How do we know if Trump is now just conning us?

Donald Trump met with the New York Times journalists, who live-tweeted the meeting.  He said all the right things:   He could never even think of hiring Steve Bannon if he thought he was a racist or part of the Alt-Right.  "Breitbart is just a publication."

He disavows and condemns the white nationalists who met in Washington and proclaimed his election a victory for them, saluting Trump's name with a Nazi-type salute of "hail victory."  He says the tensions and infighting with Republican leaders are water under the bridge.   "Paul Ryan loves me;  Mitch McConnell loves me."    "I have great respect for the New York Times."

But how do we know that he's not just conning us now;   just as he conned his crowds at his rallies when he said all the right things to excite them?  We know he will say anything to further his cause at the moment.   It may be inoperative moments later.  Don't fall for it.  Watch what he does and whom he appoints.

Ralph

Blind trust, indeed. If the president is above the law, we should change the title to "King".

First there was the refusal to release his tax returns.   Not required by law, but a tradition going back decades and followed by every candidate including Richard Nixon when he was under audit.

Then it was what to do about putting his business assets in a blind trust, as is also the tradition.   It's complicated for Trump, because his wealth is not simple investments that can be easily shielded from his knowledge and managed by a competent financial manager.   But, not to worry, Trump said.   He'll turn the business over to his three adult children.   (As if they would never talk to their father -- or have a financial interest themselves in profiting from the presidency.)

And then, during this transition period, we hear about business associates from India having meetings with President-elect Trump.   Of course, we can be sure that they did not discuss how to use his new role as U.S. president to drum up business for the new hotel the Trump Organization is partnering with in India.  Really?  And on election night, he spoke with his Argentine business associates about future deals there.  So when does the blind trust arrangement start?

Then we find that daughter Ivanka has been sitting in on meetings with world leaders like the prime minister of Japan -- while having her own business interests for her line of fashion items.   And Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, has emerged as one of Trump's closest advisers, and now they want to find an official way to bring him into the White House.   The nepotism laws would seem to prohibit him having a paid position.   But could Trump make him an unpaid adviser, with access and security clearance?   Again, the blind trust.    Kushner is married to Ivanka.  They're looking into it.

Never mind the next four years.   It's already started -- the commercialization of the United States presidency, using the presidency to further personal business interests.    Trump's new hotel in Washington is encouraging stays there to gain advantage with the president.  Diplomats have said they've felt pressure to do so.  We can forget about the blind trust.    The only people who would be blind to what's going on would be the American people, certainly not Trump, himself.

When asked about all this, Trump was dismissive.   He said that all this concern about his business interests was known -- and thus "baked into" the election.   In other words, he's claiming that the American people knew -- and approved, by voting for him.

Well, that's not even true on the face of it, that voters knew the extent -- in part because he refused to release his tax returns.   They voted with lack of information -- plus hordes of misinformation.  We now know more details of the conflicts of interest:  that he owes $300 million to Deutsche Bank, which is currently in negotiation  over a proposed $14 billion fine against the bank for lying to its investors during the 2008 housing crisis.   Trump also is in debt to the Bank of China for hundreds of millions of dollars;  the bank is state-owned, meaning the same government that Trump, as U.S. president, would be negotiating with on many sensitive issues.

How will we know that they won't make a secret deal, changing the course of world affairs in China's favor in exchange for personal debt forgiveness?  The same is true with the debt he owes Goldman Sachs, which is itself being investigated by the Justice Deprtment, while Trump has vowed to get rid of Dodd-Frank and other regulations that would be in the investment firm's interest.    Just those three are enough conflicts of interest to disqualify him -- without some effective, true blind trust.

But here's the thing:   Trump is actually right.  According to an article by Paul Blumenthal, political reporter for Huffington Post, "Government conflict of interest regulations do not apply to the president of the United States.  Theoretically, Trump could legally continue to manage his Trump Organization while in office.  In his meeting with the New York Times on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said his lawyers have reached the same conclusion.

This position is one step away from Richard Nixon's:  "If the president does it, it's not illegal."   On the other hand, he could also choose to abide by the regulations that apply to other federal government officials.   And that is what we expect an ethical president to do.   

Essentially it is "baked into the election" when the voters chose Trump -- which is why it matters to elect someone of good character and ethical principles.   The president is expected to be above reproach in his official duties, as he takes the oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.   We've never had, in modern times, someone so unconcerned about propriety and decorum and so intent on willfully tearing up traditions.

So, it appears that if we don't like it, it's up to Congress to investigate the  king  president and, consider impeachment.   Or they could try going through the courts.   But by then, his new appointee will have filled the vacancy of Justice Scalia's seat;   and a conservative majority will have been restored.

Folks, unless and until he does something so reprehensible that a Republican House would vote to impeach and then a Republican Senate vote to convict, we're stuck with him, for better or worse.   For four years.

Ralph

A sample of comments from what I'm reading

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. was interviewed by CNN's Erin Burnett after the initial cabinets appointments made by President-Elect Trump.    Chertoff had been critical of a Trump presidency during the campaign, but here's some of what he said:

""I have to take my hat off to him, because [Trump] demonstrated an ability to read the mood of the American public that confounded all the data crunchers, and I think you have to give him some credit for that . . . . It's still early and obviously he hasn't even started in office yet. But at least I'm encouraged that what we're hearing seems to be sober, disciplined and appropriate."   [except for the Tweets, I would interject, and some of the appointments.]

Chertoff was cautious in his assessment of Lt. Gen. Flynn based on the provocative tweets that he's been sending around:     "Obviously any statement that someone makes, you have to consider, but I'm very reluctant to regard tweets as a real measure of what a person thinks."  [what about his behavior in the security briefings with Trump?   Christie had to calm him down, according to someone in the room.]

[Chertoff's comments are pretty mild compared to what Flynn's superiors said about why he was forced out of his position as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.   More about that another time, but briefly it had to do both with his outspoken anti-Muslim rhetoric, his ultra-hawkish views on fighting in the Middle East, and a management style that had become intolerable for others to work with him.   From once being considered one of the most respected military intelligence officers of his generation, he is now seen by the upper military echelons as out of his element and lacking the steadiness of character and judgment to be the top strategic military adviser to the president.   This does not bode well for those crisis moments when the top people from the military, the NSC, CIA, State, and Defense all gather with the president in the Situation Room and decide what to do.   The head of NSC -- Flynn -- should be the steadiest, most reliable person in the room.   Instead, he sounds like he's become a very loose cannon.  Trump does not need a loos cannon;  he can do that himself.]

Chertoff also commented on the appointment of Sen. Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General, despite past evidence of racism and bigotry from the Alabama senator that cost him the confirmation by the Senate for a federal judgeship back in the 1980s.   But Chertoff said:  "I found Sen. Sessions to be knowledgeable, smart, willing to engage and willing to listen.  People I know who actually were closer to him are really willing to vouch for him for being someone who's not carrying any kind of racial animus."    Another commentator, whose name I have lost, emphasized Sessions honesty and openness.   We'll see over time, I guess.

*     *     *

My next source of comment is an essay in the November 21st edition of The New Yorker, and the essay is by Nobel Prize writer Toni Morrison, titled:  "Mourning For Whiteness."   The gist of her argument is that the strong motivating force for a large number of Trump voters was the fear of losing "white privilege," which she elaborates as losing the "comfort of being naturally better than."

Morrison points out that in our past, "the necessity of color rankings was obvious, but in America today, post-civil rights legislation, white people's conviction of their natural superiority is being lost. . . .  There are 'people of color' everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of American.   And what then?   Another black President?   A predominantly black Senate?   Three black Supreme Court Justices?   The threat is frightening."

And I would add, it's especially frightening to those who feel they are being left behind by all the cultural changes in our society.  Immigration is only one of those changes, along with income inequality, globalization, racial, sexual and gender status.   Donald Trump understood this fear and the people most affected by it.   And he spoke directly to it -- even ramped it up, I would say, for political advantage.   It remains to be seen whether he will give them what he promised, or whether they will turn on him when they realize they've been conned, again.

*     *     *

Regular readers know that I often find quotes from the Esquire contributing writer, Charles Pierce, to be especially pungent and insightful.   I like his combination of brilliance and irreverence.   (He once referred to Newt Gingrich as "floating away on a golden cloud of his own intellectual flatulence.")   In a current piece on Esquire.com, he writes about the significance of Mitt Romney going to Trump Tower for a reconciliation talk and a possible cabinet seat in the Trump administration, despite having denounced Trump in the most caustic terms during the campaign.

Pierce begins:  ". . .  And now, the lost prince of American plutocracy has come to pay a call, and perhaps find a place at court. . . . It is possible that old-guard types like Willard think they need to come aboard in order to make sure that El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago doesn't sell Rhode Island to Gazprom in the middle of the night. If that's their plan, they are misreading their man as badly as they misread him over the past year. Right now, they're all coming to him, all the people who laughed at him and made fun of his candidacy, and jilted him in Cleveland last summer, and whispered about how disastrous he would be as a president. They're all coming to the big tower with his name on it. Winning!

"If Trump hires Willard to work for him, it will be because he wants to tell people that Mitt Romney came to him begging for a job and that, He, Trump, nature's nobleman, was a big enough guy to give him one. He's going to mount Willard's head on the wall of his den, right above the Tiffany vase that holds Chris Christie's balls. By next March, he'll be sending Romney out for another bucket of KFC."

*     *     *

Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that.   Not a big Romney fan four years ago, I now find myself rooting for him to get the Secretary of State post.   Then at least there would be one serious, maybe moderating influence in the White House that so far seems to be filling up with zealots and fascists.   Beware of Kris Kobach, Kansas' Secretary of State,** whose chief aim these days is to carry out Trump's wish to make a Muslim Registry of all Muslims living in this country.   Kobach had been trying to do that in Kansas.   Now he may get a bigger platform on which to ply his trade.   Rumor is that he's being considered for Chertoff's job -- Secretary of Homeland Security, which would put him in charge of many issues related to immigration.   That would be a terrible terrible idea.   Kobach was most noted for his work to suppress voting, and his plan for Kansas got overturned by the courts.   This will only give the jihadist recruiters more fodder for their propaganda videos.

Ralph

**   I just wanted to acknowledge an error in a previous post, where I had identified Kris Kobach as the Kansas Attorney General.    No, he is Kansas Secretary of State.

Time to lighten up for a moment . . .

Thanks to Em for pointing out this amusing geographic irony:

"Iceland has more green space than Greenland,

and Greenland has more ice than Iceland."

Former expert on infrastructure plan says Trump's plan "is a trap." And he warns, "Don't fall for it."

Ronald A. Klain worked in the White House as President Obama's point man for implementing the American Recovery and Renewal Act in 2009-2011.   This was the plan, less expansive than Obama wanted but as much as he could get through Congress, that was to restore jobs through spending on infrastructure.

Klain has a message (quotes from Nov. 18 Washington Post):

"I’ve got a simple message for Democrats who are embracing President-elect Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan: Don’t do it. It’s a trap. Backing Trump’s plan is a mistake in policy and political judgment they will regret, as did their Democratic predecessors who voted for Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 and George W. Bush’s cuts in 2001."

Klain then explains that Trump's plan "is not really an infrastructure plan. It’s a tax-cut plan for utility-industry and construction-sector investors, and a massive corporate welfare plan for contractors. The Trump plan doesn’t directly fund new roads, bridges, water systems or airports, as did Hillary Clinton’s 2016 infrastructure proposal. Instead, Trump’s plan provides tax breaks to private-sector investors who back profitable construction projects. These projects (such as electrical grid modernization or energy pipeline expansion) might already be planned or even underway. There’s no requirement that the tax breaks be used for incremental or otherwise expanded construction efforts; they could all go just to fatten the pockets of investors in previously planned projects.

"Moreover, as others have noted, desperately needed infrastructure projects that are not attractive to private investors — municipal water-system overhauls, repairs of existing roads, replacement of bridges that do not charge tolls — get no help from Trump’s plan. And contractors? Well, they get a “10 percent pretax profit margin,” according to the plan. Combined with Trump’s sweeping business tax break, this would represent a stunning $85 billion after-tax profit for contractors — underwritten by the taxpayers."

And that's only the investment side problems with Trump's plan.   Klain says it "isn’t really a jobs plan, either. Because the plan subsidizes investors, not projects; because it funds tax breaks, not bridges . . .  there is simply no guarantee that the plan will produce any net new hiring. Investors may simply shift capital from unsubsidized projects to subsidized ones and pocket the tax breaks on projects they would have funded anyway.

And, beyond those two big problems of (1) not rebuilding the intrastructure and (2) not creating jobs, Klain explains that Trump's plan does not include how to pay for it -- at the same time he's proposing huge tax cuts -- so it will increase the deficit by as much as $137 billion.   And then you can be sure that Trump and a Republican congress will "weaponize" this deficit increase and use it to justify cuts in social programs, healthcare and education.

That's not all.   Klain also predicts that hidden in the plan will be policy changes that weaken wage protections, undermine unions, and ultimately hurt worker's earnings.  Environmental rules that Obama has attached to federal contracts will undoubtedly be gutted.

Klain ends by saying that he understands Democrats' hope to find some areas where they can work with a Trump presidency on common interests, and that his stated interest in big infrastructure projects could have been one of those.   But it does not do what Democrats think it would -- instead, it would help investors at the expense of workers.   When the real plan becomes evident, this will likely hurt Democrats' attempt to reconnect with workers;   because, once again, they will have been sold out for the benefit of the investor class.    It's a trap;   don't fall into it.

*   *   *

I wonder how long it's going to take the angry, white working class Trump voters to realize that -- once again -- Lucy has jerked aside the football, leaving the gullible Charlie Brown to fall on his back.

Once again they have been used to win elections for Republicans, only to fall victims to their bait-and-switch scam.   Guess who's going to benefit from the tax cuts, and which street -- Wall Street or Main Street -- is going to benefit from the Trump/GOP agenda?   What was that about a populist movement?    

Ralph

Interfaith support for Muslims -- are you listening, Mr. Trump? Mr. Sessions? Mr. Bannon? Gen. Flynn?

Leaders of Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist faiths attended Friday prayers at a mosque in Washington, D.C. in support of their Muslim neighbors.  They called on President-Elect Trump to denounce anti-Muslim hate crimes, which increased by 67% last year, according to FBI reports.

Speaking as president of the Interfaith Alliance, Rabbi Jack Moline told reporters:  “We must promise that no one will ever make another American afraid ― not the bigots, not the alt-right, not the chief strategist of the next administration, not the president of the United States. . . .  No one will make the precious children of this community, of any community, afraid.”

That's what we need more of -- leaders speaking out against hate rhetoric.  Bravo to the cast of "Hamilton" for addressing VP-Elect Pence at the show he attended.  Yes, Pence was booed by some in the audience when he entered.   But the cast was not disrespectful, as Pres.-Elect Trump angrily tweeted out, demanding an apology from the cast.   Here's what the actor Brandon Dixon did say for the entire cast gathered on stage for curtain calls:

“Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us at 'Hamilton: An American Musical.  We, sir, we are the diverse America, who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights.  “But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”

That is not disrespectful, Mr. Trump.   But you, Sir, have been disrespectful throughout the campaign.   Shame on you for firing off a tweet, demanding an apology from the cast, without getting the facts straight.   If anyone owes an apology, it is you and those audience members who booed, not the cast.

Ralph

Followup:   Pence went on FoxNews Sunday morning to say that he was not offended by the cast addressing him.    He reiterated what Trump had said on election night, that he would be president for all the people.   Pence said he (Trump) means it "from the bottom of his heart."

Hurtful words can be a "hidden form of terrorism" -- Pope Franics

Swedish journalist and author Goran Rosenberg wrote about the effect in Europe of our election of Donald Trump.

". . . .  What we do know for certain is that Trump’s victorious election campaign has poisoned the political climate of liberal democracies. We have been shown that defamation, hatred and lying can be a road to power. The outcome of the U.S. election is a clear message to the burgeoning populist and xenophobic parties of Europe that hate and fear-mongering is a winning concept and that they henceforth should feel free to smear, vilify and incite without any fear of transgressing the “politically correct” borders of decency and shame."

He then refers to a recent interview in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, in which Pope Francis spoke of slander and vilification as "a form of terrorism."  Quoting the pope:

Pope Francis:  “Every human being is capable of turning into a terrorist simply by just abusing language . . . .  You see, I am not speaking here about fighting a battle as in a war. I am speaking of a deceitful and hidden form of terrorism that uses words as bombs that explode, causing devastation in peoples’ lives. It is a sort of criminality and the root of it is original sin. It is a way of creating space for yourself by destroying others.”

Rosenberg then observed that the political fallout of the U. S. election "might be more devastating for Europe than for America. . . .  [W]e are again learning that democracy ultimately depends on the people, the demos, having a democratic disposition and that the terrorism of vilification is a weapon in the hands of those who intend to weaken and demolish it."

If this election indeed does represent an attack, and a crack in the foundation of democracy itself, then this is more disturbing than other problems we have been worrying about.   I tend to see it not so much as that, at least not on a large scale.

After all, Hillary  Clinton did win the popular vote, at latest count, by at least one and a half million votes.  And much of  the Trump vote, especially in the battleground states, that tipped the electoral count, was from voters who decided in the last week of the campaign.   Which suggests that the FBI and Comey's letters played a major role, as well as the social media blitz that falsely exaggerated and amplified what that meant.

But we also have to look at the Democratic party's neglect of the forgotten, "left-behind" white people who gave Trump his big boost.   In trying to expand our scope we forgot the core of working class, middle class and union members (now unemployed) that used to be the core of the Democratic Party.  

I think widely disseminated false news played a bigger part than an attack on democracy.   And in future elections, we're going to have to learn to cope with the role of social media in disseminating false claims, outright lies, and misinformation. 

Ralph