Shooting The Messenger

They are toadies, flunkies, or sycophants, or perhaps a combination of the three and their support of President Donald J. Trump endangers national security. They are not traitors; they are not giving aid and support to the enemy, for the USA is not in a declared war and consideration of any nation as an "enemy" is therefore subjective. However regrettable for the nation, they are not stupid.

These are congressional Republicans, the 227 (of 239) House Republicans who voted for the Corporate Tax Scam of 2017 and the 51 of 52 (John McCain having been absent) of Senate Republicans who did the same.  "It's always a lot of fun when you win," Trump responded, confirming that congressional Republicans had strengthened him and helped "make America great again." "Enablers," the pop psychologists would call them, accurately.

They're all in for the President who is called an "idiot," "fucking idiot," "fucking moron," "child," dope," or "dumb as shit"- and those characterizations come from members of his own Adminstration.

Validating the juvenile's agenda is not the only damage they're doing.  Politico reports

Last month, House Republicans cast public suspicion on communication they say occurred in the fall of 2016 between former FBI general counsel James Baker and a Mother Jones reporter who wrote stories at the time about the FBI’s probe of Trump-Russia ties. The lawmakers cited Justice Department documents for the claim but have provided no further details.

Republicans have offered no evidence of wrongdoing and say they are merely seeking more information for now.

Evidence is optional, as it was when they nearly rescinded the Affordable Care Act and largely did so de facto with passage of the  tax bill. Moreover

The Republican focus on Justice Department contacts with the media escalated last week, after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) reached a Wednesday agreement with Justice Department leaders to secure witness testimony from officials whose handling of the Trump-Russia probe he has criticized.

Nunes released a letter the next day to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein which included a little-noticed reference to an alleged meeting between Weissmann and reporters.

Rosenstein's office, Nunes wrote, "is researching records related to the details of an April 2017 meeting between DOJ Attorney (and Mueller teammate) Andrew Weissman… and the media."

The letter offered no other details about the meeting, such as why it might be the subject of an inquiry. But sources tell Politico that Republicans intend to ask more questions along these lines in the coming weeks.

"Sadly, we are now at a point in our political life when anyone can be attacked for partisan gain," tweeted James Comey, neglecting to note that usually the "anyone" is a journalist and the "partisan" is Republican.

Less than three months after the President of the United States of America threatened to challenge the broadcast license of a network he accused of "fake news," the congressional wing of his Party is joining him in an assault upon the practitioners of the First Amendment. The goal of the strategy is to quell dissent while the tactic- intimidation- may be having an effect. In an under-publicized story

“I’ve written twice in my column a quote about one of the people closest to Donald Trump during the campaign saying he’s got early stage of dementia,” (MSNBC host Joe) Scarborough said. “He repeats the same stories over and over again. His father had it, and it’s getting worse, and not a single person who works for him doesn’t know it. He didn’t think he was going to win. Twice the Washington Post would not let me put that in my column. I salute them for having a high bar, but we’re at this moment, and until your book came out, this was something we were not allowed to speak about.” 

This is not The Wall Street Journal or a small-town newspaper subject to the whims and prejudice of a local Art Pope.This is The Washington Post, thus calling into question how far we've come since the media covered up for President Roosevelt's melanoma and helianopa, President Kennedy's scoliosis, or President Reagan's likely dementia.

Scarborough may be exagerating or distorting the situation or- far less likely- lying. But the public needs to know if anything written by the ex-congressman was censored and if so, why it was deemed unfit to print.   Donald Trump may be suffering early symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease, or be mentally ill, or simply may be an evil man with an extraordinarily grandiose image of self. But we'll never know if the newspaper most reliably bringing us coverage of the President starts pulling its punches.

Share |

Too LIttle, Too Much, Too Late

A great political strategist- Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6-) once put it succinctly, quipping "when you're explaining, you're losing."

Reagan had few original thoughts but was sufficiently crafty to know what plays well in Peoria. And if true that "when you're explaining, you're losing," there is a corollary: when you're clarifying, you're losing.

Steve Bannon less-than-cleverly combined the two when on Sunday he stated  "My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, these comments were not aimed at Don Jr."

David Frum responds "Bannon helpfully explains that Don Jr, CEO of the supposedly multibillion-dollar Trump Organization, was too inexperienced and unknowledgable to realize he shouldn’t receive stolen information from Russian spies,"

In the statement first reported by Axios, Bannon had omitted mention of Jared Kushner or Ivanka Trump, but called Donald Trump Jr. "both a patriot and a good man" who "has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around." Again, Frum: "Bannon clarifies: it was not treasonous of Donald Trump Jr. to organize a meeting with Russian spies, only of Paul Manfort to attend it."

Nonethless, as Politico notes

inside the White House, Bannon's 297-word statement of contrition about comments he made in Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" was seen as too little, too late for an operative unaware of the self-inflicted damage his hubris could cause.

It did nothing to quell Trump’s rage at his former chief strategist or the anger of Bannon’s former West Wing colleagues, according to multiple administration officials, who said the vibe in the president’s circle was that people were unmoved by the statement. Asked whether there is anything Bannon can do at this point to get back in the president's good graces, one White House official said curtly, "Unlikely."

Bannon and Trump are wise enough to recognize that each can use the other, and some sort of rapproachment is likely. Still, the response from the White House was far more predictable than that Bannon would do something so foolish as to wait a few days and then issue what The Washington Post referred to as a "mea culpa."

Bannon's (belated) response was both too little and too much.  Trump does not crave approval but adulation.  After passage of the Corporate Tax Scam of 2017, the always-understated Senate Majority Leader McConnell told the President "you hold the record."  House Speaker and perennial ass-wipe Paul Ryan cited "exquisite presidential leadership" and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy gushed "we would not be standing here it it were not for you."

Similarly, House Ways and Means Committee chairperson Kevin Brady told the President "but for your leadership we would not be here today" and Senate counterpart Orrin Hatch, chairperson of the Finance Committee, raved "you're one heck of a leader" who "has been making history since the first day of this administration." (In the old days, we would refer to people such as Hatch as "senile.")





Compared to all that, "patriot and good man" (directed at the President's son) is very weak tea and could not impress Donald Trump.

In an ironic twist, however, while Bannon's compliments were insufficient, they also were excessive.

Often generously referred to as a "bully"- fascist would be far impolitic and rude- Donald J. Trump feeds on the weak and the unsuccessful. When candidate Trump trivialized the Vietnam war sacrifice of John McCain, he did not suggest the reports of torture were exaggerated, question their accuracy, or claim the torture was unusually severe. Instead, he maintained "I like people who aren't captured"; that is, individuals who aren't losers.

Once the blowback ensued after the "Sound and Fury" comments were published, Bannon had lost.Yet, iIf he had issued his near-apology immediately, it would have been merely insufficient, having taken place before it was clear the remarks were damaging him. Instead, he waited until the President criticized him, thus making it obvious he issued the mea culpa because his back was against the wall and he had no choice. He was a loser, and Trump pounced.

It was an unforced error on the part of Steve Bannon and a mistake he's unlikely ever to repeat.




Share |

Normalization

At various times, Reince Priebus, Representative Lee Zeldin (R-NY), and other Republicans have termed a "nothingburger" the meeting to discuss "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in June 2016 at Trump Tower among three top Donald Trump aides and five individuals with direct or indirect ties to the Kremlin.  Now one of Trump's personal attorneys, John Dowd, has claimed that Thursday's report of the President's effort to convince Attorney General Sessions not to recuse himself in the Russia matter is "another NYT nothing burger."

At first glance  this may seem to be a nothing burger:

Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham on Friday issued a criminal referral to the Justice Department, urging it to examine whether the former British spy Christopher Steele made false statements to the FBI "about the distribution of claims" contained in a dossier he wrote about alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Chris Wray, Grassley and Graham wrote: "Attached please find a classified memorandum related to certain communications between Christopher Steele and multiple US news outlets regarding the so-called 'Trump dossier' that Mr. Steele compiled on behalf of Fusion GPS for the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee and also provided to the FBI."

The senators, both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, continued: "Based on the information contained therein, we are respectfully referring Mr. Steele to you for investigation of potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, for statements the Committee has reason to believe Mr. Steele made regarding his distribution of information contained in the dossier."

The criminal referral does not pertain to the veracity of the dossier's claims and "is not intended to be an allegation of a crime," a press release from the committee says.

There is no there there, but it still is more than a nothing burger (whatever the heck that is, anyway).

The subtle effect of the Grassley-Graham scheme has as its corollary the intensifying attack by the President and his subordinates upon the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies.  These agencies have long deserved skepticism, though they have consistently received little or none from those who have become their critics in service of Dear Leader.

Nonetheless, they do not deserve to be undermined, with little or no basis, by Republicans intimidated by the President or who fear for their own future if the Trump goes down. This will have lasting impact, and not a positve one, upon the faith of American citizens in these institutions.

In a similar  fashion, Grassley & Graham further are chipping away at faith in American political institutions.  They are intentionally drawing some attention from the Kremlin's interference with American political players in the political process toward other alleged misbehavior. While they imply this was motivated by anti-Trump bias, they sow distrust in all politicians, engendering a notion that all polticians, not only enablers of the Kremlin, have an angle.

There is another insidious effect of the Grassley-Graham stunt upon American politics. Evidence ironically comes by way of Thursday night's righteous rant of MSNBC contributor Steve Schmidt, a Never Trumper, in which he noted that

the President of the United states was engaged in premeditatively lying to the American people (with) the incompetence,  the recklessness, the unpreparedness for duties and responsibilities, around the most powerful person in the world of this entire menagerie around him, the West Wing of the White House.

Granted, John Kelly, HR McMaster, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah H. Sanders, Jared Kushner, Scott Pruitt, Steve Mnuchin, and several others are facilitating the incompetence and recklessness of President Trump.  But they are not alone. Steve M recognizes that the cynical move against Steele by Senators Grassley and Graham

will make them heroes on the right -- and in the mainstream, they'll retain their reputations, as respectable-seeming Republicans always do, even after it's unmistakably clear to everyone that they were running interference for a gang of criminals in league with international thugs. They won't be regarded as dishonorable. They'll be treated with respect on Sunday chat shows. We'll purge a certain number of Trumpers, but the vast majority of those who aided and abetted them will be allowed to carry on as if nothing had happened....

The press has made some serious efforts not to normalize Trump, and bravo for that. But McConnell and Ryan, Graham and Grassley, Nunes and Gowdy have all been normalized for years. The press hasn't been willing to portray them as the scoundrels they are. After we're rid of Trump, that will continue to be the case with regard to his enablers.

We'll not know for some time whether Schmidt will be among those in, or on the periphery of, the media who will avoid calling out Graham and Grassley, McConnell and Ryan and Jim Jordan.  But most of the commentariat and the working press will refuse, as SM eloquently explains, to acknowledge what the GOP has become- and had become long before there was even a presidential candidate named Donald J. Trump.








Share |

Grand Opportunity

Interviewed Friday morning on "The TodayShow," "Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff was asked about his credibility and responded "my credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who has ever walked on earth at this point."





Perhaps? Mr. Wolff is being too generous. Donald J. Trump, at many and varied times both attacked and praised as a nationalist and populist, is a world-class liar- and a fake, phony, and fraud.

Or maybe he's not, and in the next 24 hours we'll know with confidence whether his image, crucial to his electoral success, as a populist and nationalist is legitimate. Henry Grabar explains that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, NY

announced on Thursday it would start charging mandatory admission fees to out-of-state visitors, a policy change that will provide revenue for the Met and bring the museum’s business model in line with its global peers. It will also deprive New York of one of its most extraordinary, egalitarian traditions, a rare offering that had lingered from the city’s fading commitment to common public life.

The Met, whose 7 million annual visitors make it the second-most popular art museum on Earth after the Louvre, has long wanted to make more money from admissions. The museum says out-of-staters account for more than half of its annual attendance. (New York state residents and students from around the region will continue to pay what they wish to enter the nation’s largest art museum; admission for children under 12 remains free.) It wasn’t just about making ends meet; it was a matter of principle. “What is it about art that it shouldn’t be paid for?” the former Met director Philippe de Montebello asked in 2002....

In a letter published on Thursday, Met President and CEO Daniel Weiss put a more pragmatic spin on it: The Met needs money. The museum has struggled financially in recent years, running up a $40 million deficit that forced layoffs of 90 employees last year and the downscaling of a planned $600 million new wing. Critics say that under Thomas Campbell, who resigned as director in February of last year, the museum had spent recklessly, seduced by visions of new wings, new art, and new donors.

Weiss argues that his museum does not derive most of its revenue from government and is “the only major museum in the world that relies exclusively on a pure pay-as-you-wish system," It's unlikely that charging visitors- who currently are asked to make a donation-will greatly cut into its attendance because

No one would contend that a tour of the Met is not worth $25 or that most international visitors, who account for 37 percent of the museum’s attendance, could not afford it. Museum directors and their allies have often said their institutions possess what economists call a low “elasticity of demand,” meaning that price hikes generally don’t drive visitors away.

However, Grabar argues

This may be true and good for globetrotters, and perhaps the Met will still bring in 7 million visitors next year. But the person the museum ought to be trying to get inside is not someone already determined to be there. It’s precisely those who might be turned off by a $25 ticket who are the Met’s perfect audience: the young woman visiting her sister who is not sure if she can afford it, the New Jersey commuter who doesn’t know if he even likes this stuff. The Met has always offered itself to those people, in part because its astounding array of treasures in such close proximity—not just art, but armor, and the choir screen of a Spanish church, and the façade of an 1825 bank building, and an entire Egyptian temple—can melt any skeptic’s resistance. But also because, being free, all you had to lose was your time.

Fewer domestic travelers- even those from Trump's allegedly beloved heartland- will be able to afford to visit one of the nation's cultural treasures. Grabar continues:

Enduring the stern looks of the ticket-sellers when you handed over your $2 was the price you paid to share this sneaky, radical bargain with a friend from out of town. It’s too bad that the Met will no longer mean the same thing to visitors as it does to New Yorkers, because no city is quicker to make you one of its own than this one. However diminished from days when the subway was a nickel and CUNY was free and the Met didn’t“suggest” anything but the city’s tremendous public assets, New York’s occasional largesse was never something that had to be earned. And while the museum remains all but free for New Yorkers, whatever their vintage, the formality of an ID check nevertheless functions as a little marker to remind that some visitors belong and some do not.

The Met, Grabar understands, "will no longer mean the same thing to visitors as it does to New Yorkers" while "the formality of an ID check" will serve "as a little marker to remind that some visitors belong and some do not."  A cultural institution freely available to all individuals- who would attend alongside New Yorkers- will become less available to Americans from Durham or Dubuque or Delavan, Wisconsin.

Normally, this would not concern a President of the United States. But inveterate tweeter Donald J. Trump is not a normal president. He made his millions or billions in New York City, NY, where he maintains his principal residence. His favorite person and her husband are Manhattan people,where they lived in opulence and Jared made his own big bucks in real estate.

And now a repository of high culture located in Democratic New York City in Democratic New York State has chosen to favor New York citizens over those of Southfield, Michigan or Scranton, Pennsylvania. They will be asked for identification and charged admission on the same basis as visitors from any country.

This would be a perfect opportunity for a president who once claimed to represent "Pittsburgh, not Paris" to tweet out his concern.





Or it would be if President Trump were a populist or even a genuine nationalist.  But that was all for popular consumption.  In "Fire and Fury," Wolff notes that when the President signed the initial Executive Order promulgating the travel ban

The result was an emotional outpouring of horror and indignation from liberal media, terror in immigrant communities, tumultuous protests at major airports, confusion throughout the government, and, in the White House, an inundation of opprobrium from friends and family. What have you done? You have to undo this! You’re finished before you even start! But Bannon was satisfied. He could not have hoped to draw a more vivid line between Trump’s America and that of liberals. Almost the entire White House staff demanded to know: Why did we do this on a Friday, when it would hit the airports hardest and bring out the most protesters?

“Errr … that’s why,” said Bannon. “So the snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot.” That was the way to crush the liberals: Make them crazy and drag them to the left.

Serving the most sensitive President in American history, presidential advisor Steve Bannon was pleased "the snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot."  "That was the way," Wolff wrote, "to crush the liberals."

Not only was crushing liberals by enraging them the primary objective of Trump's chief campaign strategist, it was the guiding principle of the Trump campaign. It was not populism or even nationalism, though the latter played a role: it was to exhibit a visceral hatred of the people Republicans hate, thereby stirring up more animosity to exploit. Given a chance to show a genuine populist or even nationalist spirit, the President will pass.




Share |

GOP Humor

While most of the credible (which obviously excludes Fox News) fixates, justifiably, on Michael Wolff's allegations and revelations about life inside the Trump campaign and White House, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and John Roberts are doing stand-up. We learn from Politico

The White House plans to ban the use of personal cell phones in the West Wing by both staff and guests, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced on Thursday, citing security concerns.

“The security and integrity of the technology systems at the White House is a top priority for the Trump administration and therefore the use of all personal devices for both guests and staff will no longer be allowed in the West Wing,” Sanders said in a statement. “Staff will be able to conduct business on their government-issued devices and continue working hard on behalf of the American people.”

The article continues "The ban will go into effect in the coming days, and it is likely to have the secondary effect of cracking down on leaks, a top priority for White House chief of staff John Kelly."

It would be politically incorrect to point out that the primary aim is to stop leaks, although it is likely to have limited effect because, as Wolff suggests

As details of Trump’s personal life leaked out, he became obsessed with identifying the leaker. The source of all the gossip, however, may well have been Trump himself. In his calls throughout the day and at night from his bed, he often spoke to people who had no reason to keep his confidences. He was a river of grievances, which recipients of his calls promptly spread to the ever-attentive media.

Staff and guests would be banned from bringing their cell phones into the West Wing but no one can stop the sexually insecure Chief Executive from desperately trying to provoke nuclear war by, for instance, tweeting "North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the 'Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.'Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"

But the presidential press secretary is a comedic amateur compared to the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court who

in his annual State of the Judiciary report, said Sunday his branch of government will examine the issue of sexual harassment within the judicial system.

"The judiciary will begin 2018," wrote Roberts, "by undertaking a careful evaluation of whether its standards of conduct and its procedures for investigating and correcting inappropriate behavior are adequate to ensure an exemplary workplace for every judge and every court employee."

That's commendable- but who's going to tell Clarence Thomas he's out?

Well before Harvey Weinstein, there was Clarence " a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves..." Thomas, who has become famous on the Court for saying almost nothing.

Not all invocations of the "race card" are necessarily malevolent, but given that Thomas knew the accusations were both accurate and unrelated to race (and not only because Anita Hill was/is black), his was truly evil. Still, Thomas is best known for withstanding (valid) charges of sexual harassment of  Hill and given life-long tenure on the highest court in the land.

In 2010, in an article Salon entitled "How we Know Clarence Thomas did it," Steve Kornacki helpfully laid out the open-and-shut case against the judge, who denied everything and slandered his accusers as liars and worse.  Among other pieces of evidence, he quotes from a Washinton Post article which explained that the book (written by Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer)

 "Strange Justice" uses statements from Thomas's friends and associates to undermine Thomas's testimony that he never talked dirty with Hill. The authors, after interviewing acquaintances as far back as his college years at Holy Cross, report that he often recounted sexually explicit films in lurid detail. Kaye Savage, a former colleague, reports that the walls of his bachelor apartment were covered with Playboy nude centerfolds. The owner of a video store near the EEOC said Thomas was a regular customer for pornographic movies."

Clarence Thomas as he portrayed himself never would even have imagined behaving in such a manner. Still, he is now on the United States Supreme Court, whose Chief Justice, with no sense of irony, observes "events in the past few weeks have made clear that the judicial branch is not immune" from sexual harassment in the workplace. (First video below is from 4/16; the second from 10/16.)





If Chief Justice Roberts were concerned about sexual harassment in the workplace, he should ask his colleague to resign.If he wants bygones to be bygones, he needs to ask guys named "Franken" and "Moore" about double standards. Meanwhile, we can admire people like John Roberts and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who have gotten so far with so little sincerity, and laugh at their surfeit of gall.









Share |

Less MAGA Than MCGA

Donald Trump, the man who once openly mocked a disabled reporter, now promises to announce next Monday "the most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year," targeting news organizations which once prompted him to whine "I can't believe the media is allowed to write anything they want."

And so by one measure, Grump' support for the freedom of critics of the Iranian regime to dissent is a welcome departure. "The people of Iran," Grump tweets, "are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their ‘pockets.  The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!”

If that seems hypocritical (as well as inaccurate)- which obviously it is- you may remember that Donald Trump, who as President has blocked individuals from his personal Twitter account, was once not so supportive of dissent abroad.  Responding to the Tianamen Square protest of 1998, Trump in 1999 declared “The Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak."

There may be few things which better define Donald Trump, for therein he reveals not only his admiration for dictators but his willingness- nay, desire- to promote the Communist Chinese government. Evan Osnos, explaining how the President is "making China great again," writes

China’s leaders rarely air their views about an American President, but well-connected scholars—the ranking instituteniks of Beijing and Shanghai and Guangzhou—can map the contours of their assessments. Yan Xuetong is the dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute of Modern International Relations. At sixty-five, Yan is bouncy and trim, with short silver hair and a roaring laugh. When I arrived at his office one evening, he donned a black wool cap and coat, and we set off into the cold. Before I could ask a question, he said, “I think Trump is America’s Gorbachev.” In China, Mikhail Gorbachev is known as the leader who led an empire to collapse. “The United States will suffer,” he warned.

Over a dinner of dumplings, tofu, and stir-fried pork, Yan said that America’s strength must be measured partly by its ability to persuade: “American leadership has already dramatically declined in the past ten months. In 1991, when Bush, Sr., launched the war against Iraq, it got thirty-four countries to join the war effort. This time, if Trump launched a war against anyone, I doubt he would get support from even five countries. Even the U.S. Congress is trying to block his ability to start a nuclear war against North Korea.” For Chinese leaders, Yan said, “Trump is the biggest strategic opportunity.” I asked Yan how long he thought the opportunity would last. “As long as Trump stays in power,” he replied.

A foreign affairs specialist at Fudan University in Shanghai has remarked  "China Knows Trump can be unpredictable, so we have weapons to make him predictable, to contain him. He would trade Taiwan for jobs." Osnos notes "China's leaders predicted that a time would come- perhaps midway through this century- when it could project its own values abroad. In the age of 'America First," that time has come far sooner than expected."

At a campaign rally in April, 2016, Trump boasted "China’s upset because of the way Donald Trump is talking about trade with China. They’re ripping us off, folks, it’s time. I’m so happy they’re upset." They may have been upset about how he as a candidate was talking about their country. But as mainland Chinese leaders now observe an American president who has squandered his nation's leadership abroad, they are quite delighted.








Share |

Not The Typical Acts Of Kindness

"During last year’s presidential campaign," wrote self-identifying evangelical Richard Mouw last July

Ken Burns posed a question to evangelical Christians about the Republican candidate: “What part of Donald Trump reminds you of Jesus Christ?”

The evangelical leaders who supported Trump in the campaign—folks like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Franklin Graham—did not think it necessary to make that kind of comparison.  They seemed quite willing to grant that there were a lot of things about Trump that Jesus would disapprove of. But some of them simply excused Trump on the grounds that that he was a “baby Christian,” not very far along in his journey of faith. And, furthermore, as one of them put it: “we are not electing a pastor-in-chief.”

We learned long ago that standard switches when assessing Democratic politicians, who are ruled ineligible by right-wing evangelicals when the former publicly support reproductive freedom.  Mouw continued

Actually, the evangelical Trump supporters pointed to some biblical measures during the campaign. A reporter called me right after the Republican convention for some background theological discussion about what she was hearing from evangelicals about their support for Trump. When she asked them whether the Bible had any role in their support for his candidacy, they responded by comparing him to two biblical kings: David and Cyrus.

The David comparison is certainly apt. The great king of Israel did some very bad things in his personal life—most notably, having a man killed so that he could commit adultery with the man’s wife. But he is also celebrated in the Bible for some good accomplishments as a national leader.

We all know about Trump cozying up to dictators everywhere, enacting a travel ban arguably targeting individuals based on their religion, threatening North Koreans with nuclear devastation, leaving Americans in Puerto Rico to die, and other high-profile compassionate acts. But Matthew Yglesias points out other, less-publicized, actions in which the President has curried favor with congressional Republicans who have returned the favor by supporting his legislative agenda and bemoaning the Mueller probe. Bearing little resemblance to David or Cyrus

As president, Trump has put a pharmaceutical executive in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS is changing regulations to better fit the needs of pharmaceutical companies, and Trump is personally pocketing club membership fees from people with business before the federal government, including the CEO of Allergan. The candidate who ran as the champion of the forgotten man has led an administration dedicated to such causes as making it easier for financial advisers to rip off their clients and ensuring that workers suffer continued exposure to toxic chemicals in paint-removing solvents.

Additionally, in a move cited by Yglesias and symbolizing Donald Trump's dedication to the average person man on December 5

on December 5 the Trump administration took its first major step toward allowing employers to legally pocket the tips earned by the workers they employ. The Department of Labor (DOL) released a proposed rule that would allow restaurants to take the tips that servers earn and share them with untipped employees such as cooks and dishwashers. But, crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute “pooled” tips to workers. Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as tipped workers earn minimum wage, employers could legally pocket those tips.





Seven months ago, Mouw had noted

I’m not fixated on how President Trump compares to Jesus.  But I’m glad that many of my fellow evangelicals agree that we should expect Trump to be David-like and Cyrus-like in his leadership.

The time is ripe now for evangelicals to conduct a job performance review in this regard. I have my Bible handy whenever Mr. Trump’s evangelical supporters are ready to get started!

That was wishful thinking. Trump's supporters in the evangelical community never cared whether Trump would emulate kings David or Cyprus, exhibit "a humble and contrite spirit," or have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ . They were motivated by Trump's opposition to reproductive freedom and the confidence that he would appoint judges like Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme  Court.

That is the meat-and-potatoes they were looking for.  Protecting drug company and bank executives while harming medical patients, families seeking financial advice, and low-wage workers is just the gravy on top.




Share |