Bob Woodward's New Book Paints a Damning Portrait of Trump

Those of us of a certain age remember the Watergate crisis all too well.  We also remember two journalist who helped pave the way for the ultimate removal of Richard Nixon from the Oval Office: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.   Now, Woodward has a new book about to hit the stands entitled "Fear" that paints a picture of a hideous and unstable regime that has Der Trumpenführer in spittle flecked rants. The Washington Post looks at the book that once again tells Americans that Trump is unfit for office, something that was always obvious to Americans not consumed by greed and religious and racially based hatred of their fellow citizens.  The take away?  Be very, very afraid. Secondly, Trump voters DO deserve to be viewed with contempt and derision.  Here are article highlights (read the entire piece): 

Woodward depicts Trump’s anger and paranoia about the Russia inquiry as unrelenting, at times paralyzing the West Wing for entire days. Learning of the appointment of Mueller in May 2017, Trump groused, “Everybody’s trying to get me”— part of a venting period that shellshocked aides compared to Richard Nixon’s final days as president.

The 448-page book was obtained by The Washington Post. Woodward, an associate editor at The Post, sought an interview with Trump through several intermediaries to no avail. The president called Woodward in early August, after the manuscript had been completed, to say he wanted to participate. The president complained that it would be a “bad book,” according to an audio recording of the conversation. Woodward replied that his work would be “tough,” but factual and based on his reporting.

A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.

Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.

Again and again, Woodward recounts at length how Trump’s national security team was shaken by his lack of curiosity and knowledge about world affairs and his contempt for the mainstream perspectives of military and intelligence leaders.

At a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19, Trump disregarded the significance of the massive U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, . . . . After Trump left the meeting, Woodward recounts, “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’ ”

In Woodward’s telling, many top advisers were repeatedly unnerved by Trump’s actions and expressed dim views of him. “Secretaries of defense don’t always get to choose the president they work for,” Mattis told friends at one point, prompting laughter as he explained Trump’s tendency to go off on tangents about subjects such as immigration and the news media.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was “unhinged,” Woodward writes. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

Reince Priebus, Kelly’s predecessor, fretted that he could do little to constrain Trump from sparking chaos. Woodward writes that Priebus dubbed the presidential bedroom, where Trump obsessively watched cable news and tweeted, “the devil’s workshop,” . . . .

A near-constant subject of withering presidential attacks was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump told Porter that Sessions was a “traitor” for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, Woodward writes. Mocking Sessions’s accent, Trump added, “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner. … He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

With Trump’s rage and defiance impossible to contain, Cabinet members and other senior officials learned to act discreetly. Woodward describes an alliance among Trump’s traditionalists — including Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser — to stymie what they considered dangerous acts.

Cohn came to regard the president as “a professional liar” and threatened to resign in August 2017 over Trump’s handling of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Cohn, who is Jewish, was especially shaken when one of his daughters found a swastika on her college dorm room.

Trump was sharply criticized for initially saying that “both sides” were to blame. At the urging of advisers, he then condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but almost immediately told aides, “That was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made” and the “worst speech I’ve ever given,” according to Woodward’s account.

Dowd then explained to Mueller and Quarles why he was trying to keep the president from testifying: “I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas are going to say, ‘I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?’ ”

Later that month, Dowd told Trump: “Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit.” . . . . “I’ll be a real good witness,” Trump told Dowd, according to Woodward.  “You are not a good witness,” Dowd replied. “Mr. President, I’m afraid I just can’t help you.”  The next morning, Dowd resigned.

Donald Trump's America is an America in Retreat

Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer on this blog, was elected by those who, in my view, Hillary Clinton accurately described as a basket of deplorables: racists, would be white supremacists, increasingly marginalized whites who blame others for the consequences of their bad choices (dropping out of high school, drug use, alcohol abuse, etc.), those motivated by greed like Trump, those too lazy to get informed on issues and change the channel from Fox News, and, of course the Christofascists.  Indeed, Trump won the highest percentage of votes in regions that are increasing backwaters and in economic decline - in no small part because of their embrace of toxic, ignorance embracing right wing Christianity, and bigotry, all of which only increases the likelihood that new industries and progressive businesses will avoid them like the plague.  And rightly so. Now, Trump wants to take the nation as a whole in the same direction of this isolationist, bigoted and reactionary regions of the country.  Rather than making "America Great Again," this turn away from globalism and knowledge and a rejection of Enlightenment values will weaken America and make the future more dangerous. An editorial in the New York Times looks at this retreat into backwardness.  Here are excerpts:

The swiftness of President Trump’s transformation of America’s global image from a proud and valued leader to something more nearly resembling a whiny bully has heads spinning at home and abroad. Mr. Trump was elected on a slogan of “America First” and a promise that the country would never again be bound by agreements and conventions that, in his view, compromised its sovereignty. But the policies and pronouncements that have flowed from this promise have in fact made the United States, and his presidency, the object of disbelief, alarm, even derision.

America may be first in the eyes of the president, but in the eyes of the world it is in headlong retreat.

Trump has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, ceding leadership on trade in Asia to China; refused to reaffirm the mutual defense commitment that has been the bedrock of trans-Atlantic security for half a century, forcing America’s European allies to think about dealing with threats like Russia on their own; and abandoned a landmark agreement on climate change signed by 190-plus other nations, ceding leadership on the issue to Europe and China, and, in the bargain, forfeiting the rewards of participating in a worldwide clean energy economy that the agreement will bring.

Anyone seeking answers for these reckless decisions beyond Mr. Trump’s campaign braggadocio might take note of one sentence in a remarkable op-ed article written by Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, for The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Trump, they wrote, has “a clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”

The authors presumably meant this as praise of hardheaded realism. It is actually a vision of a world of cutthroat competition and zero-sum outcomes deeply at odds with the more cooperative, rules-based vision that has motivated America and its allies since World War II. . . . . American leadership and engagement were undeniably good for this country and, more often than not, a force for global peace and security. . . . . Washington also led the way in promoting human rights and democracy.

America’s commitment to those institutions and values is now in question under a president who is arrogant in his disregard of history, nuance and, most important, understanding of American leadership and what in fact makes the country secure, prosperous and “great.”

Mr. Trump and his team, embroiled in controversy over Russia and other matters, have shown no inclination, much less skill, to do the hard thinking that must precede any decision to alter America’s role in the world. And even if they did attempt such preparation, it is hard to imagine any convincing argument for abrogating or even weakening the country’s leadership responsibilities, its defense of NATO and Europe, its preference for cooperative problem-solving and its commitment to democratic values and human rights.

Is this what Americans want? If not, they had better voice their opposition loudly and clearly. Mr. Trump, abetted inexplicably by people who should know better — General McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — is moving fast down a dangerous and uncertain road.

Trump’s Alternative Reality Rally in Pennsylvania

To celebrate his 100th day in office with not a single legislative success to show, Der Trumpenführer held a campaign style rally in Pennsylvania, one of the states responsible for inflicting Trump on America.  This is Trump's preferred venue since typically only his delusional, reality free supporters show up and he can avoid speaking to the press which has the inconvenient habit of asking hard questions and pointing out the fact that he's lying.  Indeed, during the rally of deplorables, Trump lashed out at the news media and "fake news," even though the only fake news is what comes out of Trump's mouth and the mouths of his propaganda ministers and Republicans in general. The tactic of attacking the free press has long been favored y dictators and would be authoritarians.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the alternate reality of Trump and his very frightening followers.  And yes, there were members of hate groups in open attendance.  Here are excerpts:

President Donald Trump emerged with a wave and a clap of his hands from behind a blue curtain at the Pennsylvania Farm Show and Expo Center in Harrisburg on Saturday night, underneath a sign that read PROMISES MADE PROMISES KEPT.

He wanted, he said, to commemorate his first 100 days in office with the Pennsylvania voters who had helped put him there. But he also, he made clear, intended to provide counterprogramming to the events taking place back in the swamp: the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the constellation of related events wherein the fake news media and the rest of the Washington elite dresses up and schmoozes from cocktail hour on Friday until hangover brunch on Sunday.

Entering a Trump rally in the year 2017 requires you suspend your critical faculties to a degree, since the people there — most of all the president — seem to be under the impression that the campaign is ongoing, that Hillary Clinton remains Trump’s most formidable foe, and that they are united against the creatures of a swamp controlled by … someone else … it’s not clear who. Several times Saturday night, the crowd chanted, “LOCK HER UP,” seemingly unaware that Clinton retreated long ago into some woods in Chappaqua.

In a less surreal time, the president of the United States would be at the dinner, which supports the White House Correspondents’ Association. . . . . Not showing up, then, was both a fuck-you to the media which Trump publicly pretends to hate and a thank-you to his fans who still believe he is a different sort of politician. One man walked around the floor of the stadium holding a sign that read MY PRESIDENT SKIPPED THE DINNER TO GIVE US OUR DESSERT. He proudly stopped before the press pen to ensure we all got a good look.

“A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation’s capital right now. They are gathered together for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” — he lowered his voice mockingly — “without the president.”

As the crowd erupted in cheers and whistles, he smiled.

“And I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from Washington’s swamp, spending my evening with all of you and with a much, much, larger crowd and much better people, right? Right?”

The space holds more than 7,000, but tickets for the event — like all Trump rallies during the campaign — aren’t sold; they’re offered for free on DonaldJTrump.com, and they aren’t required for admission. And while the crowd was substantial, it didn’t fill the room. Seats remained open in the stands, and space remained available on the floor.

[T]he people in attendance were excited — one man, sporting a long ponytail and a leather vest, turned to the person next to him when Trump started talking. “I love him,” he said. And they provided a stark contrast to the scene back in Washington, where people are dressed in gowns and tuxes and pretending to like each other. Studding the crowd were rather menacing-looking members of Keystone United (previously KSS, or Keystone State Skinheads), which the Southern Poverty Law Center characterizes as a white-supremacist hate group. 

Outside, a man who said he was named Jeff Thomas wore a green Pepe the Frog mask — a symbol of the alt-right — and waved the fictitious flag of “The People’s Republic of Kekistan.”

And while the crowd was animated by Trump’s claims about his accomplishments — executive orders he’s signed, the Supreme Court justice he got confirmed (they chanted “build the wall!” although there is no concrete plan to do so) — they seemed to take the most delight in feeling, finally, a sense of superiority. “

Post Election Hate Crimes Exceed Those After 9-11

Many Trump surrogates and Republicans would have people believe that there is no surge in hate crimes in the wake of Donald Trump's election victory.  According to these folks, its all in our imagination and/or the result of made up stories by hostile media outlets.  Like so much that has come out of the Trump campaign and the Republican Party, these claims are untrue.  Hate crimes have spiked and Trump and company have done too little to demand that these hate-filled knuckle draggers.   A piece in USA Today looks at what is really happening as opposed to the bogus story line of Trump/the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

What may seem like a dramatic rise in the number of hate harassment and hate incidents happening across the country in the wake of Tuesday's general election is not in anyone's imagination, experts say.

There indeed has been a spike in the number of reports of such incidents, say representatives for two organizations that track such occurrences. A representative for one group, in fact, said the rise appears to be even worse that what was took place immediately after the terror attacks in 2001.

"Since the election, we've seen a big uptick in incidents of vandalism, threats, intimidation spurred by the rhetoric surrounding Mr. Trump's election," Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., told USA TODAY. "The white supremacists out there are celebrating his victory and many are feeling their oats," Cohen said.

The incidents, some that bring up memories of the Jim Crow era, continued into Friday. In Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania issued a statement saying it was working to find the source of racist messages sent to black freshmen, and in Syracuse, N.Y., a group of pickup trucks - one draped with the Confederate flag - drove through an anti-Trump rally. In Columbus, Ohio, a man banged on the car window while a Muslim woman was driving, her children and elderly parents with her, and told her, "C--t, you don't belong in this country," according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington.

All those were added to the list of incidents that included black children being told to get to the back of a bus and Latino children being taunted about the wall that Trump promised to build between Mexico and the United States. 

Anti-black and anti-immigrant incidents are generating the highest numbers followed by anti-Muslim incidents, Cohen said. Part of the reason it is happening is that hate group leaders are encouraging members to intimidate people, according to Cohen.

Members of the public who witness or are victimized by hate harassment are advised to contact police, the SPLC, CAIR or other organizations that advocate against hate crimes.

How Trump Made the Hateful Fringe Mainstream

Over the years as I have traveled overseas it has often been interesting to get a foreign perspective on American politics and politicians.   The comments have run from admiration for Barack Obama more recently to comments that "America deserves better" while in Canada back in the 2008 prior that year's presidential election.  Back in the Reagan years when I traveled extensively as in-house counsel for an oil company, it was a mixed bag.   When not traveling, foreign publications are the next best window into foreign thinking on the madness that is American politics, especially in 2016. A piece in The Economist, a well respected British publication, shows the dismay that many of America's allies and members of the international business community feel towards Donald Trump and his frightening supporters.  Here are article highlights:

FIRST, an apology, or rather a regret: The Economist would prefer not to advertise the rantings of racists and cranks. Unfortunately, and somewhat astonishingly, the Alt-Right—the misleading name for a ragtag but consistently repulsive movement that hitherto has flourished only on the internet—has insinuated itself, unignorably, into American politics. That grim achievement points to the reverse sway now held by the margins, of both ideology and the media, over the mainstream. It also reflects the indiscriminate cynicism of Donald Trump’s campaign.

Much of the Alt-Right’s output will seem indecipherably weird to those unfamiliar with the darker penumbras of popular culture. It has its own iconography and vernacular, derived from message boards, video games and pornography. Its signature insult is “cuckservative”, directed at Republicans supposedly emasculated by liberalism and money.

One of the Alt-Right’s pastimes is to intimidate adversaries with photoshopped pictures of concentration camps; a popular Alt-Right podcast is called “The Daily Shoah”. To their defenders, such outrages are either justified by their shock value or valiantly transgressive pranks. Jokes about ovens, lampshades and gas chambers: what larks!

Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, an extremist website, dismisses these antics as “youthful rebellion”. (Mr Taylor is also involved with the Council of Conservative Citizens, which Dylann Roof cited as an inspiration for his racist massacre in Charleston last year.) But the substance behind the sulphur can seem difficult to pin down. The term Alt-Right, reputedly coined in 2008 by Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute, a bogus think-tank, encompasses views from libertarianism to paleoconservatism . . .

Yet from the quack ideologues to the out-and-proud neo-Nazis, some Alt-Right tenets are clear and constant. It repudiates feminism with misogynistic gusto. It embraces isolationism and protectionism. Above all, it champions white nationalism, or a neo-segregationist “race realism”, giving apocalyptic warning of an impending “white genocide”. Which, of course, is really just old-fashioned white supremacism in skimpy camouflage.

That is why the term Alt (short for “alternative”) Right is misleading. Mr Taylor—whom Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a watchdog, describes as the movement’s “intellectual leader”—says it represents an alternative to “egalitarian orthodoxy and to neutered ‘conservatives’.”

[I]t is the latest iteration in an old, poisonous strain of American thought, albeit with new enemies, such as Muslims, enlisted alongside the old ones. “Fifty years ago these people were burning crosses,” says Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League. . . . Online, they have achieved sufficient density to warrant wider attention. There, too, they and Mr Trump found each other.

The association precedes Mr Trump’s hiring as his campaign manager of Stephen Bannon, former boss of Breitbart News, a reactionary news website that Mr Bannon reportedly described as “the platform for the Alt-Right”, and which has covered the movement favourably. Already Mr Trump had echoed the Alt-Right’s views on Muslims, immigration, trade and, indeed, Vladimir Putin, whom Alt-Righters ludicrously admire for his supposed pursuit of Russia’s national interest. Pressed about these shared prejudices (and tweets), Mr Trump has denied knowing what the Alt-Right is, even that it exists—unable, as usual, to disavow any support, however cretinous, or to apply a moral filter to his alliances or tactics.

Mr Trump’s rise and the Alt-Right were both cultivated by the kamikaze anti-elitism of the Tea Party, rampant conspiracy theories and demographic shifts that disconcert some white Americans.

Unquestionably, however, Mr Trump has bestowed on this excrescence a scarcely dreamed-of prominence. As Hillary Clinton recently lamented, no previous major-party nominee has given America’s paranoid fringe a “national megaphone”. Many on the Alt-Right loved that speech: “it was great,” says Mr Griffin. “She positioned us as the real opposition.” Because of Mr Trump, the Alt-Right thinks it is on the verge of entering American politics as an equal-terms participant. “He is a bulldozer who is destroying our traditional enemy,” says Mr Griffin. Mr Trump may not be Alt-Right himself, but “he doesn’t have to be to advance our cause.”

Suffice it to say than many in America's longest ally other than France, are appalled by Mr. Trump, as should sane, decent Americans.

Trump Supporters Pepper Spray, Yell "N****r Lover” to 15-Year-Old Girl

Nearly daily now, we are seeing incidents that underscore why I left the Republican Party quite a few years ago.   Things that would never have been accepted are being normalized by the GOP and its toxic standard bearer, Donald Trump.  A piece in Salon ask the question, what's wrong with Janesville, Wisconsin?  No, not because the place has repeatedly elected Paul Ryan to Congress, the same Paul Ryan who wears his Catholicism on his sleeve while pushing policies that are the antithesis of Catholic social justice teachings, but because a 15 year old girl was pepper sprayed and called a "nigger lover" by white male Donald Trump supporters at a Trump rally. Navel contemplating pundits and GOP demagogues continue to whine about Hillary Clinton's statement about half of Trump's supporters being a "basket of deplorables,"yet every day we see examples to confirm that Clinton was correct.  The situation looked at in Salon was all caught on video, so try as they might, the Trump apologists cannot try to claim it never happened.  Here are article highlights:

Police in Janesville, Wisconsin, are searching for two Donald Trump rally attendees who pepper sprayed and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old anti-Trump protester outside the Republican presidential frontrunner’s rally on Tuesday. Video of the incident shows other apparent Trump supporters shouting “bitch” and “nigger lover” to the teenager as she attempts to walk away with pepper spray in her eyes.

“Damn, Donald, back at it again with the white supremacy,” read 15-year-old Alex Drake’s topical protest sign, according to video that captured the incident. As another protester raised a sign that read, “Black Lives Matter,” the crowd of mostly older white Trump supporters began chanting “All lives matter,” attempting to drown out the Janesville teenager.

Law enforcement in Janesville, home of Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, said that “a male in the crowd groped the 15 year girl, when she pushed him away; another person in the crowd sprayed her.” . . . . Another video shows one Trump supporter yelling to “get that bitch out of here,” after the teenage girl stumbles from being pepper sprayed. . . . “Goddamn communist, nigger lover! Get out of here,” another Trump supporter can be heard shouting.

Inside, the Trump rally was hardly more civil. Speaker Ryan’s hometown booed him when Trump merely mentioned his name — and continued to boo him to the surprise of even Trump. Ryan, of course, has been out publicly bemoaning the “ugliness” that has befallen the Republican primary, a not-so-thinly veiled jab at Trump. Janesville Police additionally reported that they had to turn away two people last night who had concealed weapons, and two others who were openly carrying firearms.

Physical violence against minority protesters, the yelling of homophobic remarks, punching elderly women on oxygen, pepper spraying girls, and yelling racist remarks - all normal among Trump supporters.  When will these folks start killing opponents?  Be very, very afraid.

Yes, Half of Trump Supporters are Racist

As much as many Republicans do not want to face the reality - especially because of what it says about them themselves - racism and hatred of others in general has become one of the pillars of today's Republican Party.  While pundits and GOP apologists continue to criticize Hillary Clinton for speaking the truth about Donald Trump's "basket of deplorables," as noted in a Washington Post column, polls and studies show that at least half of Republicans are likely racist.  Throw in the homophobes and anti-immigrant crowd and the 50% figure used by Clinton is easily exceed.  It is far past time that the media and the general public be honest about what motivates the today's GOP and it is NOT a philosophy of small government and alleged fiscal responsibility.  As a former Republican, yes, there was always some latent racism in dome party members, but it went completely mainstream with the arrival of the Christofacists.  Look at any of the major "family values" groups and scratch the surface and you find a lily white organization with strong white supremacy undertones. Thankfully, Hillary had the courage to speak the truth about these people.  Here are column highlights:

Hillary Clinton may have been unwise to say half of Donald Trump’s supporters are racists and other “deplorables.” But she wasn’t wrong.

If anything, when it comes to Trump’s racist support, she might have low-balled the number.

Trump, speaking to the National Guard Association of the United States’ annual conference here Monday afternoon, proclaimed himself “deeply shocked and alarmed” about Clinton putting half of his supporters in the “basket of deplorables” . . . . How dare she, Trump said, “attack, slander, smear, demean these wonderful, amazing people.”

But this isn’t a matter of gratuitous name-calling. This election has proved that there is much more racism in America than many believed. It came out of hiding in opposition to the first African American president, and it has been welcomed into the open by Trump.

The American National Election Studies, the long-running, extensive poll of American voters, asked voters in 2012 a basic test of prejudice: to rank black and white people on a scale from hardworking to lazy and from intelligent to unintelligent. The researchers found that 62 percent of white people gave black people a lower score in at least one of the attributes. This was a jump in prejudicial attitudes from 2008, when 45 percent of white people expressed negative stereotypes.

This question is a good indicator of how one votes: Republican Mitt Romney won 61 percent of those who expressed negative stereotypes. And, when the question was asked during the 2008 primaries, those with negative racial stereotypes consistently favored Republican candidates — any of them — over any Democratic candidate in hypothetical matchups. . . . . “Whites who reported prejudicial beliefs about blacks skewed heavily Republican in 2008 and 2012 — and they will in 2016.”

Clinton’s infelicitous “basket of deplorables” phrase . . . . for the large number of racists drawn to Trump, the shoe fits.

In June, the Pew Research Center found that 79 percent of Clinton voters believe the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities is an important issue, while only 42 percent of Trump supporters feel that way. 

Research by Washington Post pollsters and by University of California at Irvine political scientist Michael Tesler, among others, have found that Trump does best among Americans who express racial animus. Evidence indicates fear that white people are losing ground was the single greatest predictor of support for Trump — more, even, than economic anxiety.

If you are “very enthusiastic” about a candidate who has based his campaign on scapegoating immigrants, Latinos and African Americans, talked of banning Muslims from the country, hesitated to disown the Ku Klux Klan and employed anti-Semitic imagery — well, you might be a racist. 

Trump, on stage, rejected any notion of racism, . . . .  But moments later, he repeated the campaign slogan he borrowed from an anti-Semitic organization that opposed involvement in World War II.  “America First – remember that,” he said. “America First.”

For non-racist Republicans, they might want to take a good look at the company that they are keeping.

The 2016 Election Is Being "Graded on a Curve" by the Media

As note not only in recent posts but for some time now I have called out the double standard that the mainstream media has been applying in "grading" the 2016 presidential candidates and the manner in which many pundits and news anchors fabricate a false equivalency between Donald Trump's outrageous statements and innumerable lies and statements or actions of Hillary Clinton and/or Democrats in general.  The latest example is found in the feigned shock that Hillary Clinton accurately identified a large segment of Trump's base of support as outright bigots and racists as well as homophobes and anti-immigrant extremists.  Sometimes the truth hurts but it does not make it any less the truth.  A piece in Esquire looks at this irresponsible double standard and the manner in which Trump continues to figuratively get away with murder as anchors and pundits disingenuously grade the candidates' behavior on a bizarre curve so that Trump does not immediately come up failing.  Stated another way, these "journalists" ignore the duty they owe to the public and ignore the fact that similar irresponsible conduct allowed the nation to go to war in Iraq based on lies.  Here are article highlights:

And "basket of deplorables"—the phrase that pays for every cable-news wastrel in the mob . . . there isn't anything in that quote by which anyone who's spent five minutes at a Trump campaign rally in the past year seriously can be offended.

Nonetheless, the people who have attached themselves to a campaign that prides itself on not being politically correct immediately grabbed their badly chafed fee-fees and started screaming for safe spaces. And much of the elite political press immediately went into an ensemble chin-stroke—sagely parsing HRC's math down to the third decimal place and, yes, deploring the level to which the campaign has sunk. Or else they lit a candle at the altar of the Church Of The Savvy and whispered about what terrible politics it is to point out that bigots act out of bigotry. Is it exactly half? Maybe not, but it's damned close to it and everyone following this campaign knows it. Which brings us to Grading On A Curve.

Are we grading El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago, who doesn't know enough about any issue to throw to a cat, on a curve? The answer can be seen plainly enough in how everybody now is pretending that what HRC said isn't god's own truth, or how everybody is arguing that you can't say that stuff out loud because to do so is unkind to white people who are so concerned about unfair trade deals that they go to freaking Stormfront to argue about it. Talk about grading on a curve. There is an accomplished woman saying something everybody knows is true and there is a vulgar talking yam who apparently could set his own dick on fire and not pay much of a price for it on television. That is grading on the curve, but it's nothing new.

Hell, we've been grading Republicans on a curve for decades. We graded Reagan on a curve when he burbled about trees and air pollution. We graded him on a curve during Iran Contra on the grounds that he was too dim to know what was going on around him. We graded W on a curve for the whole 2000 campaign when he didn't know Utah from Uzbekistan, but Al Gore knew too much stuff and what fun was he, anyway? We graded Republicans on a curve when they attached themselves to the remnants of American apartheid, when they played footsie with the militias out west and with the heirs to the White Citizens Councils in the South. We graded them on a curve every time they won a campaign behind Karl Rove or Lee Atwater or the late Terry Dolan back in the 1970s. We talked about how they were "reaching out" to disillusioned white voters who'd suffered in the changing economy, as though African-American workers didn't get slugged harder than anyone else by deindustrialization. We pretended not to notice how racial animus was the accelerant for the fire of discontent in the "Reagan Democrats." That was, and is, grading on a moral curve.

We graded Republicans on a intellectual curve when they embraced a fundamentalist splinter of American Protestantism and brought themselves to a pass in which they are the 21^st Century Know Nothings.

It is timidity now that grades this ridiculous man running this ridiculous campaign on the biggest curve of all—the timidity of a people who have declined the responsibilities of serious citizenship and the abdication of its duty under the Constitution of a putatively free press too timid to call them on it. That is the political correctness that truly is hurting the country and may yet hurt it beyond all repair. There's only one candidate now running however gingerly against that.