Daily Archives: May 17, 2017

President Trump's national security adviser says a Washington Post report that says Trump shared intelligence with Russia "is false." USA TODAY

A great deal has been written and said about the media divide in the United States or how Americans tend to follow news organizations that reinforce their political beliefs and that divide was clearly in evidence Monday in the wake of a Washington Post story alleging President Trump shared classified information with Russian diplomats during a meeting at the WhiteHouse.

For example, a glance at the three major cable news networks at 8:20 p.m. ET revealed the following banners on the bottom of the screen:

While CNN and MSNBC focused on the report from the Post and the reaction from Trump's opponents, Fox News focused on a perceived hysteria among liberals a tactic the network also employed in the wake of the firing of former FBI director James Comey.

Just under an hour later, Fox News ran a banner reading, "McMaster: Washington Post story on Russia meeting is false," while CNN's banner read, "Sources: Trump shared classified info with Russian foreign minister."

On the Fox News website, the top story at 9:30 p.m. ET was about Hillary Clinton and the launch of her "Onward Together" PAC. The story about Trump was programmed beneath that under the headline, "'It didn'thappen': WH denies report Trump revealed classified info."

Read more:

Lawmakers slam reports Trump revealed classified intel to Russians

5 unanswered questions from latest Trump-Russia intelligence leak

Trump's tweets on mishandled classified info come back to haunt him

'Post' scoop on Trump's Russia leak sets new reader record

On Breitbart, the top headline read"Deep State Strikes: Leaks Classified Info To Washington Post To Smear Trump, LOL: Reporters Negate Oversold Headline In 7th Paragraph."

The "deep state" refers to a theory repeatedly propagatedby Breitbartsince Trump took office, which says a cadre of government officials loyal to former President Obama have been working behind the scenes to undermine Trump.

The 7th paragraph from the Post story that theBreitbart headline refers to reads,"As president, Trump has broad authority to declassify government secrets, making it unlikely that his disclosures broke the law." The headline implies since the president did not break the law, the story is of little importance.

Read more:

Is it legal for Trump to share classified intelligence? Yes, but risky, experts say

The second headline on Breitbart was, "McMaster: WAPO Story 'False' 'I Was In The Room, It Didn't Happen'."An accuratesummation of the denial issued by Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

On The Washington Times website, the top story was "Officials dispute report Trump revealed classified information to Russians."

By contrast, CNN led after obtaining their own unnamed sources with a wide, banner headline reading, "Sources: Trump shared classified info with Russians." Four other stories critical of the White House preceded a video of McMaster's denial.

On the Fox News showHannity,host Sean Hannityopened by attacking the sources of the leaks to the Post.

"No White Housecan sustain these types of constant leaks," he said. "So, if you're in the White House, and you're this, if you're not there to serve your country and all you're doing is hurting the country, well, then you might want to get out of the way."

Hannity proceeded to report on the Comey firing and "the worst liberal media feeding frenzy in American history" that followed. He went on to explain why he believes Comey deserved to be fired and why Clinton should have been prosecuted for her handling of classified material on a private emailserver.

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How the latest Trump headlines played out in conservative, liberal media - USA TODAY

Next month Im returning to Marthas Vineyard. Its a lovely place and, for progressives, the ultimate safe space. It sometimes seems that Republicans need a green card just to visit, and that the island only issues 10 per year.

But this creates a problem: What passes for political wisdom can become, shall we say, insular. As a journalistic eminence murmured after enduring a dinner party where, in his view, progressive piety strangled reality by the throat: As Marthas Vineyard goes, so goes Cambridge, Berkeley, and the upper West Side of Manhattan.

Which puts me in mind of certain Democratic liberals and lemmings.

Hold the outrage, please. I like to think Im as progressive as the next guy, including ardent support for voting rights, LGBT rights, reproductive rights, racial justice, and preventing dangerous people from slaughtering innocents with guns. Over the years, Ive devoted considerable energy to these issues. But, for me, the current ideological fratricide among Democrats evokes the mythic rodents who commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs.

This years contest for DNC chair in essence, a tiresome rerun of the fight between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders featured lemmings galore. Among them were the raucous activists who booed the liberal Tom Perez for beating the even more liberal, and more controversial, Keith Ellison, perpetuating the ongoing divide between the merely progressive and the truly pure.

Inescapably, this spectacle raised questions. What slice of the populace do these folks represent? At this critical juncture, were Perez and Ellison the best choices Democrats had? What about Pete Buttigieg, the young and appealing mayor of South Bend, Ind. who, having succeeded in a red state, emphasized expanding the partys appeal in middle America? And what does all this fractiousness portend for the Democrats ability to reverse their electoral fortunes?

Nothing good. To heal the wounds, Perez and Sanders launched a unity tour. Quickly, it foundered on their support of the Democratic candidate for mayor of Omaha, Neb., Heath Mello who, it transpired, had taken anti-abortion positions as a state legislator. Quickly, abortion-rights groups pounced, asserting that the partys support for Mello was unacceptable.

Progressives like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended the right of a local candidate to hold views at odds with theirs, sensibly distinguishing between a would-be mayor of Omaha and, say, a Supreme Court nominee. But the head of NARAL denounced this as politically stupid. Swiftly, Perez capitulated, asserting that Democrats commitment to abortion rights is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.

Lets be clear. The Democratic Party firmly embraces reproductive rights and should. And, yes, the anti-abortion movement is tainted with misogyny, patriarchy, and fundamentalism. But, unavoidably, the debate over abortion includes a genuine ethical issue regarding how we define life. And, as a practical matter, a significant minority of Democrats oppose abortion; some are women who support maternal leave, better child-care policies, and wage equity.

Abortion rights should not, in itself, be a litmus test of decency or of who gets to be a Democrat in Nebraska.

But doctrinal purity is contagious. Shortly, Sanders stumbled, when asked if Jon Ossoff a Democrat opposing an antiabortion GOP zealot in a bright-red Georgia congressional district was a progressive. I dont know, Sanders flatly stated. Really? When did Georgia become Vermont? And when did progressive orthodoxy become so rigid and exclusionary?

But among Democrats, this ideological Stalinism is all too common. A few years ago, a friend and leader in the gun-control movement refused to support the incumbent Democratic senator from Arkansas, deeming him too compromised on guns. He lost to a Republican who opposes everything my friend cares about. Now Republicans control the Senate, and Neil Gorsuch sits on the Supreme Court.

This illustrates the complex relationship between moral urgency and political actuality. The civil rights movement was not driven by political exigency, but by the uncompromising commitment of brave men and women who transformed our national conscience. But translating civil rights into law required a Democratic president working through a Democratic Congress.

Too many activists fail to grasp this or that their desire to thwart Donald Trump exceeds their partys ability to do so. Thus some on the left threaten primary challenges against Democrats they perceive as insufficiently militant.

This is political self-immolation. The Democrats are defending Senate seats in red or purple states like Montana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania all of which Trump carried. Do these petulant purists really think that a Warren-style Democrat could win in Montana? Or care that they risk losing the last bastion of legislative resistance to Trump even, perhaps, the filibuster?

Already, Democrats are ceding most of America with alarming celerity. Since 2006, the party has lost 10 percent of its seats in the Senate, 19 percent in the House, 20 percent in state legislatures, and 36 percent of governorships. The 16 percent of counties won by Hillary Clinton resemble, demographically, a cocktail party on Marthas Vineyard urban, affluent, well-educated, and, increasingly, politically homogenous and sociologically isolated. In such circumstances, political antennae rust, litmus tests flourish, and a vision of deplorables sets in that mirrors the intolerance of the right.

No surprise, then, that many middle-class and blue-collar Americans including former Obama voters feel that national Democrats favor the wealthy. Programmatically, this simply isnt so. No doubt this misperception owes much to the GOPs rank dishonesty. But ideological rigidity and cultural condescension surely do not help nor, frankly, do enormous speaking fees from Wall Street.

So what should Democrats do? Some think the party should focus on turning out its core demographic well-educated whites, women, young people, and minorities; others on winning back some of the voters it lost to Trump. But this is a false choice. Nor is it sufficient for Democrats to define themselves merely by opposing Trump. Instead, the party needs to prioritize engaging voters rather than excluding them.

This requires what went missing in 2016: a compelling and unifying vision of how Democratic policies improve the lives of more Americans, helping unleash the potential of every person wherever and whoever they are to lift themselves and their country. This message of inclusion and economic opportunity transcends geography and demographics and, as well, any single issue or constituent group no matter how important. It says, rather, that every American is not merely worthwhile, but valuable.

That is what a national party looks like.

Richard North Pattersons column appears regularly in the Boston Globe. His latest book is Fever Swamp. Follow him on Twitter @RicPatterson.

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The Democrats' Liberal Lemmings - HuffPost

The bad news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history. The good news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history.

He was too incompetent to understand his own health care bill, or accurately describe the direction in which the armada designed to intimidate North Korea was heading, or restrain himself from disclosing highly classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. But hes also too incompetent, it appears, to destroy liberal democracy.

When Trump fired James Comey a week ago, many Republicans denied that he had done so to shut down the FBIs inquiry into his campaigns Russia ties. Trump, they said, could not have been that stupid. He could not have been stupid enough to believe that firing Comey would quash the Russia investigation.

But, increasingly, it appears that Trump was. Rather than building a high-minded pretext for firing Comey, Trump, according to the New York Times, invited Comey to dinner in January and demanded his personal loyalty. If that wasnt incriminating enough, in February he baldly asked Comey to end the investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Then, after Comey asked for more funding to investigate the Trump campaigns Russia ties, Trump fired himessentially asking the man he had handed a loaded gun to fire it at his head.

In the hours after Comeys firing, the Trump cant be that stupid caucus globbed onto Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteins memo, which offered justifications for Comeys firing that did not reek of self-interest. But in an interview with NBC News Lester Holt, Trump admitted that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he made the decision to fire Comey, thus discarding Rosensteins fig leaf and exposing his political nakedness for all to see.

Thank goodness. The Kremlin, it turns out, is not the only institution able to outwit Donald Trump. American law enforcement and the American press can too. Comey, who unlike Trump knows the art of political CYA, reportedly kept a record of the Presidents efforts to obstruct justice. Trumps own White House is sabotaging him daily through massive leaks. And at both the Times and the Washington Post, the best reporters of their generation are participating in the journalistic equivalent of a dunking contest.

In retrospect, it was predictable. During the campaign, Trump advertised his hostility to liberal democratic norms. But he advertised his incompetence too. He slandered judges for their ethnicity and vowed tax investigations into the publishers of newspapers that criticized him. But he also let Texas Senator Ted Cruz give a prime time speech at his own convention that did not include an endorsement.

As a result of his own ineptitude, Trump is politically weaker than he was on Inauguration Day even though the economy is stronger. And its harder to mount a populist assault on the rule of law when youre not even that popular.

Yes, Trump can still do grave damage. Yes, hes exposed the fragility of Americas system of liberal democracy. But that system has one key advantage: The people protecting it are good at their jobs.

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American Institutions Strike Back - The Atlantic