White House resignations and firings

1.  A White House spokesperson said the Gen. Kelly and Steve Bannon had mutually agreed that today would be Mr. Bannon's last day on the president's staff.   Bannon reportedly offered his resignation, and Trump had told senior aides that he was planning on letting Bannon go.  Other sources said he was fired. Either way, his ousting very good news.

   At least that was my thought, until I saw evening news shows, which report that Bannon is returning to Breitbart News to a position of power;  and he has told outside sources that he's "going to war for Trump."   Repeat:   for Trump.  Apparently, his view is that the Trump presidency has been taken over by the generals, bankers, and New York liberals in the White House.  And they are the once he's going to war with -- with all the media tools he knows how to use.

2.   In addition to the resignations earlier in the week of large numbers of CEO's who were members of Trump's corporate advisers, it was announced yesterday that all the remaining members of the president's Council on the Arts and Humanities have resigned.  

These arts and humanities advisers were holdovers from the Obama administration who had agreed to remain until replacements were named -- replacements that had yet to be chosen.    Their letter to the president was tough and candid, including these words:

"The false equivalencies you push cannot stand. . . .  We cannot sit idly by, the way your West Wing advisors have, without speaking out against your words and actions. . . .  Your values are not American values. . . .  If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office too."

The CEO resignations is a different matter.   Trumps thinks of himself as being of their same world;  these are appointments that he made himself.   But they turned against him for similar moral reasons, in addition to seeing that a failed presidency would also lead to severe economic consequences.    Top financier Carl Ichan, someone that Trump had greatly admired and sought advice from, also announced late yesterday, that he is withdrawing from an informal advisory role.,

3.  At least eight big charity groups have cancelled plans to hold their fund-raising events at Mar-a-Lago because of the Charlottesville fallout.  These include the Cleveland Clinic, the American Cancer Society. the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the Susan G. Comen Foundation.  Each event cancelled represents a loss in revenue to Mar-a-Lago of between $175,000 and $250,000.

4.  Although none of them has resigned, the top five military chiefs -- the Chiefs of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard -- each has released a statement condemning racism, white supremacy, and the neo-Nazi movements, in obvious contradiction to what Trump said.  None of them named Trump in their statements, but the significant thing is how unusual it is for active duty military leaders to ever make any statement that could be misconstrued as taking a political position.   They obviously felt that their speaking out on this subject was worth taking that risk.

5.  Numerous Republicans in Congress have made statements in direct contradiction to the position taken by President Trump.  The two former Presidents Bush issued a joint statement.  Former Vice President Al Gore, when asked what Trump should do at this point, had a simple, one-word answer:  Resign.

It is quite apparent that the president is becoming increasingly isolated.   Losing his chief strategist;  losing his advisory boards;  losing support of the military chiefs, as well as Republicans in Congress -- this is a major defeat, clearly of his own making and against the advice of those close to him -- except perhaps Bannon.  Which makes it all the more confounding that some of his staff have told reporters that Trump says he feels free and energized after having spoken his mind.

Or dare we hope that his "free and energized" means he's already anticipating how he will feel . . . after he does resign?

Ralph

Trump's embrace of white supremacy groups has far-reaching effects

The split sparked by President Trump's embrace of the white nationalist groups, which so delighted David Duke and Richard Spencer of those groups, is not only a replay of the civil war over racial divisions.   It has wide-ranging implications, including the economy.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, told a CNBC anchor on Thursday that, if Trump's economic adviser Gary Cohn were to resign over this, "it could crash the markets."  

That White House Economic Adviser, Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, was reported by the New York Times to be "upset and disgusted" by Trump's response to the violence at the Charlottesville rally.   The groups Trump has been defending includes the Neo-Nazi, swastika-wielding, Heil, Hitler-saluting marchers.  Thus far, Cohn has made no public comments about his boss's remarks.

As a former Goldman Sachs financier, Cohn is not alone in the finance community.  Trump had appointed two advisory councils, made up of CEO's of leading corporations.   Elon Musk had resigned some time ago in protest of Trump's climate policies;  two others had resigned some time back over immigration policies and one over the transgender tweet.

But then an avalanche began this week with Kenneth Frazier's resignation over Trump's comments on the racial conflicts in Charlottesville.   Five more followed suit;  and, after one group had already written a letter to tell Trump they were disbanding their group, he quickly tweeted out a statement that he had dissolved both advisory groups.

When a Republican president loses the support of such a select groups of corporate CEO's -- not over economic policies, but over a moral issue that they know will sharply affect the economy, as well -- then he might as well resign right now.

Donald Trump cannot repair the problem he has created.   This latest issue is about race, nationalism and, yes, immigration;   but it is only the last straw.   This is not a blunder on Trump's part.   This is a revelation -- finally and undeniably -- of the lack of moral substance and moral compass in the very heart of this administration, the president himself.

Ralph

Paraphrasing Walt Whitman -- "Charlottesville contains multitudes."

About the time I began a two-week vacation from writing a daily blog here on ShrinkRap, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman published a piece about Trump-overload, Trump-weariness that struck a chord in me.   I saved it;  and, with each passing day, it has become more apt for the continuing saga of this maddening Trump presidency.

Krugman describes having a friend send him an email suggesting he read an article about how Trump's brain works.  He says a voice inside his head said, "No thanks, I would prefer not to. . . . I'm full."

Thanks exactly the way I have come to feel about the daily, sometimes hourly, avalanche of news that Donald Trump generates.   And that is never more true than what I came back to from my break -- the weekend events in Charlottesville, the president's inadequate reaction, and everyone's feelings about that.

Condensed in this one weekend is a microcosm of the failure of the Trump presidency. As Walt Whitman might have said:   It "contains multitudes," including:  (1) the racist/fascist mentality leading up to the clashes and the murder;  (2) including the several insufficient statements President Trump made supposedly to put it to rest, but which inflamed it;  (3) the appalling, disaster of a press briefing on Tuesday , when the charge "temperamentally unfit for the presidency" finally focused, laser-like, for all to see;  and then (4) what does it all mean for where we are as a nation, with this president, and what do we do about it?

That is a multitude too many for me to deal with in one post.   It's something we'll come back to, as we will as a society, again and again.    What I want to focus on in this one is the president's role as a moral leader, a role that Donald Trump is so woefully inadequate, as a human being, to fill.

HuffPost's Igor Bobic put it this way in his August 16th essay:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said the presidency is “preeminently a place of moral leadership.” By drawing an equivalence between white nationalist groups and people protesting on behalf of equality . . . Donald Trump has ceded that responsibility.

Trump ignited a firestorm of bipartisan criticism this week when he blamed "many sides" and "both sides" for the deadly violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and defended racist demonstrators there. Protesters . . .  waved Nazi flags and burning torches, and shouted racist and anti-Semitic slogans as they marched, but Trump ― after describing racism as "evil" on Monday -- insisted Tuesday that many people at the rally “were there to innocently protest” the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

“What Trump did today is a moral disgrace,” Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer said Tuesday. Prominent conservative radio host Charlie Sykes called Trump’s equivocal condemnation of white supremacists a "moral dumpster fire."

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) framed the issue in a similar way, tweeting:  “There is no question who he [Trump] is. The critical moral question is: who are we? We can not surrender America to Trump.”

Other Democrats, like former Barack Obama aide David Axelrod, wondered whether Trump would make some sort of effort to heal wounds and bring the nation together . . . .  It’s become increasingly clear, however, that Trump has no interest in taking such steps.

During an angry news conference in New York on Tuesday, Trump parried questions about the so-called alt-right movement by asking, “What about the alt-left?” While in the past he’d been happy to issue moral judgments about other politicians, fellow heads of state, journalists and clothing retailers, here, facing questions about racism, he appeared to reject the role of moral arbiter.

“I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane,” he said, after a reporter asked whether he was placing white supremacists and those who protested against them on the same footing.

It wasn’t just pundits and politicians who urged Trump to live up to the moment. Historians, too, said that with his reluctance to single out racism and bigotry for condemnation, Trump has ceded the presidency’s moral authority and threatened America’s leadership at home and abroad.

Trump lost “the moral standing to speak for or about America,” Harvard Professor Theda Skocpol told HuffPost. “Every second he is in office he damages and endangers us. In this instance, he is directly encouraging organized, violent white supremacists who will bring public agony to many places for months to come.”

Jon Meacham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential biographer, called Trump’s remarks on Tuesday “morally ambiguous” at best. He predicted that Trump’s behavior will further erode the public’s trust in political institutions.

“We have to be in a position, both as a country and as a global community, where we believe what the president says, where you have some innate confidence that things are in fairly good hands,” Meacham said.  “And I think for a lot of people, that level of confidence started low [with Trump], and it’s gotten to be almost nonexistent. So I think it’s an exacerbating moment.”. . .

Barack Obama biographer and Washington Post editor David Maraniss was more explicit, calling on all living former presidents to make a joint statement urging Trump to resign.

Veteran NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, meanwhile, said he doubts whether Trump can reverse the damage he’s done in the wake of Charlottesville.  "He's going to have to find a way to stitch the country together again, and frankly, I don't know if he's capable of doing that in his own mind," Brokow said.  He's the moral authority by the office that he has, and it's about time for him to exercise that."

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People on both political sides are calling this a "pivotal moment" for Trump's presidency.   Privately, a large number of Republican leaders are said to be aghast, horrified.   One Republican strategist said that "Every member that I've talked to has been apoplectic" about Trump's news conference.  This is not a good day for the Trump presidency.  It is not a good day for race relations, nor for America.

And yet, the smoldering racism has been there for some time, putting the lie to the false narrative that Obama's election to the White House meant we were in a "post-race" society.    It is a national conversation we need to have.

Services were held yesterday for Heather Heyer, the 32 year old activist who was killed by a neo-Nazi's ramming his car into the peaceful counter-protesters crowd.   Her mother spoke eloquently about Heather's positive activism, saying that her Facebook motto was:  "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."  The mother said that she'd rather have her daughter here, but if that can't be, "let's make her death count."

Ralph

A president's words really do matter

Democrats and Republicans both sharply criticized President Trump for waiting almost 48 hours to denounce,  by name, the hate-filled, violence-prone white supremacist groups that gathered in Charlottesville for a rally -- one that resulted in the death of a peaceful counter-protester.

When he finally did manage to name the "KKK, Neo-Nazis, white supremacy, and other hate groups," he was reading from a script prepared for him.   They were not his own heart-felt words.

That was Monday afternoon.   Then he got to work sending out tweets -- and they were not reinforcements of his speech, nor expressions of regret for his tardy reluctance.   In fact, they seem more like dog whistles to reassure his base that he's still got their back.

In contrast to the 45 hours it took him to denounce hate groups, he needed only 45 minutes to send out a snarky, insulting response to the protest resignation of Kenneth Frazier, an African-American member of his Council on Manufacturing and the CEO of Merck Pharmaceutical Co.   As of this writing, now a total of five CEO's from that group have resigned in response to the president's delay in denouncing the alt-right groups.   And Trump's response to those resignations from his Council?  A tweet:

"For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!"
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2017

But put aside the back and forth attack and counterattack.   What are the facts on effects of a president's bully pulpit words?

Brian Lervin, of the Center for Study of Hate and Extremism, was interviewed by Ari Melber on MSNBC's "The Beat" Monday night.   Levin supplied the following data:
   1.  Following President George W. Bush's emotionally moving speech in the wake of 9/11, in which he said "Islam is peace" -- in the six days following that, there was a 66% DECREASE in hate crimes.

   2.  When then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump first called for a Muslim ban, during the ensuing five days, there was an 87.5% INCREASE in hate crimes.

Another bit of evidence of the effectiveness (good or bad) of the bully pulpit -- even when the message comes in code or dog-whistle disguise:   just look at the response of David Duke and the bloggers representing the white supremacy groups.   They took it as good news for them that Trump didn't initially denounce them by name.   Even when he eventually did name the KKK, Neo-Nazis, and white supremacists, the long delay told them that he only did it for political expedience.   It did not come from his heart or his principles.

Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke called Saturday's rally in Charlottesville "a turning point" for their groups who want to "take back our country" and "carry out President Trump's promises."   Eli Moseley, a leader of one of these new alt-right groups, told ProPublica that Trump has served as "a megaphone" for far-right ideas.

They know what he promised all during his campaign.   A delayed, scripted, forced speech for political expediency doesn't fool them.   A president's words from the bully pulpit can have a strong effect -- if his people believe he means it.   This president has no credibility, except with his base.   And he's losing that.

It's going to take strong action if he wants to undo that -- changing some policy initiatives, firing some people, speaking from his heart about his change of direction.   Otherwise, we're going to see more rallies from these folks, escalating violence, more chaos in the White House.   And a more divided country than we already are.

In order to save the country, Trump will have to lose his base.   Or else the Republican Party will have to lose Trump.   Maybe Mueller will give them convincing evidence to do just that.

Ralph

PS:   Once again, in this rapid news cycle we're in, news keeps upstaging what I had already written to post the next morning.   Trump spoke to the media again Tuesday afternoon -- and essentially went back to his original "many sides are to blame" for the violence.   "What about the alt-left?" he asked.    Some of them were armed, too, he claimed.   He seems incapable of understanding a moral position.

This media event showed an angry president, verbally almost out of control.  It was his reaction to being forced (by public pressure, by his staff) to read that statement yesterday.  He has to do something to retaliate.   We almost overlooked his first try at that Tuesday morning, when he said he was thinking about pardoning Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was recently convicted of contempt of court for not obeying a judge's order concerning over-zealous policy of ID checks of immigrants.

If only . . .

2000:    Al Gore won the popular vote; but a challenge to the vote count in Florida wound up at the Supreme Court which, in a very controversial decision to end the recount, gave Florida, and thus the electoral college majority and the presidency, to George W. Bush.
   2001:   President Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Climate Protocol, an international agreement on climate.
   2003:  President Bush led the U.S. into an unnecessary war in Iraq.

2016:   Hillary Clinton won the popular vote;   but in a great surprise outcome, Donald J. Trump won three rust belt states by small margins, giving him the majority of electoral college votes and the presidency.
   2017:   President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.
   2017:   President Trump flirts with war with North Korea.

Think how much would be different if only Al Gore and Hillary Clinton had been our presidents . . .

Charlottesville

The pattern of news cycles we've become inured to in just six months of the Donald J. Trump presidency is this:   whatever dominates the news today will be replaced in a day or two by something else of equal or greater concern.

Last week, the calmer heads in the Trump administration (Kelly, McMaster, Tillerson, and Mattis) began to prevail in reassuring the public that we are not, after all -- despite the commander-in-chief's rhetoric and bombast -- about to go to nuclear war with North Korea.

So would we then, maybe, have a few days respite, while our publicity-craving president vacationed at his golf club?

No.

With potential terror from North Korea temporarily on hold, the tides shifted to domestic terrorism.   True, the gathering of nationalist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, KKK groups -- the "Alt-Right" -- in Charolttesville, Virginia to protest the removal of Robert E. Lee's statue had been planned without regard to the president's schedule.   A local, alt-right blogger, Jason Kessler, organized the "Unite the Right" rally to bring together all these "take back our nation" groups to "carry out Trump's agenda" to "Make American Great Again."

About 1,000 showed up, many from out of state, plus hundreds of local counter-protesters -- and we know what happened.   Torchlight, night-time parades (no crosses burned but reminiscent of KKK rallies and night-rides, nevertheless);  then the next day, violent clashes with police and anti-fascist counter-protesters.  There were minor injuries, until a 20 year old, Hitler-admirer from Ohio decided to use his car as a weapon, plowing it into a crowd of peaceful counter-protesters, killing one and injuring many others.

There are two big stories here:   (1)  Who are these new Alt-Right people?   They don't look like the old crowd.   Mostly young men, who look better educated and better dressed than previous generations.  In fact, some of the crowd pictures -- if you removed their symbols and signs -- could be mistaken for a pre-football game, college campus rally.

(2) The other big story here, and the one that has dominated the news, is President Trump's response -- specifically his refusal to denounce by name these hate groups who brought their white supremacy and violent intent to a peaceful town.

As is now famously known, Trump condemned the violence -- but then he had to add "from many sides."    And then, in case you missed it, he repeated:   "from many sides."

In other words, he was making a moral equivalence between neo-Nazi and KKK groups with peaceful, democracy-protecting counter-protesters.    And no amount of public outcry seemed to convince him he had made a mistake.   Even though his National Security Adviser, his daughter, and numerous Republican political leaders put out their own statements calling the hates groups out specifically.

This doesn't come in a vacuum.   We have observed, again and again, that Trump insults and picks fights with leaders of our democratic allies, but refuses to utter one negative word about many autocratic leaders -- Russia's Vladimir Putin, Egypt's el-Sisi, Turkey's Erdogan, Phillipine's murderous Duterte.

All of which led Paul Krugman to address this in his New York Times column yesterday, in which he made the dramatic statement:  "In short, these days we have a president who is really, truly, deeply un-American, someone who doesn’t share the values and ideals that made this country special."

Disputing Sarah Palin's claim about the "real America" being its rural and small town residents who agree with her narrow political views, Krugman defines "real America" as:

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". . .  a multiracial, multicultural land of great metropolitan areas as well as small towns. More fundamentally, what makes America America is that it is built around an idea: the idea that all men are created equal, and are entitled to basic human rights. Take away that idea and we’re just a giant version of a two-bit autocracy.

  

"And maybe that is what we have, in fact, become. For Donald Trump’s refusal to condemn the murderous white supremacists in Charlottesville finally confirms what has become increasingly obvious: The current president of the United States isn’t a real American.

"Real Americans understand that our nation is built around values, not the “blood and soil” of the marchers' chants . . .["blood and soil" was a chant used at rallies in Nazi Germany] . . .  what makes you an American is your attempt to live up to those values, not the place or race your ancestors came from. And when we fall short in our effort to live up to our ideals, as we all too often do, at least we realize and acknowledge our failure.

"But the man who began his political ascent by falsely questioning Barack Obama’s place of birth — a blood-and-soil argument if ever there was one — clearly cares nothing about the openness and inclusiveness that have always been essential parts of who we are as a nation.

"Real Americans understand that our nation was born in a rebellion against tyranny. They feel an instinctive aversion to tyrants everywhere, and an underlying sympathy for democratic regimes, even those with whom we may currently have disputes. . . . 

"Real Americans expect public officials to be humbled by the responsibility that comes with the job. . . .

"Real Americans understand that being a powerful public figure means facing criticism. . . . 

"Finally, real Americans who manage to achieve high office realize that they are servants of the people, meant to use their position for the public good. . . .

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I wouldn't go so far as to call Trump "un-American," although I agree with Krugman that his performance of the office of president often gives the appearance of coming from an autocrat, not a democrat.

How much responsibility falls on this president for what happened?   There is no doubt that, especially at his campaign rallies -- which he continues to have, by the way -- he encouraged this rage and hatred and divisiveness.   Many at the Charlottesville rally wore the red, Trump MAGA hats.   David Duke, former KKK leader and sometime office-seeker, was there.  He praised the gathering to unite these groups, which he promised "would fulfill the promises of Donald Trump."

I'd love to know what Donald Trump, the man, is thinking about all this right now.  Any regrets?   Does he take it in?    Does he think about his role in this?   I'm not sure that he does, at all.

Ralph

PS:  After I wrote this on Monday, Trump held a press briefing and read another statement, saying:  "Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans."

Frankly, it's too late -- coming two days later on his third attempt, and only after so much pressure and public denunciation -- so that it really does not change anything.

He made his position very clear with his first statement.   That's the way these Alt-Right groups heard it:  saying "on many sides," they heard as including the counterprotesters, whom they blame for the violence.  If they hadn't showed up, one wrote, their "Unite the Right" rally would have been non-violent.   Never mind the fact that the Alt-Right groups came with torches, sticks, shields, and bats.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions gets slightly better marks than his boss.   From the beginning, he was willing to call it "domestic terrorism" and said the Justice Department is opening a civil rights investigation of a potential hate crime.