Everyone's Sorry-- Except Trump, Who Isn't Sorry For Anything

Did you watch Jake Tapper's CNN show Sunday? Is this what the primary is going to be about-- a parade of unaccomplished candidates apologizing for their unsavory pasts? Then it all becomes a test of who you believe and who you think is just an opportunist faking it. (Gillibrand is the worst so far-- refusing to apologize for destroying Al Franken's career, while making up the crappiest excuses for why she espoused xenophobic, racist, gun-loving policies as a House member-- basically blaming her constituents and demonstrating how she was/is a complete sociopath.) Tulsi was on the show too, but she sounded more credible and authentic in her apologies to the LGBTQ community for "offensive and hurtful statements" in the distant past.

I wonder if interviewers will spend much time speaking with Joe Biden about his slavish devotion to banksters? His handling of the Anita Hill testimony? His "hands on" behavior towards women? The 1994 crime bill? His grotesque anti-integration agenda back in Delaware? His crusade for mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. Here he is in 1989 attacking Bush from the right for being soft on crime. [And he's OFF!] Yeah... ultimately it will be Biden who's the sorriest of all.

And Biden's not the only candidate with a weak criminal justice record. I haven't heard anyone-- at least not on TV-- take on Kamala Harris for her wobbly record as California Attorney General, particularly in regard to letting Mnuchin off scott free. Lara Bazelon, former director of Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent, in the NY Times last week: "Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as district attorney and then the state's attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors."

Christopher Cadelago wrote a piece for Politico about The I'm Sorry Democratic Primary:

Gabbard issued her apology this week in a video after the past remarks resurfaced with her presidential ambitions. CNN published statements and reports from earlier in her career, including a 2002 quote in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin where she spoke about working against same-sex marriage with her father’s anti-LGBT organization. Also included was a Gabbard quote from her time as a state legislator, when she advocated that “as Democrats, we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”

“In my past, I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, they were very hurtful to the people in the LGBTQ community and to their loved ones,” Gabbard said in the apology video.



For Gillibrand, who announced her plans to seek the White House Tuesday on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the questions she now faces trace back to her political rise in 2006. That year, she won an underdog challenge to Republican then-Rep. John Sweeney in a GOP-heavy, overwhelmingly white New York district.

In the House, Gillibrand earned an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association; opposed driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants; and, according to a CNN report, opposed “amnesty for illegal immigrants” and voted to increase funding for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to work with local law enforcement on deportations. Those and other past Gillibrand positions, including wanting to make English the official language of the U.S., were recounted in painstaking detail by Maddow.

The liberal host didn’t hold back in her introduction, referring to Gillibrand’s political “transformation.”

“She has been on her own party’s right,” the popular MSNBC host said. “She has been on her own party’s left.”

Gillibrand, for her part, said she came to realize the errors of her ways when she became a senator and met with the Brooklyn family of a slain teenager-- a story she often cites to explain her shift on gun control. “And now, I’ve been a leader on these issues,” the senator added, noting her support for universal background checks and bans on assault rifles and large magazines.

Later, Maddow said she was struck to hear Gillibrand tell CBS’ “60 Minutes” that she was essentially embarrassed by her previous positions on immigrants.

“Well, I don't think it was driven from my heart. I was callous to the suffering of families who want to be with their loved ones, people who want to be reunited with their families,” Gillibrand said.

Looking back, she added, “I really regretted that I didn’t look beyond my district and talk about why this is an important part of the United States story, and why it’s an important part of our strength.”

And there's Cory Booker. Is he going to start apologizing for his coziness with Wall Street? How about his charter school support, which he was up to again over the weekend.

Wouldn't you rather hear candidates saying something like this instead of whining about being sorry about their miserable records? Guess who said this: "When so many others have abdicated their responsibility, it's on all of us to breathe fire."

One of the many things Trump is never sorry about is the swampiest administration in American history. The worst and most ignorant "executive" always surrounds himself with people even stupider than he is. In his new book, Let me Finish, Chris Christie wasn't complementary about most Trump staffers or the staff in general. Nothing we didn't already know, but...

Donald so urgently needed the right people around him and a solid structure in place... Far too often, he’s found himself saddled with the riffraff.

Instead of high-quality, vetted appointees for key administration posts, he got the Russian lackey and future federal felon Michael Flynn as national security adviser. He got the greedy and inexperienced Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

He got the high-flying Tom Price as health and human services secretary. He got the not-ready-for-prime-time Jeff Sessions as attorney general, promptly recusing himself from the Justice Department’s Russian-collusion probe. He got a stranger named Rex Tillerson as secretary of state…

He got the Apprentice show loser Omarosa Manigault in whatever Omarosa’s job purported to be. (I never could figure that one out.)… Too few Kellyanne Conways. A boatload of Sebastian Gorkas. Too few Steven Mnuchins.

One Kellyanne is way more than enough. Ditto for Mnuchin, who should actually be in prison. But the rest of the assessments all seem right on. But don't mix up the Chris Christie book with the Cliff Sims White House tell-all, Team of Vipers. Who's sorry now? Former Trump chief of staff John Kelly? "This is the worst fucking job I’ve ever had. People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired. If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place."