Americans Are Finally Figuring Out What We Have In The White House-- And That They Don't Like It

This morning, the IMF released its annual World Economic Outlook report, which predicts that "this year the global economy will experience its worst recession since the Great Depression, surpassing that seen during the global financial crisis a decade ago. The Great Lockdown, as one might call it, is projected to shrink global growth dramatically." The fallout in the U.S.-- which is the worst in the developed world because of Trump regime dysfunction and incompetence-- could actually rejigger the electoral map strongly enough to give the Democrats wins in states they haven't taken in decades. Politico, for example, sees Texas as up for grabs. The last time Texas gave it's electoral votes to a Democratic presidential nominee was over 4 decades ago when when Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford (1976). Even if Biden can't close the deal, "The economic impact threatens to hurt down-ticket Republicans, who for decades have hitched their fortunes to a robust economy. Democrats are targeting seven U.S. House seats and defending two, mostly in the suburbs of the largest cities: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso and Fort Worth. Winning the state House is not out of the question for Democrats. They need to flip nine seats and are targeting districts that O'Rourke carried two years ago to get there."

New polling of likely voters, from a Firehouse Strategies survey, shows Señor Trumpanzee's pandemic approval ratings continuing to underperform, especially in relation to governors-- and even Congress! They found that "among 2020 general likely voters, Trump’s approval rating on coronavirus (51%) is currently lower than the approval ratings of Congress (57%) and governors (75%)" and that Biden would beat him 53-43%. Voters are starting to conclude exactly who is to blame.

Trump’s approval rating on the coronavirus crisis (51%) is currently lower than the approval ratings of Congress (57%) and governors (75%). That gubernatorial approval doesn't extend to clueless Trumpist allies like Ron DeSantis (R-FL).Tampa Bay Times reporters Steve Contoro and Larry Mower reported that among governors, DeSantis is standing out-- for his sheer incompetence. "Unlike other governors," they wrote, "DeSantis doesn’t hold regular public briefings. He has ceded the biggest decisions, like whether to close beaches, to city and county officials, yet he hasn’t talked to many of them. Early on, he clashed with federal officials over whether Florida had community spread of the virus. DeSantis’ uneven response has made him an outlier among his counterparts across the country. The approval ratings of most governors have soared during the crisis. DeSantis, one of America’s most popular governors a few months ago, has seen his support plummet. One poll found him the third-worst rated governor at handling the coronavirus in the country."

The poll they were referring to shows TRump's corona-approval at 45%. Compare that to the half dozen best-rated:

• Mike DeWine (R-OH)- 85%
• Larry Hogan (R-MD)- 84%
• Andy Beshear (D-KY)- 83%
• Tim Walz (D-MN)- 82%
• Charlie Baker (R-MA)- 81%
• Andrew Cuomo (D-NY)- 81%

The 6 worst performing governors, according to voters in their own states, are all Trump goons who do whatever he wants them to. Nevertheless, they all rate considerably higher than Trump:

• Henry McMaster (R-SC)- 63%
• Tate Reeves (R-MS)- 62%
• Bill Lee (R-TN)- 60%
• Ron DeSantis (R-FL)- 53%
• Mike Parson (R-MO)- 53%
• Doug Ducey (R-AZ)- 52%

Before the pandemic hit, DeSantis' overall job approval was 58%. It has sunk 7 points in just a few weeks. Most other governors have seen their approvals go much higher. Gavin Newsom, California's very mediocre neo-liberal governor went up 41 points to 83%, mostly because of the reflected glory of the county official and mayors of the 6 Bay Area counties who ignored his cautious, stupid approach and shit down their own jurisdictions while he sat around doing nothing. Ditto for Cuomo, whose ratings went up 32 points.

Lousiana's governor, Democrat John Bel Edwards, acted faster than most governors and saw his job approval go up 14 points in this Trump state, from 54% to a robust 68%. The state's Lt. Governor, Republican Billy Nungesser isn't faring as well. He was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer the other day admitting he was wrong in his reticence to do anything to help the citizens. He consistently pushed business interests over healthcare and now wishes he hadn't encouraged Mardi Gras, which is responsible for God-knows-how-many infections and deaths. As of Monday morning Louisiana had 21,016 confirmed cases and 884 deaths, both rising figures. Nungesser said he "absolutely" regrets his comments. Nungesser also apologized to New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell (D) for criticizing her decision to cancel events: "So the mayor did the right thing. In hindsight, I was wrong and she was right."

Another poll, YouGov's for The Economist, had even worse news for Trump. They found that 57% of Americans say Trump waited too long to respond to the pandemic.That includes 85% of Democrats and 56% of independents and even 20% of Republicans.

Here in Los Angeles, where it is an infraction to walk into a store without a mask, you almost never see anyone not wearing one. Nationally though-- especially in red states where people get their information from Fox and other fake news outlets (including Trump)-- many people still don't wear masks. My unhealthy Trump-loving brother-in-law went shopping a few days ago without one. YouGov reported that "Up until this week, relatively few Americans wore a face mask in public. Only one in five (20%) said they did that last week. This week, one-third (34%) said they had done so... Looking ahead, however, a majority (55%) said they would. That still leaves large numbers who either aren't sure or-- like my brother-in-law-- refuse to. YouGov reported that Republicans are as likely to trust Trump’s medical advice than they are to trust legitimate medical advice from the CDC; they have more confidence in what Señor Trumpanzee says than in Dr. Fauci’s advice. Let's see how long it takes for Darwinian natural selection to kick in and rid the country of people that dumb.

Things can get a lot worse for Trump between now and November. If he really tries to "open up" the economy on May Day-- as he keeps threatening-- there may well be a million deaths, especially in red states that will do what he says. And then there's the economy. A sharp nasty recession could turn into a long drawn-out depression, which would then be the main thing Trump would be remembered for. Brookings released this chilling report on Sunday: The Coronavirus Collapse Is Upon Us. "The world economy is facing its most severe challenge of the postwar period," wrote Eswar Prashad and Ethan Wu. "Economic activity, financial markets, and private sector confidence are all collapsing... much worse is to come. Will the present downturn prove to be sharp but relatively brief, with a snapback of economic activity once the COVID-19 pandemic curve is flattened? Or is the stage set for a deep and protracted global recession? The outcome depends on the trajectory of the pandemic, the responses from policymakers, and whether these are sufficient to contain the damage while rebuilding consumer and business confidence. In any event, the combined public health and economic crisis makes a rapid recovery less likely. Demand has been ravaged, there are extensive disruptions to manufacturing supply chains, and a financial crisis is unfolding simultaneously. Unlike the 2008-09 crisis that was triggered by liquidity shortages in financial markets, the crisis now unfolding involves more fundamental solvency issues for many firms and industries beyond finance."

The U.S. economy has come to a virtual standstill, with a large share of the services sector shutting down, industrial activity being disrupted, and a red-hot labor market giving way, in the space of a few weeks, to a dramatic surge in unemployment. The U.S. has responded with an extraordinary series of fiscal and monetary stimulus measures, which will help mitigate the immediate fallout from the crisis. Still, to alleviate the longer-term damage from this economic sudden stop, further targeted stimulus measures are needed, especially to protect economically vulnerable households and small businesses.

Europe and Japan, which were facing economic stresses even before the pandemic, are likely to suffer substantial declines in output and increases in unemployment. France, Germany, and the U.K. face historic recessions as all indicators of activity and trade tumble. In some of these countries, social safety nets that are stronger than those in the U.S. will mitigate the impact of the crisis on the most economically vulnerable. But the path to recovery will be long and difficult.

China’s economy seems to be getting restarted, at least to a limited extent and despite the restrained monetary and fiscal policy responses to date. Key economic indicators such as industrial output, retail sales, and fixed asset investment contracted sharply in the first two months of the year, but there are signs that the contraction might have bottomed out. In some respects, China’s command economy is built to better withstand such massive shocks compared to market economies. Its government can aggressively marshal national resources beyond the limits of traditional macroeconomic tools, by directly supporting enterprises and banks. But the economy is hardly out of the woods yet, especially with unemployment rising, domestic and external demand likely to remain weak, and given the risks of a second wave of infection.

Other emerging market economies are heading for a traumatic period. Many have decrepit health care systems, congested urban population centers, and high levels of poverty, leaving little room for maneuver between controlling the pandemic and sliding into economic disaster. Making matters worse, some of these economies are also having to cope with sudden stops of capital inflows, depreciating currencies, and a lack of external demand for their exports. Others face formidable debt loads that are only growing harder to finance.

The Indian government, which was already grappling with a sharp growth slowdown, has put the economy on lockdown but faces both a health crisis and an economic crisis. Brazil’s limited pandemic response so far may sustain economic activity in the short run. But its financial markets and currency have tumbled, reflecting the likelihood of an eventual lockdown.

The economic and financial carnage wrought by the pandemic could leave deep scars on the world economy for a long time to come. Central banks, at least, are stepping up to the challenge. The Fed has taken extraordinary measures to bolster U.S. financial markets through asset purchases and by providing dollar liquidity to many foreign central banks. The ECB has stated that there are “no limits to our commitment to the euro” while announcing massive purchases of government and corporate bonds and other assets. The Bank of England is set to directly finance government spending. Even some emerging market central banks, such as the Reserve Bank of India, are considering quantitative easing operations. Such measures will keep financial markets from freezing up but will not by themselves offset the fall in consumer demand or stimulate investment.

With both conventional and unconventional monetary policy tools already stretched to the limit, fiscal policy will have to do more of the heavy lifting. Well-targeted fiscal measures can soften the blow on consumers and businesses, especially small and medium enterprises that tend to have minimal buffers, thereby helping sustain employment and demand. In these desperate times, this option ought to be exercised by governments that face low borrowing costs, even if they already have high levels of public debt. Low- and middle-income countries with inadequate health systems-- where the pandemic could be catastrophic-- need support from the international community, potentially including concessionary debt relief.

The inability of national governments to come together even at such a critical time to forge a common front against the pandemic highlights a dangerous fracturing of international cooperation. This is further damaging business and consumer confidence, which are already in free fall. The need of the hour is honest and transparent information-sharing by national leaders, coupled with aggressive steps to contain the epidemic, extensive stimulus to limit the economic fallout, and a carefully calibrated strategy to restart economic activity before too long.

While multiple leading conservative advocacy groups plan to soon announce a joint coalition to demand the reopening of the U.S. economy despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, pushing for government authorities to loosen restrictions against the warnings of leading public health experts, And Borowitz reported that the governors-- not DeSantis, right-wing dim bulb (at best, murderer at worst) Kristi Noem and Kevin Stitt-- are considering forming their own country. "In order to better coördinate their efforts to combat the coronavirus, the nation’s governors are considering the extraordinary step of forming a country," wrote Borowitz. "The radical proposal is an unusual bipartisan effort, spearheaded by the Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, and the Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine."

“Mike and I were bidding against each other for masks and ventilators, and I was, like, ‘Mike this is crazy,’” Whitmer said. “‘It would be so much better if we just worked together and formed a country.’”

DeWine said that Whitmer’s proposal of creating a country out of the fifty states “made a lot of sense.”

“It was one of those moments where someone throws out a nutty idea and you think, ‘Hold on, let’s think on that for a second,’” he said.

While the idea of the fifty states coming together to form a country is still in the embryonic stage, DeWine said that the states would ideally create a “federal government” led by a “President.”

“We’re all in agreement that it would be amazing to have a President right now,” DeWine said.

A straw poll of the governors indicates that the front-runner for President of this yet-to-be-named country is one of their own: Governor Andrew Cuomo, of New York.

“Andrew keeps saying that he doesn’t want to be President,” Whitmer said. “And I’m, like, ‘Dude, you already are.’”

Hard To Imagine Trump Resigning... But The Mooch Knows Him Better Than I Do

The Mooch says Republican senators will pressure Trump enough over the next 3 months that he'll resign by March. Yesterday he told Yahoo Finance that "When you talk to elected Republicans privately, they can’t stand the president. They know the president is a lawless person and basically a criminal."

Scaramucci said Republicans can’t ignore the new polls from Fox News and NBC/Wall Street Journal which show a growing number of Americans, 49%, want Trump removed from office. “I predict that’s now going to have to go to 60 and when it’s 60, Republicans are going to have to cut and run.”

Scaramucci recently filed paperwork to create a political action committee (PAC) which will use its funds to defeat Trump if he fails to leave office before the 2020 presidential election.

“I am in the process of raising the assets and I will make an announcement in early January the number of assets we’ve raised and where we are going to target the thing,” he said.

Scaramucci’s PAC will focus on 11 swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Florida targeting suburban voters, “to explain what the president is doing actually to their children,” he said. “You can’t have somebody that is lawless at the top of the food chain, who is supposed to be the number one law enforcement official in the United States.”

Scaramucci suspects voters are turned off by the presidents “repetitive lying” and “bullying.” Among Republican voters, Trump’s approval rating has fallen eight points since September to 74%, according to a recent ABC News Washington Post poll. But 61% strongly approve of Trump’s performance as president which is essentially unchanged. It’s one reason Scaramucci says Republican leaders still defend Trump publicly but trash him privately.

“The president tries to shame people. He'll bully people,” said Scaramucci. “Remember, we have to be 100% loyal to him like he's David Koresh, or Jim Jones from the Jonestown Kool-Aid punch. If you're not 100% loyal to him he flips out.”

Scaramucci said Republicans should have acted sooner despite what he calls their fear to act.

“The stink of the president would have lasted a little while, but not that long. I mean, they're overestimating his power of intimidation,” he said. “And they're underestimating how good they could be post his departure.”

Sherrod Brown was on with Colbert yesterday and the Ohio senator told him that "Most Republican senators, when you talk to them individually, quietly, will acknowledge that Trump is a racist. They’ll acknowledge that Trump is a misogynist, they’ll acknowledge he has trouble telling the truth... It’s pretty clear that Republican senators, I mean they’re not going to go down as profiles in courage. It’s pretty clear that they like the tax cuts that Trump gave them. They like the attacks on the environment and on labor rights, and they like the young right-wing judges. And they’re all scared of their base. They’re all scared of a Republican primary from a Trump supporter that could take them out." Moscow Mitch wasn't on with Colbert, but he said that "I’m pretty sure how it’s likely to end. If it were today I don’t think there’s any question-- it would not lead to a removal. So the question is how long does the Senate want to take? How long do the presidential candidates want to be here on the floor of the Senate instead of in Iowa and New Hampshire?"

As much as I'd love to believe it, I think The Mooch is dead wrong on this and that McConnell has it about right. The Mooch may know Trump better than I do, but me and Moscow Mitch know Capitol Hill better than he does and there just aren't enough Republican senators with big enough cajones and enough integrity to go to Trump and tell him to retire. It's easier for them to make a bad bet that he'll come through this whole mess fine and they'll all live happily ever after.

Report: Putin Almost Done Redacting Mueller Report

Mr. Putin, you have mail by Nancy Ohanian

Except for Rudy Giuliani, tomorrow's the big day. God only knows what Maddow is doing tonight to prepare for the Big Day! No matter what, though, he sure to spend the day with Ted Lieu's twitter feed open. This morning, Ken sent me the New Yorker url that led to the latest from Andy Borowitz, along with this concise note: "All too frequently I don't bother clicking through to Borowitz Reports because the subject matter is of such despair to me that I figure, how could Andy B make it funny? Except he always does! In this case, I don't know about you, I see that aberrant life form's reptilian cunning-- his only form of intelligence-- yet again allowing him to skate through, well, every-fucking-thing."

After putting in what one associate called a “hellish all-nighter,” the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is almost finished redacting Robert Mueller’s report in time for its release, on Thursday.

Earlier in the week, the U.S. Attorney General, William Barr, submitted the approximately four-hundred-page document to Putin for his approval, but the Russian President was reportedly "in a state of disbelief" over how much Barr had failed to redact.

Quickly assembling a crisis team at the Kremlin to implement further redactions, Putin told his associates, "Put some coffee on, boys-- it’s going to be a long night."

Although Putin is said to be satisfied that his redactions have rendered the Mueller report meaningless, he resents that the important task of obliterating damning evidence fell to him. "I have to do everything for these people," he reportedly said.

2018 Midterms-- All About Señor Trumpanzee

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that Marc Short, Trump's liaison to Congress is quitting, complaining that trying to push Trump's agenda through the GOP-controlled Congress has reached a point of "diminishing returns." Far right extremists are delighted because they view him as a champion for the GOP establishment’s. They're always bitching that he didn't obtain funding for the Great Wall of Trumpanzee or repeal ObamaCare. Maybe he'll go back to his old job working for the Koch brothers' political operation.Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that Marc Short, Trump's liaison to Congress is quitting, complaining that trying to push Trump's agenda through the GOP-controlled Congress has reached a point of "diminishing returns." Far right extremists are delighted because they view him as a champion for the GOP establishment’s. They're always bitching that he didn't obtain funding for the Great Wall of Trumpanzee or repeal ObamaCare. Maybe he'll go back to his old job working for the Koch brothers' political operation.

Sounds grand to me-- for the Democrats. The Capitol Hill Republicans hate his guts as much as Democrats do-- maybe more, if that's possible... but they whisper it and clam up when there are microphones around... pining for an Eisenhower in 2020 to save them. Nazis are in heaven. "Deal with it," said Corey Stewart, the anti-immigrant, pro-Confederate symbols, new Republican nominee for Senate in Virginia: "This is the new Republican Party." As for the people resisting, Stewart said, "They’re dinosaurs. They need to wake up and understand that President Trump has fundamentally remade the Republican Party." In his concession speech, Mark Sanford said, "We are a nation of laws." In her victory speech, the self funding Trumpist who beat him, Katie Arrington had a different interpretation of the Republican Party: "We are the party of President Donald J. Trump."

She's probably right-- and her assertion will be examinable in November. Amy Walter observed for the Cook Political Report yesterday that Trump Is Everything Voters Hoped/Feared He Would Be. She's correct when she asserts that "If you are surprised at what President Donald Trump is doing or how he is behaving or what he is prioritizing, you shouldn’t be. This is what he was doing, what he was saying, and how he was acting throughout the 2016 campaign. On some topics, he has been espousing the same rhetoric for years and years."

Is anyone really surprised that Trump is not interested in following the priorities of GOP party leaders in Congress? Shouldn’t we have expected that the “I alone can fix it” candidate would not feel constrained by the other co-equal branches of government?

...President Trump is not all that much different than candidate Trump. This is why his base of support has remained solid, and why those who never liked him in the first place are as turned off by him as ever.

A Fox News poll, taken June 3-6, asked respondents to give one specific reason for why they either approved or disapproved of the President.  Among the 45 percent of voters who said they approved of the job Trump was doing, the number one reason, volunteered by 24 percent of respondents, was “helping the economy/creating jobs.” But, a combined 53 percent focused more on his style than substance, like “keeping promises,” “getting things done,” “doing what he said,” “putting America first,” and “shaking things up.”

...Trump is everything today as president that voters had hoped or feared he would be when he was a candidate.

This helps explains why Trump’s job approval ratings in the most recent polls from Fox (45 percent) and NBC/Wall Street Journal (44 percent) are close to where he was on Election Day 2016 when he took 46 percent of the vote.

The other similarity between this election and the one in 2016 is that where the spotlight is focused this fall will determine if the election breaks for Democrats or for Republicans. As I wrote back then, when the spotlight was trained on Clinton’s weaknesses (emails, “deplorables,” the Wikileaks trove), her numbers went down and Trump’s went up. When Trump and his temperament were in the spotlight, he went down and she went up.

In 2018, Democrats would like the spotlight to be trained on health care and tax reform. Specifically, they want to be talking about the rising cost of health care and a GOP crafted tax law that they argue is tilted toward the wealthy and big corporations over struggling middle class families. In fact, some of the lowest approval ratings for the president-- and some of the largest advantages Democrats have had on the congressional ballot-- came during the debates and votes on health care legislation and the tax bill.

Republicans certainly would like to see the president be more disciplined. But, the constant swirl and clamor also make it hard for even bad stories to stick around before they are swept off the front pages by something else. The consistently good economic news helps as well.

But, let's be honest, we have no idea where that spotlight will be shining by November. Will it be on a recently released Mueller report? Health care premium hikes? The success/failure of North Korean denuclearization?

One thing we do know, however, is that Trump will never be out of the spotlight. And, as such, opposition to or support for him is what will ultimately determine the outcome of 2018.

Amy's right. Does Pelosi understand that? Does the DCCC? I asked Alan Grayson (D-FL) what he thinks. "Obviously, it’s extremely important to propose and implement policies that improve the lives of ordinary people; that’s what this is supposed to be all about. However, the GOP has set out-- largely successfully-- to make every policy debatable. Universal healthcare, progressive taxation, immigration reform, even climate change: the Republicans have consistently undermined any effort distinguish good policies from bad. The one thing that remains undebatable in the minds of almost everyone is Trump himself,"

And Andy Borowitz sure does too:

As new details emerge from this week’s summit in Singapore, the White House has confirmed that Donald J. Trump unilaterally offered to let Kim Jong Un have Mike Pence as his personal manservant.

The offer reportedly came after Kim spoke glowingly to Trump about the Vice-President’s obsequiousness, sources said.

“Even by North Korean standards, Pence puts my toadies to shame,” Kim reportedly said.

Once the necessary paperwork is squared away, Pence could begin bowing and scraping in Pyongyang as early as next week.

Going forward, Pence’s duties as senior sycophant to Trump are expected to be performed by Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California.

Although State Department insiders were taken by surprise by Trump’s offering of Pence, for whom the U.S. will receive nothing in return, the deal has been met with nearly universal approval.

“At least Trump didn’t give away much this time,” one diplomat said

 

How Do Progressives Look At Trumpanzee's Summit With Kim?

Trump's bluster isn't going away soon but his obvious first priorities to get something accomplished so he can get a Nobel Peace Prize (instead of a Piece Prize for sleeping with hookers. His second priority is to make himself look like he can get something done for his moron base (and the moron media)-- after his catastrophic G-7 donnybrook. And his other priority (which actually be first) is to be able to build a golf course and tower (or even a chain of McDonalds)in Pyongyang.)

Should progressives be rooting for him? Well... yes, if he makes real progressive towards denuclearization and actual peace, peace even beyond just signing a Potemkin-like "eace treaty" that either madman could tear up. Trump is a terrible negotiator-- very much like Kaiser Wilhelm II was. He thinks of himself as the "indispensable" man, like Wilhelm did. That's absurd in both cases. In fact, Trump has been boasting that if North Korea doesn't bend to his will, he'll re-install "maximum sanction." Is that so? Who does he think will join him? Certainly not Russia or China, who were already ignoring his sanctions. And now he'll have a hard time with the leaders of Europe, who all hate him, as does our #1 ally, Canada.

Yesterday Ro Khanna and 14 of his colleagues sent Trump an official letter, explaining what Americans would like to see him accomplish in Singapore. "We are encouraged," wrote Khanna, "by your efforts to pursue direct diplomacy with North Korea with the dual goals of resolving the nearly seven-decade-long conflict and achieving the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. As many of us wrote to you in May 2017, diplomacy is the only path to resolve the tensions between our countries. There is a broad popular mandate for this diplomatic approach: at a time when he has engaged in an unprecedented diplomatic effort, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has an 85 percent approval rating, while recent polls indicate that four out of five Americans support diplomacy with North Korea."

We remain concerned that some, from both parties and inside and outside of your administration, seek to scuttle progress by attempting to limit the parameters of the talks, including by insisting on full and immediate denuclearization or other unrealistic commitments by North Korea at an early date. The comments made by National Security Advisor John Bolton, and echoed at times by both yourself and the Vice President, regarding the Libya model-- referencing the complete dismantlement of Libya’s fledgling nuclear program-- was an especially unconstructive approach given the subsequent NATO intervention and overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in 2011. Requiring unreasonable concessions before talking, or early in the negotiations process, is precisely why this conflict remains unresolved.

Instead, we emphasize the tremendous value of incremental progress that advances the potential for future agreements. Among the positive steps that you can commit to right away are: pledges or agreements to formally end the 68-year war, ending the practice of US-ROK “decapitation” military exercises, and support for important cooperative efforts such as vital humanitarian assistance, parliamentarian dialogue and exchanges, reunions between Koreans and Korean American families, and the repatriation of US servicemember remains.

Such steps, combined with commensurate actions by North Korea, could help facilitate the phased denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. One of the world’s foremost nuclear weapons experts and one of the only Americans to visit North Korea’s nuclear facilities, Sig Hecker, notes that the best the United States can hope for is a phased denuclearization, which would manage the greatest risks early on and then address lower priority aspects of the program over the course of ten or more years.

We reiterate that the United States cannot achieve a lasting agreement alone. Allies and partners are vital in making a durable peace. That is why we are gravely concerned with your violation of the Iran nuclear agreement. Your approach to this feat of international diplomacy places substantial obstacles in your path as you seek historic progress on peace.

We once again must remind you that in the unfortunate event of a setback or collapse in talks, you do not have the authority under the U.S. Constitution or U.S. law to strike North Korea. With the sole exception of instances requiring a response to a sudden attack, our founding fathers clearly granted the power to declare war to the Congress under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11. As James Madison explained, “The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature […] the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.”

Further, our close ally South Korea has made clear that a military approach to this situation poses unacceptable risks to their people and nation.  As the previous administrations dating back to that of Richard Nixon determined, any military option could precipitate an unacceptable counter-reaction from Pyongyang, which today could immediately threaten the lives of as many as a third of the South Korean population, put nearly 30,000 U.S. service members and over 100,000 other U.S. citizens residing in South Korea in grave danger, and also threaten our other regional allies such as Japan. Moreover, the Pentagon reported this year that only through a costly, bloody ground invasion would the United States be able to secure all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that a U.S.-North Korea war would be “catastrophic.” In the event talks break down, the U.S. deterrence that was successful in avoiding nuclear war with the USSR for decades and has been successful with North Korea for years, remains the only policy for which you have constitutional authority.

Accordingly, we stand ready to provide support for potentially historic progress made through diplomacy, but will continue to stand with our ally South Korea in vehemently opposing any return to threats of illegal and unacceptable military action.

Andy Borowitz noted that Kim could offer to host peace talks between the U.S. and Canada.

Speaking to reporters at his hotel in Singapore, Kim said that the rising tensions between the North American neighbors were posing an “intolerable threat to world peace.”

In addition to offering to host U.S.-Canada talks in Pyongyang, Kim urged the immediate creation of a demilitarized zone along the border separating the two hostile nations.

“In exchange for Canadian Mounties agreeing to stand down on their side of the border, the United States, in turn, would dismantle its nuclear weapons,” Kim said.

Although stating that “North Korea stands ready and willing to be an honest broker” in peace talks between the two countries, he urged Trump to dial back the “inflammatory rhetoric” that he aimed at Canadians over the weekend.

“Violent language and threats have no place in international diplomacy,” Kim said.

Trump And His GOP Are Undermining Our Institutions

I saw a joke from Andy Borowitz the other day about how hippies feel they're being forced to embrace the FBI after decades of hating it. "Former hippies across the United States have been put in the unbearable position of rooting for the F.B.I., hippies have confirmed. From Vermont to California, erstwhile hippies bemoaned a nightmare scenario that has forced them to side with a law-enforcement agency they have despised since the Summer of Love...'Donald Trump has wrecked America’s standing around the world, spread misogyny and bigotry, ravaged the environment, and endorsed a child molester,' Carol said. 'But making people like us support the F.B.I. is the most unforgivable thing he’s done.'"

But a new poll from Monkey Survey at the same time shows that Trump, Trump-TV and the Republicans in Congress have had an impact on a large number of Americans in terms of trust in one of the county's most trusted institutions, the FBI. And not in the same way Borowitz was laughing about. Congress may only have an 11% positive approval and Trump's may only be somewhere in the 30s, but the constant hammering on the FBI has completely undermined trust in the organization-- at least among Republicans. Look at that chart up top-- and this one:

Trump is getting just what he wants and it really us very dangerous for the state of democracy for this country. This isn't a game anymore. All that talk about fascism is realer than anyone hoped. Can we hold on til November and next January when the new Congress comes in? Will Putin and Trump even allow a new Congress to be fairly elected?

Jerry Nadler, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee sent this note out over the weekend:

Yesterday, over the objections of the FBI and the Department of Justice, and in an utter disregard for accuracy and truth, House Republicans released the so-called Nunes memo in a move that places their main political goal-- protecting Donald Trump-- above our democracy.

The DOJ called the decision “extraordinarily reckless,” and the FBI, which rarely comments publicly about such matters, said, “We have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

Republicans are willing to tell any lie to protect Trump and their party.

...When the pro-Trump memo’s author, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, was asked whether his staff had coordinated with the White House, he refused to answer the question.

Let me be clear: the Republican majority in Congress is now complicit in Trump’s propaganda war-- a deliberate campaign to undermine and derail the work of Special Counsel Mueller and the entire Russia investigation. They have moved from stonewalling efforts to get to the truth to actively aiding in obstruction of those efforts.

The memo’s release is a charade designed to protect Trump from being held accountable for the foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.

...Reports have suggested that the release of this intentionally deceptive memo may be used as a pretext to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and undercut Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. We cannot allow Trump-- now with the help of the Republican majority-- to destroy those democratic institutions whose function it is to uphold the rule of law.

This sustained Republican misinformation campaign is a betrayal of the American people, and we must speak out loudly against it with one voice. I will continue to fight it with every ounce of effort as Ranking Democrat of the House Judiciary Committee.

Thank you for standing with me, for democracy.

This is getting scary. And Trump isn't deporting MS-13 gangsters; he's deporting longtime peaceful, productive residents of our neighborhoods and no one is standing up for them. WHo's going to stand up for you and me when he comes for us?

News Flash! Spicer! Conway! The Trump White House Is Now Officially An Insane Asylum

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is on the job.

by Noah

That the Trump White House has become a home for crazy people shouldn't come as a surprise to any sane observer of the events of recent years. Face it: We've seen the Republican Party cross over the edge of sanity since the dawn of the Tea Party. That was the point where it became apparent that the Republican Party had fully become the Crackpot Party. I don't need to recount the Bizarro World antics of the likes of Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Louie "The Bestiality Guy" Gohmert, Paul LePage, et al. Their numbers are legion, and they have been parading across our TV screens for years like the sideshow freaks they are.

Nixon's "last press conference" (oops!)

In fact, if you're a glutton for punishment, you can trace the origins of this thing of total lunacy the Trumpies call a movement back through the Reagan years all the way to President Nixon. Nixon was a raving maniac who we learned literally ran through the corridors of the White House screaming his head off. Even before he was elected president, America had evidence that Nixon was severely paranoid and given to delusion. Think: "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore" (Nov. 7, 1962, at what he said was his "last press conference," after his California gubernatorial loss). Eventually, his White House taping system proved once and for all that he was a racist and, even more, an anti-semite.

So, really, the precedent for a President Trump or someone like him was set long ago. Most of America, with the help of the mainstream media myth machine, just chose not to see it.


1968-69: THE NIXON PODS DESCEND ON DC

I lived in Washington, DC, in all but the last of the Nixon years. The Nixon government aside, I saw the change in the population of Washington as it moved from the LBJ years to the Nixon years. To say the least, no one I chose to associate with had much if any regard for either man. We could look at LBJ and give him his due for ramming civil-rights and voting-rights legislation through Congress, but there was also his role in escalating the Vietnam War. Nixon, on the other hand, had no redeeming qualities other than the creation of the EPA. Please note that all three of the positives I just mentioned are things that today's republicans hate with all their being.

What I found most disturbing about Washington in those days was that when Nixon took over, you could see a marked difference in the kind of people that were coming to town to replace the LBJ people. I'm not talking just about cabinet people; I'm talking about the massive numbers of department staff and support staff that come along with the tide when a new president comes in. With Nixon it was an influx of crewcut, wound-tight, pole-up-the-ass types, people who were stuck in a world view of 1953, 15 years out of date; people who really did still believe that Commies lurked in every shadow and that the Earth is only 6000 years old.

These people feared a world where males had sprouted long hair. Which made them easy to terrify in the streets of Georgetown, especially after the horrific crimes of the Manson Family, and I admit that I personally had some fun with this. You could just stare at them and they'd start walking on eggshells. Dumb fucks that they were, they thought that any guy with hair over his ears was carrying a machete.

The Nixon types also hated those who hated war. War was big business for them, plus it was waged against Commies. Understand: The word Commies didn't necessarily mean Communists in the literal geopolitical sense. To them a "Communist" was anyone who didn't agree with their myopic, narrow-minded view of things. To the vast majority of them, both bread and people should only come in one color: white.

Today's republicans aren't that much different. Sure, it's harder to tell them from normal people just by fashion differences. I mean, can you tell those Duck Dynasty freaks from a death-metal band or the Manson gang? But if you notice that wound-tight thing, substitute "Muslim" for "Commie," and listen to the various bigotries they express, it's really the same. The difference now is that there seems to be a larger concentration of them in the general population. Either that or they just feel bolder and more entitled to act out in civilized society. Then again, it could be because social media and more TV and stations have given them a platform where they can reach each other easily and egg each other on.


SO HERE WE ARE NOW IN 2017

Russia is still an enemy of the United States. Only now that's OK with republicans 'cause the Russians helped put their guy in the White House. The Republican Party went over the cliff and dropped down so low that, to them, there's not a thing wrong with that. They got so insane that they put party over country like no party has ever done before. They got so insane that they embraced a man who is obviously severely mentally ill and now he is our president. If Nixon ever wanted a president in the White House that made him look sane by comparison, he's got him. Somewhere in Hell, a great burden has been lifted from his shoulders.

It has now gotten so bad that on Saturday afternoon, when I was in our kitchen and heard an angry, shrieking madman on the TV in our living room, I had to stop what I was doing and see what the commotion was about. At first I thought maybe the authorities had arrested some bonkers terrorist at some airport somewhere. Maybe my wife was watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Vincent Price's House on Haunted Hill.


"Don't try to escape! You can't!"

But no, it wasn't a movie. It was Comrade Trumpinsky's press secretary, Sean Spicer, channeling the Orange Fascist himself. He was clearly off his meds, and was a thing to behold -- emphasize thing.

He wasn't wearing a straitjacket, but you could be forgiven if you remembered it that way. That's how intense the crazy shooting out of his mouth, eyes, and entire body language was as he berated and tried to intimidate the assembled press. Mere words cannot do this bizarre incident justice. And this was just his first day! He made a lasting and credibility-destroying impression. It was a tantrum for the ages. I have never seen Facebook explode over an ongoing event like it did with this one.

What set Spicer off was the press coverage of the Trump inauguration, particularly the reporting of the simple fact, verifiable by aerial photographs that we have all seen by now, and verifiable by photographs of the empty seats along the parade route, that President Obama's crowd was bigger than President Trump's crowd. Freud would have a field day with this. Obviously Trump had sent Spicer out to combat this reality that Trump cannot deal with and is not mentally equipped to deal with. His megalomania and massive insecurities get in the way.



Spicer managed to set some sort of record for speed lying as he spat out an incredible five lies in just five minutes. You can click here for the specifics. It was engrossing. It was both hard to look and hard to look away. I was watching a man disintegrate on national TV.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo had this to say:

On the one hand it is chilling, bizarre, un-American to see the President's spokesman begin the term excoriating and threatening the press, telling demonstrable lies, speaking with a palpable rage in his voice. On the other, the President and his toadies are on the second day almost vanishingly small. They are embarrassing themselves. They look silly. They look ridiculous. It is hard to be intimidated by ridiculousness. I suspect this will be the abiding duality of the Trump presidency.

Yes, they look ridiculous, and yes, they are embarrassing themselves. But sadly for them and everyone in the world, they have no idea that this is how they come off, just as those who voted for Trump have no idea how this seems to the moral and the sane. Even former press secretaries from both major parties took issue with Spicer's behavior.

The thing is, of course, that Trump and his toadies are taking millions of naïve, wounded, and gullible Americans right over the cliff with them, and the rest of us are at risk of being collateral damage. While this bit of Saturday-afternoon horror theater was going on, I checked the FOX "News" twitter feed, where Trump's army of brainwashed souls, in an orgasmic state, were cheering Spicer on in his ranting insanity. There were a lot of "About time!" and "Hell yeah!" shout-outs to Spicer. To them, a star was born.


Is Sean Spicer counting hockey crowds now too? Maybe it was the very same "million and a half people" President Trump saw at his inauguration who packed Dallas's American Airlines Center for Saturday's Stars loss to (ahem) the Washington Capitals. [Click to enlarge.]

Reading the FOX Twitter feed offered a glimpse at the total Opposite World these brainwashed crazies live in. The danger is that they want to make the rest of us live in their world. It's like they've already gone through the looking glass and blown right past, into a state of ultimate denial. This is way beyond "O.J. didn't kill Nicole" stuff. This is alternate-reality creation that allows them to rationalize and justify, consciously or unconsciously, the criminality of what they have just done to their own country and the world.

Trump's lost souls are trying to reverse the polarity of reality itself. It may be that the only way to deal with these people is to constantly throw their vile bullcrap right back in their faces until their heads explode from brain-hemorrhaging apoplexy. Disdain, derision, and zero tolerance should be the order of the day.


"ALTERNATIVE" REALITY INVADES SUNDAY-MORNING TV

The Sunday morning news-talk shows like Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and "This Week With George Stephanopoulos brought out Trump's mistress of spin, Kellyanne Konartist. On This Week she made the point that (crowd) size doesn't matter while saying that it was "completely unacceptable" for the media to call Sean Spicer a liar. Well, Kellyanne, I'll go ya one further: If Spicer keeps it up, soon the word spicer will be synonymous with liar.

But it was on Meet the Press that Kellyanne reached the heights of crazy that republicans adore her for, claiming that Spicer wasn't lying, he was just presenting "alternative facts"!



It's really something when you are a republican so disingenuous that even a republican water carrier like Chuck Todd puts you on the hot seat. Still, I have to give Ms. Konartist credit. She is very good at her job and proved it in the campaign. She can also go on TV and erect a stonewall like nobody's business. Maybe Trump can send Kellyanne to the Mexican border and she can just talk any would-be "illegals" away.

I took some amusement from the moment where Kellyanne appeared to flip off Chock Todd UK-style with a two-finger F-U salute. Was it intentional, or am I making up some of that famous "fake news" that is all the rage?



To be fair -- and, like I say, I'm always fair -- I do want to address the bit of unfortunate real fake news that Ms. Konartist brought up on Meet the Press. There was lots of chatter from republikook circles over the weekend about a "fake news" report on the bust of Martin Luther King being removed from the Oval Office (now declared by me to be the Offal Office for the duration of Trump's hopefully short term).

In fact, the bust was not removed. It turns out that it was obscured by someone standing in front of it. The reporter who wrote the story should have at least taken a better look. The righties are focusing on this incident as an example of what they term "fake news." Fair enough, but there is a much more serious underlying issue at play here. The issue is: Why would we assume that President Trump would remove the MLK bust. It's only natural to assume that he would because of his previously demonstrated feelings towards African-Americans, which include his having them removed from the floors of his casinos, the rabid support he received from KKK and other white supremacy groups worldwide, and many of his own words.

[Click to enlarge.]

The silver lining in this is that, if Trump was going to remove the MLK bust, a likely scenario, he will now have to think twice about it. I take pleasure in knowing that, when he is in his new office, he will have to look at something he'd rather not see. Oh well, funny how things can work out! Maybe he can just paint it gold or cover it with a handy white hood.


ANDY BOROWITZ OFFERS A TAKE ON THE SPICER STORY

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- A man who was described as “visibly deranged” eluded the Secret Service on Saturday and gave a five-minute press conference at the White House.

The man, who somehow obtained White House credentials in order to bypass security, unloaded a delusional and paranoid rant that left a room full of experienced reporters shaken.

“We were all very, very scared,” Tracy Klugian, a reporter who witnessed the incident, said. “The things he was shouting made absolutely no sense, and he seemed to just get angrier and angrier.”

After a stream-of-consciousness tirade in which he accused the reporters of being part of a far-reaching conspiracy to distort reality, the man abruptly walked off “before he could do any real harm,” a Secret Service spokesman said.

Reporters who left the White House called the incident the scariest five minutes of their lives and said that they were grateful it did not escalate further.

“We were all terrified that, at some point, he was going to ask us if we had any questions,” Harland Dorrinson, a reporter, said. “None of us wanted to say anything that would set him off.”

MEMES OF THE ORANGE WHITE HOUSE INSANE ASYLUM

"News Flash! Spicer! Conway! The Trump White House Is Now Officially An Insane Asylum" (1/23)
"Trump Press Secretary Spicer Spawns A Cottage Industry Overnight!" (1/24)
"Kellyanne Conway Memes: Crazy Lady Now Roams The Halls Of The White House, America’s Newest Insane Asylum" (1/26)

#

Is it really necessary to label "The Borowitz Report" as "satire"?

What's wrong with this picture?

by Ken

Let me confess that I'm the one who appended the January 15 "Borowitz Report" as an update to Part 11 of Noah's herculean 2016 In Review America Off The Rails series: "Comrade Trump: Inauguration Entertainment Update!."

It seemed an obvious call. No sooner had we put up Noah's update to his earlier post on the extraordinary difficulty the Trumpinistas have been having getting entertainers to perform at their guy's inauguration (Part 3, "The Trumpf Inauguration Committee Finds The Perfect Inauguration Entertainment At Last!"), and also getting the folks who had signed on to keep from weaseling out, than here comes Andy B with this wicked post:



Luckily, I can report that after the fact Noah found the addition of that Borowitz Report altogether appropriate. So that's not why I bring it up. I bring it up because what you see immediately above is not the way I originally presented it. No, the way I originally presented it is the way newyorker.com presented it, which was more like what you see atop this post. (For reasons I'll explain in a moment, it's not exactly what you see atop this post, which is merely a re-creation.)

Sometime after posting, I found myself looking at this again, and I found myself bothered again. No, "bothered" doesn't cover it. I was shocked and appalled, just as I had been when I'd first looked at this and noted that newyorker.com was now labeling The Borowitz Report as "SATIRE FROM THE BOROWITZ REPORT."

Really? Is it honestly necessary to explain that what Andy B produces is "satire"?

For that matter, does "satire" really define what it is? I'd never really thought about it. I guess have to acknowledge that satire sort of describes what a Borowitz Report is, but somehow putting a label on it seems to constrict it, to close it off. In truth, it seems to me that when you see something like that head, "Karaoke Machine Backs Out of Performing at Inauguration," you immediately know two things:

(1) Chances are pretty good that it's not literally true, because it seems pretty unlikely that a karaoke machine would be able to back out of performing at the inauguration.

(2) You just have to read it, because, well, it's bound to be fun and it expresses a larger truth.

I guess this is what satire does, being fun and expressing a larger-than-factual truth. Yet somehow slapping the label on seems to me to short-circuit the whole process of discovering, deciphering, and connecting. And, oh yes, smiling. Somehow when we start with that "SATIRE FROM" label, the necessity of smiling seems to diminish -- a chunk of the fun is taken out.

I might add that I don't know how long newyorker.com has been doing this -- you know, slapping that "SATIRE FROM" label on Borowitz Reports. I don't know because, as I've been realizing, I have been clicking through to a lot of Borowitz Reports lately -- since, oh, about November 3. Not because I don't think they'll be funny. On the contrary, what Andy B does maybe better than anybody I'm aware of is to find "funny" in news that wouldn't seem to have a lot of "funny" in it -- and not only funny but true.

True-to-reality, that is, not true-to-facts. Because Andy B always understands and respects the underlying seriousness of the subjects he targets. No, I think I've been looking away out of resistance to the very idea of finding anything about this post-November 3 world amusing. It's too horrifying.

Until that karaoke-machine-having-second-thoughts came along. I knew I could handle that, and I also knew that I wanted to read it right away. And I was right. Not even that heavy-handed "SATIRE FROM" label could spoil it. But not for want of trying.


POSTSCRIPT: I HAD TO DO SOMETHING

As I just noted, once I found myself looking again at the version atop this post, the longer I looked at it, the fidgetier it made me. Until finally I had to do something. I recalled that I had considered originally lopping off that "SATIRE FROM THE BOROWITZ REPORT" label. But I held back, I think out of some sense that it would be somehow misrepresenting the way the piece had been presented, which was pretty much the point of my presenting it with use of the screen shot. Now, looking at the thing more and more compulsively, and realizing that even without that slug, the piece would still be clearly presented as a Borowitz Report, I came around to the view that I should have lopped it off.

And finally, even though it was a post that already wasn't new, and might never be looked at again (though I always hope!), I had to do it. I reopened the thing in Photoshop Elements and lopped the slug off, then inserted the new version in the post. As soon as I verified that it looked OK, I deleted the original version, and I felt better. Of course, once the original version was deleted, it was gone, which is why, as noted above, I had to re-create it in order to present it for this post.

And I still feel better. My only regret is that I didn't have the sense to do it originally.

#

From one president to the next, it seems a reasonable enough request, no?

Today from The Borowitz Report: today

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an Oval Office meeting that White House aides described as “friendly but strained,” President Obama politely asked President-elect Donald Trump to wait until he is officially sworn in to begin destroying the world.

According to the aides, Obama said that, while he understood that Trump was eager to create potentially cataclysmic diplomatic crises around the world, tradition dictated that he wait until he is actually President to do so.

Obama cited the example of George W. Bush, who waited until he took the oath of office before wreaking destruction on a massive scale.

“There’ll be loads of time for you to do stuff like that,” Obama reportedly said.

During the meeting, which lasted nearly an hour, Obama repeatedly asked Trump “if he understood what was being said to him,” the aides reported.

After the meeting, Trump spoke briefly with reporters but cut the session short to “jump on a phone call with Kim Jong-un.”

“He’s a terrific guy, he’s doing just a terrific job over there,” Trump said, of the North Korean leader.

Obama did not take questions from reporters but was later seen sitting at his desk, holding his head in his hands.

I dunno, it seems a reasonable enough request. But look who's being asked for reasonableness. -- Ken

#

Why does The Donald lie?

[Click to enlarge.]

"In returning to this sort of language now that he’s got the nomination—and escalating it with his use of the phrase 'founder of ISIS'—Trump is, on the face of it, harming his prospects for November. . . . He sounds like he is talking to his angry base, and supplying them with an inflammatory narrative that can be trotted out for years, and decades, to come."

-- John Cassidy, in a new newyorker.com post, "Why
Trump's Crazy Talk About Obama and ISIS Matters"

by Ken

Idea for a post: "Prophetic utterances uttered by a young imp known as The Donnie." As for example: "Someday I'm gonna be so rich, people will have to laugh at my jokes." Not for today, but still safely lodged in the Idea Hopper. Meanwhile, now all grown up, or as grown up as it appears he's ever going to get, The Donald sprinkles his little "jokes" all over the damn place, most recently inspiring this Borowitz Report:

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Clarifying his position on a key national-security issue, Donald Trump said on Friday that as President he would be willing to use nuclear weapons, “but only in a sarcastic way.”

“People who are worried about me having the nuclear-launch codes should stop worrying, O.K.?” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “If I ever used nuclear weapons, it would be really obvious that I was just being sarcastic.”

Pressed by Blitzer to explain the difference between a sarcastic and non-sarcastic nuclear attack, Trump responded, “You’d use the weapons and everything, but then you’d say, ‘Just kidding.’ ”

Trump did not specify which nations he would target for a sarcastic nuclear attack. “I can’t say right now,” he said. “But there are a lot of countries that need to lighten up.”

Stunning as this latest round of Donald-esque delusions and lies is, it's hardly a novelty, in that by now we have learned to expect pretty much anything when our boy opens his yap. Now I've already argued that this isn't in itself ground-breaking -- that, after all, we had a president who served for eight years (2001-09) without ever intentionally uttering a public word of truth. (I say "intentionally" to allow for the possibility that on occasion, in his usual slapdash, devil-may-care way "Chimpy the Prez" Bush may have delivered an accidental word of truth.) And in 2008, we had a presidential campaign in which the Republican candidate not only did the same but upped the ante, nestling lies within lies, and even lies within lies within lies. What's more, at least as of that magical year 2008 it appeared that every campaigning Republican in the country had fully adopted the new GOP fuck-the-truth standard

Still, there is something different about The Donald: the sheer brazenness of his lying. As witness the present case. As The New Yorker's John Cassidy puts it in the newyorker.com post from which I quoted up top, "Why Trump's Crazy Talk About Obama and ISIS Matters":

On Thursday morning, Donald Trump doubled down on his latest verbal outrage: the claim that President Obama was the “founder” of ISIS. Actually, the Republican Presidential nominee tripled down. Appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” he described himself as “a truth teller” and went on to say that the President was “the founder of ISIS absolutely, the way he removed our troops.” Referring to Hillary Clinton, Trump added, “I call them co-founders.”

Peripatetic as ever, Trump gave another interview, a short time later, to Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host, who said to him, “Last night, you said that the President was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace.”

Trump wasn’t having it. “No. I meant that he’s the founder of ISIS,” he said. “He was the most valuable player. I gave him the Most Valuable Player award. I give her”—Clinton—“too, by the way.” Hewitt evidently thought that this was unfair to Obama. “But he’s not sympathetic to them,” he said. “He hates them; he’s trying to kill them.” Trump was unabashed. “He was the founder,” he said, referring to Obama. “His, the way he got out of Iraq, that was the founding of ISIS.”

If this rings a bell, perhaps it's from the similarly loony rewrite of history done by The Donald's hand-picked running mate, The Unspeakable Pence, who managed -- in distancing himself from the still more extreme position of the man who has chosen him to be a heartbeat away from his presidency -- to "explain" that Capt. Hamayun Khan's killing in Iraq in 2004 was the fault of the devil Obama and the chaos he created in Iraq, even though at the time of Captain Khan's death Chimpy the Prez not only was still president but would still serve another full term.

And the problem for the country is that this may seem quite believable to the people who are prepared to vote for The Donald. Which is not only terrifying but ironic, because clumsily buried beneath the Trump and Co. lies about Iraq is a truth that the country has never been prepared to face: that indeed all sorts of humongous international problems were created, or at least exacerbated, by American actions in Iraq (and also Afghanistan) -- except not the devil Obama's, but none other than Chimpy the Prez and the invasion that was "justified" by an entire fabric(ation) of out-and-out lies.

From which episode two lessons need to be remembered, it seems to me:

(1) The country as a whole swallowed Chimpy and the Neocons' lies pretty much whole.

It's not as if absolutely nobody was in possession or at least in search of the truth about Iraq (and Afghanistan). Enough of it was already gleaned that it should have made a difference if the country had given a damn about the truth. And, as we've noted frequently, even in the aftermath of the disaster of our involvement in Iraq, the people who had advocated for the truth were almost uniformly punished, while the people who had formulated or at least propagandized for the lies were almost uniformly rewarded.

(2) Similarly, the country ignored the real-world effects of our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Again, there were observers pointing out that our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, far from combatting terrorism, were laying the groundwork for a whole new generation of terrorists, for wider-spread and more destructive terrorism. But the country as a whole made it clear that it didn't want to hear anything about that. Only to be easy pickings for the Trump and Co. rewrite of history. Does this make any sense?

As a matter of fact, it does. Because at some point in the above-alluded-to second term of Chimpy the Prez, that same broad middleground of America, people who had once treated Chimpy as divinity, and denounced even the mildest criticism as "Bush-bashing," lost its devotion to the lies of Chimpy and Co. Partly it was the inescapability of the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the contrast of the reality with the bright and cheery lies Chimpy had fed them and they had swallowed so eagerly. Partly it was the visible ineptitude of the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina. Partly it was assorted other first-term Chimpy-chickens coming home to roost. And eventually there was economic catastrophe presided over by Chimpy and his team. This idea of creating your own reality and pretending it's actual reality is fun as far as it goes, but sometimes the real thing has a way of getting in the way.

Interestingly, though, when the former Chimpyites turned on their onetime idol, it didn't take the form of them blaming him for what he'd done. He simply disappeared from their consciousness. By the time of the 2008 presidential campaign, it was as if he had never existed, even though he was still the president of these United States. Barack Obama, by contrast, gets blamed for everything that Chimpy never did get blamed for.

As I argued at the time, it wasn't that the Chimpyites were prepared to come to grips with reality. No, it was more like they had become passionately disillusioned with the years' worth of lies Chimpy and his people had told them but they were demanding, often angrily, newer and better lies.

And now they're getting 'em. And, I worry, swallowing 'em.

This scares me for two reasons. First, I'm still not persuaded that The Donald can't win. If people are sufficiently determined to reject reality in favor of a more "acceptable" concocted version, they can do it. And the degree of Hillary hatred makes this possibility substantially less impossible. But second, even assuming the Trump candidacy crashes and burns, the broad national disaffection he's tapped into, and the descent into delusion he's proposed as a response, will remain fixtures of the political landscape going forward.

Which, as it happens, is the very subject John Cassidy pursues in this post of his. Following the chunk from the post I quoted above, he asks, "What are we to make of all this?" And he continues:

At this stage, some will argue that it isn’t worth the effort to interpret Trump’s misstatements, or to point out the truth of the matter—in this case, that a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi founded ISIS, in 2004. At the very least, it should be obvious to everyone by now that Trump doesn’t deal in reality; he deals in mythmaking, demagoguery, and carnival barking.

When he’s not tied to a teleprompter, Trump often seems to say the most provocative thing that comes into his head, with little thought for the consequences for his campaign, or for the campaigns of other Republicans. He’s like a small child, trying to be the center of attention, even if that means he has turned himself into an object of outrage and ridicule.

If you take this view of Trump, there isn’t much more to be said. He’s the melting figure on the cover of this week’s Time magazine [see image above -- Ed.]: a reality-television shyster who somehow captured the nomination of a major political party and is now dissolving in front of us. The only remaining questions for you are how big a majority Clinton will rack up, and whether the Republicans can limit the damage in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

"I’ve got a lot of sympathy for this interpretation.," John writes. "But, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Trump is smarter and less myopic than he seems."

Let’s assume that what he’s really focussed on isn’t winning this year’s election, a task he now realizes is beyond him, but creating a long-term Trumpian movement. A nationalistic, nativist, protectionist, and authoritarian movement that will forever be associated with him, but which also has the capacity to survive beyond him.

And he cites the current reactionary movements in France, Austria, and the U.K., not to mention the similar movements in our own history.

History tells us that for right-wing populist movements to succeed, a number of things need to be in place. For one thing, they need a narrative that mainstream political leaders, and political parties, are guilty of not merely incompetence but betrayal.

And John refers us to "the 'stab-in-the-back' myth" in post-1918 Germany, which led to the rise of Hitler, and to post-de Gaulle French right-wingers' accusation that the Général had betrayed France by "giving up" Algeria and that later French governments had betrayed France by embracing the European Union. Looked at this way, John argues, the kinds of anti-Obama indictments The Donald has been pronouncing (he notes, for example, that Trump "first suggested that Obama and Clinton created isis seven months ago, long before this week’s comments") suggest a larger purpose than merely electioneering for 2016. Which brings us to the quote atop this post. Here it is again, with a sentence I omitted in the middle restored, and with the continuation included:

In returning to this sort of language now that he’s got the nomination—and escalating it with his use of the phrase “founder of ISIS”—Trump is, on the face of it, harming his prospects for November. He certainly doesn’t sound like he’s trying to win over the soccer moms in Columbus, or the office workers in Tampa, that he needs to win the election. He sounds like he is talking to his angry base, and supplying them with an inflammatory narrative that can be trotted out for years, and decades, to come. It’s a tactic that politicians outside the United States, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jörg Haider, have used to good effect in building up far-right nationalist movements.

John goes on to make quite a nice case about the potential effectiveness -- in the context of building a longer-term movement, of The Donald's blithering about the election being stolen -- a scenario to which a lot of Americans are apparently susceptible, as long as it doesn't include that actual attempts at election-fixing by the soldiers of the Right, with some interesting backup from other scribes.

You may be relieved to learn, as I was, that John doesn't really believe The Donald is masterminding "an enduring America First movement that will eventually supplant the Republican Party."

I wouldn’t give him that much credit. He’s precisely the self-centered, shortsighted, and insecure figure he appears to be, and he’s now flailing around for excuses to explain a humiliating defeat in the making. In his interview with CNBC, he said, “If, at the end of ninety days, I’ve fallen short . . . it’s O.K. I go back to a very good way of life.”

But that doesn't mean the country will pick up as if nothing happened in the event that The Donald simply leaves the mess behind him and "go[es] back to [his] very good way of life."

Four years from now, or eight years from now, a more disciplined and self-controlled figure could take up where he left off. If at that time the United States were facing a serious economic or national-security crisis, more Americans—conceivably even a majority of them—might be willing to accept the argument that regular politicians have failed and betrayed them, and that drastic measures are called for. Healthy democracies don’t decay overnight. They gradually rot from within, with termites like Trump undermining their foundations.

Which is kind of what I've been trying to say, John, only you've said it much better.

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