro’s account of the TV-driven case in 1996, wondered if Shapiro had hired Dershowitz “mainly to shut him up.”
Malaika Jabali at The New Republic writes—The Shallow “Unity” of The New York Times’ Endorsements:
On Sunday, after much fanfare, The New York Times’ editorial board announced its presidential endorsement, which was actually a decision to endorse two candidates: Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. “Both the radical and the realist models” being offered in the Democratic primary “warrant serious consideration,” the board wrote, and so voters must decide which is “best suited for repairing the Republic.”
As much as the op-ed served to announce the board’s endorsements, it was also an opportunity to issue some warnings: “Any hope of restoring unity in the country will require modesty, a willingness to compromise and the support of the many demographics that make up the Democratic coalition—young and old, in red states and blue, black and brown and white.” Bernie Sanders, they argued, would merely exchange “one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another.” (This is also where Warren falters, according to the board: “She sometimes sounds like a candidate who sees a universe of us-versus-thems, who, in the general election, would be going up against a president who has already divided America into his own version of them and us.”)
The rhetoric of unity to restore American democracy feels good on its face, but the board seems untroubled by and uninterested in the question of who, exactly, might be united under a future president. And by what?
Andrea Miller at The Nation writes—There’s a New Playbook for Securing Abortion Access. Recent wins suggest that we are more effective when we proudly proclaim our support for abortion access for all—and defend that position when the attacks come:
What we are learning—led by activists and advocates who are fighting the attacks on the front lines—is that we are more effective when we publicly proclaim our support for abortion access for all and stand strong to defend that position when the ugly and deceitful attacks come. Hiding or apologizing for our support for abortion access will not prevent the attacks, and only contributes to abortion stigma. In the 1990s, many Democrats hedged their support for abortion rights by adopting Bill Clinton’s formulation that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” In those years, Pennsylvania, with the White House, mounted a direct challenge to Roe that went to the Supreme Court and the federal government enacted the first-ever federal abortion ban. The years 1990 to 1999 also represent the greatest number of murders and attempted murders of abortion providers and clinic staff by anti-abortion zealots on record. History suggests that silence and shame do not mitigate political attacks on abortion or prevent violence against those on the front lines.
Progressive legislators and the voting public are recognizing that anti-choice forces will stop at nothing to undermine, and someday overturn, Roe, and are shoring up state protections accordingly. But there’s also a deeper change afoot. Victories like the ones we saw last year are not possible without strong voter support and the infrastructure to create the conditions for success. In 2019, 29 states and Washington, DC, introduced 143 bills to improve abortion access, up from just 12 bills in nine states in 2014. States have expanded insurance coverage for abortion and presidential candidates are calling for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, thanks to the sea change in support for Medicaid funding for abortion brought about by the All* Above All campaign.
Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer writes—Call Richmond’s MLK Day gun rally what it was: An outbreak of terrorism on American soil:
The event — part of a just-OK idea to make the King holiday a “Lobby Day” to allow citizens to air their grievances which increasingly has become a gun-lobby day in the last few years — was a rally led by the Virginia Citizens Defense League that drew an estimated 22,000 to a state capital on a total lockdown, with guns banned from the fenced-in site of the actual event. Most attendees milled around outside the fences — armed to the teeth, waving their long guns to see who had the biggest one. When the event ended early Monday afternoon, there was a palpable sigh of relief both in Richmond and around a nation that had just watched the armed hijacking of MLK Day.
To use a popular buzzword of 2020 by way of 1920, I’m here to call “malarkey” on the popular notion that what went down in Richmond was “peaceful.” To the contrary, America — although we may be too frightened to even admit it — just witnessed arguably the most successful use of terrorism on U.S. soil in nearly a generation, even if this time was non-lethal.
David Korten at Yes! magazine writes—The Time for Postponing Climate Action Is Over:
BBC environmental correspondent Matt McGrath pointed out last July that to achieve the UN’s initial target of a 45% cut in carbon emissions by 2030 will require decisive global action by the end of this year—2020. His point is that reaching that initial target in just 10 years will require massive changes. So, if we don’t get going immediately, we will not make it.
Humanity is reawakening to a basic truth understood by earlier humans, by many Indigenous people today, and now confirmed by the leading scientists: We are born of and members of a living Earth community.
We are now awakening to the responsibilities that come with our distinctive ability to consciously create our future. The environmental consequences of our neglect of this responsibility have been known for more than half a century, but for many people, the urgent need to act is just now sinking in.
Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post writes—In a break from tradition, I am endorsing all 12 Democratic candidates:
In 2020, American voters must choose among several visions of the future. There is a serious debate going on in the Democratic Party about what is wrong with the country and what needs to be done to fix it.
And I, for one, am not going to take a stance on that debate.
Should we be realists? Should we be radicals? Should we be neither radical nor realistic? Yes, yes and yes!
Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times writes—The Iconic Man With a Gun Is a White Man:
RICHMOND, Va. — Around 22,000 people came here on Monday to protest potential new restrictions on guns under consideration by the new Democratic majority in the General Assembly. Most of the protesters were outside the grounds of the State Capitol, and most appeared to be carrying weapons: handguns, shotguns, carbines and semiautomatic rifles. There were armed men in camouflage and military-style equipment threatening insurrection if the state’s elected representatives acted contrary to their wishes.
Walking through the crowds, I saw Gadsden flags emblazoned with “Don’t Tread on Me” and “Come and Take It” banners alongside “Blue Lives Matter” patches sewn into vests and T-shirts with oft-used quotations like Thomas Jefferson’s famous claim that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
The rhetoric may have been violent, but the overall event was calm — a “peaceful protest,” Brian Moran, the Virginia secretary of public safety, told The Washington Post. A model of democratic assembly.
But that “peace” can’t be separated from intimidation; progressive groups urged members not to go to the Capitol to avoid violent confrontation with extremists. There were no counterprotests or rival demonstrations. The Second Amendment had effectively limited the First.
As I watched the rally, it was impossible not to think through counterfactuals. What if these were left-wing protesters instead? Twenty-two thousand members of the Democratic Socialists of America, armed and threatening insurrection if the Commonwealth of Virginia didn’t establish a system for single-payer health care. How would the state authorities react? Would they give them a wide berth or would they assume hostile intent?