People will look back on this era in our history to see what was known about Donald Trump while Americans were deciding whether to choose him as president. Here’s a running chronicle from James Fallows on the evidence available to voters as they make their choice, and of how Trump has broken the norms that applied to previous major-party candidates. (For a Fallows-led, ongoing reader discussion on Trump’s rise to the presidency, see “Trump Nation.”)
Robert Gates (center) receiving the Liberty Medal five years ago. Gates has served under every Republican president since Richard Nixon, and every Democrat since then too. This week he said that the GOP nominee was "unqualified and unfit" for office.Tim Shaffer / Reuters
Robert Gates is as experienced a national-security figure as America now has. He joined the Air Force when Lyndon Johnson was president and has served under every president, Republican and Democratic, since then. He was deputy CIA director under Ronald Reagan, CIA director under the first George Bush, and Secretary of Defense under both the second George Bush and the only Barack Obama. He is also very sure-footed in bureaucratic, domestic, and international politics, as his long record of appointments might suggest and as his surprisingly score-settling memoirDuty makes clear. In foreign policy he is more “realist” than neocon.
In an essay for the the Wall Street Journal this week, Gates takes a little time getting to his conclusion, including laying out the reasons he’s lukewarm to (his onetime Cabinet colleague) Hillary Clinton. But conclude he does, in forthright terms:
At least on national security, I believe Mr. Trump is beyond repair. He is stubbornly uninformed about the world and how to lead our country and government, and temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform. He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief.
***
If you’re keeping score at home, here are some of the senior figures who have declared Donald Trump “unfit,” “dangerous,” “reckless,” or in other ways unsuitable for service as President:
Apart from Gates, two other former CIA heads, including one who said Trump had become “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” in #70;
A former Prime Minister of Sweden, calling Trump “a serious threat to the security of the West,” #61;
Some 50 former military, intelligence, and foreign-policy appointees from Republican administrations, “most reckless president in American history,” #72;
Another 160-plus foreign policy experts—“Mr. Trump’s foreign policy vision has inspired alarm … in allied capitals throughout the world”—also #61;
A former Republican president, by implication in saying that he would take the unprecedented step of voting for the Democratic rival, #107.
So it stands with 47 days to go, no tax records or non-Dr. Bornstein medical information forthcoming, and the Republican establishment saying: He’s fine.
To say it once more: nothing like this has happened before.
***
Colin Powell? Condi Rice? George Tenet? Your G.W. Bush-era Cabinet colleagues Robert Gates, and before him Henry Paulson, Michael Hayden, Michael Chertoff, John Negroponte, Tom Ridge, and others have set the precedent of doing the right thing. Dick Cheney will never do so, but you have the opportunity, and not just in leaked emails.
George H.W. Bush in his prime, in a famous statue at the George Bush International Airport in Houston (PresidentsUSA)
Without elaboration, here is a for-the-record note of some publicized news of the past few days:
1. George H.W. Bush. For the first time in modern history, a former president of one party has said he will vote for a nominee from the other party.
The president who is taking this step is of course the senior George Bush, who this week reportedly told a crowd of 40 people that he plans to vote for Hillary Clinton. Set aside the ensuing flap over whether Bush “intended” something he said in front of several dozen people to become “public.” (If you want to keep something confidential, you don’t say it in a crowd. You especially understand this point if you are yourself a former U.S. president and vice president plus CIA director, with two sons who ran for the White House and one who made it. And once the news got out, Bush’s spokesmen didn’t even deny it. He just said that Bush’s vote would be “private,” which is code for “the report is true.”)
Ill will between the Bush and Trump empires is no surprise. Just think back to the days of Trump mocking “Low-Energy Jeb,” or of Barbara Bush saying early this year that she was “sick of Trump.” But to the best of my knowledge, this is the first-ever case of a former president from one party saying that he would vote for a nominee from the other party.*
— Even in 1964, the esteemed former Republican president Dwight Eisenhower officially “supported” the highly controversial Republican nominee Barry Goldwater.
— Even in 1972, the beleaguered former Democratic president Lyndon Johnson technically endorsed the controversial Democratic nominee George McGovern, who had built his campaign on opposition to Johnson’s own Vietnam war.
But in 2016, with 47 days and a few hours until the election, we take another step into the unknown.
(*The Bull Moose / Republican tussle between Teddy Roosevelt and W.H. Taft in 1912 was a special case that doesn’t apply. The counterpart to today’s Bush-Trump news would be if Teddy Roosevelt, as a former Republican president, had endorsed Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat, rather than endorsing himself for another run at the White House.)
***
2. Fahrenthold and the Trump Foundation. This campaign has revealed a lot about our country, much of it unsettling. It is also revealing things both good and bad about our news media, in ways that are changing and unfolding every day, and that I’ll try to say more about sometime soon.
For now I’ll say: it’s impressive to see the NYT’srecent embrace of the “let’s call a lie a ‘lie’” philosophy; it is alarming that CNN has kept right on with Corey Lewandowski as a paid “analyst” while he is still on Donald Trump’s payroll, and it is encouraging for journalism in general and the WashingtonPost in particular that David Fahrenthold continues his extraordinary work on the Trump Foundation.
The story posted last night, about the foundation’s role in paying off legal claims against Trump’s for-profit businesses, is roughly ten times more dramatic—in evidentiary support, and in clarity of offense—than even the worst allegations about the Clinton Foundation. You can read the details yourself, but here’s a sample from the story:
“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington. After The Washington Post described the details of these Trump Foundation gifts, Tenenbaum described them as “really shocking.”
“If he’s using other people’s money — run through his foundation — to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I’ve seen in awhile,” Tenenbaum said.
For Time Capsule purposes: through the centuries of U.S. history, various nominees have of course had their swirls of financial controversy. Lyndon Johnson’s rise to wealth was complex enough to occupy hundreds of pages of Robert Caro’s oeuvre. George W. Bush, of course born to a rich and prominent family, benefited greatly from a favorable deal involving the Texas Rangers. Spiro Agnew had to resign as vice president for taking cash bribes while in office. Suspicions that “something” must be awry with the Clinton family’s Whitewater dealings occupied the press and special investigators through much of the 1990s. And so on.
But to the best of my knowledge, nothing ever known or suspected about any previous national-level nominee comes close to what is now on the record about Donald Trump and his foundation.
And still he remains the only modern candidate to refuse to release his tax returns. And still the solons of his party say, He’s fine.
***
3. Kagan. Something must have happened yesterday to bring a four-month-old article to broader attention. I received several notes from readers wanting to be sure I’d seen an old WaPo essay by Robert Kagan.
I disagree with Robert Kagan on just about everything. But in the months since he originally published his essay, called “This Is How Fascism Comes to America,” I think his arguments have come to seem more rather than less relevant. Especially this, with emphasis added:
We’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily.
What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence.
His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.
All this is part of what the country knows about this candidate, as it considers whether to make him president; and what the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell know as well, as they stand beside him.
Orly Taitz (in red), leader of the "birther" movement until Donald Trump took on that role, at a Tea Party convention in 2010Josh Anderson / Reuters
For the past few days Donald Trump has been saying that Hillary Clinton and her campaign launched the racist “birther” smear against Barack Obama.
Birtherism was a lie, as Trump now sort-of admits. But his claim that birtherism started with Hillary Clinton, in her losing campaign against Barack Obama in 2008, is a follow-on lie. For details, check back on installment #105 or an admirably direct story yesterday in the New York Times with the admirably blunt headline: “Donald Trump Clung to ‘Birther’ Lie for Years, and Still Isn’t Apologetic.”
Today Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who generally has been playing the Good Cop in presenting a nicer version of Bad Cop Trump’s own arguments, went on Meet the Press and pinned specific blame for the supposed Clinton-world birther campaign on Sidney Blumenthal—author, former Bill Clinton staffer, and long-time Hillary Clinton ally.
Based on everything I know, which includes some first-hand experience, I view this as almost certainly yet another lie. It’s disappointing, to put it mildly, to hear Kellyanne Conway retailing it and so far being allowed to get away with doing so.
***
Here is the real sequence of birtherism, as I’m aware of it:
Twelve years ago, Barack Obama first drew national attention as a “he could go all the way!” candidate with his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Very soon after that, conspiracy-minded bloggers and broadcasters from the right wing only—not anyone associated with Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat—began ginning up rumors that there was something “off” or “other” about Obama, apart from the obvious fact that he was black. Muslim? Indonesian? Communist? Kenyan? Saul Alinsky protege? Who knows. Back in 2007, Chris Hayes, then a Nation writer, chronicled the anti-Obama efforts along with other right-wing efforts of the time. This was the dawn of the birther age.
As Obama rose to beat Hillary Clinton for the nomination and then John McCain for the presidency, birther activity again on the right intensified. Through Obama’s first year in office, the most prominent birther was a right-wing lawyer-dentist from California named Orly Taitz. By the summer of 2009, Taitz’s role was so evident that the Daily Beast did a feature on her called “Queen of the Birthers.” The author of that piece was Beast writer Max Blumenthal; please take note of his name. The Beast’s intro to the piece set up the state of birtherism, and its GOP affiliation, as of that time:
“A new poll finds 58 percent of Republicans doubt Obama is American. Orly Taitz, the mastermind behind the Obama birth-certificate controversy, tells The Daily Beast’s Max Blumenthal why the president should be jailed.”
In 2011, Donald Trump took up the mantle from Orly Taitz, and from then until very recently became the most prominent birther theorist.
***
Now, where do Hillary Clinton and Sid Blumenthal fit into this narrative? As far as I can tell, and to the best of my first-hand experience, they fit in only in an entirely fictitious way.
As discussed before in this space, I have known Sid Blumenthal for a very long time, since we were starting-out magazine writers in DC in the 1980s. We’ve agreed on many things and disagreed on others. The disagreements notably involved the 2008 Democratic primaries, in which he was a strong Hillary Clinton partisan and I favored Barack Obama (mainly because of their respective stands on the Iraq war). I think Sid Blumenthal’s magazine and book journalism of the 1980s and 1990s stands up very well. I think A Self-Made Man, the first installment of his multi-volume saga on Abraham Lincoln, is a magnificent look at 19th century American political, economic, and cultural history, with understated but impressive resonance for our current day.
During the intensity of the 2007-2008 primary campaign cycle, even though I was living in China, I was on Sid Blumenthal’s email list for frequent (several times daily) updates on the state of the campaign. Mostly these updates involved why Hillary Clinton would be a stronger Democratic nominee, and Barack Obama would be weaker. They talked about foreign-policy experience. They talked about possible Republican lines of attack. They talked about the way the smear machine that had maligned John Kerry on the fraudulent “Swift Boat” attack might be arrayed against Obama.
But not once, to the best of my first-hand knowledge, did they ever mention citizenship, birtherism, or Kenya.
Just now I’ve gone back through my email archives again. The words “Kenya,” “citizenship,” “birth certificate,” and related terms do not appear in any of the very large corpus of mail I received from Sid Blumenthal in 2007 and 2008. Sid has his critics and his flaws, like any of us. But the idea that he either originated or propagated the birther view of Obama, to the best of my knowledge, is phony.
Remember Max Blumenthal, author of the takedown of Orly Taitz and her fantasies in 2009? He is Sid and Jackie Blumenthal’s son.
***
The article on which Kellyanne Conway based today’s attack is here. See if you find it credible; I do not. A very thorough deconstruction of it, by a conservative writer, is here. Sample:
Here’s what we’re lacking from [the author of the accusatory article] (that could be reasonably asked of him):
detailed notes of his meeting with Blumenthal
multiple, unbiased reporters confirming that he met with Blumenthal in 2008, and that the subject of the meeting was birtherism
evidence that he sent an investigator to Kenya to pursue these claims
the investigator who traveled to Kenya confirming the investigation, the reason for the investigation, and the source
Asher has provided none of this, nor has he hinted at being able to provide any of this. Instead, the only thing he has offered is Blumenthal’s business card.
Further deconstruction from The Washington Monthlyis here. The author of TWM’s piece, D.R. Tucker, makes a point similar to my own:
It’s profoundly unlikely that Blumenthal would encourage journalists to pursue a path of inquiry that a) was ridiculous on its face, b) would obviously lead nowhere and c) would make both himself and Clinton look like colossal fools.
Why does this qualify for Time Capsule notice? Because I’m not aware of a previous case in which a nominee has trafficked in claims that a sitting president was illegitimately in office (because, by birther logic, he was not legally eligible)—nor tried, via psychological projection, to blame these false claims on someone else once forced to admit they were lies.
It’s 50 days and a few hours until the election; one nominee has refused to release his tax information; and the Republican leadership continues to say, “He’s fine!”
This was the subtitle of my book 25 years ago! Trump in Miami tonight.Mike Segar / Reuters
This evening, in Miami, the Republican nominee for president referred to his opponent and said (emphasis added):
“I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Miami. “I think they should disarm. Immediately. What do you think. Yes? Take their guns away. She doesn’t want guns. Take them. Let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away, O.K. It will be very dangerous.”
I am aware of only one other case in which a major-party nominee has “joked” about bodily harm against his opponent. As it happens, that was from this same Donald Trump, five weeks ago saying (in installment #73) that “the Second Amendment people” might be able to do something about Hillary Clinton’s ability to appoint Supreme Court justices.
I’ll say it again: Nothing like this has ever happened before. It’s 52+ days until the election; the tax returns (and non-Dr. Bornstein health reports) still not forthcoming; and Republican leaders still saying: Sure, he’s fine!
Donald Trump at his new hotel in Washington today, before a press conference at which he lied about the birther controversy.Mike Segar / Reuters
I think this day, 52 days before the election, is one that people will look back on. At his press conference / hotel promo / endorsement spectacle just now in Washington, D.C., Donald Trump said this, and only this, about the long-running “birther” controversy that for years he led and whipped up:
Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.
In detail:
“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.” This is a flat lie. In an internal memo, people in the 2008 Clinton campaign considered applying an “othering” strategy against their rival Obama. It did not involve any challenge to Obama’s birth or citizenship, and in any case it was not put into effect. What Trump said is a flat lie. More here and here and here, with links to countless other sources.
“I finished it. I finished it.” This is a flat lie. Trump started this phony and racist controversy [or: brought much more attention to what had been a fringe view] and kept it going. (Racist? Yes. As Bernie Sanders pointed out today, Sanders’s own father, like Obama’s, was born overseas. But Sanders said that no one has ever asked him to prove that he was a “real” American.) Even after Trump claimed to have “finished” it with the appearance of Obama’s birth certificate five years ago, Trump has continued to put out Birther tweets and innuendos. You can see a sample at the end of this Vox piece; also here and here. Below is one from December 2013, two years after Trump supposedly “finished” the issue. As of this moment this is still live in Trump’s Twitter feed:
Trump on Twitter
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.” Unlike the other two, this is not a lie. It was read in exactly the tone of a negotiated hostage statement.
An ongoing theme of these time capsules, and a major focus of the Primary Concerns podcast I did with Brian Beutler this week, is the difficulty the “normal” press has had in coming to terms with a man who simply and continually lies, without the normal internal checks that hold most people back.
In particular we discussed the differing arcs of the New York Times and the Washington Post in grappling with this issue. Over the past decade, the NYT has become more and more obviously the dominant American news organization, and the Post has coped with many constraints and cutbacks. But in the past few months the news page of the Posthas seemed much more direct in calling out what is happening.
Beutler and I go into details of this in our discussion. But here is an example, the contrasting breaking-news notifications the two papers put out, with the Times at the top and the Post at the bottom.
The Post headline says “admits” and “falsely”; the NYT’s says “backed off.” Via Dylan Scott on Twitter
And the polls continue to draw closer, and the Republican leadership continues to say: Sure, this guy is fine.
Jimmy Fallon "charmingly" mussing Donald Trump's hair. This will merely be amusing if Trump loses on November 8. It will be something worse if he wins. (NBC / Reuters)
Mainly because he’s talented, partly because of the similarity of our names, I’ve paid attention to Jimmy Fallon from the start.
Effective 53 days from now, he may have a lot to answer for. Performances like the one he put on this evening with Donald Trump, including a “charming” mussing of the candidate’s famous hair, are a crucial part of the “normalizing” process of a candidate who is outside all historical norms for this office.
In my current cover story I wrote:
Trump’s rise through the primary debates, and his celebrations of successive victories at rallies in between, made it appear that one of his gifts was the ability to combine unvarying emphases and messages with a wide range of dramatic styles. One day he was egging on huge crowds by picking out scattered protesters and yelling, “Get ’em outta here!” The next day he was talking earnestly with sympathetic hosts on Fox News or conservative talk-radio shows—and then in the evening chatting urbanely, in a “we’re all New Yorkers here” style that was a less risqué version of his old radio exchanges with Howard Stern, to win over presumptively less sympathetic figures such as Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel on their shows.
Last November, Trump served as host (and danced in a parody rap video) on Saturday Night Live. In February, just after the New Hampshire primary, Stephen Colbert allowed Trump to phone in to his Late Show—and Colbert, for once overmatched, ended up making Trump seem as if he was in on all the jokes rather than the object of them.
One reason for Trump’s rise has been the effective merger of the entertainment and political-campaign industries. Jimmy Fallon accelerated that process tonight. He did so on the same day in which Trump put out a crazy economic plan and still refused to say that the incumbent (black) president was a “real” American.
Fallon’s humoring of Trump was a bad move, a destructive and self-indulgent mistake, which I hope Fallon becomes embarrassed about but the rest of us don’t have long-term reason to rue.
Donald Trump Jr., at right, with his brother Barron and stepmother Melania at the Republican convention. Today he weighs in about taxes.Carlo Allegri / Reuters
This one is just a note for the record. Please recall the sequence:
Four years ago, Donald Trump said that Mitt Romney should release his tax returns. That’s hardly a surprising position: Every major-party nominee since Richard Nixon has been expected to do so, and has.
Through the past year, Trump has said repeatedly that he’d be happy to release his tax returns but can’t because they are “under audit.”
That excuse is bullshit. No lesser authority than the IRS has said so repeatedly and unmistakably. Whether or not the returns are actually being audited (as discussed here), there is no legal reason whatsoever to keep Trump from releasing them.
While Trump has stuck with his utter-bullshit rationalization, and while establishment Republicans from Paul Ryan on down have averted their eyes, reasons have mounted up to think that a disclosure expected of all previous nominees is especially important for him. These include: the shady operations of his Trump Foundation; the unsubstantiated nature of most of his claimed donations; and, significantly for a president, the extent of his reliance on foreign creditors and customers.
Even without any of these complications, tax returns are part of the “transparency” expected of a potential president. Michael Dukakis had no complicated wealth to speak of, nor Joe Biden or Barack Obama as nominees, but still all of them had to turn over the records. Donald Trump’s finances are more complex than those of any prior nominee and thus of greater potential public significance. But he has stonewalled, and his enablers in the party have allowed him to get away with it.
Finally today two campaign representatives shifted the rationale, as if the previous one had not existed, to one that is more completely indefensible.
First Donald Trump Jr., then campaign ally Jack Kingston said that that Trump Sr. couldn’t release the returns because people might find things in them. As Trump Jr., who tends to make his father’s points with less finesse, said in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
When asked why his father has not released his tax returns as presidential candidates have traditionally done, Trump Jr. said, “Because he’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create … financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would distract from [his father’s] main message.”
Kingston, a former congressman who now works for one of D.C.’s biggest lobbying firms but is part of Trump’s “anti-insider” team, made a similar point today on CNN:
“If you put it on the table, you’re going to have 300 million Americans second-guessing what is this, what is that?”
Of course, asking what is that?, aka “second-guessing,” is why public officials have to make financial disclosures. It’s why both Kingston and Donald Trump Sr., and presumably Donald Trump Jr. as well, were hammering Hillary Clinton to release her emails. If all the information in medical records, financial reports, or official emails were flattering, no one would be required to release it. It’s only because it can lead to “second-guessing” that it’s expected of public officials.
***
I’m noting this in real time, at a moment when like so many other flaps it’s prominent on talk shows and news feeds. But like so many other “never before!” episodes in the Trump campaign, it’s likely soon to become “normalized,” and fade.
I note that with 53 days until the election, and with polls tightening, a nominee continues to defy a norm that his modern predecessors have all respected—and that his campaign has stepped away from his previous rationalized excuse and, out of nothing, invented a new alibi. And his party’s leaders say: That’s fine. People will look back on this time.
Pastor Faith Green Timmons speaking with the candidate yesterday in Flint. When he was no longer in the pastor's presence, Trump said that at the moment depicted here she was a "nervous mess."Evan Vucci / AP
We could be entering the Era of Hourly Time Capsules, in part because I need to make up for the past few days away from The Internet.
To note this for-the-moment highly publicized episode before it gets sandblasted from public memory by whatever is about to happen next: Yesterday, in Flint, Michigan, Donald Trump revealed a trait that is strikingly recurrent in his own behavior, and strikingly different from what I can recall from any other presidential nominee.
That trait is the combination of his bombast about women when they are not present, and his reluctance or inability to confront them face-to-face.
The man is a bully, and like most bullies he is a coward.
I don’t know of any other nominee in modern times of whom that was so clearly true. (Richard Nixon gave all the signs of not being physically courageous, but he rhetorically he did not show the stark contrast between being nasty-behind-their-back / polite-to-their-face that Trump does with women who challenge him.)
This is something I discuss in my current cover story, involving the three distinct moments in the primary season when Trump looked worst in live exchanges:
Donald Trump was made to look bad by one interviewer with the time, preparation, and guts to pursue a line of questioning, and by two women who discussed right in front of him the ugly things he has said.
If he shows up for this fall’s debates, he’ll encounter moderators with a lot of time to explore issues, and a woman with decades of onstage toughness behind her.
And it’s what you saw in this now-famous showdown in Flint, in which Trump meekly accepted correction in person from Pastor Faith Green Timmons, when she told him he was not supposed to be making a political speech—and then, once safely out of her gaze, flat-out lied about what had happened and had been captured on tape.
Here is what Trump told the never-disappointing Fox and Friends this morning:
“Something was up,” Trump told Fox and Friends on Thursday morning, calling the Rev. Faith Green Timmons a “nervous mess.”
“I noticed she was so nervous when she introduced me,” he said. “When she got up to introduce me she was so nervous, she was shaking. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. Then she came up. So she had that in mind, there’s no question.”
And here is what actually occurred:
***
Bonus travails-of-the-press point: NPR’s Scott Detrow did a very strong and pointed post contrasting the way Trump described the Flint episode and what actually occurred there.
But here is the way NPR headlined his post:
“Misstates Key Facts”? What, exactly, would be wrong with the word “lies”?
Mock 'The Deplorables' poster. From left: Roger Stone, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Eric Trump, Mike Pence, The Man, Pepe the Frog, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr., Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos. Trump Jr. said he was "honored" by the grouping.Donald J. Trump Jr. on Instagram, via Tina Nguyen in Vanity Fair
Remember the episode of “the Star,” reported back in installment #33? It was only two months ago, but it seems forever.
Remember this?
Way back in July, Donald Trump retweeted an item showing Hillary Clinton awash in a sea of cash, with the message “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” emblazoned on a six-sided star. Criticism quickly arose about the overlap with classic money-hungry anti-Semitic imagery, much as if Trump had used an image of blacks eating watermelon or Mexicans dozing under their sombreros. Fairly quickly Trump took the rare-for-him step of actually deleting his tweet. But even then his campaign’s reaction was outraged innocence. Anti-Semitic? What are you talking about?? Why would you think it’s a Star of David? It’s so obviously a sheriff’s badge! The real racists are the ones who think anything else!
That’s what this weekend’s “Pepe” episode reminds me of.
As a reminder: Hillary Clinton set the stage with her tin-eared comment about the “basket of deplorables.” Then the stylish and unembarrassable Trump ally Roger Stone responded with the Expendables-knock-off movie poster you see above, which Donald Trump Jr. then shared on Instagram, as shown below:
Donald J. Trump Jr’s comment on the poster, via Tina Nguyen.
Why is this like “the Star”? Because of Pepe the Frog.
For some people, what I’m about to say is old news and obvious. But for many, perhaps most, it’s important to have the whole context laid out.
If you’ve spent any time in the thickets of “alt-right” activism in recent years, you know perfectly well who Pepe is and what he stands for. In the “Deplorables” poster he is of course the figure with green skin and Trump-style hair standing alongside The Man. But to people who would actually fit “the deplorables” standard of racial animus, Pepe is also the wink-wink insiders’ symbol not just of racism but even of outright exterminationism.
From a typical day’s email.
You can read an account of Pepe’s recent history via the Daily Beast a few months ago here. He also has a pre-racist internet meme history, which you can see here. I’m not going to share the Pepe variants I keep getting in the mail, but they include:
Pepe as a sly smiling gas-chamber operator, inviting Jews to take a “shower”; Pepe working the crematoria, after the gas chambers have done their job; Pepe at the glorious new southern Wall, grinning at the plight of Mexicans trapped on the other side; Pepe as an Orthodox Jew, smirking (because of the “inside job”) as the World Trade Centers come down 15 years ago; Pepe with a lynch mob.
Again, it’s old news, and that is the point. If you’re involved in politics, you know this. You know exactly what the image of Pepe signifies in political uses these days. So for the son and namesake of the Republican nominee to share with pride a poster including Pepe necessarily means either that he does not know about Pepe, which indicates incompetence—or that he does, which indicates something worse.
***
The episode should be more disturbing than the conceivably misunderstood six-sided star. In that case, an innocent if unlikely alternative explanation was at hand: No, really, it is just a sheriff’s star! What’s wrong with you, that you would think anything else?
But in this case, there is no “nice” version of contemporary political Pepe to fall back on. (Oh, you thought we meant the one from the death camps? Not at all! We meant the one from the lynchings! Sorry for the confusion.) With eight weeks to go until the election, this is what Donald Trump Jr. has been “honored” to send out.
I am not aware of anything like this having happened before.
Donald Trump in Baltimore, after his CNBC interviewMike Segar / Reuters
An uncatchable-up-with amount of news has happened in the three days since installment #99. So I’ll start the regrouping process with something simple: a single incredible interview.
Early this morning, Donald Trump did a long phone-in session with CNBC, which you can see in full below. The questioners made Matt Lauer look like the Grand Inquisitor, as you will see if you take a look.
For instance, one of the early questions, from Joe Kernan, starts with the premise that businesses and business leaders are unfairly maligned in America today. What does a successful business leader like Trump think about that?
Through the rest of the interview, Trump reeled off several dozen surprising, unsubstantiated, completely wrong, and otherwise weird statements, none of which the interviewers challenged him on. Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star provided a convenient summary of a few:
And that’s just the start. Beyond the ones Dale mentions were Trump’s (fantastical) claim that “China could solve the problem with North Korea in one day, if they wanted” (actually they couldn’t). Or that Matt Lauer had been much tougher in questioning him than he had with Hillary (unt-uh).
In a normal election cycle, a candidate making an offhand racist remark about a sitting US senator would be a big news story.
In a normal election cycle, a candidate making an offhanded lie about the state of his personal finances would be a big news story.
To be totally honest, even in a normal election cycle a candidate exhibiting total confusion about the mechanics and merits of monetary policy probably wouldn’t be that big of a news story but it would at least get some attention.
***
It’s 56 days and a few hours until the election; one of the candidates is still stonewalling about his tax returns; both of them, who will be 69 (HRC) and 70 (Trump) on election day should be offering full health information, but at least what Hillary Clinton has offered so far is not a self-evident joke; and the race tightens up. Just noting for now an interview that in any other year for any other candidate would itself be the stuff of campaign-altering news. I am trying not to remain numb.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, at a Trump rally.Scott Audette / Reuters
Through any campaign, candidates have ups and downs in their editorial-page treatment. The concentration of these four editorials in the past 24 hours seems unusual and is worth noting as a possible press recalibration.
1. Tampa Bay Tribune, “Feds should investigate Bondi-Trump connection.” This is of course about the apparent pay-to-play connection of Donald Trump’s donations to the Florida Attorney General’s campaign, and her then deciding against an investigation of Trump university. The editorial begins:
Federal prosecutors should investigate whether there is any connection between the decision by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office not to pursue fraud allegations against Trump University and a $25,000 campaign contribution he gave her. Since Florida prosecutors will not touch this mess, the Justice Department is the only option. The appearance of something more than a coincidence is too serious and the unresolved questions are too numerous to accept blanket denials by Bondi and Trump without more digging and an independent review.
The Washington Post also has an editorial on this theme, “The Pam Bondi case shows that Trump is more hustler than businessman.” What is already known in this case—flow of money, favorable government treatment, exact cause-effect not yet proven—is so much starker than what is suspected in the many Clinton Foundation episodes that it is overdue for extra attention.
Imagine how history would judge today’s Americans if, looking back at this election, the record showed that voters empowered a dangerous man because of . . . a minor email scandal. There is no equivalence between Ms. Clinton’s wrongs and Mr. Trump’s manifest unfitness for office.
If the moderators of the coming debates do not figure out a better way to get the candidates to speak accurately about their records and policies — especially Mr. Trump, who seems to feel he can skate by unchallenged with his own version of reality while Mrs. Clinton is grilled and entangled in the fine points of domestic and foreign policy — then they will have done the country a grave disservice.
Whether or not one agrees with her positions, Mrs. Clinton, formerly secretary of state and once a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, showed a firm understanding of the complex issues facing the country. Mr. Trump reveled in his ignorance about global affairs and his belief that leading the world’s most powerful nation is no harder than running his business empire, which has included at least fourbankruptcies.
“Grave disservice.” “Reveled in his ignorance.” This is an editorial rather than a news item, but it marks a different tone from most campaign-year coverage of debates.
***
4. WaPo, “Gary Johnson’s Aleppo gaffe was bad. But Trump’s ignorance is worse.” The “gaffe” is of course Gov. Johnson’s “What is Aleppo?” question yesterday on the Morning Joe program. The significant word in this headline is “worse,” which sets up a distinction between, rather than the familiar “They’re all shading the truth!” false-equivalence grouping of, the errors and offenses of the candidates:
It’s refreshing, at least, to hear a national candidate [Johnson] acknowledge error and vow to do better.
Contrast that with Donald Trump, who in a televised national security forum Wednesday offered a staggering array of ignorant and mendacious assertions—and acknowledged no regrets about any of them.
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One by one, sentiments like some of these have appeared in some outlets over the the weeks. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that they all appear at the same time. But perhaps it indicates how the unprecedented nature of the campaign has been provoking and requiring a different approach by the press. One way or another, it is worth noting with 59 days to go.
Now-retired Army general Michael Flynn, testifying as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency two years ago. He accompanied Donald Trump to the recent classified briefing. Flynn has kept quiet about what he heard there. Donald Trump has not.Gary Cameron / Reuters
Last night, at the “Commander-in-Chief” forum, Donald Trump characterized what he had heard from intelligence officials in a classified briefing, and said why he believed the briefers agreed with his political perspective and shared his disdain for the current administration.
I am not aware of any previous nominee ever having done anything of this sort.
(In the modern era, nominees have gotten classified briefings to keep them up to date on crucial issues. Some have deliberately delayed or declined the briefings, precisely so they wouldn’t need to constantly remember what information was classified and thus shouldn’t be mentioned in public, and what was safe to discuss.)
According to a story by NBC, two former heads of the CIA share the view that Trump has crossed yet another line. As Ken Dilanian and Robert Windrem report:
Former CIA and NSA director Mike Hayden, who opposes Trump, told NBC News that in almost four decades in intelligence “I have never seen anything like this before.” [JF note: Hayden, a retired four-star Air Force general, is no one’s idea of a political lefty, and is in the camp of national-security conservatives who oppose Trump.]
“A political candidate has used professional intelligence officers briefing him in a totally non-political setting as props to buttress an argument for his political campaign,” said Hayden. … “The ‘I can read body language’ line was quite remarkable. … I am confident Director Clapper sent senior professionals to this meeting and so I am equally confident that no such body language ever existed. It’s simply not what we do.”
Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director who was President George W. Bush's briefer and is now a Hillary Clinton supporter, said Trump's comments about his briefing were extraordinary.
“This is the first time that I can remember a candidate for president doing a readout from an intelligence briefing, and it’s the first time a candidate has politicized their intelligence briefing. Both of those are highly inappropriate and crossed a long standing red line respected by both parties,” he said.
Mike Lofgren, the longtime Senate staffer and defense expert turned writer (The Party Is Over, The Deep State) expands on an implication of Hayden’s and Morell’s comments. That is, Trump’s comments are not merely indiscreet; they are also almost certainly untrue. Lofgren writes:
Two points:
1. Employees of the intelligence community who give briefings to high-level officials do not, repeat, do not advocate for their pet policies. These people would not be presidential appointees but almost certainly career civil servants (or the foreign or intelligence equivalent of a civil servant) If they were asked, “what do we do about X?” they would demur on the basis of it not being their department. They know they are not there to advocate for policies. This applies doubly for personnel briefing presidential candidates because of the extreme political sensitivity. As for criticizing the policies of their bosses to a human megaphone like Donald Trump, it is inconceivable they are that stupid.
Of course the briefers didn’t actually advocate anything, as Trump first implied, so he fell back on what philosopher Karl Popper would have called a statement devoid of factual content, because it cannot be falsified: the briefers’ body language told him they disagreed with Obama’s policies. Sure, it did …
What he’s managed to do is put those briefers in an extremely embarrassing situation. In a Trump presidency, we could expect a lot more of that: generals and civil servants being nonchalantly thrown under the bus as if they were contractors or tradesmen being stiffed on the bill for their services at Mar a Lago.
2. So what if Putin has an 82 percent approval rating? We can argue about the validity of that figure, but let’s assume it’s true. It is completely irrelevant with respect to which policies are ultimately in the U.S. national interest. I dare say Xi Jin-ping is similarly popular in China, particularly with regard to his aggressive assertion of sovereignty over virtually all of the South China Sea. But that popularity has no bearing on what US policy towards the matter ought to be, particularly when an international tribunal has rejected China’s claim. The point Trump is making is a pretty ominous one when you deconstruct it: authoritarian populist leaders ought to get their way because of their alleged popularity.
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Here we are, 60 days until the election, with the nominee discussing the classified information he’s heard, and the GOP establishment from Ryan and McConnell on down still saying: He’s fine!