Foolish Republican Politicians Are Terrified At The Prospect Of Puerto Rican Statehood

Racist Republican senators warn their racist base that if Democrats win the White House and Congress in November, they will make Puerto Rico a state and the Republicans will never have a Senate majority because, of course, those brown Puerto Ricans will always automatically vote for Democrats. I wish... but it's just a mark of GOP paranoia and racism. Puerto Rico would probably be a swing state and certainly not a Democratic slam dunk. Now, Democrats making Washington DC a state, is probably what Republicans should really be worried about.

Yesterday, Olivia Reingold, writing for Politico Magazine, took a closer look at the idiotic GOP fears about Puerto Rican statehood, pointing out that, as usual, Republicans have it totally backwards. "People in the continental U.S. think that Puerto Ricans are going to vote Democratic, but on the other hand, the conservative values and Latin traditions are more akin to the values of a Republican Party," said José Garriga Picó, a political scientist and former member of the Puerto Rican Legislature. "You can’t really predict what voters are going to do here."

Some of the assumption that Puerto Rico would go blue is based on the fact that Puerto Ricans, when they move to the mainland, are often a reliable Democratic vote. A Politico poll from last spring asked Puerto Rican voters in Florida about their political preferences. It found that 38 percent of respondents identified as Democrats, but 42 percent said they weren’t committed to either party.

Both major islandwide elected officials in Puerto Rico are registered Republicans, as is the sitting governor, who was installed by the island’s Supreme Court. Puerto Rico’s Legislature, which has made a mark in recent years by enacting conservative laws including restrictions on abortion and expressions of gender identity, is led by registered Republicans in both its House and Senate. Seven of the past eight elections for governor or resident commissioner were won by members of the New Progressive Party, the more conservative of the island’s main parties—including the territory’s current nonvoting member of Congress, Jenniffer González-Colón, who is a member of the NPP, the chairwoman of the Puerto Rican Republican Party and a former co-chair of Latinos for Trump.

Meanwhile, as national Democrats flirt with the prospect of a Senate majority in 2021 and agitate for statehood for Puerto Rico, there’s a real political risk: They would add two seats to the Senate, but contrary to Republicans’ vocal fears, it’s no safe bet that those new senators would be Democrats.

Which may well mean that while this year, the path to a Senate majority runs through Denver, Birmingham and Billings, come 2022, San Juan might be the next battleground. Puerto Rico could be a purple state.

In Puerto Rico, statehood is the axis around which all politics revolve.

There are two main political parties-- the New Progressive Party and the Popular Democratic Party. Neither fits neatly into the Democratic-Republican binary, but the NPP is typically seen as the more conservative coalition, and has advocated tax cuts and conservative social policies-- positions which align it more closely to the Republican Party, even as national Republicans generally oppose statehood. But perhaps the most important contrast between the two parties comes on the issue of statehood: The NPP supports it, while the PDP is pro-commonwealth. The NPP advocates closer ties with Washington, whereas the PDP advocates local control.

In recent years, the NPP’s platform has proved successful at the ballot box. The party has two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate, and controls both the governor’s mansion and the island’s nonvoting seat in the U.S. House.

Carmen Yulín Cruz, the high-profile mayor of San Juan who is a member of the opposition PDP, says it would be a mistake to conflate the NPP’s dominance with widespread support for conservatism-- many of its members identify as Democrats, she notes. Even so, she’s not sure whether Puerto Ricans would identify more with the Republican or Democratic Party if statehood were achieved.

“It depends,” she told Politico. “What Puerto Ricans see, and this is wrong for us to see it this way, but what they see is that the pro-statehood party is equivalent to the Republican Party, and that the commonwealth party is equivalent to the Democratic Party.”

Yulín Cruz, who frequently appeared on cable news after Hurricane Maria as a Trump critic, has been embraced by the progressive wing of the national Democratic Party and served as a co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. During her recent gubernatorial primary, she was endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, then lost her race for the party’s nomination by almost 50 points.

...“It’s really tough to argue that we would be a blue state,” said Mayra Vélez Serrano, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. “The [2020] primary tells you that. Someone like Carmen Yulín Cruz, who’s very progressive and has a lot of support from the mainland, did horribly locally.”

...In 2011, during an official visit to the island-- the first of any sitting president since John F. Kennedy-- Barack Obama promised to support whatever decision Puerto Ricans made about their status. “When the people of Puerto Rico make a clear decision,” he said to an audience at the Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport, “my administration will stand by you.”

A little more than a year later, Puerto Ricans voted in favor of statehood in a nonbinding referendum. Over 60 percent of voters said they wanted to see the island become a state. But many observers said the results were muddied by confusion about whether the results actually resulted in any sort of mandate. Rather than offer voters a simple up-down vote on statehood, the ballot presented three options for Puerto Rico’s preferred form of government: statehood, sovereign commonwealth or independence. Leading up to the vote, the PDP urged voters to leave the ballot question about statehood blank altogether, in protest of the fact that their preferred option-- "enhanced commonwealth," which would keep the island’s current status but add some of the benefits of independence, like exempting it from some federal laws—wasn’t on the ballot. Ultimately, more than 498,000 ballots-- 26.5 percent of all ballots cast-- were left blank.

When asked about the election results at a news conference in 2012, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration declined to endorse the outcome “because of the process itself.” The next day, the Obama administration reversed its position and endorsed the pro-statehood results of the referendum. The Congress, with its Republican-controlled House and Democratic Senate, never ratified the results of Puerto Rico’s statehood vote, and the island was not granted statehood.

...[T]he Democratic Party’s official platform commits to giving Puerto Ricans the opportunity to determine their status. Last week, Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia M. Velázquez, both New Yorkers of Puerto Rican ancestry, introduced a bill that would accomplish that-- the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act.

Velázquez, who was born in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, says if her bill passes and Puerto Rico decides to become a state, she’s not sure whether the island will send two Democratic senators to Washington.

“That’s certainly the fear of the Republicans in Congress. They truly believe that for the most part, Puerto Ricans will be in the Democratic Party. I just, I do not know,” Velázquez told Politico. “It will be a different ballgame. People are learning that they need to hear from both parties what are their platforms on the issues that matter most for Puerto Ricans.”

Picó, the former Puerto Rican legislator-turned-political scientist, notes that when Hawaii and Alaska were admitted to the U.S. as states in 1959, the assumption was that Hawaii would be a Republican state and Alaska would be solidly blue. That’s not how either state votes now. Hawaii is solidly blue, and Democratic presidential candidates have carried it in all but two elections since 1960. Alaska is beet red and has voted for a Democratic presidential nominee only once.

“I know that’s the assumption in the states that Puerto Rico would become a Democratic state,” Picó said. “Then again, you never know.”

No? With DC you know though. No? Dependable-- just like secessionist South Carolina. Although...

Trump's Racism Caused Him To Push To Sell Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is 5,328 square miles with a population of 3.2 million (Americans). Greenland is melting but the area is 836,300 square miles with around 56,000 people, less than the 70,000 who live in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico's 7th largest city. Greenland's biggest town, Nuuk, has 18,000 people. There are 140 Americans station in Greenland at the Thule Air Base.

Former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor is getting really famous. The video above is an interview he did with Hallie Jackson on MSNBC yesterday. It's worth watching the whole thing but at the 5:15 point he said "One time before we went down, [Trump] told us, not only did he want to purchase Greenland, he actually said he wanted to see if we could sell Puerto Rico, could we swap Puerto Rico for Greenland, because, in his words, Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor."

Taylor said Trump wasn't joking. He said that Trump "expressed deep animus towards the Puerto Rican people behind scenes. These are people who were recovering from the worst disaster of their lifetime. He is their president. He should be standing by them, not trying to sell them off to a foreign country."

Alan Grayson, who grew up in the Bronx, in an area that has more Puerto Ricans than anyplace else in the continental U.S. and then went on to represent the Orlando area, which has one of the continental U.S.' biggest Puerto Rican populations said he feel "the feeling is mutual. I’m sure that Puerto Ricans would love to trade Donald Trump for the Queen of England, Pope Francis, or even Muammar Qaddafi’s corpse. To say that Donald Trump is a racist is like saying that Serena Williams is a tennis player."

I think anyone who knows anything about Trump from his pre-White House days, knows he's always been a bigot with an animus towards Puerto Ricans, especially working class Puerto Ricans. The first time the young Trump made it into the legitimate newspapers was as the result of the federal government suing him and his father for illegally discriminating against Puerto Rican families in a building development they used federal funds to develop. That's around the time Woody Guthrie, one other tenants in Brooklyn rode this song about Trump, Sr.





Progressive Jared West is the official Democratic candidate running to replace Trumpist Sam Killebrew in the Winter Haven-Haines City-Davenport area of Polk County (HD-41). He wasn't happy about hearing what Trump said about Puerto Ricans. "It is absolutely deplorable Trump said that," he told me this morning, "but are we really surprised? Puerto Rico has been through a lot lately, and he’s done nothing but mock them and ignore them. Puerto Rican people are Americans, and my district has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Rican’s in Florida. Many of them came over after the natural disasters. Today, when I’m elected, and forever, I stand with all people and especially Puerto Ricans to denounce this awful hate filled rhetoric. We will see you in November Donald Trump, and you will be answering for these comments."

Bob Lynch is the Democratic Party candidate for the Miami-Dade state House seat held by GOP wig wig Daniel Perez, a knee-jerk Trumpist, with no interest in working families other than during election season. Lynch has a very different perspective. This morning he told me that "It is unclear why Miles seems surprised as to the extent of Trump’s depravity and lack of humanity. He willingly went to work for a man that announced his presidency by declaring our Latino neighbors to be rapists, thugs, and killers. We have people that are still living without electricity and running water in Puerto Rico because of the agency Miles continued to work for, despite his shamelessly self-serving newfound conscience. Trump, Kitstjen Nielsen, and Miles Taylor are all personally responsible for thousands of needless deaths in Puerto Rico as well as thousands of Latino families destroyed after being separated by ICE. Miles should have resigned and immediately gone to Congress the day it was proposed to keep children in cages. Congress should also haul him, Nielsen, and everyone else who committed crimes against humanity at Trump’s behest in for non-stop hearings between now and November. A redemption tour because he sees grifters like the Lincoln Project getting rich is not something the media should be feeding into. Donald Trump doesn’t consider Puerto Rican’s to be Americans nor does he believe other Latinos should be given basic human rights. Miles Taylor could have done something to stop it and chose to do nothing. November is way too late for his victims."

Here's the version of the same Woody Guthrie song, the one I've been listening to for the last few years-- and performed by Ryan Harvey, Ani DeFranco and Tom Morello:

Will It Ever End?

On Tuesday, Trump seemed exasperated. When, he wanted to know, will those damn Puerto Ricans, stop having hurricanes already! He's pissed off and he's not going to take it any more! He doesn't even seem angry at Dorian; he's angry at Puerto Rico and at Puerto Ricans. He stole some of the money allocated by Congress for hurricane relief for the last one to use for his foolish wall. Jonathan Chait, in his column for New York Magazine yesterday, Trump Is Ordering Crimes To Get Wall Built Before Election, noted that "Trump is an instinctive authoritarian who came into office lacking even a rudimentary understanding of government. But he is beginning to grasp the potentialities available to a despotically inclined leader, and the tool that has most excited him is the pardon power." He uses as an example a report from the Washington Post about how Trump "has instructed his subordinates to break any laws they have to in order to complete his wall by Election Day. 'When aides have suggested that some orders are illegal or unworkable, Trump has suggested he would pardon the officials if they would just go ahead... He has waved off worries about contracting procedures and the use of eminent domain, saying take the land, according to officials who attended the meetings.'"

I had dinner with a member of the Judiciary Committee last night, who told me that Trump hasn't built one inch of wall so far, just some improvements on fencing that the Obama administration had legally put up. Chait continued in his essay that "It is important context to understand that the wall project itself is an attack on the separation of powers. The power to allocate funds for a domestic project like a border wall belongs to Congress-- a fact nobody on either side even disputed until recently."

Trump has previously directed border officials to violate the law and promised to pardon them in advance. CNN reported in April that Trump told Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan to block asylum seekers from entering the country in violation of U.S. law, promising him a pardon.

Trump has already used his pardon power liberally to reward political allies, pardoning right-wing heroes like Joe Arpaio, Conrad Black, and Dinesh D’Souza. Last spring, CNN reported that Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer dangled a pardon in front of Michael Cohen if he would perjure himself to protect Trump. The implicit (or possibly explicit) promise of a pardon has likely encouraged Roger Stone and Paul Manafaort-- the two Trump agents in most direct contact with Russia’s election operation-- to withhold cooperation from the Mueller probe, thereby permitting Trump’s campaign to avoid conspiracy charges.

Yesterday Tropical Storm Dorian was officially named Hurricane Dorian and slammed into the Virgin Islands. Puerto Rico was barely spared, but by the weekend, Florida-- likely the east coast of Florida, from Mar-A-Lago through Stuart and Port St. Lucie to Vero Beach, Cocoa and Palm Bay-- is in for a thrashing. A swing state for the 2020 election, at least Trump will try to appear to be helping them with damage control.

Trump, who has had a repulsive animus towards Puerto Ricans for his whole racist life, inherited from his Nazi father, keeps repeating a false claim that Congress sent $92 billion of aid money to Puerto Rico. Congress has allocated $42.5 billion to disaster relief for Puerto Rico, and only around $14 billion ever actually arrived. The loudmouthed pig and fake president "reignited his ongoing feud with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, calling her 'incompetent.' But his specific complaint had to do with what he considers her ingratitude for the help the island received after the devastating Hurricane Maria two years ago... In a later tweet he attacked the entire U.S. territory, saying 'Puerto Rico is one of the most corrupt places on earth. Their political system is broken and their politicians are either Incompetent or Corrupt... 'And by the way, I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to Puerto Rico!' Trump added."

"Will his racism and his vindictive behavior toward the people of Puerto Rico ever end?” Cruz asked CNN host John Berman during an interview on Tuesday evening. “As you have said, this is not how a president behaves. This is not how a human behaves in the face of adversity."

Cruz tweeted: “It is reprehensible that yet again Trump chooses to lie. Will it ever end? Congress has approved $40b and $14b have been disbursed. Would it be too much to ask for you to act Presidential and do your job without a lie or an insult?”

A year after Hurricane Maria struck as a Category 4 storm, Trump said Democrats had inflated the death toll number to nearly 3,000 “to make me look as bad as possible” and repeatedly accused Puerto Rico officials of “trying to use the massive and ridiculously high amounts of hurricane/disaster funding to pay off other obligations.”

Trump, who days earlier touted himself as “an environmentalist” and reportedly floated the idea of trying to deter hurricanes with nuclear bombs, has denied any responsibility for the slow response to Puerto Rico disasters, blaming Puerto Rican leaders and the island's infrastructure. Earlier this month, following a recent scandal involving the governor of Puerto Rico and misuse of federal contracts, the Trump administration moved to restrict billions of dollars in federal disaster aid for Puerto Rico, according to the Washington Post.

“It seems like some people have learned the lessons of the past or are willing to say that they didn’t do right by us the first time and they are trying to do their best,” Cruz said Tuesday evening. “That is not the case with the president of the United States.”

“Three thousand Puerto Ricans did not open their eyes this morning because this racist man did not have it within him to do his job,” she added. “So get out of the way, President Trump, and let the people that can do the job get the job done.”

Commenting on Trump skipping out on the G-7's discussion of the Climate Crisis, AOC noted in an e-mail to her supporters that "Leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro have evolved past the stage of being climate deniers-- they’re officially catastrophe enablers. It’s not just their refusal to take powerful action on climate change that’s the issue, but their insistence on choices that accelerate us towards Armageddon. But Trump and Bolsonaro are too far gone. We’ll never overcome their special interests, oil barons, and flat-out ignorance to wrangle real climate action out of them. That’s why for now, we have to target our next climate enemy: apathy. We need to get voters off the sidelines, into the polling stations, and converted into warriors for powerful action on climate change, millions of new green jobs, and true restorative justice for communities that have been left behind."

Time To Revisit Hillary's Statement About The Deplorable Trumpist Base?

Putin's nasty, vile excuse for an American president-- the clown in the White House-- was jumping around last week, nearly frothing at the mouth about how Republicans in Congress should back him up in opposing the disaster relief bill that finally passed the House Friday (with a huge bipartisan majority). Trump's ugly, life-long and barely disguised bigotry against and racism towards Puerto Ricans has had him lying again and again about his regime's refusal to give hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico ample recovery resources. Trump claims this bill gives Puerto Rico too much money. The bill also disaster relief and rebuilding aid to areas that were impacted by the California wildfires, by flooding in the Midwest and Texas to states-- particularly Florida and red states-- that were hit, like Puerto Rico, by hurricanes.

34 Republicans fretted over Trump's threats to not support their reelection efforts and voted with the Democrats for the bill anyway. Most of the Republicans who voted for it have serious reelection challenges in 2020, particularly Michael McCaul (R-TX), Don Bacon (R-NE), Steve King (R-IA), Will Hurd (R-TX), John Katko (R-NY), Fred Upton (R-MI), Ross Spano (R-FL), Doug LaMalfa (R-CA), Peter King (R-NY), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Richard Hudson (R-NC), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Michael Bost (R-IL).

That said, and this being Sunday, I want to point to a relevant essay by evangelical pastor and best-selling author John Pavlovitz, Hillary Was Right Calling Then "Deplorables." It wasn't a good move strategically, but it was certainly accurate. Pavlovitz has a more positive attitude towards Hillary than I do, writing for example, that "Hillary Clinton was right about everything."

• She was right when she warned us that Donald Trump was in bed with Russia.
• She was right when she said our election process was being irreparably compromised.
• She was right when she noted his cruelty, his impulsiveness, and his recklessness.

• She was right when she suggested he was beholden to a murderous foreign dictator.
• She was right when she told us that he was dangerously incapable of self-control on social media.
• She was right when she pointed out the toxic hatred he was cultivating and releasing in people.
• She was right when she noticed the way he was dragging national discourse into the toilet.
• And she was right was when she called his supporters "deplorables."

He's right about all those things. She was right about all those things. But, at the time she made the "deplorables" statement in 2016 she was, wrote Pavlovitz, "unfairly excoriated in the media and by Republicans-- but looking back she was using sober judgement, measured speech, and incredible restraint.

"To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of  deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic-- Islamophobic-- you name it."

They are.

In the wake of the police shootings of black men, the street corner assaults on gay couples, the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, the defacing of synagogues, the burning of black churches, the mistreatment of migrant families-- Trump’s supporters daily reveal their phobic hearts and their willingness to ignore vulnerable people’s suffering.

“And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people-- now have 11 million.”

He has.

He continually cries “fake news” about the legitimate Press, while disseminating the wildest of conspiracy theories from extremists media outlets, previously and rightly marginalized because they appealed to only the tiniest lunatic fringe.

“He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric.”

He does.

Just look at his Twitter feed at any moment during the past three years, and you’ll find the unhinged, incendiary ramblings of a supremacist, terrorist sympathizer-- whose account under any other circumstance-- would be deactivated for its hate speech, its purposeful targeting of individuals, and its steady invocation to violence.

In 2016, Hillary was being prophetic.

She used the word “deplorable,” to describe people who would soon:

• applaud Muslim travel bans,
• celebrate families separated at the border,
• abide children being placed in cages,

• demonize teenage shooting victims,
• defiantly deny the value of black lives,
• vilify sexual assault survivors,
• bless a predator to the Supreme Court,

• cheer Presidential rally cries of shooting immigrants,
• approve of the suppressing of Special Counsel reports,

• sanction the complete perversion of our Rule of Law.

Deplorable, was being kind. I have many other words for such people, and they’re much stronger and far less diplomatic than that.

Hillary closed her now infamous comments by saying, “Now, some of those folks-- they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.”

Well, she was about half right.

These people may not be America, but they represent a good 38 percent of it. That’s far too much of any nation aspiring to greatness. As long as more than a third of our country blesses such malfeasance and tolerates this kind of toxicity in the name of holding power, we’re going to continue to regress into chaos and implosion.

When Hillary Clinton said that half of Trump’s supporters were deplorables, she was in essence claiming them to be filled with contempt for others, motivated by fear, and driven to exclusion. She may have been right in that moment-- but the percentage today is actually much higher.

Anyone still supporting him has deluded themselves into an alternate reality that makes them incapable of compassion or reasonable dialogue. All that they have seen from this President and his cadre of grifters and criminals, hasn’t proven alarming enough to wake them into decency or rouse their humanity alive.

Hillary wasn’t name-calling, she was accurately describing the kind of inhumanity we are now seeing as people’s default setting. Given their support of a man who regularly uses phrases like “Crazy Maxine,” “Pocahontas,” “Pencil Neck”-- or “Crooked Hillary,” their feigned offense at her supposedly offensive language was and is laughably hypocritical anyway.

No, Hillary was telling the truth, as difficult as it is to admit. She was diagnosing a collective sickness that afflicts a terrifying number of Americans. The woman who should currently be helming this nation was right about far too many things, and not enough of us listened.

Hatred, bigotry, supremacy, misogyny, and violent phobia are indeed sickening and  repugnant and reprehensible and yes, deplorable-- or at least they should be.

Trump's Life-Long Bigotry Towards Puerto Ricans In New York Is Destroying Peoples' Lives On Puerto Rico

Tuesday Hogan Gidley, White House deputy press secretary, was on MSNBC to defend Trump for his twitter rage against Puerto Rican leaders when he referred to Puerto Rico as "that country"-- twice. Reporting for Politico yesterday, Rebecca Morin, wrote that the Trumpist regime "has been criticized for holding a double standard when it comes to distributing hurricane relief aid and favoring states such as Florida and Texas over Puerto Rico. All areas were hit by destructive hurricanes around the same time."

Trump was also criticized for his visit to the island, after he appeared to downplay the destruction and death caused by two hurricanes that struck within several weeks of each other. Images of the president playfully throwing paper towels became the main image from the trip.

Gidley on Tuesday sidestepped when asked whether Trump believed Puerto Ricans were equal to U.S. citizens living on the mainland, saying those accusations were "absolutely ridiculous."

MSNBC host Hallie Jackson pressed Gidley on Trump's statement that Puerto Ricans are "taking from the USA."

"Puerto Rico is part of the United States. People who live in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens," Jackson said. "You're rolling your eyes and I don't know why you're rolling your eyes. There's a lot of confusion over why the president would say this and what he understands and how he views the people of Puerto Rico."

"That's ridiculous. He has actually already traveled to Puerto Rico after this horrific hurricane. He was there," Gidley replied.

"He gave them a lot of money. They have mismanaged and misused that money. It hurts their people, and that's what he is upset about," he added.

It's odd that no one has mentioned that Trump's notorious racism has always applied equally to Puerto Ricans and African-Americans. From an early age, when he was still basically an errand boy for his Nazi/KKK father, Trump was illegally preventing Puerto Rican families from renting apartments in Trump properties for which the federal government sued the firm.

Trump has had a bad attitude towards Puerto Rican people and towards the island itself. Last January, Vanity Fair Bess Levin reported that was doing all he could to screw Puerto Rico. She wrote that once "got it into his head that Puerto Rico was using emergency money to pay off its debt, he told then-Chief of Staff John Kelly and then-Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney that he 'did not want a single dollar going to Puerto Rico,' and wanted to divert the island’s relief funds to Texas and Florida. 'POTUS was not consolable about this,' a person familiar with the matter told the paper. This led to what was likely a deeply surreal moment for Patenaude, who reportedly had to explain to White House budget officials during a December meeting that the money for Puerto Rico had already been appropriated by Congress, and had to be used as intended. 'Pam Patenaude showed the most commitment to Puerto Rico of any of the public officials inside the Trump administration,' Carlos Mercader, the executive director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Washington, told the Post... [The repulsive racist in the White House] "became obsessed with stripping the island of aid-- despite its infrastructure remaining precarious post-Hurricane Maria-- driving one of the few competent people in the administration to give up and quit:

A top Department of Housing and Urban Development official is leaving the agency Thursday following disagreements with other members of the Trump administration over housing policy and the White House’s attempt to block disaster-recovery money for Puerto Rico, according to five people with direct knowledge of the situation. Deputy Secretary Pam Patenaude, second-in-command at the agency helmed by Ben Carson and widely regarded as HUD’s most capable political leader, is said to have grown frustrated by what a former HUD employee described as a “Sisyphean undertaking.”

No one knows how Trump came up with the $91 billion figure-- $80 billion more than what Puerto Rico has gotten in hurricane aid. Trump's fury was unleashed when Democrats blocked the totally inadequate Republican disaster relief bill on Monday. The $13.45 billion bill would have provided assistance to victims of hurricanes in Florida, George and North Carolina, floods in the South and Midwest, and wildfires in California but allocated just $600 million allocated for Puerto Rico, far too little.

After the vote, the psychopath ranted that "The Democrats today killed a Bill that would have provided great relief to Farmers and yet more money to Puerto Rico despite the fact that Puerto Rico has already been scheduled to receive more hurricane relief funding than any 'place' in history and the next morning, decided to play the victim, insisting that "the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump. So many wonderful people, but with such bad Island leadership and with so much money wasted. Cannot continue to hurt our Farmers and States with these massive payments, and so little appreciation!" You've probably noticed this before but it can't be said too much: the man is insane (and should be removed).

In Congress Beto O'Rourke Took Money from a Hedge Fund King Who's Sucking the Life from Puerto Rico. Will Beto Take His Money Again?

by Thomas Neuburger

Short and dirty. Via David Dayen, writing at the American Prospect (emphasis added):

What passes for much “campaign-finance” reporting in America typically follows the flow of cash from big bundlers to particular candidates, treating the whole thing like a competition over who “got” what rich person to invest in them. Rarely is the central question asked of how that rich person earned their money, and what effect that will have on the candidate’s outlook. In other words, it’s not just the power of Big Money, but what specific kind of Big Money, that often gets overlooked.

Yesterday presented a perfect example. Mark Gallogly, a founder and managing partner of Centerbridge Partners, indicated to friends that he would support former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke as his 2020 candidate, according to CNBC. Gallogly is enthusiastically described as an “Obama bundler” who raised at least $500,000 for the former president in 2012.

So, what does Centerbridge Partners invest in? Something politely called "distressed debt" — the IOU's of entities that have no ability to repay.

To take an example involving humans, imagine someone who bought all the credit card debt of your nearly bankrupt brother — at pennies on the dollar — then tried in every way possible to force your brother to pay up. That's what "investing in distressed debt" looks like, and there are companies that do just that to living persons.

Now imagine investment firms that do this to whole countries. That's Centerbridge Partners. Its victims include the nation of Argentina ... and Puerto Rico. The plan is a good one — they purchase the bonds of these entities for pennies on the dollar, then use political pressure, including bought pressure from the U.S. government, to force them to make the bonds good at 100 cents on the dollar.

[Centerbridge Partners is] a $30 billion hedge fund. Those suffering from the after-effects of its strategies would describe Centerbridge as a “vulture fund.” It scoops up debt on the cheap, and uses whatever means necessary to force the troubled company or sovereign government to pay up. Centerbridge debtors include bankrupt utility PG&E, the country of Argentina, and Puerto Rico.

That's the kind of person Mark Gallogly is. Dayen again:

That any presidential candidate would even consider taking money from one of the vulture funds who participated in the Puerto Rican carnage is unthinkable to local activists. “Voters are watching, and they know that vulture hedge fund money is toxic,” said Julio López Varona from CPD Action and the Hedge Clippers coalition, which educates the public about the role of hedge funds in Puerto Rico and other areas. “They are seeking to get rich by making Puerto Rico poor. Any presidential candidate should know that Puerto Ricans in the diaspora can determine the election of the next US President and they will not support so-called progressives that take their money from those who have caused so much pain for our communities.”

Yet "Beto" O'Rourke has taken Gallogly's money before:

O’Rourke’s spokesperson, Chris Evans, did not respond to a request for comment on the matter, or whether the candidate would accept the bundled cash raised by a vulture fund giant. ... Then again, he did take $5400 in donations from Gallogly in 2018 for his near-miss Senate run, and over half of his $80 million haul in that race came from big donors.

Will the Hispanic-sounding white guy — Robert Francis O'Rourke is 4th generation Irish — take Gallogly's money again? As the original Mayor Daley used to say, "Youth wants to know."

So, I would imagine, would Democrat-leaning Hispanic voters in 2020.
 

Trump Rains On The Parade In Paris

Trump made an ass of himself on the international stage again and disgraced our country, as he always does. He’s a hateful little turd who thinks he can bully foreign leaders the way he bullies the cowardly careerists in his own party. He respects Putin— even seems to genuinely like him— and no one else.

Jonathan Swan reported this evening that he’s “as jazzed as ever about hitting foreign-made cars with steep tariffs. Just about every member of his senior economic team besides Peter Navarro believes this is a terrible idea. But they haven’t swayed him. With each passing month, his zest for car tariffs only swells. Trump now views the threat of car tariffs as his best leverage over negotiating partners. He has privately told aides that he got a better trade deal with Canada because he threatened Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with car tariffs. And he says the same about the Europeans, according to sources briefed on his thinking… Trade law dictates that Defense Sec. James Mattis must provide a national security justification for any new auto tariffs. A source who spoke to Mattis more than a month ago said he was deeply skeptical about the idea, worrying that big new car tariffs could further strain relationships with allies. Mattis has not, however, made any final decision.”

And speaking of bullying, , which is sees as a foreign colony and can’t seem to conceive as an integral part of the U.S., a product of his lifelong prejudice and ugly bigotry and racism. He “doesn't want to give Puerto Rico any more federal money for its recovery from Hurricane Maria, White House officials have told congressional appropriators and leadership. This is because he claims, without evidence, that the island’s government is using federal disaster relief money to pay off debt. Trump also told senior officials last month that he would like to claw back some of the federal money Congress has already set aside for Puerto Rico's disaster recovery, claiming mismanagement.”

Fearful of his make-up running and his “hair” getting messed up, he avoided the ceremony honoring fallen U.S. servicemen from WWI, clowning himself again in Paris. Peter Baker reported in the NY Times today that Trump also avoided the kind of camaraderie other foreign leaders got into in Paris over the weekend. He’s always the odd man out, the sulking asshole everyone hates but has to pretend to respect. Trump and Putin managed to make “a ceremony meant to celebrate the ties that bind the world today [instead something that] in effect showcased the divisions that are pulling it apart.”

Dozens of leaders from around the globe marched in the soaking rain down the Champs Élysée on Sunday, expressing solidarity for an international order that had its origins in the end of a world war 100 years ago, an order now under increasing pressure on both sides of the Atlantic.

Only after these leaders arrived by foot at the Arc de Triomphe did President Trump show up, protected from the rain as he made an individual entrance. A few minutes later, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia did the same.

…No one has done more to break up the postwar global system in the last couple of years than Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. As the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I was commemorated on Sunday, Mr. Trump’s brand of “America First” nationalism was rebuked from the podium while he sat stone-faced and unmoved, alienated from some of America’s strongest allies, including his French hosts.

…“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a speech at the Arc de Triomphe, welcoming the leaders and extolling an old system now under siege. “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying: ‘Our interest first. Who cares about the others?’”

Recalling the forces that led to World War I, Mr. Macron warned that “the old demons” have been resurfacing and declared that “giving into the fascination for withdrawal, isolationism, violence and domination would be a grave error that future generations would very rightly make us responsible for.”

Mr. Trump, who recently declared himself “a nationalist,” appeared grim as he listened to the speech through an earpiece and clapped only tepidly afterward. He had no speaking role and made no mention of the issues Mr. Macron raised during an address later at a cemetery for American soldiers killed in the war.

The ceremony led by Mr. Macron encapsulated the tension in the international arena as Mr. Trump seeks to rewrite the rules that have governed the world in recent decades. He has abandoned international agreements on trade, nuclear proliferation and climate change, and disparaged alliances like NATO and the European Union.

How do you stop this guy?

Why Do Intelligent People Disapprove Of Trump So Intensely?

Everyone remembers Trump's comment about how he loves the "poorly educated." He's lucky they exist; they're basically what's propping up what's left of hid favorable numbers in polling. He does worst among people who are college educated, more so among people with graduate degrees. I was watching Reliable Sources on CNN today and listening to one of Brian Stelter's guests, Brendan Nyhan, I had a bit of an epiphany. Nyhan, an academic expert on fake news, once told NBC that "It's worrisome if fake news websites further weaken the norm against false and misleading information in our politics, which unfortunately has eroded. But it's also important to put the content provided by fake news websites in perspective. People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites." In 2004 he wrote All the President's Spin: George W. Bush, the Media and the Truth. And he's taught this subject at Dartmouth and, more recently at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Stelter's show was about Trump as a purveyor of conspiracy theories. What Nyhan pointed out was that Trump "is in the most powerful office in the world and he's promoting conspiracy theories. They usually are used by the powerless and are directed against the powerful. But instead, he's weaponizing them from the highest office in the land."

OK, we all knew that already, right. But here's where Nyhan suddenly helped me to put 2 + 2 together and get 4. This is where I understood why educated people hate Trump so much in ways that less educated-- usually lower IQ-- people don't care much. Responding to a question from Stelter, Nyhan said "At some point it becomes an assault on our shared understanding of reality." BINGO! "An assault on our shared understanding of reality." That's is exactly what Trump is. Remember this?

Does that disgust you? If it does... you probably went to college or have an above average IQ. Back to Nyhan: "And that's what we've seen in other countries, where misinformation and conspiracy theories are weaponized by the governing regime. That's not a road we should be comfortable going down; and its not what we should pretend is normal political dishonesty. Every politician dissembles, every politician makes false statements. But this is something different entirely. It's about real peoples' lives. Those people in Puerto Rico... what happened to them is real. We sometimes act like what's on Twitter is a reality show, but Donald Trump it trying to evade accountability for something that upset the lives of thousands of our fellow citizens and maybe even is responsible for the deaths of thousands of our fellow citizens. That is deadly serious." Deadly serious and contagious. The Republican Party, in embracing Trumpism, has also embraced his methods and, basically, that whole code of his above. In their desperation to win this cycle, Republicans are just flooding the airwaves with lies pulled out of their asses-- lies about their own accomplishments and lies about their opponents. New to politics, Wisconsin's Bryan Steil has already earned himself the sobriquet "Lyin' Bryan Steils." This is a response video, "Knock It Off," from Randy Bryce's congressional campaign to the unending stream of lies from Steil and his right-wing allies:

Can Democratic Candidates Win Evangelical Voters?

My friend Samir Selmanović put most of this together to help Democratic candidates who have sizable evangelic communities in their districts. Neither of us, nor any of our VoteCommonGood colleagues think these communities should just be ceded to Republicans-- especially not when the head Republican is Donald Trump, anathema in too many ways to count to the people who are actual followers of Jesus. As we've been discussing for months, VoteCommonGood is getting ready to set off on a bus tour of America. Not all the dates are confirmed yet, but these are:

October 2- Allentown, PA with Susan Wild
October 3- Lancaster, PA with Jess King
October 7- Morgantown, WV with Kendra Fershee
October 9- Racine, WI with Randy Bryce
October 10- Bloomington, MN with Angie Craig and Dean Phillips
October 11- Sioux City, IA with JD Scholten
October 12- Des Moines, IA with Cindy Axne
October 13- Omaha, NE with Kara Eastman
October 16- Wichita, KS with James Thompson
October 18- Dallas, TX with Collin Allred and Linsey Fagan
October 19- Cypress, TX with Mike Siegel
October 20- Harris County, TX with Dayna Steele and Adrienne Bell
October 21- Houston, TX with Lizzie Fletcher
October 22- San Antonio, TX with Gina Ortiz Jones and Joseph Kopser
October 23- El Paso, TX with Veronica Escobar
October 24- Las Cruces, NM with Xochitl Torres Small
October 26- Escondido, CA with Ammar Campa-Najjar
October 27- Carlsbad, CA with Mike Levin
October 28- Huntington Beach, CA with Harley Rouda
October 29- Irvine, CA with Katie Porter
October 30- Brea, CA with Gil Cisneros
October 31- Simi Valley with Katie Hill
November 1- Bakersfield with TJ Cox
November 2- Visalia with Andrew Janz

Democrats and Religion? Yes!

If you are a Democrat running for office in the Fall of 2018, you can reach religious and values voters in a grounded, confident, and impactful way.

Vote Common Good is here to help you turn your perceived weakness into real strength.

Vote Common Good team members have worked as pastors, coaches, activists, and spiritual directors for decades, and we are equipped with “insider” knowledge, empathy, and the best practices of religious communication. As a part of our overall strategy, we want to help you tap into your authentic self when you communicate to religious voters.

In front of any religious audience, your authenticity can become more compelling than the lingo, posturing, or hubris of your opponents.

Our Goals This Fall

Help Democratic candidates become more confident talking about religion in a way that is both authentic and persuasive to religious voters, particularly Evangelicals who are ready for your message. Many of them are on the brink of turning their vote to the left in order to follow their conscience, be faithful to their religious experience and story, and cross the line (in the booth or in public) to recover their personal integrity.

• We do this through coaching and advising, helping you as a candidate be in touch with your spiritual experience (for what it already is, nothing more), broaden your story, learn to articulate it in public, and connect with the religious sensibilities of the electorate.
• You can be you. And you will know how to “turn the table” of faith on Republican religionists so to speak. This is more simple to do and more powerful in its impact than most Democrats can imagine.
• We will help you ground and deepen your “presence” (presence eats arguments for breakfast) and tell a bigger story in which others can find themselves.

As a result, some previously Republican voters will flip their vote, some will stay home and not vote Republican, while some will double down their commitment against you and progressive values you hold. We are focused only on the first two groups. Offending (or often scaring) some in the third group is an inevitable byproduct of doing this right.

• The voters we want to reach have already begun to change on the inside. They only need to acknowledge what is already true for them and cross a threshold with their actions. Voting is that action.
• Many voters are not willing to take on more and more of the incremental fear dispensed by Republicans and much of the Evangelical establishment. Instead of trying to convince these voters with arguments on issues (level of mere reason), you will learn how to speak in a way that invites them drop into their formative faith (level of emotion, values, and social connections) and embody their faith in their political choices (level of behavior).
• You will learn how to help them cross the line by naming what they are right about, not what they are wrong about. We are asking them to manifest deeper loyalty to the religious/spiritual path they are already on. In their heart of heart, they can’t wait to migrate from fear to faith.

Importantly, in our experience, the voter impact for Democratic candidates working on this is vastly underestimated by most candidates. The margin for growth is huge. Teachings and values of religion in general, and example of Jesus in particular, now overlap with Democratic platform and values more than with the Republican. In other words, this effort provides a small lever to open a large door for Democratic candidates.

To start, all you need is one hour.

Process:

We will spend an hour with the candidate on Zoom (an online video platform) and can follow up as needed. We can also support the candidate in other ways, such as help him/her write an op-ed for a newspaper in his/her district addressing the religious/values audience.

Other Info:

This is a pro bono service of Vote Common Good. We would request brief feedback and an optional testimonial after the coaching/consultation call.

Next Step:

If you are an organizer, activist, or are supporting a Democratic candidate running for office in November 2018 in some way, forward this information to the candidate or candidate’s campaign manager.

If you are a candidate or a campaign manager, send an email to Samir Selmanović to set up an initial one-hour session.

This morning, Elizabeth Dias broke the Vote Common Good story-- Christian Group Takes Aim at a Republican Stronghold; Evangelicals. "For years," she wrote, "Republicans have enjoyed the support of a powerful constituency: conservative evangelical Christians, whose passion on issues like opposition to abortion and support for Israel has aligned them with the party’s agenda. It has been an almost impenetrable voting bloc in recent years, and growing stronger, with more than 80 percent of evangelical voters supporting President Trump in 2016. Democrats have largely stood on the sidelines as Republicans forged this alliance. But now a group is moving more aggressively to bring evangelical voters and the Democratic Party together as the midterm elections approach. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, a group of progressive Christians-- largely Democrats who are also evangelicals-- are organizing small rallies in some 20 battleground House districts across the country. Their goal is to urge Christians to vote for Democrats and counter Trump administration policies that oppose their religious beliefs-- especially on immigration, health care and poverty."

These are the guys we've been talking about, ever since Ted Lieu and I met with them a few months ago to talk aims and strategy, Vote Common Good. This is their website. And they feel they can make a difference at the polls. I agree-- and they're working with some of the Blue America candidates, like Randy Bryce (WI), Kara Eastman (NE), Jess King (PA), Kendra Fershee (WV), JD Scholten (IA), James Thompson (KS), Mike Siegel (TX), Dayna Steele (TX), Katie Porter (CA) and Ammar Capa-Najjar (CA).

“We think they are movable,” said Doug Pagitt, a pastor from Minnesota who is leading the effort. “In the privacy of the voting booth, they might do something.”

The Democratic Party does not have significant resources devoted nationwide to targeted religious outreach, but this effort has support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and many Democratic candidates trying to flip Republican seats are participating.

“More Democratic elected officials should be talking about God, and their own personal religious beliefs,” said Representative Ted Lieu of California, a vice chairman for the D.C.C.C. who has informally advised Vote Common Good.

“America has always been a country where faith has played an important role,” Mr. Lieu said. “It’s not a good idea for Democrats to ignore that.”

The rallies, styled as “traveling salvation show tent revivals,” will be held in church parking lots and parks, with beer trucks, musicians and preachers in a bid to encourage evangelicals who have felt alienated from the Republican Party, Mr. Pagitt said.

The challenge is daunting. The initiative is small compared with the formidable ground operation of religious conservatives championing Mr. Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Those field operations enjoy millions of dollars of financing in battleground states.

The budget for entire Vote Common Good tour is about $1 million. By comparison, each rally held when the evangelist Franklin Graham barnstormed California this spring to drum up the conservative evangelical vote cost nearly as much.

“The progressive left habitually rediscovers the strength of the evangelical vote and tries to counter it,” said Ralph Reed, the chairman of the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition, which has field teams in 19 states and plans to knock on two million doors by Election Day.

“To be sure, imitation is the highest form of flattery,” he said. “But this effort will fall short because the religious left lacks the intensity, resources and infrastructure built over the years in the evangelical community.”

That isn’t stopping Democrats from trying.

“You are going to have a percentage of evangelicals who realize that the president’s behavior and policies are inconsistent with the teachings of Christ,” said Mr. Lieu, who is Catholic. “The Democratic Party is a very big tent party. You can have lots of different views. We are very accommodating.”

But the party has struggled to connect with white, socially conservative voters, many of whom have views outside the Democratic platform. A year after white evangelicals helped send Mr. Trump to the White House, the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, called on the Democratic Party to make room for anti-abortion voters.

...Progressive religious leaders have been increasingly getting involved in politics since Mr. Trump’s election, protesting a range of administration policies, including the separation of migrant families and the ban on travel from citizens of several Muslim-majority countries. In a bus tour before the midterms, a group of Catholic nuns from across the country is driving to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida residence, to mobilize voters around opposition to the Republican tax law.

...Democratic candidates participating in the project say they hope to shift the conversation about values in America, which they believe Mr. Trump has betrayed.

“As a child, my family taught me the importance of following the Golden Rule,” said Katie Hill, a first-time Democratic candidate seeking to flip California’s 25th district, outside Los Angeles. She will be attending one of the Vote Common Good rallies.

Republicans, she said, “have shown time and again that they do not follow this most basic value.”

“They have separated families at the border, repeatedly attempted to slash the social safety net and have waged an outright assault on women’s health and early childhood education,” she said.

Gina Ortiz Jones, an Iraq war veteran in southwest Texas who is running to replace Representative Will Hurd, will speak at the group’s event for her district.

“It’s important for people to know that being religious doesn’t always equal being conservative,” she said in an email. “So many people are in favor of Democratic platforms like affordable health care and comprehensive immigration reform specifically because their religion tells them to be kind, compassionate and deliberate in the way they treat others.”

UPDATE: Samir just reminded me to tell our candidates...

As you promote this conversation, you, us, all of us, will have a pushback from people who hate all religion, or are too hurt to consider any facts like where did the inspiration come from to MLK, etc. For some of them, if you are religious, you are either dumb or evil. These people need to be resisted by educating the majority of Democrats that religion is here to stay, diverse, good and bad like everything else. It's the way people organize their lives around a shared story. Democrats need to learn to let people be, and seek unity on shared values instead.

 I just want to encourage you to keep going with speaking up. And also creating more space for those of us who can help Democrats feel safe and be challenged at the same time.  There are great people you can inject into Democratic leadership gatherings to help tool (and school!) Democrats in religion. Republicans have fumbled so badly, there is a huge opportunity here for Dems, and it should not be hard.

The Level 2 Progressive Religion Ninja is all about having enough confidence, presence, and wisdom to start speaking about Republicans, religion, and politics in a way that take out the judgment. Those we judge we cannot change.  It is counter-intuitive, but it is generosity of heart that will open the floodgates of migration from red to blue by Christians. We are not there yet though. Ultimately, in the future, we need to get to a place where we don't respond to problematic religious people and groups with one trick, one tool, one voice, but can do all of it, as needed:  confront with fire, converse in peace, celebrate, even support, or withdraw support, criticize, praise, etc.


  

Constitutionally Unfit

September 7 was another day in the life of a narcissistic sociopath. The Washington Post reported that Señor Trumpanzee "woke up in Billings, Montana, flew to Fargo, N.D., visited Sioux Falls and eventually returned to Washington. He spoke to reporters on Air Force One, held a pair of fundraisers and was interviewed by three local reporters. In that single day, he publicly made 125 false or misleading statements-- in a period of time that totaled only about 120 minutes. It was a new single-day high. The day before, the president made 74 false or misleading claims, many in a campaign rally in Montana. Trump’s tsunami of untruths helped push the count in the Fact Checker’s database past 5,000 on the 601st day of his presidency. That’s an average of 8.3 claims a day [he] averaged 32 claims a day."

Yesterday, Ben White reported that in an alternate universe, the fat fuck "would be heading into the midterms relentlessly touting his stewardship of a strong economy with results that include historically low unemployment, solid economic growth, sky-high enthusiasm among small businesses and shattered records for job openings." He'd be busy taking credit for all Obama's achievements from the time he woke top til the time he fell out. Instead, the uncontrollable loser "is repeatedly muddling that message with easily debunked falsehoods or hyperbole about the state of the economy while pressing on with unpopular trade wars that frustrate establishment Republicans and business groups worried about price increases. His undisciplined approach-- coupled with his obsessing about the Russia investigation, Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election-- is damaging what many Republicans say should have been a political slam dunk for the GOP heading into the fall."

Still lying about his regime's disastrous and catastrophic response to Hurricane Maria, he's already claiming "We're getting tremendous accolades from politicians and the people" [for his action on Hurricane Florence]. This is the psychotic president-- illegitimate fake president-- of the United States: "We got A Pluses for our recent hurricane work in Texas and Florida (and did an unappreciated great job in Puerto Rico, even though an inaccessible island with very poor electricity and a totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan). We are ready for the big one that is coming!" Mentally ill? Sure-- but it's part of his... style. And that's what Josh Dawsey explained so well for Washington Post readers this week.

An estimated 3,000 people died after the devastating Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico last year. Large swaths of the island were without power for months. FEMA was short thousands of workers and underestimated how much food and supplies were needed in the recovery, according to a federal government report.

But in the eyes of President Trump, the government’s response was a raging success-- and one he touted this week as a monstrous hurricane pinwheeled toward the Carolinas.

“We got A Pluses for our recent hurricane work in Texas and Florida (and did an unappreciated great job in Puerto Rico, even though an inaccessible island with very poor electricity and a totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan),” he wrote Wednesday on Twitter.

It’s a frequent tactic of the president-- elevate a widely perceived failure or mistake and defend it as a great triumph while attacking his critics. His detractors say it is shameless and sometimes comical gaslighting; supporters say he is just a master marketer who uses hyperbole and always shows strength.

“You just never give an inch or admit any mistake in public,” said Sam Nunberg, a former aide describing Trump’s mind-set.

Inside the administration, firing James B. Comey as FBI director in May 2017 is widely perceived as an original sin that spun a cascade of other problems for the White House-- including the creation of a special counsel’s investigation that has tormented the president and includes an obstruction-of-justice inquiry. He was repeatedly counseled against the firing by top aides such as former chief of staff Reince Priebus, White House counsel Donald McGahn and former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who have since faced hours of questioning over Trump’s actions as part of the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe.

But rather than show any signs of regret, the president has instead championed Comey’s firing, both publicly and privately, as a smart decision.

“I did a great service to the people in firing him!” Trump tweeted this summer.

Trump faced withering criticism, even from supporters, for standing on a podium in Helsinki in July and cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin while seeming to question U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election and entertaining the idea of letting Russian law enforcement officials question American citizens.

But to hear Trump tell it these days, it was one of his finest hours.

“One of my best meetings ever was with Vladimir Putin,” he said earlier this month, before attacking the “fakers,” or his short-term for the “fake news media.”

This week, he has repeatedly brought up Bob Woodward’s book Feat-- continuously calling attention to a portrayal of his White House as incompetent and veering toward a breakdown. Trump says the book is a “scam” and that his White House is a “smooth running machine.”

Aides say that Trump’s tendency to focus on and defend his perceived failures is fueled by a mix of potent factors. He obsesses over negative news coverage sometimes long after the topic has changed. He often marvels that he can make the cable news chyrons change. And he is constantly selling himself-- regardless of who is in front of him and no matter the topic.

Sometimes, he is trying to preempt criticism that he knows is likely to revive itself, like before this week’s hurricane. And he tells senior aides that his supporters will believe his version of events.

It leads to awkward encounters and surreal situations for those around him. His comments this week on the administration’s handling of the recovery effort in Puerto Rico following last year’s hurricane quickly morphed from a defense of how a difficult situation was handled to a declaration that it couldn’t have gone better.

It was “one of the best jobs that’s ever been done with respect to what this is all about,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

It was a statement that drew immediate condemnations and questions about how Trump could characterize the recovery effort as such a success especially on the heels of a study that estimated there were nearly 3,000 excess deaths in Puerto Rico due to the hurricane.

“You know there are no A-pluses in disaster recovery. That letter doesn’t exist,” said Marc Ferzan, who led recovery in New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy and is now a consultant.

...Trump observers and critics said that the president’s refusal to admit mistakes and to go a step further and declare them smart moves has long been part of how he operates.

“One of his great strengths is that he lives in his own reality distortion field-- there is this narrative going on all the time in his head about how successful he is, how great he is-- one of the things that allows him to plow ahead after he makes mistakes,” said Timothy O’Brien, a longtime Trump biographer.

None of this is new. This is what was elected. Forget about Putin's contribution for a moment and forget about what a rotten candidate Clinton was-- a Trump election shows a glaring weakness of democracy. If we're going to stay with it, we'd better get serious about that opioid crisis and do something about the broadcasting of false right-wing propaganda.

Going Down by Nancy Ohanian