Monthly Archives: September 2020

On Labor Day weekend, eight weeks before one of the most consequential elections in American history, its useful to consider the inequalities of income and wealth that fueled Donald Trumps victory four years ago and which are now wider than ever.

No other developed nation has nearly the inequities found in the US, even though all have been exposed to the same forces of globalization and technological change. Jeff Bezoss net worth recently reached $200bn and Elon Musks $100bn, even as 30 million Americans reported their households didnt have enough food. Americas richest 1% now own half the value of the US stock market, and the richest 10% own 92%.

American capitalism is off the rails.

The main reason is that large corporations, Wall Street banks and a relative handful of exceedingly rich individuals have gained enough political power to game the system.

Chief executives have done everything possible to prevent the wages of most workers rising in tandem with productivity gains, so most gains go instead into the pockets of top executives and major investors. Theyve outsourced abroad, installed labor-replacing technologies and switched to part-time and contract work.

Theyve busted unions, whose membership shrank from 35% of the private-sector workforce 40 years ago to 6.4% today.

Theyve pushed government to slash their own taxes, unravel safety nets for the poor and middle class and reduce investment in education and infrastructure. Theyve eliminated a raft of labor protections. Theyve defanged antitrust enforcement, allowing their monopolies free rein. The free market has been taken over by crony capitalism, corporate bailouts and corporate welfare.

This massive power shift laid the groundwork for Trump. In 1964, almost two-thirds of Americans believed government was run for the benefit of all the people. By 2013 almost 80% believed government was run by a few big interests. The erosion in public trust was particularly steep in the wake of the Wall Street bailout and Great Recession. In 2006, 59% of Americans thought government corruption was widespread. By 2013, 79% did.

At the start of the century, a Gallup poll found that 77% of Americans were satisfied with opportunities to get ahead by working hard, and only 22% dissatisfied. By 2014, only 54% were satisfied and 45% dissatisfied. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who believe most people who want to get ahead can do so through hard work dropped by 13 points between 2000 and 2015.

Much of the political establishment wants to attribute Trumps rise solely to racism. Racism did play a part, to be sure, but racisms sordid history in American politics long predates Trump.

What has given Trumps racism as well as his hateful xenophobia, misogyny and jingoism particular virulence has been his capacity to channel the intensifying anger of the white working class. It is hardly the first time a demagogue has used scapegoats to deflect public attention from the real causes of its distress.

Trump speaks the language of authoritarian populism but acts in the interests of Americas emerging oligarchy. His deal with the moneyed interests was simple: hed stoke divisiveness so Americans wouldnt see how the oligarchy has taken over the reins, twisted government to its benefit and siphoned off the economic rewards.

Hed make Americans so angry at each other that they wouldnt pay attention to CEOs getting exorbitant pay while slicing the pay of average workers, wouldnt notice the giant tax cut that went to big corporations and the wealthy, and wouldnt be outraged by a boardroom culture that tolerates financial conflicts of interest, insider trading and the outright bribery of public officials through unlimited campaign donations.

This way, the moneyed interests could rig the system while the president complained that the system was rigged by a deep state.

Notwithstanding all this, Trump trails Joe Biden in the polls. Trumps inexcusable failure to contain the coronavirus is having a larger impact on swing voters than the divisiveness he foments. Death has a way of concentrating the mind.

But if Biden is elected, he would be well advised to remember the forces Trump exploited to gain power, and to begin the task of remedying them. The solution is not found in mere redistribution of income. It is found redistributing power. Income isnt a zero-sum game in which some peoples gains require other peoples losses, but power indubitably is. Some have it only to the extent others dont.

If wealth continues to concentrate at the top, no one will be able to contain the corrupting influence of big money on the American system and the anger it unleashes. As Justice Louis D Brandeis once said: We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cant have both.

Go here to read the rest:

On Labor Day, remember this: Trump's America works only for the rich - The Guardian

Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

SAN ANTONIO Working to shore up historically red Texas, Republican President Donald Trump's reelection campaign launched a bus tour of the state here Thursday where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other surrogates went to pains to argue they are not sweating the state this November.

"Welcome to the Trump bus tour in Texas," Patrick said in his first remarks to reporters off the bus, before quickly volunteering: "We are absolutely 100% confident that President Donald Trump will carry Texas," and "solidly" so.

Patrick, the chairman of Trump's 2020 campaign in Texas, was followed by Trump campaign senior adviser Katrina Pierson, who insisted the president would "carry the state and carry it well." Then came another senior adviser, Brad Parscale, who claimed Trump is "in a very good position for Texas" and said he laughs when people approach him with concerns about the state, noting the attention that the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, is paying to it.

"That's all just a little bit of smoke and mirrors," said Parscale, who was Trump's campaign manager earlier this election cycle. "The president's in a clear position to win this state."

The unsolicited confidence belied a race in Texas that has looked close for months, with poll after poll falling within the margin of error. Trump carried the state by 9 percentage points four years ago, which even then was the smallest margin of victory that a GOP nominee got in Texas since 1996.

Now, in addition to the polls, Biden's campaign has identified Texas as a battleground state and made fall TV ad reservations here. And while it remains to be seen how much the campaign will eventually invest in the resource-intensive state, the initial overtures are nonetheless fueling Texas Democrats' hopes that the state is on track to flip for the first time since 1976.

Patrick recently reiterated his prediction from months ago that Trump would win Texas this November by a larger margin than he did in 2016 double digits. Speaking to the crowd here Thursday, donning a new cowboy hat after stopping at Paris Hatters in downtown San Antonio, Patrick declared that Texas "is not a swing state." Pierson told the crowd that Trump "would blow it out in the state of Texas."

Still, the existence of a bus tour two months out from the election, no less seemed to speak for itself. The bus was set to make a second stop Thursday in San Antonio before heading to Granger in Central Texas and ending Friday at Bedford in North Texas. Both Granger and Bedford are in firmly competitive political territory the former in Williamson County, which covers the suburbs north of Austin, and the latter in the sprawling suburban expanse between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Trump himself has not held a campaign rally in Texas since October, though he visited the Permian Basin in July for an ostensibly official trip that was imbued with politics as he attacked Democrats as bad for the state's energy industry.

Asked if he would advise Trump to campaign in Texas before the election, Parscale suggested that if the president did, it would not be out of political necessity. "Its gonna be because these are his people," Parscale told reporters. "Texas is Trump country."

The state's Democrats say it strains credulity that Trump is not worried about Texas at this point, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. In polls, more Texas voters have disapproved of Trump's pandemic response than have approved.

"As the Trump campaign conducts its last-ditch bus tour of Texas, it has never been clearer that they are on the verge of breaking," state Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. "Texans are demanding change. Texas will go to Joe Biden on November 3."

The bus tour stop here drew several dozen Trump supporters to the sweltering parking lot in front of the local Latinos for Trump office. Parscale, who was working in web design in San Antonio before Trump plucked him from obscurity to work on his 2016 campaign, said he had forgotten how hot the city could get. Pierson also has Texas roots she is a former Tea Party activist from Garland. And Tommy Hicks, the Dallas investor who co-chairs the Republican National Committee, was also set to participate in the bus tour, though he was not seen at the first San Antonio stop.

After the stop, one Trump-supporting couple from San Antonio said they felt good about the president's chances in Texas, though the wife, Ann Sawyer, expressed some concern about the influx of new voters coming to Texas from blue states. Sawyer, a substitute teacher, suggested it would not hurt for Trump to drop in on the state at least once before Election Day.

"It would be nice to see him," said Sawyer, who was decked out with a pro-Trump shirt, hat and flag. "It's nice to the lieutenant governor and part of [Trump's campaign] staff, but yeah, it'd be nice for him to come back again."

View post:

In Texas, President Donald Trump hopes bus tour will shore up support - The Texas Tribune

President Donald Trump again targeted Baltimore in tweets posted Sunday morning.This time, the tweets focused on a political endorsement for Maryland Republican 7th District candidate Kimberly Klacik, who's running to unseat Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who won the seat in a special election in April after the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings.In a thread of three tweets, the president said: "Be smart Baltimore! You have been ripped off for years by the Democrats, & gotten nothing but poverty & crime. It will only get worse UNLESS YOU ELECT KIMBERLY KLACIK TO CONGRESS. She brings with her the power & ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. She works sooo hard...."....Baltimore will turn around, and I will help. Crime will go way down, money and jobs will pour in. Life will be MUCH better because Kimberly really cares. The Dems have had 100 years and they gave you nothing but heartache. Baltimore is the WORST IN NATION, Kimberly will.."....fix it, and fast. The current recipient has no chance, and wont even try. As I have often said, Baltimore is last in everything, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE! Kimberly is fully Endorsed by me, something I do not do lightly. Take advantage of it and MAKE BALTIMORE GREAT!"Mfume released a statement Sunday afternoon, saying: "Donald Trump and my opponent are two of a kind. They love each other, but more importantly they deserve each other. Mr. Trump will soon find out that he can't tell the people of Baltimore City, Baltimore County or Howard County how to vote, or who to vote for. Instead of Baltimore bashing, how about showing a little leadership in the middle of a pandemic Mr. President ... Now tweet that!"President Trump last tweeted support for Klacik by retweeting her online ad, which went viral.Before that, the last time President Trump tweeted about Baltimore was to call the city a "disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess."At the time, Klacik, then a political commentator who appeared on FOX News, had tweeted about trash in west Baltimore, saying: "(Cummings) claims to care about children & their future, however in west Baltimore you will find abandoned homes on every block. Many filled with trash, rodents & homeless looking for shelter. Children live on these streets seen here. This district belongs to @RepCummings. More to come."

President Donald Trump again targeted Baltimore in tweets posted Sunday morning.

This time, the tweets focused on a political endorsement for Maryland Republican 7th District candidate Kimberly Klacik, who's running to unseat Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who won the seat in a special election in April after the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings.

In a thread of three tweets, the president said: "Be smart Baltimore! You have been ripped off for years by the Democrats, & gotten nothing but poverty & crime. It will only get worse UNLESS YOU ELECT KIMBERLY KLACIK TO CONGRESS. She brings with her the power & ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. She works sooo hard....

"....Baltimore will turn around, and I will help. Crime will go way down, money and jobs will pour in. Life will be MUCH better because Kimberly really cares. The Dems have had 100 years and they gave you nothing but heartache. Baltimore is the WORST IN NATION, Kimberly will..

"....fix it, and fast. The current recipient has no chance, and wont even try. As I have often said, Baltimore is last in everything, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE! Kimberly is fully Endorsed by me, something I do not do lightly. Take advantage of it and MAKE BALTIMORE GREAT!"

This content is imported from Twitter.You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is imported from Twitter.You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is imported from Twitter.You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Mfume released a statement Sunday afternoon, saying: "Donald Trump and my opponent are two of a kind. They love each other, but more importantly they deserve each other. Mr. Trump will soon find out that he can't tell the people of Baltimore City, Baltimore County or Howard County how to vote, or who to vote for. Instead of Baltimore bashing, how about showing a little leadership in the middle of a pandemic Mr. President ... Now tweet that!"

President Trump last tweeted support for Klacik by retweeting her online ad, which went viral.

This content is imported from Twitter.You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Before that, the last time President Trump tweeted about Baltimore was to call the city a "disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess."

This content is imported from Twitter.You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is imported from Twitter.You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

At the time, Klacik, then a political commentator who appeared on FOX News, had tweeted about trash in west Baltimore, saying: "(Cummings) claims to care about children & their future, however in west Baltimore you will find abandoned homes on every block. Many filled with trash, rodents & homeless looking for shelter. Children live on these streets seen here. This district belongs to @RepCummings. More to come."

See the article here:

President Trump again targets Baltimore in tweets: 'Baltimore is the WORST IN NATION' - WBAL TV Baltimore

President Donald Trumprecklessly riskedwar over North Koreain 2017, but then appeared to make relatively good use of that scare bystarting a negotiation processwith Kim Jong-un the following two years. Unfortunately, the momentum is now gone, and we are back to almost where we started three and a half years ago. At least North Korea is not testing nuclear weapons or long-range missiles right now, butit could resume those testsand it has never stopped building more nukes. The next president, Biden or a reelected Trump, needs to break out of this logjam.

There is a way ahead. Rather than pursue complete elimination of all of North Koreas nuclear capabilities, the Trump administration would aim for a more modest trade as at least an interim step. It would require North Korea to verifiably dismantle all capabilities it possesses to make more bombs in exchange for a partial lifting of the sanctions which have driven North Koreas economy into the tank.

The terms of such an agreement wouldfollowlogically from the February 2019 Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi, where the North offered to dismantlesomeof its nuclear production capability in exchange for a lifting ofallsanctions, and wherePresident Trump then walked. Washingtons new proposal would simply toughen and improve the terms of this kind of trade, requiring the dismantlement ofallplutonium and enriched uranium infrastructure in exchange for a lifting ofsomeof the sanctions.

Provided that verification is good and that some sanctions are retained even after such an agreement was struck, this would be a smart deal. It would not be perfect andwould not achieve the complete denuclearization of North Korea that Trump initially insisted upon. But it would identify, and pursue, the intersection of what is realistic with what is desirable. It would reduce the risks of war and limit the damage done by nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia.

North Korea has an estimated 20 to 60 nuclear bombs today, and is still making more as best we can tell. It views those weapons as the proud legacy of Kims father and grandfather, and the ultimate insurance that the younger Kim will not suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein or Muhammar Qaddafi, both of whom wound up dead after fighting the United Stateswithoutnuclear weapons. It is hard to see North Korea giving up those bombs even if sanctions remain in place indefinitely, though admittedly we cannot be sure. North Koreans have talked about being willing to eat grass to keep their nuclear arsenal. Kim and his cronies will always have their caviar and cognac, but there can be little doubt that the North Korean leader would be willing to see his own people continue to suffer as long as he keeps hold of his ultimate guarantee of political and personal survival. Striving for complete North Korean denuclearization is a bridge too far.

But perhaps Kim has concluded that 20 to 60 (or 70, or 80!) bombs are enough. And perhaps he is also willing to make permanent his moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, provided the United States and South Korea cap the size of their military exercises.

We can live with such a deal, too. If North Korea can be persuaded to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure, its future arsenal will be forever capped at or below its current size.The next president would be wise not to boast too much about a deal that left one of the worlds worst dictators in possession of nuclear bombs and allowed it to resume trade and investment with other nations. But by giving North Korea a stake in peace, and a stable Northeast Asia, it would on balance probably reduce the risks of war.

Under such a deal, U.N. sanctions that have been imposed in recent years would presumably first be suspended, then lifted. It is these sanctions that really hurt North Korea because they prevent its normal economic dealings with China and South Korea in particular, as well as with Russia and some Southeast Asian nations. As a result of these sanctions, imposed largely in 2016 and 2017, North Koreas trade appears to have shrunk by more than half despite some cheating and sanctions evasion.

But most U.S. sanctions that have been imposed on North Korea over the decades should remain in effect even after the U.N. sanctions are gone. Most American aid, trade, investment, and interaction should still be banned under such an accord. So should assistance from organizations like the World Bank, where the United States has a major influence. North Korea would not be formally recognized as a nuclear-weapons state. Any peace treaty and any U.S. diplomatic presence would be viewed as matter-of-fact mechanisms to enhance future communication, not as great accomplishments to celebrate. Only if and when North Korea gives up all its bombs, scales back its threatening conventional and chemical weapons, and starts to open up its gulag-style prisons would truly normal relations become possible with America. Only then would the U.S. sanctions be lifted. That day may not arrive for decades, admittedly. But in the meantime, we will have capped North Koreas nuclear arsenal and ambitions and lowered the risks of war.

Here is the original post:

What Donald Trump should have done with North Korea and what the next president should do - Brookings Institution

DONALD TRUMP V. THE UNITED STATESInside the Struggle to Stop a PresidentBy Michael S. Schmidt

When a Republican-led Senate committee issued a nearly 1,000-page report in mid-August that detailed the prodigious extent of the contacts between Russian officials and members of Donald Trumps 2016 campaign team, it felt a bit like a dispatch from a vaguely familiar reality a prepandemic realm when we could mostly agree to focus on foreign interference in American democracy, and when the Trump presidency felt as if it were hanging in the balance while it awaited word from Robert S. Mueller III. This is the world that forged Michael S. Schmidts Donald Trump v. the United States. It vividly resurrects that actually-not-so-distant era by unspooling the occasionally staggering stories of two administration figures who were central to the investigative sagas that dominated the early Trump years, largely thanks to their attempts to constrain him.

The subjects are both all too familiar and, Schmidt implies, underappreciated in their significance in shaping Trumps presidency. Schmidt recounts with unsparing intimacy James Comeys arc from the 2016 election to his 2017 firing from the F.B.I. directorship, and he documents the relentlessly uncomfortable White House tenure of the former general counsel Donald F. McGahn II, who, he points out, was in charge of Trumps greatest political accomplishment, and he found himself caught up as the chief witness against Trump. The result is a revelatory portrait of the events that led to the investigation of Trump for obstruction of justice, and his repeated attempts to control the Department of Justice. It is not about the alleged collusion with Moscow, and in fact Schmidt reports that Muellers investigators never undertook a significant examination of Trumps personal and business ties to Russia, largely thanks to the deputy attorney general Rod Rosensteins intervention.

Schmidt, a New York Times correspondent in Washington who was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018, including one for coverage of Trumps Russian-inflected scandals, portrays an administration in which all aides may as well always have a resignation letter ready as a safeguard against an angry, flailing president detached from commonly accepted reality. This is a meticulously reported volume that clearly benefits from the authors extraordinary access to many of the relevant characters, but also from his subjects tendency to record, in detail, their time around Trump.

Whereas recent years have been packed with high-impact reported books about Trumps erratic behavior and his administrations backbiting Bob Woodwards Fear, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnigs A Very Stable Genius and Jonathan Karls Front Row at the Trump Show come to mind Donald Trump v. the United States is more closely tailored to the efforts to rein Trump in. As such, it may be unlikely to become a go-to for general conclusions about Trumps character. But it adds significantly to the public understanding of the Mueller investigation and Trumps war against it.

The narrative is sometimes cinematic. It opens with Schmidt chasing down McGahn outside the White Houses front gates and eventually getting him to concede, I damaged the office of the president; I damaged the office. Its a breathtakingly revealing admission from the White Houses chief lawyer and the architect of Trumps effort to appoint as many conservative judges as possible. (Schmidt says, I thought he was still understating the gravity of what he had done.)

McGahn, a staunch libertarian, was frequently in over his head with the lawless president he nicknamed King Kong, and he struggled with his highly unusual extended contact with Muellers team. Still, despite getting close to resigning, McGahn stuck around far longer than his apparent misery and frequent attempts at principled stands would suggest, largely because of his judicial projects success. It was only after Trump granted a woman clemency at Kim Kardashians request that McGahn knew he truly had to leave the White House. He could no longer abide the accumulation of Trumps actions.

Then, in the annals of unsustainable relationships with Trump, theres James Comey. His early interactions with the president, like the one-on-one dinner at which Trump requested Comeys loyalty, have been described repeatedly. But in Schmidts granular telling, the relationship was especially agonizing because of a fundamental disconnect between the two men.

Comey was always deeply interested in maintaining his and his agencys public credibility especially after his wildly controversial intrusions into the 2016 campaign over Hillary Clintons emails. After he was fired by Trump, he text-messaged a friend: Im with my peeps (former peeps). They are broken up and Im sitting with them like a wake. Trying to figure out how to get back home. May hitchhike. Its just one example of the clearly extensive access Schmidt had to Comey and his wife.

Donald Trump v. the United States is full of gritty details about what its like for a plugged-in journalist to report on Trumps intrigue, ranging from the time Schmidt shepherded a valued source to and from the airport, to his learning, secondhand, about a Justice Department official soliciting dirt on Comey at a Cinco de Mayo party. At one point, Schmidt writes, he shattered his cellphone and didnt fix it for a week because there was too much news; he ended up with pieces of glass in his hands.

More interesting, however, is the constant flow of shocking anecdotes: Schmidt writes that Mitch McConnell fell asleep during a classified briefing on Russia, for example, and he details the F.B.I.s shambolic reaction to evidence of the hacking in 2016, including an unresolved disagreement over how to handle the material. Describing Trumps unexpected November 2019 visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he reports the White House wanted Mike Pence on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized. (The vice president never had to take this step.)

For all its revelations, this is not an inside look at Muellers investigation itself, and over half of Schmidts story goes by before Mueller is even appointed. At times, too, it wanders from the obstruction fights at its heart. Still, if the furor around the investigations into Trumps last campaign feels like ancient history as the nation faces a pandemic, a civil rights reckoning and another election, Donald Trump v. the United States nevertheless offers one more startling dissection of the Trump presidency. Ultimately this book about the struggle to stop a president is, in many ways, a tale of how he survived.

Link:

How Has Donald Trump Survived? - The New York Times

G.K. Chesterton called humor the chief antidote to pride and the hammer of fools. He observed that it adds a new beauty to human life. Which is a longish way of saying theres nothing so foolish, prideful or ugly as a society that cant laugh at itself.

Jim Gaffigan is one of the most successful stand-up comedians of the past decade. His 2013 book, Dad Is Fat, spent 17 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. According to Forbes, he earned $30 million in 2019 from his live performances, movie roles and television specials. Everybody loves Jim.

But making America laughand getting rich from itis apparently no longer enough for Mr. Gaffigan. Now the man who rode to fame riffing about Hot Pockets wants to tell you how to vote.

During the final night of the Republican National Convention last week, Mr. Gaffigan delivered a profane Twitter rant against President Trump: I dont give a f if anyone thinks this is virtue signaling or whatever. We need to wake up. We need to call trump the con man and thief that he is.

There was more. Along these lines. You could look it up.

The rest is here:

Jim Gaffigan, Donald Trump and the Death of Laughter - The Wall Street Journal

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

It was one of the defining moments of Donald Trumps presidency. On August 15, 2017, three days after a white supremacist drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Trump held a press conference in the lobby of his New York City tower.

He started off okay, reiterating in the strongest possible terms his condemnation of this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. But as the press conference continued, Trumps impulse to defend the rallys participants and reapportion blame onto political critics won out. You had some very bad people in that group, Trump said, at one point, of the white supremacist protest. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides, he continued, thus equating a racist mob with people who showed up to protest a racist mob. In case there was any ambiguity, Trump spelled it out a few minutes later: You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, he said, adding: There are two sides to a story.

Trump was rebuked by Republican House and Senate leaders (though not always by name), foreign heads of state, and his chief economics adviser. On Fox News The Five, conservative talking head Greg Gutfeld called Trumps remarks pure ignorance. That was then. Three years later, Trumps very fine people moment has become foundational to the Biden campaigns message that the soul of the nation is in peril, and Trump and his supporters have settled on a different line: They argue that Trump simply never said what he said about Charlottesville.

A slick video from the right-wing PragerU on The Charlottesville Lie has more than 3 million views on YouTube. The pro-Trump site Breitbart News has published at least 61 stories on what it calls the Charlottesville Hoax since the beginning of 2019. On Monday, after Biden once again criticized Trump for his Charlottesville comments in an interview with a Pittsburgh TV station, the presidents reelection campaign pushed out a video purporting to debunk it as one of 4 BIG Biden lies.

In effect, Trump and his supporters have turned one of his presidencys lowest moments into a loyalty test, by redefining what happened in the context of three of the pillars of his fall campaignan attempt to delegitimize the media, defend his most militant supporters, and cast the presidents opponents as violent radicals.

To understand how Trumps remarks have been spun, it helps to revisit what he actually said. When he praised very fine people, Trump insisted that he was not condoning the behavior of the white supremacists, but instead praising some other group of people who were there in support of Confederate monuments. Im not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalistsbecause they should be condemned totally, he said. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

Trumps defenders have seized on that line to argue that its false to say Trump praised white supremacists. But that requires a willful ignorance of who organized the rally and who attended it. Unite the Right was not some spontaneous demonstration, nor was it a big-tent gathering meant to rope in a broad coalition. It was plainly advertised as a white supremacist rally, by and for neo-Nazis. It was supposed to be menacing. And it was the only rally in Charlottesville that day (other than the counterprotests). There was no second group. The Washington Posts fact-checker noted that The 207-page independent review commissioned by Charlottesvillemakes no mention of peaceful pro-statue demonstrators.

I looked the night before, Trump said at one point during his press conference. If you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.

The rally the night before was the famous tiki-torch parade, in which attendees shouted Jews will not replace usnot the kind of thing you can find yourself unintentionally partaking in. And Unite the Rights support of the Lee statue was mostly just a pretext. As Voxs Jane Coaston noted, it is fascinating just how little the statue of Lee, or honoring Confederate veterans, seemed to matter to the organizers and attendees of Unite the Right. Instead, promotional materials for the rally described it as an attempt to, for instance, end Jewish influence in America.

Trumps comments could only hold water in a different factual universe, in which a different sort of rally was attended by a different sort of people. As it is, the term for someone attending a white supremacist rally is a white supremacist, and the words of condemnation Trump managed for some are less significant than the words of sympathy he offered for others.

And he did more than just sympathize. Not only was he saying that some attendees at a white supremacist rally were fine people, his impulse was to use the aftermath of a terrorist attack to say that he also believed they were right. Trump viewed what happened in Charlottesville as an attack on his own supporters, so he defended their honor.

So this week its Robert E. Lee, Trump said. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?

You werent imagining this. Its all on tape. The transcript is on the White House website. There was a reason David Duke immediately thanked Trump for his honesty & courage afterwards. Theres a reason why so many Republicans who have otherwise had Trumps back felt compelled to criticize him then. Trump messed up, said then-speaker-of-the-house Paul Ryan. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement saying there are no good neo-Nazis. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) visited the White House to explain to the president why Trumps comments were painful.

But thats where the story diverges. Trumps critics within the party had little incentive to dwell on the incident; continuing to criticize someone for both-sidesing Nazis would, after all, raise uncomfortable questions about why they continued to support someone both-sidesing Nazis. So the dissenters got their statements out, but over the next three years, the Charlottesville Truthers drowned them out.

By late 2018, Dilbert creator and Trump fan Scott Adams was calling the idea that Trump had praised white supremacists fake news on Fox News. A few months later, Steve Cortes, a former member of Trumps National Hispanic Advisory Council and current campaign adviser, dubbed it the Charlottesville hoax in a column at RealClearPolitics. By that point theBulwark, a site founded by conservative Trump critics, had caught on to this shift, describing it as an effort to create a more palatable version that would fit comfortably with their support for Trump.

But the biggest catalyst for this evolution was Joe Biden. When the former vice president kicked off his presidential campaign in April of 2019, his very first word was Charlottesville.

The President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it, Biden said in his launch video. In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any Id ever seen in my lifetime.

Rationalizing Trumps words became essential, not just to defend the president but to undercut his most likely Democratic opponent. So supporters began parsing the transcript.

Candace Owens, a popular pro-Trump commentator, said on Fox News that you can go and you can look up the full speech at what Trump saidhe specifically said Im not speaking about white supremacists or Nazis.

On The View, Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw claimed that in the same sentence Trump had stated he was definitely not referring to white nationalists.

Around this time, Trump himself revisited his comments in an interview with conservative radio host Mark Levin. You never said anything positive about neo-Nazis and Klansmen, but they continue to push that line, dont they? Levin asked.

Thats a terrible thing that they keep bringing up, Trump said. And I actually said, two different ways. And I actually said it every way you can say it. But I said you had bad people in both groups, and I said you had good people in both groups.

Levin, helpfully, suggested that by groups you mean protestors, not the Klan and neo-Nazis, to which Trump assented. Many of those people were from University of Virginia, they were from all around the neighborhood, the area, Trump said, and, once again, indicated that they had a point: Lee was probably the greatest general in the history of our country in terms of strategic brilliance.

When Prager Us video, featuring Steve Cortes, dropped a few months later, Trump retweeted it. Now even Gutfeld, who initially chided Trumps ignorance, calls the whole thing a hoax.

Theres an existential need among Trump defenders to belabor this point, to become mini Jim Garrisons rewinding the tape to show what really happened. Its become an article of faith conservatives must echo in order to properly support Trump. But it also serves another function: Charlottesville was also a formative moment in the creation of antifa as a conservative bte noir. What Trump alluded to at his 2017 press conferencethat counter-protestors with the black outfits and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats shared responsibility for the violenceechoed for months in the form Fox News segments about the violent and illiberal left.

Now those fears have become the very linchpin of the presidents fall campaign. Three years after Charlottesville, the party is increasingly receptive to the idea of vigilante violence against leftist demonstrators. At the Republican National Convention, the party featured the McCloskeys, the rich St. Louis couple famous for pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protestors marching through their gated community. A member of Congress from Louisiana, Clay Higgins, fantasized on Facebook about shooting Black demonstrators.

Unlike Heather Heyers killer, Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager who allegedly crossed state lines with an assault rifle to confront Black Lives Matter protesters in Wisconsin and shot three people, has become a conservative celebrity. Tucker Carlson praised him as a patriot willing to stand up where Democratic cities wouldnt17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would, he said. An incoming Republican member of Congress shared a meme hailing Rittenhouse for having fought back. A Christian fundraising site raised a quarter of a million dollars for Rittenhouses legal defense. And on Monday, Trump broke his silence on the episode by asserting that Rittenhouse had acted in self-defense. He was in very big trouble, Trump said. He probably would have been killed. This time, he didnt equivocate; the very fine people are only on his side now.

More here:

Donald Trump and His Allies Are Trying to Rewrite the History of Charlottesville - Mother Jones

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman told CNBC on Tuesday he applauds PresidentDonald Trump's decision to take a harder stance on China than previous commanders in chief.

"Donald Trump is not the American president America deserves, in my opinion. But he definitely is the American president China deserved," Friedman said on "Squawk Box.""We needed to have a president who was going to call the game with China. And Trump has done it, with I would say more grit and toughness than any of his predecessors. I give him credit for that."

At the same time, Friedman said he believes the way Trump sought to confront China over international trade and other geopolitical issues would have been more constructive if he had brought along American allies from the outset.

"[Trump] thought he could do it alone. He thought he could do it without a coalition," thePulitzer Prize-winning journalist said. "Remember, it was the country that had the biggest coalition that won World War I. It was country that had the biggest coalition that won World War II. It was the country that had the healthiest coalition that won the Cold War, and it will be same with China."

Despite his analogies, Friedman said he was not "looking for a war" between the U.S. and China. But the world's two largest economies are engaged in a critical "struggle," he contended.

"I've always felt from the beginning that if we made this challenge with China, the United States alone versus China, we will lose," said Friedman, who works at what Trump has repeatedly called "the failing New York Times" for what the president considers a liberal bent at the media organization. "If we make it the world versus China, on what are the right and fair rules of international commerce and technology in the 21st century, we can win."

Friedman, while critical of Trump on many issues,wrote in 2018that the economic fight with China is "worth having," adding the president's "instinct is basically right" to hold the line "before China gets too big."

Trump, who is seeking reelection in November, has adopted a sharply critical stance on China during his first term in the White House. He set off a major trade dispute that resulted in the two nations placing billions of dollars of import tariffs on each other's goods before reaching a phase one trade deal.

More recently, Trump has focused his ire on Chinese technology companies, accusing them of presenting national security risks to the U.S. The Chinese firms have denied the various allegations. The administration has placed tight restrictions ontelecommunications giant Huawei Technologies, and more recently taken steps to restrict access in the U.S.for two popular apps owned by Chinese tech firms, ByteDance's TikTok and Tencent's WeChat.

Friedman said there are numerous concerns over how technology is used across the world, noting that years ago the U.S. governmentreportedly breached Huawei's own network as part of an intelligence gathering operation. Technology is only getting more sophisticated, with household items potentially being "dual use" for civilian and military purposes, he said.

"There needs to be a kind of global conversation between the [European Union], America and China over how we're going to do this, otherwise we're heading for a ... digital Berlin Wall," Friedman said. "The world will be less stable and it'll be less prosperous if that's where we go."

Continued here:

Trump is the U.S. president that China deserves, says New York Times' Thomas Friedman - CNBC