“Donald Trump joked with Vladimir Putin about getting rid of journalists and Russian meddling in US elections when the two leaders met at the G20 summit in Japan.
As they sat for photographs at the start of their first formal meeting in nearly a year, the US president lightheartedly sought common ground with Putin at the expense of the journalists around them in Osaka. . . .When journalists asked Trump just before he left for Japan what he would like to talk to Putin about, he told them it was “none of your business”. As they sat alongside each other, a reporter asked whether he was going to tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 election.
Trump said: “Yes, of course I will,” drawing a laugh from Putin. Then, without looking at Putin, Trump said briskly: “Don’t meddle in the election, please,” and then repeated the phrase with a mock finger wag as Putin and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, smiled broadly.” – The Guardian
Category Archives: Donald Trump
“Because he’s one of the best presidents we’ve had for a very long time. Very long time.”
Reporter’s question to Trump supporter: “What’s the main reason you’ll vote for him again?“
Her response:
“The main reason? Because he’s one of the best presidents we’ve had for a very long time. Very long time.
He doesn’t lie. I know y’all say he does. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. And I’m just going to be honest. I’m not trying to be mean. But the way the media treats him, it’s a disgrace.”
Donald Trump will get her vote. And it won’t matter that Trump hasn’t really delivered on his campaign promises.
It has been clear forever (or at least since my first post on this blog) that Trump has no intention of reaching out beyond his base.
Trump is undoubtedly convinced that whipping up the base worked for him last time. (Well, in the last presidential campaign, not in 2018.) But in 2020, James Comey will be out of sight; there will be no Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Clinton Rich as a template for mainstream media reporting; the Democratic nominee won’t neglect campaigning in Michigan, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania; and no one will be confident that either staying home or casting a protest vote couldn’t possibly prevent a Democratic victory.
This time around: we’ve experienced a Trump presidency, we’ll be looking out for Putin’s meddling, and Democrats – aware that Trump’s reelection would pose an existential crisis – will pull out all the stops to win.
That’s not a guarantee, but as much fun as Trump’s campaign rallies generate for true believers (“Lock her up! Lock her up!”), and as much bewildered angst as they create for more critical observers (“He doesn’t lie. I know y’all say he does. He doesn’t.”), it’s not clear that Trump is helping himself. As Jonathan Bernstein notes, “… the question is what Trump has accomplished with all of his non-stop electioneering. And the answer to that is pretty simple: Bupkis. Nada. Nothing.”
Democrats should be heartened by this. In Josh Marshall’s words, “… the idea that Trump can be a complete maniac and buffoon but none of it matters because of the electoral college or other magic powers becomes at a certain point enervating and demoralizing for those who see the danger he represents and the necessity of his electoral repudiation. There’s little evidence to back it up.”
There’s no guarantee. But Trump’s foolery may end up mattering.
Tick tock, tick tock – Why hasn’t the House staged televised hearings with live witnesses?
Well, finally: “In their attempt to move forward with impeachment, the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee is reaching way back, calling Watergate star John Dean to testify on June 10.”
It’s a beginning and long overdue.
Never mind what you think about impeachment, or Nancy Pelosi’s resistance to it, or optimal timing for it, or initiating impeachment proceedings, or any other permutations. Why haven’t we had televised hearings with live witnesses in the House of Representatives every week since Bill Barr released his redacted version of Robert Mueller’s report? There are scads of people whose testimony the Trump White House can’t possibly block – including many B-List folks who aren’t household names, but (as in the Watergate hearings of another era) can advance the narrative of presidential wrongdoing. (John Dean is fine, as a warm-up, though the Mueller Report mentions a cavalcade of others who have a closer connection to Donald Trump.)
The absence of hearings up till now represents Congressional malpractice. Numerous commentators have highlighted the importance of telling a story through House hearings:
June 6 – Jonathan Bernstein (“Stop Obsessing About Impeachment Poll Numbers“):
What the House can do is relentlessly dramatize and amplify the story that the Mueller report tells, along with other Trump impeachable malfeasance and scandals. So far, they haven’t really done that effectively.
June 4 – Josh Marshall (“Thoughts on Impeachment“):
The most effective action the House can take is to investigate the President’s wrongdoing and bring it before the public and hold the possibility of impeachment in the offing as they bring new evidence to the public about the President’s misrule.
But here’s the thing. . . .
If the most aggressive stance toward President Trump isn’t impeachment but aggressive investigation – which I firmly believe – then you actually have to be aggressive and show you’re being aggressive.
June 2 – Francis Wilkinson (“Before Impeachment, Democrats Must Win the War for Truth“):
Democrats . . . should methodically highlight the truth of Trump’s ethical and policy failures, day after day, in hearings, reports, news conferences and events in Washington and around the country. And then they must get up each succeeding day and do it all over again.
May 30 – Donna Edwards (“Democrats need to repackage the Mueller report for TV“):
It’s time for Democratic leaders to repackage Mueller’s findings in a form that will be more readily digested by the American people. Unfortunately, the current approach of investigations in no fewer than six committees, multiple subpoenas, innumerable court proceedings and White House delay tactics just creates more confusion. How can the United States focus on the findings if a Democratic House will not singularly focus its investigations? From the cheap seats, it appears that there may be too many balls in the air.
It is no surprise that few Americans are talking about the report over the water cooler. The only voice that breaks through with a consistent (if mostly untrue) message is President Trump’s, especially absent an alternative narrative. Democrats should look at this differently. Mueller has given Democrats cover to present that narrative and proceed with impeachment as the appropriate process under the Constitution.
May 29 – Benjamin Wittes (“Mueller Bows Out: What Does Congress Do Now?“)
Congress’s current strategy is an incoherent muddle. . . .
The better approach, in my view, is to focus on live testimony from witnesses who supplied the material about President Trump’s conduct that Mueller made public in the report—mostly but not exclusively in Volume II. There are a lot of these witnesses. Congress could easily hold weekly hearings that would be riveting television. Who knows? They might even get what the president most values in the world: good ratings. The goal would be to focus public attention on the president’s abuse of the intelligence and law enforcement communities and his individual conduct with respect to Russia. Such hearings could develop new information. They could also enrich our understanding of the existing factual record. They would serve to publicly validate and elucidate Mueller’s findings and, critically, to shift those findings from the voice of Mueller himself to the voice of the president’s closest aides. Perhaps most importantly, they would create a sustained vehicle for focusing on Trump’s conduct—which is, and needs to be, the central issue.
If I were in charge of the House judiciary committee, a wide array of witnesses named in the report would receive an invitation for public testimony—and any of them who did not immediately agree to appear would receive a subpoena in short order. The idea would be to bring the Mueller report to life and, along the way, to establish clearly in case law the ability of Congress to conduct such oversight hearings against a recalcitrant executive.
May 22 – David Corn (“Have the Democrats Blown the Trump-Russia Scandal?“):
For five months now, the Democrats have held power within the House. While passing legislation to address voters’ needs and while battling to enforce subpoenas, they could also be telling the story—with hearings featuring witnesses who could present compelling accounts that have a chance of grabbing the nation’s attention for at least a few minutes.
Three percent of Americans say they have read the Mueller report. That number is probably high. Yes, many have seen the headlines and the news accounts summarizing the report’s findings and allegations. But there is something visceral about a well-run hearing. It is a different way of presenting information to the citizenry. (John Dean’s testimony during the Watergate hearings continued for days and captivated the nation.) Congressional hearings could be used to convey the basics of the Trump-Russia scandal that have disappeared in the ceaseless shuffle—and been shoved aside by the debates over collusion and obstruction.
May 5 – Jonathan Bernstein, who has been at it a while (“Impeaching Trump Would Constrain Democrats Too Much“):
The “before” question is whether to continue investigations and hearings as part of regular House oversight, or as part of an explicit impeachment inquiry.
Are there advantages with the latter? Not really, I don’t think. Whether it’s called impeachment or not, what matters at this stage is whether Democrats can find ways to publicize Trump’s malfeasance, in hopes of both hurting Trump’s popularity and of finding new allies among any weak Trump supporters among congressional Republicans.
April 22 – Norman Ornstein (“Impeachment Is Not the Answer. At Least Not Yet“):
What we need is for the Judiciary, Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committees to conduct a series of deep dives into the areas of communication and coordination between Trump and his campaign with Russians and their surrogates, such as WikiLeaks; the multiple categories and areas of obstruction of justice that Robert Mueller outlined; the threats to our intelligence operations and our justice system from Trump and his operatives; and the moves by Russia to interfere in and influence our elections used by Trump and unchecked by Republicans. Other committees, such as Ways and Means and Banking, need to be ready to do the same thing as more information emerges from the SDNY and the New York attorney general, among others, about Trump’s financial dealings, including with the Russians, and about Russian money laundering. The witnesses need to include Mueller and Rosenstein, of course, but also the range of figures mentioned in the report, and also a range of experts in areas such as ethics, constitutional violations, intelligence operations, and election administration and security.
Democrats need to stage and coordinate hearings across committees and subcommittees, to make sure they do not overload Americans’ ability to pay attention. Most important, they need to structure the public hearings in a dramatically different way than usual. Each committee needs to use experienced counsel—a good example might be former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara—and limit, if not abandon, opening statements, except from the chairs. No five-minute rounds of questions going down the line of every committee member, leading to utterly disjointed discourse, making it easy for hostile witnesses to evade, filibuster, or otherwise avoid follow-ups and get through a five minute period, which is then followed by a five-minute breather with an ally on the Republican side, and then another five minutes from the next member of the panel that may have nothing to do with the previous round of questions.
Good grief. Bill Barr can hardly sink any deeper into the tank for this president
“I think one of the ironies today is that people are saying that it’s President Trump that’s shredding our institutions. I really see no evidence of that, it is hard, and I really haven’t seen bill of particulars as to how that’s being done. From my perspective the idea of resisting a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him and you know, really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president, that is where the shredding of our norms and our institutions is occurring.” – Attorney General Barr on “CBS This Morning”
For a bill of particulars, of course, we need look no further than the Mueller Report (as if we needed that report as evidence of Trump’s off the rails behavior). And, in the world according to Barr, it’s the opponents of the President who are shredding norms.
The Attorney General’s interview with CBS, following Bob Mueller’s brief public statement earlier in the week, continues his ongoing misrepresentation, obfuscation, and validation of baseless conspiracy theories to subvert the rule of law, undermine our law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and shore up Trump’s political position.
(Full disclosure: the first two words of the headline were inspired by Barr’s hapless mien, reminiscent – to the editor – of Charlie Brown.)
Democrats disagree about political strategy: Is Trump the problem or the GOP?
“I feel like the party went through this and the 2016 election showed that Trumpism isn’t just Donald Trump — it’s the entire Republican Congress, too. Until there is someone in the Republican Party who can stand up to Trump, then none of them are better than Trump.” — Rebecca Katz, Democratic strategist
(“Biden Thinks Trump is the Problem, Not All Republicans. Other Democrats Disagree,” Shane Goldmacher, New York Times, May 4, 2019)
Joe Biden is running on the conceit that Donald Trump is an aberration. And that he, Biden, can reach across the aisle to work with a cooperative Republican Party.
The former Vice President is either making a clever (if not quite factual) electoral pitch (which, while it may sound reassuring, is hardly something we can bank on), or he has a very short memory — because Joe Biden was there when Barack Obama was greeted with absolute, across-the-board opposition from the Republican Party.
Let’s recall:
Michael Grunwald, speaking of his book, “The New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era,” recounts a now familiar plot line for Time magazine (when the United States was poised to plunge into a depression):
It reveals some of my reporting on the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) in which they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular President-elect during an economic emergency. “If he was for it,” former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it.”
Grunwald goes on to relate that Biden was aware of this scorched earth strategy:
Vice President Biden told me that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any bipartisan cooperation on major votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators who said, ‘Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ ” he recalled. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was, ‘For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’ ” Biden said. The Vice President said he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along those lines.
“So I promise you — and the President agreed with me — I never thought we were going to get Republican support,” Biden said.
Robert Draper’s book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do,” describes the Republican strategizing at the January 20, 2009 meeting:
“The only way we’ll succeed is if we’re united,” Ryan told the others. “If we tear ourselves apart, we’re finished.” But, he added, he liked what he was hearing now. Everyone at the table sounded like a genuine conservative. It was a place to start.
“If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the minority,” said Kevin McCarthy. “We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.”
…
The dinner lasted nearly four hours. They parted company almost giddily. The Republicans had agreed on a way forward: Go after Geithner. (And indeed Kyl did, the next day: “Would you answer my question rather than dancing around it — please?”)
Show united and unyielding opposition to the president’s economic policies. (Eight days later, Minority Whip Cantor would hold the House Republicans to a unanimous No against Obama’s economic stimulus plan.)
Begin attacking vulnerable Democrats on the airwaves. (The first National Republican Congressional Committee attack ads would run in less than two months.)
Win the spear point of the House in 2010. Jab Obama relentlessly in 2011. Win the White House and the Senate in 2012.
“You will remember this day,” Newt Gingrich proclaimed to the others as they said goodbye. “You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown.”
Here is how Mitch McConnell summed up the strategy on everything Obama proposed:
“We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” McConnell says. “Because we thought—correctly, I think—that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.”
Why?
Want another example? There was Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi: the Republican never-ending cycle of hearings to politicize the deaths in 2012 of Americans at the Libyan embassy. Why? For political advantage, of course, as Kevin McCarthy (then House Majority Leader; now House Minority Leader) explained in an interview with Sean Hannity:
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy asked. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”
“I give you credit for that,” said Hannity. “I’ll give you credit where credit is due.”
The obstructionist strategy played out in the bipartisan negotiations leading to passage of the Affordable Healthcare Act in 2010, Obama’s major legislative accomplishment, without a solitary Republican vote in favor. Democrats made numerous compromises with Republicans (this is why we don’t have a public option*) before Republicans revealed their unanimous, remorseless opposition to ACA:
… [W]ith Obama’s blessing, the Senate …became the fulcrum for a potential grand bargain on health reform. Chairman Max Baucus, in the spring of 2009, signaled his desire to find a bipartisan compromise, working especially closely with Grassley, his dear friend and Republican counterpart, who had been deeply involved in crafting the Republican alternative to Clintoncare. Baucus and Grassley convened an informal group of three Democrats and three Republicans on the committee, which became known as the “Gang of Six.” They covered the parties’ ideological bases; the other GOPers were conservative Mike Enzi of Wyoming and moderate Olympia Snowe of Maine, and the Democrats were liberal Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and moderate Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
Baucus very deliberately started the talks with a template that was the core of the 1993-4 Republican plan, built around an individual mandate and exchanges with private insurers—much to the chagrin of many Democrats and liberals who wanted, if not a single-payer system, at least one with a public insurance option. Through the summer, the Gang of Six engaged in detailed discussions and negotiations to turn a template into a plan. But as the summer wore along, it became clear that something had changed; both Grassley and Enzi began to signal that participation in the talks—and their demands for changes in the evolving plan—would not translate into a bipartisan agreement.
What became clear before September, when the talks fell apart, is that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had warned both Grassley and Enzi that their futures in the Senate would be much dimmer if they moved toward a deal with the Democrats that would produce legislation to be signed by Barack Obama. They both listened to their leader. An early embrace by both of the framework turned to shrill anti-reform rhetoric by Grassley—talking, for example, about death panels that would kill grandma—and statements by Enzi that he was not going to sign on to a deal.
And, let’s not forget the Senate’s refusal to hold hearings for Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Mitch McConnell is especially pleased with himself for putting President Obama in his place: “One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, ‘You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy.'”
When I asked McConnell how he felt about his legacy and Trump’s being so closely linked, he rejected the premise. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the most consequential call I made was before President Trump came to office.” I asked what he meant. “The decision not to fill the Scalia vacancy,” he said. “I think that’s the most consequential thing I’ve ever done.”
Remember: not a single Republican Senator moved a finger to ensure hearings for Obama’s choice (though there were ineffectual murmurs of complaint — I recall Senator Susan Collins murmuring — just like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker’s mild criticism of Trump, while voting consistently in support of Trump and the Republican leadership).
This, the Garland blockade, McConnell believes, will be his lasting legacy as Senate Majority Leader:
When I asked McConnell how he felt about his legacy and Trump’s being so closely linked, he rejected the premise. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the most consequential call I made was before President Trump came to office.” I asked what he meant. “The decision not to fill the Scalia vacancy,” he said. “I think that’s the most consequential thing I’ve ever done.”
Count me in the Democratic camp that thinks that Trump is only a symptom of an off-the-rails Republican Party.
*After posting this, I recalled Joe Lieberman’s threat to kill the public option. I don’t wish to let him off the hook for his misdeeds, but if Republicans hadn’t played Max Baucus for months on end with meaningless negotiations and compromises, the ACA would have passed with Ted Kennedy’s vote.
(Image: McConnell, Ryan, Trump, and Pence celebrating the Republican tax bill.)
Attorney General Barr’s disinformation campaign: the definitive assessment
Quote of the day from Benjamin Wittes, Editor in Chief of Lawfare, who reviews the Attorney General’s wrenching mischaracterizations to protect the President from March 24, when Barr sent his first letter to Congress, to yesterday’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Barr did not lie in any of these statements. He did not, as some people insist, commit perjury. I haven’t found a sentence he has written or said that cannot be defended as truthful on its own terms, if only in some literal sense. But it is possible to mislead without lying. One can be dishonest before Congress without perjury. And one can convey sweeping untruths without substantial factual misstatement. This is what Barr has been doing since that first letter. And it is utterly beneath the United States Department of Justice.
Wittes, who after initially granting Barr the benefit the doubt has concluded that his actions regarding the Mueller report have been catastrophic, analyzes “seven different layers of substantive misrepresentation, layers which build on one another into a dramatic rewriting of the president’s conduct—and of Mueller’s findings about the president’s conduct. It is worth unpacking and disentangling these misrepresentations, because each is mischievous on its own, but together they operate as a disinformation campaign being run by the senior leadership of the Justice Department.” (“The Catastrophic Performance of Bill Barr,” Benjamin Wittes, The Atlantic, May 2, 2019)
Years ago I recall hearing an expression, which was attributed to the speaker’s mother: ‘You can tell a lie with what you say and you can tell a lie with what you don’t say.’ Bill Barr, clever lawyer and ruthless political operative, has mastered the latter technique (albeit not altogether convincingly). I regard Benjamin Wittes’ analysis (as of this morning) as the definite assessment of Barr’s disinformation methodology vis-à-vis the Mueller report. I highly recommend spending a few minutes to read it. A couple of brief quotations hardly do the essay justice.
I’ll offer one more quote, where Wittes offers a link to another assessment (also worth a read):
The dishonesty only begins with the laughably selective quotation of Mueller’s report in Barr’s original letter, the scope of which Charlie Savage laid out in a remarkable New York Times article shortly after the full report was released. I urge people to look at Savage’s side-by-side quotations. The distortion of Mueller’s meaning across a range of areas is not subtle, and it’s not hard to understand why Mueller himself wrote to Barr saying that the attorney general’s letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.”
(Image: Pinocchio via wikipedia.)
William Barr is first and foremost a tribal chieftain of the GOP
A post in two parts on William Barr’s shenanigans regarding the Mueller Report. [April 20 update: I’ve added a third part.]
- What did Barr do?
In William Barr’s notorious 4-page summary, he quotes from the Mueller report: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The complete sentence (Mueller Report, Introduction to Volume I, pp. 1-2) reads:
Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
From his summary letter on March 24, through his “spying” testimony before Congress last week, to his news conference an hour or so before releasing his redacted version of the Mueller report – Bill Barr’s intent to mislead and distract has been abundantly clear.
No fewer than five times in his news conference he says some variation of this: “In other words, there was no evidence of Trump campaign ‘collusion’ with the Russian government’s hacking.”
Those ‘other words,’ of course are a familiar Donald Trump refrain. Never mind that collusion – outside of anti-trust law – is not a legal concept Barr learned at the George Washington University Law School, or during his tenure as U.S. Attorney General, or anytime or anyplace else during his decades-long legal career in either government or private practice. It is a Trump talking point.
The Mueller Report, in contrast, clearly explains that “collusion” is not a federal crime and thus was not addressed at all in the investigation (Introduction to Volume I, p. 2):
In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of “collusion.” In so doing, the Office recognized that the word “collud[ e]” was used in communications with the Acting Attorney General confirming certain aspects of the investigation’s scope and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation. But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office’s focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law.
Barr’s references to collusion include this statement from his news conference, which seeks to undermine the basis for the investigation and minimize Trump’s attempts to obstruct it with excuses about the President’s unsettled emotional state. Said Barr:
In assessing the President’s actions discussed in the report, it is important to bear in mind the context. President Trump faced an unprecedented situation. As he entered into office, and sought to perform his responsibilities as President, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office, and the conduct of some of his associates. At the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the President’s personal culpability. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion. And as the Special Counsel’s report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks. Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims. And at the same time, the President took no act that in fact deprived the Special Counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation. Apart from whether the acts were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the President had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.
Barr throws up so much chaff here, it is hard to see or breathe. Yes, Trump was in “an unprecedented situation,” having won election with the aggressive covert assistance of the Russian government. “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systemic fashion.” (Introduction to Volume I, p. 1)
Yes, “federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct” with sufficient evidence of a national security threat to obtain a FISA warrant. Yes, there was “relentless speculation … about the President’s personal culpability,” based in great measure on the conduct in plain sight of Trump personally, and of Trump’s campaign and associates – and of their misdirection and lies to cover up their culpability. No, it is not a fact that “there was in fact no collusion.” And, grant that “the President was frustrated and angered,” does that earn him a pass on bad conduct?
Mueller’s report adds to abundant public evidence of Trump’s capacity for lying, which calls into question why we should be moved by references to the man’s “sincere belief.” While Barr’s assertion that “the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation,” is belied by the President’s refusal to sit down for an interview with the Special Counsel or to answer even in writing questions about obstruction of justice.
If the President “took no act in fact” that thwarted the investigation, it was not for lack of trying. For example, after firing Comey and learning learning that an obstruction-of-justice investigation into his own conduct had begun, Trump “attempted to remove the Special Counsel; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions unrecuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between the Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.” (Volume II, II. Factual Results Of The Obstruction Investigation, L. Overarching Factual Issues, 2.b., p. 158)
Finally, “Apart from whether the acts were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the President had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.” I’ll note, simply, that the Mueller Report has page after page of evidence of corrupt intent – and obstructive actions by the President of the United States.
2. What’s the point?
In my March 27 post, I suggested that Barr’s 4-page letter was designed to lock-in a false narrative prior to releasing the (redacted) Mueller report. The letter led to several days of reporting that Mueller had found no collusion, nor convincing evidence of obstruction. Barr’s news conference – an hour or so before release of the report – kept up the charade. Why bother, especially only an hour or two before folks could see for themselves that Barr was again spinning furiously?
Certainly Barr (as with many Trump associates inside and outside of government) knows how to play to an audience of one on TV. But far more significant to Barr was a much wider audience. Barr is acting as a prominent leader of the Republican Party (that is to say, his Tribe). He is signaling to Trump defenders – wherever they may be – that, regardless of how solid or extensive the evidence of corruption, instability, and wrongdoing is, the party line is unchanged: this was a witch hunt, his enemies spied on the president, they’ll use any means necessary to bring him down, and Trump defenders must continue to push back.
From Fox News Channel to Mitch McConnell to GOP Congressional backbenchers to the grassroots: Barr has a loud, proud message. He has stayed on message consistently, regardless of the logic or the facts. He has endured criticism and a diminishing reputation. So be it.
William Barr is demonstrating the remorseless tribal politics of the Republican Party circa 2019.
3. Barr as “Coverup-General” in the George H.W. Bush administration.
This just came to my attention, though it is hardly news, since it took place when Bill Barr served as A.G. the first time (1991-1993), under George H.W. Bush: he has a history of covering up for Republican presidents and cabinet members.
Noah Feldman at Bloomberg reviewed this history in January: “The most significant single act of Barr’s career in the Department of Justice was to advise President George H.W. Bush to pardon six officials from Ronald Reagan’s administration, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for crimes associated with the Iran-Contra affair. At the time, Barr was — you guessed it — attorney general. His recommendation gave Bush the cover he needed to issue the pardons.”
Even before this episode, which garnered a banner page one headline in the New York Times, William Safire had dubbed Barr “the Coverup-General” (while the headline mocked him as The Patsy Prosecutor) for his role in resisting appointment of an independent counsel in yet another Bush administration scandal.
So, insofar as Barr has damaged his reputation (as I suggested above), it may be only because folks have poor memories that Barr’s reputation was not in tatters even before his shenanigans regarding Robert Mueller’s report. Certainly this history puts things in perspective.
(NPR and Slate also reported on this history earlier this year.)
Front page review: News of the Mueller report in American newspapers the morning after
Talking Points Memo displays an array of front pages from this morning’s newspapers, via Newseum, which has hundreds of examples (but requires a search and registration). As a quick look demonstrates, Bill Barr’s shilling for Donald Trump hasn’t found much success outside the conservative media bubble – but, in my view, Trump’s A.G. is savvy enough to have expected this. He achieved his purpose.
Are Trump’s lies Strategic? Does he believe his own lies?
Benjamin Hart at New York magazine interviewed Daniel Dale, the Toronto Star reporter who has made a career of documenting Donald Trump’s lies (sometimes live on Twitter). Here are a couple of questions and answers that I found interesting:
After observing him so closely, do you think that’s true of most his lying — that it’s strategic? Or is just a reflex because he’s been doing this his whole life?
I think most of it is nonstrategic. He says things like, “My father was born in Germany,” and you’re just like, “Why? What is the point of that?” I think something that distinguishes Trump from other political liars or dissemblers is how trivial and needless many of the lies are. These are not lies about him being caught in a scandal and trying to spin his way out, or where he’s trying to win some policy debate. A lot of it is just like Trump being Trump in ridiculous ways. To the extent that there’s a strategy, I think it’s often him just trying to escape a given ten seconds. Maggie Haberman has noted that he tries to escape or win a particular transactional exchange with no regard to what he said in the past, no regard to what he might have to say ten seconds or ten minutes in the future. He’s just trying to get out of the moment. It’s pretty remarkable to witness.
This is a question that comes up whenever we deal with someone who consistently doesn’t tell the truth: Do you think Trump believes most of his lies in the moment he tells them, or do you think he’s consciously aware that he’s not telling the truth?
A: There are a lot of cases where I feel like I can tell that he knows he’s making it up. And there’s some where he clearly knows. One example that comes to mind: At campaign rallies, for a while he’d be bashing the media and he would look to the cameras in the back of the room and point and be like, “Look at that, CNN just turned its camera off. You see, the red light just went on …”
Of course, that didn’t happen. That has never happened, to my knowledge. CNN has never angrily turned off its camera when he was criticizing CNN or the media. And so he’s literally looking his supporters in the eye and pointing at something in the room that is not happening and telling them that it’s happening. And so for people who say, “Oh, he believes all these, he’s just delusional,” I think there are cases like that where he’s clearly deliberately making it up.
(July 2015 photo via wikipedia.)
This President – and the Republican Party that has his back – is off the rails
Look in vain in this report for a Congressional Republican to stick his head out of the bunker, where Republicans who expect another primary election in their future hide, and to offer a comment. “Trump’s plan” – to transport migrants detained at the border to sanctuary cities, like so much else in the Trump (and McConnell) era, is a reckless assault on democratic norms and the rule of law.
In my first post in this blog (July 7, 2018), “Is this the most divided you have ever seen the United States?” I commented on the answer to that question offered by an experienced journalist (Jamie Dupree): “My answer is always – no, this is not the most divided that our country has been, even in my lifetime.” He justified his response by pointing to the U.S. in 1968.
In that banner year we endured a losing war with high casualties, the My Lai massacre, a military draft, brutal clashes in the streets between protesters and police, and two political assassinations (Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy). So, why did I dissent from the journalist’s sanguine view that things were worse then than a half century later?
Because in 1968, we elected a president, Richard Nixon, who – however you assess his campaigns and administration – strove to be president of the whole country: Republicans and Democrats, rural and urban, partisans and swing voters, working folks and the GOP donor class. Richard Nixon was not ignorant or indifferent to public policy, to enacting laws and overseeing federal agencies to benefit the nation as a whole. He had a conception of the presidency that is beyond the ken of Donald Trump. And the Republican Party that Nixon led had not yet become the outlier – the scorched-earth, win at all costs group – that it is today.
Trump is presiding over a factional government. That’s the bottom line for a president who only plays to his base. As I said in that first post: “The stubborn refusal of our president to embrace America whole – all of our citizens; our country’s abiding national interest; what we share in common, not what divides us – sets this era apart from the divisive years that Dupree recalls.”
To reiterate: it’s not just Trump. The Republican Party has his back, with no more than occasional murmurs of displeasure (almost invariably fashioned to be absolutely ineffectual).
Hat tip to Josh Marshall for flagging this story (“MSM Journalism Can’t Handle Trump”), with the observation that the article is emblematic of “the problems MSM/bothsidesist journalism faces in the age of the Trump.”*
Update: *In the 8 or 10 hours since I saw Marshall’s initial post, he has revised it and edited out most of his commentary, including the sentence that contained the quote immediately above. I’ll still give him credit for alerting me to the WaPo story describing a “plan” to punish political opponents by a man who is unfit for the presidency.