Backtrack

In a promo for Donald Trump's most famous book, "The Art of the Deal," the Chicago Tribune is quoted as commenting "Donald Trump is a deal maker. He is a deal maker the way lions are carnivores and water is wet.”

It should have read "He is a deal maker the way lions are carnivores, water is wet, and cookies and cake are life-affirming substances."

With all due respect to Girl Scouts on a fund-raising drive, cookies are not life-affirming, and President Donald J. Trump is no deal-maker.

Politico's Eli Stokols reports

Trump, who first inflamed tensions with Chinese President Xi Jinping by accepting a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan in November, said just two months ago that he might not honor the country's "one China" policy, under which the U.S. recognizes China's designation of Taiwan as a Chinese state, unless he won concessions on trade in return.

In what Stokols recognizes as "appeasement"

According to a White House readout of Thursday's "lengthy" phone call, "President Trump agreed, at the request of President Xi, to honor our "one China" policy.

"Representatives of the United States and China will engage in discussions and negotiations on various issues of mutual interest," the statement continued. "The phone call between President Trump and President Xi was extremely cordial, and both leaders extended best wishes to the people of each other's countries."







Three weeks into his presidency and tough guy Donald already has capitulated.

We were led to believe it wouldn't be that way by the fellow who promised voters "We're going to win so much. You're going to get tired of winning. you’re going to say, ‘Please Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don't win so much. This is getting terrible.’"  We were sold a bill of goods by the man who only last month told ABC's David Muir

that critics who questioned the legality of the move were “fools,” and said: “If we took the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS.” Trump has also roundly criticized Obama’s strategy in the ongoing battle for Mosul, saying that the U.S. should not have abandoned the element of surprise by publicly announcing the offensive months ahead of time (though military strategists tend to see it as irrelevant to the progress of the battle). In his first press briefing on Monday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer reiterated that Trump will not reveal his military plans for Iraq before undertaking them.

Yet, Trump clumsily annoyed mainland China with his phone call with Taiwan and casual comments about the one-China policy and now has blundered again. Slate's Fred Kaplan explains that any Asian expert

could have told him that the Beijing government views “One China” as an existential matter, not open to discussion. When told this after the fact, Trump said—publicly—that he would use his threat as a “bargaining chip” to get better terms on trade or other issues.

This was Trump’s second mistake. If his best-seller The Art of the Deal doesn’t include a chapter titled “If You Want to Use Something as a Bargaining Chip, Don’t Say It’s a Bargaining Chip,” it’s a pretty worthless book.








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It's Him Or Us

Heather Digby Parton realizes

Donald Trump sees an America that is terrified of foreigners of all stripes, and wants the media to help him stoke that fear for his own purposes. One cannot help but wonder what President Trump would do if a modern-day Timothy McVeigh managed to pull off one of these horrifying terror plots he doesn’t seem to notice or care about. We will have to hope the American people will understand where to lay the blame.

If they do not, Democrats will be partially to blame.

When on February 3 federal judge James Robart issued a temporary restraining order against President Trump's refugee/immigration limitation/ban, The New Republic's Jeer Heet writes

If the U.S. is hit by a terrorist attack that can be connected to Islamic radicalism, Trump will blame his opponents, whether they be the courts, politicians, journalists, or whomever; the terrorist attack will be anyone’s fault but his own. Knowing this, Democrats must be ready to play politics in return.

Thus far, they are not. Typical is the response of Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, who stated

If the president were serious about bringing our country together and keeping us safe, he would rescind this arbitrary and discriminatory order and recall what makes our country great. Immigrants and refugees have enriched our country since its founding.

The people who care about immigrants and refugees and discrimination, even about arbitrariness (or nuance, for that matter), already are repulsed by the President's order.  And if hordes of voters were "serious about bringing our country together," the candidate who campaigned against "crooked Hillary" encouraged "lock her up," suggested "Second Amendment people" might want to address the problem of a Clinton presidency, and praised Vladimir Putin wouldn't have been elected.






Trump has succeeded in making the American people, already on edge about terrorism, arguably more frightened than in the past sixteen years. Heer continues

if an attack can be tied to Islamic radicalism, Trump will say “I told you so”—and argue that he was trying to protect the American people, but was hamstrung by the courts and other enemies. He will use Americans’ anger over terrorism to discredit the institutions that have a constitutional duty to check him, and he will push for more presidential power.

Notwithstanding the omission in Trump's list of 78 terrorist incidents of "mentions of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil perpetrated by non-Muslims or people who didn’t sympathize with the Islamic State," it is by no means certain that (if deadly enough) the President won't blame even a non-Islamic attack on the courts- or the Democratic Party.

Whatever love, patience, or tolerance Americans have toward immigrants or refugees will dissipate rapidly as someone is blamed when- uh, er, if- there is a terrorist attack on the "homeland" (thank you, Third Reich!). The Democratic Party now must emphasize the message that President Trump's order makes the nation less safe rather than more safe- and that his policies make an attack likely.

The invitation to fear goes against the instincts of most liberals and progressives, whose presidential candidate raised invitation of fear to an art form.  Leahy is not alone among Democrats to argue that the restrictionist Executive Order the President (briefly) implemented is dangerous for women and children and huddled masses yearning to breathe free. (See Minority Leader Schumer, above, calling it "mean-spirited and un-American.")  Meanwhile, Heer understands, "Trump is preemptively trying to insulate himself from blame for terrorist attacks (and) it’s up to the Democrats and the broader anti-Trump coalition to push a counter-narrative immediately."

Fingers will be pointed, and even though Trump's policy probably encourages such acts, the American people will not understand where to lay the blame. Democrats must make sure those fingers are pointed away from them, thus toward President Trump and his band of 300+ sycophants.

A collateral advantage of this approach, Ed Kilgore explains, is that it would enable Democrats to resist

the temptation to 'rally around the president' if his adminstration does suceed in provoking or failing to prevent or intercept future attacks. Whether or not you think George W. Bush bore any responsibility for 9/11, there is no question he exploited the atmosphere of post-attack solidarity to lauch an unnecessary preemptive war against Iraq.

Jeer Heet realizes "While Trump is trying to use the fear of terrorism to shore up his own power, his opponents need to show that he is already mishandling national security, making America less safe. A major terrorist attack under his watch will be a fireable offense." American voters will believe it unacceptable and a fireable offense- for President Trump or for the opposition party.






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He's Taunting You, Senator McCain

We will find out in the near future whether John McCain has a spine.

Not as a person, or an American, or as a soldier. He has plenty of backbone there, at least as a (ex-) soldier, but that doesn't really matter now.

We may have thought it wouldn't get worse when Presidential Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday called the raid in Yemen- which resulted in the death of at least 15 civilians and a Navy Seal and loss of a tilt-rotor mV-22- "a successful operation by all standards."

Having not hit rock bottom, Spicer yesterday said the raid was

absolutely a success. And I think anyone who would suggest it’s not a success does disservice to the life of Chief Ryan Owens. He fought knowing what was at stake in that mission. And anybody who would suggest otherwise, doesn’t fully appreciate how successful that mission was, what the information that they were able to retrieve was and how that will help prevent future terrorist attacks.

Asked specifically about criticism from Senator McCain, Spicer continued his descent, responding  “I think anybody who undermines the success of that raid, owes an apology and disservice to the life of Chief Owens.”

Don't blame Spicer, however. He says what he's expected to say, as Homeland Security director John Kelly has learned, and was demonstrated when

 “Sen. McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy! He's been losing so long he doesn't know how to win anymore,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets Thursday morning. “Just look at the mess our country is in - bogged down in conflict all over the place. Our hero Ryan died on a winning mission ( according to General Mattis), not a 'failure.' Time for the U.S. to get smart and start winning again!”

It should have crossed Trump's mind that the enemy- the media, workers, consumers, minorities, whomever Trump perceives it as today- already had heard about the raid.  But one of the guiding aims of this Administration is to keep information away from the American people, so never mind.

Nonetheless, this should remind Senator McCain of the contempt that Donald Trump, he of the five Vietnam-era deferments, has for military personnel at all sorts.   He bragged in 1997 “It’s amazing, I can’t even believe it. I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world, it is a dangerous world out there. It’s like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider." He boasted during the campaign "I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me." Earlier during the campaign, he had stated “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

It's little wonder the latter remark didn't hurt Trump with GOP primary voters. Yesterday, he added McCain "doesn't know how to win anymore."







He's a loser, Trump infers in his all-purpose insult to those individuals who aren't as strong as, say, Vladimir Putin (and the other dictators he admires).

Trump now has slammed McCain again, something the Arizona senator should remember and be guided by.  Though McCain votes for every Trump cabinet nominee (and will vote for Judge Gorsuch), as a staunch hawk he has been critical of the Trump/Putin nexus. Following an early January hearing in which the Armed Services Committee heard testimony about Russian cyber-espionage, McCain commented  "Every American should be alarmed by Russia’s attacks on our nation. There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference."

Following the hearing, the Los Angeles Times' David Horsey (his cartoon, below) recognized

Luckily, there is McCain — plus other old-school conservatives like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham who have expressed their guarded concern. What about when they are unguarded? When they are talking privately, what are they saying? How great is their alarm? What will they do to defend their country from a man for whom “intelligence” is a dirty word? What will honor demand of John McCain?

Four weeks later, those questions remain. McCain reacted to Spicer with "my record speaks for itself." However, Donald Trump, now the leader of the still-Free World, continues to demean the Arizona senator, who served his country bravely nearly a half-century ago.

President Trump is now daring him to step up again but believes he is able to intimidate everyone into submission. The senator has the unique opportunity, motive, and the duty to country to challenge the would-be autocrat while it's still possible for someone to do so. We will see if he has the spine.

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All The King's Toadies

Steve M. realizes

What we learned in November, if we didn't already know it, is that civil rights fights don't inspire a unifying admiration among Americans. As much as 46% of the electorate is tired of hearing about the struggles of non-whites, and votes accordingly. So of course McConnell has no qualms about preventing Elizabeth Warren from reading Coretta Scott King's words on the Senate floor. Of course he and 48 of his fellow Republicans would vote to uphold that ban. None of their voters will object. None of their voters revere the Kings that much (or at all).

So this fired up the Democratic base, but it didn't alienate Republican voters. That's something, but I wish it meant more.

But it doesn't have to mean more. Firing up the Democratic base is crucial, especially because it encourages Democratic members of Congress to understand the base is with them. So, too, is it critical for those members of Congress to understand what is at stake, and what their opponents are willing to resort to.

Even before the rebuke of Warren, Ezra Klein had understood it is "taken for granted that congressional Republicans will protect their co-partisan at any cost" and "confirm Trump's unqualified nominees, ignore his obvious conflicts of interest, overlook his dangerous comments, and rationalize his worst behavior."

The word may- or may not- have come down from Mount Olympus, or Mount Trump, to shut up the Massachusetts Democrat. Nonetheless, the Senate Majority Leader is modeling the behavior of the President.  "Pure authoritarian impulse," Charlie Pierce calls it, which seems awfully similar to the conduct of the autocrat in the White House.

So, too, are all of his subjects following the lead of their Supreme Leader in the White House by voting in lockstep to invoke Senate Rule 19 in which Senators may not  “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator."

It doesn't have to be socialists, trade unionists, Jews, or a Protestant minister. Circumstances and characters change with time.  And so, for whatever purpose, to whatever end, President Trump is coming after Democratic voters, with charges of voter fraud (debunked repeatedly) and a commission set up to find it, and he has a boatload of allies on Capitol Hill.

He is coming after the press, with the latest charge being that it ignores terrorism, and for the courts for encouraging it. He is coming after Muslims, whom he blames almost exclusively for terrorism. And now congressional Republicans, who already were falling in line, believe it insufficiently decorous to read on the Senate floor the remarks of  the widow of a civil rights icon.

The "cowardice" Klein notices in congressional Republicans "is the real danger to American democracy."  He argues "we need to stop talking so much about what Trump will do and begin speaking in terms of what Congress lets him do." It became a little more clear Tuesday night what Congress will let him do and what congressional  Democrats, their base at their back, must do in response.












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Trump/Pence: Merchant Of Fear

Here we go again. NPR reports

President Trump, in another broadside against the news media, on Monday accused "the dishonest press" of failing to report terrorist attacks.

Speaking to troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, Trump cited a series of recent attacks and then added, "It's gotten to a point where it's not even reported, and in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn't even want to report it."

Trump told the troops that the media "have their reasons, and you understand that."








The White House later released a list of 78 attacks, including those in Paris, Brussels, Nice, Istanbul, San Bernardino, and 73 others, all of which it claimed were largely ignored. Politico reports

Others don't meet customary definitions of terrorism. An instance in Algeria in September 2014 would seem to refer to the beheading of a French tourist, Herve Gourdel, who had been held hostage — a gruesome murder but not something that would traditionally fit the definition of terrorism.

Oddly, the list includes no attacks in Israel, despite a spate of knife attacks in 2015-16 that were meant to terrorize the population. It also doesn’t include the mass shooting of African American churchgoers by Dylann Roof, an avowed white supremacist, at a Charleston church in June 2015, or a mass shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic in November 2015.

At the time of the latter crime, The New York Times reported

A number of people who knew Mr. Dear said he was a staunch abortion opponent. Ms. Micheau, 60, said in a brief interview Tuesday that late in her marriage to Mr. Dear, he told her that he had put glue in the locks of a Planned Parenthood location in Charleston.

“He was very proud of himself that he’d gone over and jammed up their locks with glue so that they couldn’t get in,” she said.

But another ex-wife, Pamela Ross, said that he did not obsess on the subject of abortion. After his arrest, Mr. Dear said “no more baby parts” to investigators, a law enforcement official said.

The White House saw fit also to ignore the gunning down of six men on January 29 at a Quebec City mosque by an admirer of Donald Trump in what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau termed "a terrorist attack on Muslims."

That might have been excluded because of a December, 2016 cut-off date- or perhaps there was a 12/16 cut-off date because of this incident.

Or maybe the primary motivation is neither right-wing nor religious bias, but something even worse. The Washington Post's Morning Mix reveals 

What the data show, according to the Global Terrorism Database reported by Voice of America, is that a vast majority of terrorist attacks — about 98 percent between 2001 and 2015 — occurred outside the U.S. and Western Europe, even if the White House’s list and rhetoric may suggest otherwise.

A Washington Post analysis of all terrorist attacks from the beginning of 2015 through the summer of 2016 found that the Middle East, Africa and Asia have seen “nearly 50 times more deaths from terrorism than Europe and the Americas.”

But emphasizing attacks in the Third World wouldn't scare people.  As the USA came out of the Great Recession, private sector employment and even manufacturing employment increased, and crime has declined dramatically in the last two decades. Still, when he delivered his inaugural address, the President spoke of "rusted out factories," tombstones, "and the crime and the gangs and the drugs," concluding "the American carnage stops right here and stops right now."

William Saletan found that Vice President Pence, defending the President's refugee order, used the phrase "safety and security"

10 times to defend the ban, ignoring reminders that none of the terrorists who struck America on or after 9/11 came from the banned countries. The point of repeating the mantra, rather than addressing such facts, is to elevate fear and bury other considerations.

The dominant aim of this Administration is to instill fear, whether in ethnic minorities, the courts, the press, leftist advocates, whomever or whatever serves the purpose of the strongman. This comes not from principled commitment or whim, and what results a few years down the road should come as a shock, but not as a surprise.








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He Still Hates America, And We Already Knew That

Who are the Russians fooling? The Moscow Times (which otherwise does not appear to be the Russian version of The Onion) reports

The Kremlin has demanded an apology from Fox News host Bill O’Reilly for calling President Vladimir Putin “a killer.”

Presidential Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the outburst “unacceptable and offensive.”

O’Reilly made the claim during an interview with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Of course he did, because it's obvious, and O'Reilly could respond only "but he's a killer, though. Putin's a killer" after Trump maintained "I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not. And if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world — that’s a good thing. Will I get along with him? I have no idea."

The chat proceeded with

Trump: There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent. You think our country’s so innocent?

O’Reilly: I don’t know of any government leaders that are killers.

Trump: Well — take a look at what we’ve done too. We made a lot of mistakes. I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.

O’Reilly: But mistakes are different than —

Trump: A lot of mistakes, but a lot of people were killed. A lot of killers around, believe me.

Trump was not "against the war in Iraq from the beginning" but that is, as the grammatically misguided put it, " past history."

More significant is the moral equivalence Trump is trying to establish between the violent authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin and the United States of America. "Take off that flag lapel pin, you're soiling it," David Frum aptly tweets.

When you spend 4-5 years in the Hanoi Hilton, wearing an American flag lapel pin is unnecessary, as John McCain conspicously- no, inconspicously- demonstrated in the 2008 presidential election campaign. Perhaps Trump should wear half a dozen.

But O'Reilly- he of "the spin stops here"- did not challenge Trump other than pointing out the obvious, which upset the sensitive soul of  Vladimir Putin.

But perhaps not of President Trump. "We've got a lot of killers," Trump alleged, and continued "what do you think- our country's so innocent. You think our country's so innocent?"

But Trump is saying only that the USA is not innocent- that it is guilty of something or other. He is not asserting that he disapproves.  Digby points us to an excerpt from an interview held with the candidate last March when Trump remarked

Look at what China’s doing in the South China Sea. I mean they are totally disregarding our country and yet we have made China a rich country because of our bad trade deals. Our trade deals are so bad. And we have made them – we have rebuilt China and yet they will go in the South China Sea and build a military fortress the likes of which perhaps the world has not seen. Amazing, actually. They do that, and they do that at will because they have no respect for our president and they have no respect for our country.

Recognizing this as old style, chauvinistic nationalism, Digby responds "So he's going to make them 'respect' us. And then, he'll take what he wants. To the victor belongs the spoils."  There is no reason to believe Donald Trump is offended by leaders who are killers, or by colonial powers, or by national leaders who exploit other nations for economic gain.

"If we kept the oil," President Trump recently contended, "you probably wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil, but, OK, maybe we’ll have another chance.”  Now he says "a lot of people were killed. A lot of killers around, believe me." It is not at all clear Mr. Trump disapproves, and no clearer after the "interview" conducted by Bill O'Reilly.













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Partners With Trump

"It’s official," writes Mike Huckabee on his Facebook page

one of the top sheiks of the United Arab Emirates is more rational, objective about US immigration policy and less susceptible to groundlessly accusing President Trump of a “Muslim ban” than the Democratic Party and the federal judge they shopped for.

The former governor links to an article in the Conservative Tribune, in which we read

The United Arab Emirates, one of the most influential Arab states, has come out in support of President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on immigration from seven nations with terrorism problems.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the foreign minister of the UAE, called Trump’s executive order a “sovereign decision,” and said he was convinced the move was not “directed against a particular religion,” Sky News reported.

“This is a temporary ban and it will be revised in three months, so it is important that we put into consideration this point,” he said Wednesday during a news conference in Abu Dhabi.

He also voiced some tentative support for President Trump’s decision to establish “safe zones” in war-torn Syria.

“If the aim behind these areas is humanitarian and temporary and under an international umbrella, I think this is a basis we can work on,” the sheikh said.

“But I think that it is still early to decide what our final stance toward these zones is before we hear from the new U.S. administration the ideas and develop that further.”

The writer believes "The United Arab Emirates is one of America’s top partners in the Middle East, and positioning itself in favor of the temporary freeze on immigration could be a preemptive way of negotiating with the Trump administration."

Or it could be a way of aligning itself with the business interests of Donald Trump. TIME explains

Trump has a tangle of business interests in the UAE. His first venture in the country was a branding deal in 2005 to build a hotel with Nakheel, a developer backed by Dubai’s royal family. The project was canceled in 2008 following a corruption and bribery probe into two Nakheel executives. In 2013, Trump struck a branding deal with Damac Properties Dubai Co., to build luxury villas and a golf course. Damac is also building another Trump-branded course designed by Tiger Woods. In December 2015, local groups called for a boycott of those properties in response to Trump’s proposed Muslim ban. (Damac briefly removed Trump’s image and name from its properties, but reinstated them two days later.) The Trump International Golf Club in Dubai is set to open early this year. On New Year’s Eve, during a celebration at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, Trump gave a speech to hundreds of paying guests that praised Damac executive Hussain Sajwani and his family. “The most beautiful people from Dubai are here tonight,” Trump gushed. 

There is an old (not very funny) joke in real estate, Donald Trump's business. "What are the three determinants of land value?" it roghly goes. The answer:  "location, location, location." Trump's business is, was, and will remain real estate. And the three most important factors in his decision-making as President of the United States are personal:  profit, profit, and profit.








                                                                                                                                                 




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