The Carpentariat

A stunner from George Will

How much does George F. Will hate Donald J. Trump?

This much:

"Politics … requires an emotional equipoise, a blend of relaxation and concentration, stamina leavened by cheerfulness. [Sen. Amy] Klobuchar laughs easily and often. If the nation wants an angry president, it can pick from the many seething Democratic aspirants, or it can keep the president it has. If, however, it would like someone to lead a fatigued nation in a long exhale, it can pick a Minnesotan, at last."

I thought Trump would read a book, or Sen. Inhofe would make some sense, or Rep. Gohmert would show a bit of graciousness before the most spectacularly improbable — George Will's virtual endorsement of a (moderately) liberal Democrat — would ever take place. But fear, loathing and deep hatred can be inspirational things.

The tiresome imagination of Howard Schultz

From Howard Schultz's USA Today op-ed:

***

Imagine if our country were more united. If we were stronger, safer, more respected, fair, compassionate and prosperous.

Imagine if more elected leaders collaborated, unselfishly put country over party, and were only beholden to the best ideas that serve the interests of more Americans.

Imagine if our president were tough but not cruel. If he were dignified, told the truth, and was a commonsense problem-solver.

Imagine if our founding ideals of freedom and equality, and the promise of opportunities such as education and jobs, were more fully realized.

Imagine if every voice mattered, and every vote counted, in every state.

These are not outlandish goals but essential conditions for thriving democracy. And they are possible to achieve despite the chaos of our times....

Today, I ask you to join me in imagining a better America.

***

To which I would add, Imagine if all politicians offered concrete ideas and proposals rather than spewing vague, sentimental rubbish about being "commonsense problem-solvers" who can make us stronger, render us prosperous, unite us dearly, improve education and create jobs.

Schultz's op-ed is titled, "A third-party centrist candidate like me could win the presidency in 2020." Imagine that.

E.J. Dionne can't: "[Polls have] found the country split 36 percent Independent, 32 percent Democratic and 25 percent Republican. The independent share seems impressive until you consider … that 46 percent of Independents lean toward the Democrats, and 33 percent lean Republican…. The remaining 'pure' independents who decline to lean either way account for only 8 percent of adults, and many of them rarely vote."

The good that Brexit has done (for others)

Call it blowback, an unintended consequence, serendipity for the Old World continent or Springtime for Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission (the European Union's executive branch) — call it whatever you like — just know that Brexit, a.k.a. FUBAR, is the best thing to happen to the European Union since President Eisenhower's interest in its embryonic development.

As the Times reports, "Even successful populists and nationalists like Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio in Italy, Victor Orban in Hungary, Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland and the Alternative for Deutschland have dropped the idea of leaving the euro or the European Union." The U.K. took the experimental plunge for them, and now, says Rosa Balfour, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, it "has gotten itself into a right old mess, making itself ridiculous to its European partners."

Subsequent to the fiery meltdowns of Brexit and its scatterbrained proponents, cooler heads, as they say, have begun to prevail:

"Brexiters have done Europe no end of good," said Denis MacShane, a writer and former minister for Europe in the government of Tony Blair. "Leaving both the E.U. and the euro has been dropped like a ton of bricks, by populists from the right and the left, including Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain…. Everyone looks on Britain, which was the country of a stable Parliament, with sheer horror and boredom," he added.

The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said, "For some time, voices were going up in the Netherlands in favor of a possible Nexit, but with Brexit those voices have receded. All this uncertainty is of course not in our interest, also not in the U.K.’s interest, if you look at the enormous damage already done to the U.K. economy by Brexit," Mr. Rutte said. "So if anybody in political parties still thinks that Nexit would be a good idea, just look at Britain and the enormous damage that it entails."

Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, said that "Britain is imploding — we’re seeing the dominance of emotional politics over substance, and now it seems to be spinning out of control."

We Americans have a good deal of experience in that — "emotional politics over substance" — as well. Indeed the failing seems to inhere in the entire human species. The mystery is why, "political neuroscience" aside. The ancient Greeks were the first to note — and warn against — the lure of demagoguery and its simple solutions to complex problems. Aristophanes had great fun ridiculing his era's Donald Trumps and Boris Johnsons. His audiences had as much fun, whereupon they'd go out and vote for Greek, Trumpian-Johnsonian buffoons. So-called lower animals are more self-aware, more rational than that.

But, as I wrote the other day, at least we American animals should emerge from our calamity much sooner than will the Brits. Their headaches will likely grind on for decades, whereas ours are almost certain to end in less than two years.

"The Great Schultz"

Politics is a strange racket for an overcaffeinated billionaire by the name of Howard Schultz to enter …

especially when he lacks the good sense to know that a billionaire shouldn't slam Kamala Harris' advocacy of Medicare for All — i.e., health insurance for all — as "not American," or demean Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax" — i.e., fairness — as "ridiculous."

Schultz's attacks are absent of class, in that they're also altogether absent of human decency. The very least a coffee-bean billionaire can do for the society he has peeled for years is to acquire a little class. Otherwise he's just an undertaxed novelty to that society.

When I first read that Schultz was interested in a presidential campaign, I thought, perhaps he is filled with what he believes to be magnificent ideas for bettering America; perhaps it isn't just ego. You never know. This morning, however, I caught a couple minutes of Schultz on "Morning Joe," and my initial thought was fatally punctured by Schultzian emptiness.

He espoused not one even mediocre idea; he mostly sat there proclaiming his love for country and how a nonpartisan, Horatio Alger kind of guy could really inspire America to do better.

In short, he had nothing other than bullshit. But Howard is bored, I gather — bored by the billions and badly in need of assembled adulation, of Donald's sort. If that idiot can attract it, Schultz must have thought, well, surely any idiot can attract it. And so here he is … threatening to help to keep America's worst nightmare in highest office.

All so Howard can get some kicks.

So many of the superrich and their in-the-news escapades remind me of Fitzgerald's concluding lines in his best-known book; and today, I'm thinking of Howard Schultz:

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, [Howard and his wife, Sheri] — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

The sometime joy of Twitter

I'm a restrained consumer of Twitter, nor do I follow many tweeters. I've noticed some users of the medium follow 5,000 or even 10,000 Twitter accounts, which baffles me. Of what possible use are thousands of usually meaningless messages flying by at the hands of people they don't even know? I strive for a severely limited mix of liberal, conservative and centrist tweeters whose backgrounds and philosophies I'm somewhat familiar with; that way, the outcome is more of a conversation among thoughtful friends and acquaintances, rather than watching a high-speed conveyor belt at work. I contribute to Twitter even less than I follow it. But when I do check it out — often to look for a link to some interesting but obscure story — I always hope there's another missive from former CIA director John Brennan. This is why.       

Your cabal of unprincipled, unethical, dishonest, and sycophantic cronies is being methodically brought to justice. We all know where this trail leads. If your utter incompetence is not enough to run you out of office, your increasingly obvious political corruption surely will. https://t.co/S6DMeGICXZ

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) January 26, 2019

Q: Who could beat Trump? A: Anybody.

In a 22 January survey, Public Policy Polling labeled Trump a "clear underdog for reelection." For if the election were held today, Joe Biden would beat him, 53-41. Bernie Sanders would too, 51-41. So would Kamala Harris, 48-41.

Beto O’Rourke? Yes, he would also beat Trump, 47-41. Elizabeth Warren would win by the same margin, 48-42. And Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand would both whip Trump, 47-42.

Note that no matter whom Trump was matched against, his percentage never exceeded 42.

Also of interest is that voters would take either Nancy Pelosi or even Chuck Schumer over Donald Trump as POTUS; that nearly half (45 percent) the electorate "think Trump has committed crimes since he began running for President"; that more voters approve of impeaching Trump, if crimes are confirmed, than not (46-44); and that, again, if crimes are proved, an even larger number (61 percent) believe Trump "should be indicted and prosecuted in the courts."

Last, after two years of his lone fixing of things, only 38 percent of voters believe Trump has made America great again. The ingratitude!

Trouble in once-unified Republicanism

Yesterday America's top intelligence officers presented their "Worldwide Threat Assessment" to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in what amounted to a stunning repudiation of the country's commander in chief.

Contrary to Trump's rather peculiar, obstinate views, they said North Korea will likely maintain its nuclear arsenal. They said Iran has foregone, at least so far, needed preparations to build a bomb. They contradicted Trump on ISIS, saying it's not defeated; that it still harbors an army of capable fighters in Iraq, Syria, and throughout the world.

The FBI, CIA and national intelligence directors also portrayed the cyberthreat from Russia and China as significant, poignantly adding that the two adversaries are "more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s." And they underscored that Trump's trade policy and go-it-alone America Firstism have alienated our allies and caused them to look elsewhere for collaboration.

"Taken together," observes the Times, their Senate testimony "paint[ed] a picture of threats vastly different from those asserted by Mr. Trump." Most dissimilar was that nowhere in the Worldwide Threat Assessment were the beseeching hordes of Latin America — virtually the only "threat" the president has cited in weeks — or the stated need for a border wall.

Intriguingly — and I mean that literally — the Times reports as well on the Republican foreign policy establishment's now-overt disagreements with Mr. Trump. To wit, a growing number of Senate and House Republicans are objecting openly that a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan portends a disaster; that North Korea is thunderingly untrustworthy; that ISIS remains a distressing danger; and that, as the Times words it, "Russia is bad and NATO is good."

In part, Republicans formally said so in a kind of "sense of the Senate" evaluation yesterday, while many House Republicans have recently voted in similar ways. Which is to say, they're defying the president and, to a less visible but more perilous degree, the president's base.

Congressional Republican opinion hasn't changed, yet their behavior has. Why? For sure, they detect a weakened president — the result of his foolish, failed closure of government. But mostly they're annoyed, at long last, by Trump's recklessness. Especially in purple states, the latter could haunt them in 2020, so they're wisely distancing themselves from their party's cavalier leader. As the NYT presents it: "The [internal] rupture of recent days comes amid disgruntlement over the 35-day partial government shutdown."

Hence, what we have here, as Strother Martin might have put it in Cool Hand Luke, is less a failure to communicate than a heretofore circumscribed rebellion by an amplifying number of congressional Republicans, and an outright slap in the presidential face by the nation's top intelligence officers.

Predicting how all the discord will play out is a fruitless game, since Trump's unpredictability is just about the only constant. Everything else is a couple hundred or so variables — except for one other immensely reliable factor: However Trump chooses to react, his counteraction will be incredibly stupid.

The familiar madness of Roger Stone

Somehow, somewhere, along the bat-poop-crazy way, I missed this superb conspiratorial bit from Roger Stone:

I honestly believe that they’re going to try to charge the president and the vice president with some hoped-up frame of Russian collusion. That way they can make Nancy Pelosi president. She can make Hillary Clinton vice president and then step aside. It’s a nightmare but I think that’s what they have in mind.

Mr. Stone is an interpretative enigma, since one can never know if he says what he says merely for more attention, like Trump, or because he's a morbid lunatic, like Trump, or because his mendacity is heinously pathological, like Trump's. So who knows what his exotic conspiracy theory — about "they" and Nancy and Hillary — really is; if it's pathetic, spacey, or wickedly diseased.

There's another possibility. I read the Stone quote on FoxNews.com, which was incestuously covering Stone's preceding appearance on Fox News' "Hannity," in which Stone muttered his they-Nancy-Hillary conspiracy theory. As we do know, Mr. Hannity services the conspiratorially inclined among the Trump-dazed far right. Hence Stone might have only been seeking agreement, sympathy, and future contributions to his legal defense fund from Hannity's Trumpeteering crackpots.

Writ large, though, Stone and his own congenital crackpottery are but symptomatic of the entire, bat-poop-crazy Trump administration, which will be studied by psychohistorians for decades, even centuries, to come. Like Germany in the 1930s, how was it that a long-standing, (supposedly) refined, cultured society opted for the leadership of wackos, mobsters, Neanderthals and failures? On occasion I ask myself: Do we really want to know? Or should we, in the near years to come, just try to dismiss the thoroughgoing obscenity of mad Trumpism as a black-swan outlier?

Geniuses at work: Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump

The cracker-barrel senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, reportedly believes that Trump is — or rather, was — lacking options for the unbridled destruction of the United States.

According to CNN, at dinner last night the folksy wanker explained to the cretinous president what "a good deal [would] look like," as congressional negotiators seek to stave off yet another government shutdown, this one in just two weeks plus. Lindsey's idea was, Why not attach border-wall funding to an increase in the debt ceiling, which is officially reached on March 1st.

As CNN put it: "[Trump would be daring] Democrats to block funding for the border wall and risk sending the country into default in the process." To which, the cretinous president seemed to be receptive. "I don't speak for him," said the cracker-barrel senator, but "I think the President basically believes that his priority of barrier funding can be achieved solving other problems also."

This — the potential of a globe-melting, economy-exploding, U.S. debt crisis — was Lindsey's ingenious blueprint for solving, nay, not creating, "other problems." He added, "Why not just expedite things?"

Politico's Playbook offered a splendid answer to Lindsey's query: "This seems like such an epically bad idea. The debt limit is the most dangerous legislative tool Congress can play with."

The high-wire acts these buffoons repeatedly perform will someday send them crashing — and splattering. While that would indeed be the solution to at least two of our problems, the much bigger problem is that they'll take us down with them.

Updates on primary challenges against Trump

Well blow me down.

Former Arizona senator Jeff Flake has said he won’t primary Trump. "I have always said that I do hope that there is a Republican who challenges the president," said Flake this morning on CBS. "I still hope that somebody does, but that somebody won’t be me."

Of course it still could be, in view of Flake's habitual implications of one thing, only for him to do quite the opposite.

Other than John Kasich, who remains a definite maybe, "that somebody" might be Maryland's Gov. Larry Hogan. He is "consulting with aides and national GOP critics of Trump about whether to pursue a White House bid," reports the Washington Post. After two years of contentiousness between the governor and statehouse Democrats, Hogan reversed course and is now "touting [himself] as a model of bipartisanship, drawing a national spotlight and accolades from Republican dissenters who are seeking a less-polarizing alternative to President Trump."

Said Democratic Senate President Thomas Miller: "When he first got elected, he never held public office before and he was very conservative, believing government is the problem, not the answer. He’s come around. He’s grown."

Hogan has favored nonpartisan redistricting and open primary elections, among other progressive legislation. In a recent interview with the governor, Judy Woodruff of the "PBS Newshour" noted that such legislation would be sternly frowned upon by the GOP's national big shots. "Hogan shrugged. 'Don’t care,' he said."

Some of his associates have downplayed the prospect of a presidential run, "unless the president is significantly weakened," writes the Post. Yet Hogan recently said, “I don’t think you can ever rule anything out. We don’t know what’s going to happen over the next year, or two, or six years."

In addition to a crowded, wide-open Democratic race for the nomination, the potential of a primary challenge against Trump is almost too paradisiac to be real. Yet heaven knows, I hope, that I'm praying for it. Gov. Hogan hasn't a prayer himself, in terms of beating Trump, but the word divine comes to mind when I think of any such primary challenge. 

P.S.: If Hogan starts losing weight, we'll know he's in.

The perilous spectre of Howard Schultz

Former Starbucks chief Howard Schultz is a businessman who believes that profitably huckstering billions of lattes is roughly the same as overseeing the world's largest economy, commanding its most muscular military, and connecting hostile Republicans and antagonistic Democrats — if only he can "share [his] truth, listen to yours, build trust, and focus on things that can make us better." I sort of tear up just thinking about it.

Most others feel like throwing up; not because of the nauseating sentimentality, but because an independent Schultz candidacy threatens a second term for Donald Trump. Think Ralph Nader and Al Gore. That's what (maybe) former politician and fellow billionaire businessman Mike Bloomberg explicitly thinks: "In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President. That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now," he warned yesterday in a statement.

Schultz disagrees, to the limited extent he has given any thought to the subject. He knows a plurality of voters self-identify as independent, while believing they reject the whole left-right thing. From this he assumes they would vote, as he calls himself, for a "centrist independent." But any low-level campaign staffer would know different; Schultz's mistake is in believing — for others — that "independent" means "centrist." In actuality most self-described independents identify philosophically with one of the two major parties — both of which Schultz sees as "extreme" — and therefore are at odds with each other; as polarized as Democrats and Republicans. Centrism has little to do with political independence.

Also disagreeing with Mayor Bloomberg is, to no one's surprise, the Wall Street Journal editorial board. "Why couldn’t Mr. Schultz appeal to independents and Republicans who voted reluctantly for Mr. Trump but are put off by the constant chaos of his governing style?" Although the Journal's high honchos are mostly scheming here — they'd love to see the Democratic vote diluted — they do make a possibly valid point.

Even though the editors base their speculation on "The Perot Myth" ("[He] split the Republican coalition … and helped to elect Bill Clinton," recalls the Journal in a discredited interpretation of '92), it's true that Schultz could split the erstwhile Trump vote and help to elect the Democrat. The imposing question remains, however: Why take the chance?

An even riskier chance is that of a President Schultz, which could never happen, but at any rate here's the frighteningly amateurish side of Schultz, as he explained it to CBS' "60 Minutes": "I want to see the American people win. I want to see America win. I don't care if you're a Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, Republican. Bring me your ideas. And I will be an independent person who will embrace those ideas because I am not, in any way, in bed with a party."

The other day I cited John Tyler as a spectacularly failed president. Why was he such a flop? Because as president, he decided he would not, in any way, be in bed with a party. The result? Everybody in Washington hated him. Tyler should have noticed that the nation's capital city is something of a partisan town. Which, evidently, Schultz has also failed to grasp.

Please, Democrats, don't hand Republicans a loaded weapon

E.J. Dionne:

"We’re ... seeing ... a shift in the intellectual energy of American politics. This is the lesson of the disarray in the Republican Party.... Trump’s decision to close the government in the vain pursuit of an essentially meaningless goal showed a party and ideological movement lost in the wilderness.

Trump’s rise itself was a symptom of this. Traditional conservative nostrums of tax cuts for the best-off and business-friendly deregulation were not answering the needs of less affluent Republicans…. Trump has asked his blue-collar loyalists to live on a diet of rhetoric and empty symbols — the border wall being Symbol No. 1.

The Reagan presidency, which Dionne describes as "an intellectual revolution that left liberals gasping for breath," was not the only major, postwar transformation in Republican ideology; in fact, it was less a transformation in party thinking than a return to the prewar, ideological status quo.

Since 1933, in response to New Dealism, Republican pols had belched a steady doctrinaire diet of fiscal restraint and smaller government. All it got them were three more FDR electoral victories, and then President Truman. Faced with beating the dead nags of smaller government and all that comes with it , which American voters, understandably, found tedious and uninspiring, the GOP opted for the fresh sound of vehement and often bellicose anticommunism. This was the ideological glue that wedded the party's disparate camps of social conservatism and economic libertarianism — and Americans in general, like frightened children, were just as glued to the party's refocused message of strident anticommunism, fear of Russkies, the Bomb, and the Yellow Peril (which also infiltrated Democrats' messaging).

Hence, aside from his own staunch anticommunism, Reagan essentially resurrected that which had been central to conservative thinking throughout the Roosevelt Era: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." And again, in general, American voters liked what they heard (even though they opposed many of Reagan's smaller-government policies in practice, or attempted practice).

Today, however, "the real wall is between conservatism and [sort of] fresh ideas," observes Dionne. Furthermore, "Trump is doing all he can to become the latest one-term president [here, Dionne compares him to Jimmy Carter] to empower a philosophical and policy rebirth among his opponents." By this, Dionne means "liberals and the left have absorbed key lessons from the Trump insurgency" — that "speaking primarily for affluent metropolitan areas will never command a durable majority," and "that there is room for bolder political thinking given the discontent in the country with unevenly shared economic growth." What Democrats, liberals and the left actually do with these lessons in mind — and do with success — is pretty much anyone's guess.

While it's true that the Dems face exhilarating challenges and opportunities, the key takeaway from Dionne's column is the grim stagnation in Republican thinking — that, as an "ideological movement," it is "lost in the wilderness." The GOP has learned nothing from its recent failures, and even less than nothing from the abominable "Trump insurgency." The party is an ad-hoc, shadow-boxing, disoriented muddle of whatever idiocy springs from Trump's inattentive, and likely diseased, mind; it's a shamble that only undertaxed plutocrats could love.

The speculative takeaway from Dionne's column is a question far more easily asked than answered: How well will Democrats do in the absence of a competent, coherent opposition? I confess I tremble a bit when, for instance, I read of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 70 percent, marginal tax-rate proposal, but not because it's a crazy idea (it isn't). I tremble because it's the very kind of idealistic overreach, Republicans will say and are saying, that could refocus their party, allow it to demagogue with re-energized abandon, and terrify the living crap out of the average, ill-informed American voter.

It is House Democrats' and presidential candidates' overreach that Republicans are counting on for 2020, and I just about break out in hives when I contemplate what Republicans could do with it. As with its decades-long anticommunism, fear is the one constant the GOP sells with hysterical professionalism — and is Democrats' greatest danger.

A short lesson in laughable, Soviet-style propaganda

From Trump's former national security "expert," whose security clearance was revoked, who also helped form the White House's "Strategic Initiatives Group," which never existed, said a WH aide:

The Democrats have 3 weeks to prove if they will keep their word on border security.

And @realDonaldTrump gets to hold a State of the Union on The Wall.

GENIUS. pic.twitter.com/dcHUha4Vki

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) January 25, 2019

Amidst a sea of sarcastic replies to Gorka's amusing little tweet, a few others emitted the sweet odor of genuine disgruntlement with Trump, such as these two:

I hope that is true.. losing my confidence in the art of the deal!!!!

and,

The problem is I don’t see it anywhere like this.

The Trumpian humbug just isn't selling, the way it once did, to a yet-determined number of erstwhile Trumpeteers. They set the lowest-ever bar for American gullibility and shamelessness — fantasy walls, discriminatory travel bans, tariff wonders and trade-deal guttings, climate-change denial, notorious "America First" isolationism — which have surpassed in despicability even the indelible stain of McCarthyism. But the bar is gradually rising, as many of these dupes begin to realize what was always in front of their noses.       

Trump: digging himself ever deeper

This is a first. I agree with Donald Trump.

"I personally think it’s less than 50-50," he said of the chances of Congress devising a presidentially acceptable border-wall deal, since he's a fickle, mercurial child. In a Wall Street Journal interview yesterday, he added "that he would build a wall anyway, using emergency powers if need be."

(In another first, I also agree with those "Many congressional Republicans" who are fearful of Trump declaring a national emergency to build his enchanted wall, since, observes the Journal, "it could set a precedent that future Democratic presidents could declare a national emergency over their own priorities." If such a power were sanctioned by the Supreme Court, the result would be a monstrous imperial presidency that even Arthur Schlesinger Jr. never dreamed of.)

Trump said another shutdown is "certainly an option" as well — which is classic Trumpian logic, given what the recently deceased shutdown earned him: a significant drop in approval ratings. What's more, threatening another shutdown conflicts with his stated intent to use emergency powers "if need be" — and his need be a certainty, given that satisfying his base virtually ensures the unconstitutional declaration of an emergency. (Ponder, for a moment, how Trump's base would have reacted to President Obama declaring a national healthcare emergency — which actually existed — that required his extraconstitutional authority. Freakout doesn't begin to describe it.)

Speaking of Trump's base, or rather his ballooning former base, in the interview he gratuitously, stupidly egged on Ann Coulter, perhaps the only woman as nasty, as venomous, as repugnant as Trump: "I hear she’s become very hostile," he said. "Maybe I didn’t return her phone call or something." We await Coulter's counterattack.

Separately, which is to say, in his preferred manner of presidential communication, Trump also tweeted yesterday an assault on — are you ready for this? — Fox News. "Never thought I’d say this but I think @johnrobertsFox and @GillianHTurner @FoxNews have even less understanding of the Wall negotiations than the folks at FAKE NEWS CNN & NBC!"

Oh my, what is to come of this? At his next rally, will he encourage his belligerent, MAGA-hat-wearing crowd to turn on the Fox News reporters present, those enemies of the people, along with NBC, CNN et al? I gather that Trump's ambition is to be the most friendless president ever — outside of only John Tyler and John Quincy Adams — and here we can truthfully say he's a great success.

So I guess that makes three agreements of mine — two with Trump, one with congressional Republicans — all in 24 hours. And I can safely surmise that these firsts will also be the last.

Hilariously different worlds

In the National Review's "Stone Indictment Underscores That There Was No Trump-Russia Conspiracy," contributing editor Andrew McCarthy is simply aghast at Robert Muller's disingenuity.

The indictment is just the latest blatant demonstration that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, the Department of Justice, and the FBI have known for many months that there was no such conspiracy. And yet, fully aware that the Obama administration, the Justice Department, and the FBI had assiduously crafted a public narrative that Trump may have been in cahoots with the Russian regime, they have allowed that cloud of suspicion to hover over the presidency — over the Trump administration’s efforts to govern — heedless of the damage to the country.

The rationale for the Trump-Russia investigation … has been nothing more than a suspicion harbored by political, law-enforcement, and intelligence officials who loathed Donald Trump….

Not only was the suggestion of a Trump-Russia conspiracy not founded on fact. The officials calling the shots had reason to know that the premise was factually false.

McCarthy goes on at length about the Stone indictment, portraying a clueless gang — with Stone perhaps the most clueless — that couldn't shoot straight. But Mueller has never suggested that the Trump campaign's Russia collusion was smooth, slick or sophisticated. Stumblebums and poseurs are often at the center of political campaigns. Trump's was the finest example of that truism yet — and McCarthy's account merely re-confirms it. In concentrating on Stone's relationship — or non-relationship — with Wikileaks, McCarthy is able to overlook … well, see what follows.

In "Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration," the NY Times has tracked down "more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter," all made by "at least 17 campaign officials and advisers [who] had contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries." If any politico ever wanted to give the appearance of crimes, this was it.

The list of contacts and contacters includes, for instance, Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, both of whom helped set up the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting "with a Kremlin-linked attorney" who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. In that month as well Trump was still working on plans for a Trump Tower-Moscow, in league with that model of integrity, Michael Cohen, who himself partnered with the Russian-American mobster Felix Sater, who had "deep contacts in Russia." (Sater's longest entry in Wikipedia is the section titled "Criminal convictions and federal cooperation.") All perfectly innocent, I'm sure.

The list goes on, and on, from Don Jr. to Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos, among others — a nest of con men, grifters and incompetents, breathtaking in its conspiratorial sleaze.

All this, McCarthy ignores. But that's not the weakest of his argument. No, his weakest link is when he aggressively argues that All-American Boy Scout Bob Mueller has "known for many months that there was no such conspiracy," and would "[allow a] cloud of suspicion to hover over the presidency — over the Trump administration’s efforts to govern — heedless of the damage to the country." That's just not believable. 

The fractured right. Thanks, Donald.

Politico reports that a former White House official "said that Trump’s core supporters and former aides are 'furious' and 'melting down'" over his belated decision to do what always had to be done: Reopen the government. It's more complicated than that, though we'll have to wait for more polling to appreciate the statistics of complication. Until then, all we can do is survey trends among the right's opinion vendors. Having done so, all I can say for now is that it looks rather bleak for Donald Trump.

The Washington Post reports that the Daily Caller bothered not with subtlety, announcing in a headline, "TRUMP CAVES." The Gateway Pundit was just as identically blunt, but with emphasis: "TRUMP CAVES!" Another of its headlines proclaimed "Pelosi’s SECOND BIG WIN This Week." Steve Bannon's former digs, Breitbart, wrote that "The White House finally caved to Democrats demands, despite Trump’s repeated assertions this week that he would not do so." "Trump blinks," said the Washington Examiner.

Fox News hosts were, as always, mostly congenial about Trump's blunder. For instance after blaming Democrats and "weak-kneed Republicans" for the president's stupidity, Sean Hannity blared that the latter soon would have his national emergency, by God, and "Anyone out there thinking President Trump caved today, you don’t know the Donald Trump I know. He right now holds all the cards — he will secure the border one way or another." (That he could say that Trump "holds all the cards" provides a clue as to the truly surreal world of Sean Hannity.)

Still, Fox's Tucker Carlson asked during a panel session: "You know what erodes your popularity with the public?" Tucker knows: "Weakness." And Lou Dobbs, of Fox Business, said that Speaker Pelosi "has just whipped the president of the United States. It will be perceived as such on every television monitor and screen in the country and to deny it is to escape from reality." I guess Mr. Hannity wasn't listening.

The website Hot Air put it in question form. "Shutdown Fallout: Did Trump Cave?" Its answer was that Trump shouldn't be "[beaten up] for doing the sensible thing, however belatedly, before something terrible happened." The site went on to puzzle what I have often puzzled: Why didn't Trump simply declare a national emergency? Which is probably the next step, anyway. Strictly for humor, I suppose (?), Hot Air concluded: "Don’t worry. We’ll get the wall someday when Republicans have total control of government." Most of Hot Air's commenters were not amused. "Caved," wrote one. "Full blown cave," wrote another. "Epic capitulation," said a third. A fourth tried to see the upside: "It's a cave but it won't hurt him in November 2020."

Power Line also asked, "Did trump Cave?" Answer: "Certainly looks like it." Here, commenters were more dispersed in opinion. One conceded outright, "Yeah.... It’s a cave," while another joked that "Trump got his impenetrable wall. Unfortunately for him, it was named Pelosi." But there was plenty of this, too: "I would call it a strategic retreat. The globalists won this battle but it remains to be seen whether they'll win the war."

Ann Coulter's boiling opinion we already know. Erick Erickson, formerly of RedState, tweeted: "Donald Trump caved to Nancy Pelosi on shutdown, now the wall will never be built."

NeverTrump Republicans were ecstatic, of course. Such as Peter Wehner, who has worked for Reagan and both Bushes: "Pelosi rolled him in every way. Egged on by right wingers, the whole thing was buffoonish from start to finish," and "One of Trump's main attractions to his GOP base was their belief that he was 'strong,' 'tough' a 'fighter' who wouldn't back down. The showdown with Pelosi showed he was none of these things. Whether they voice it or not, this will damage Trump with the right."

I finish with Wehner because his conclusion is also mine. On the right, Trump is now damaged goods. That he not only caved but caved to a woman — a San Francisco liberal, no less — is a humiliation no "tough fighter" among right-wing goons would abide. Trump is not one of them, after all. He is, instead, as Ann Coulter said, a wimp … "Whether they voice it or not."

Trump's Rosy Garden address (updated)

Trump whisperer and presidential guide dog Sean Hannity wrote this morning that "if the stalemate continues — it is obvious, as Democrats refuse to come to the table — President Trump will take matters into his own hands. The president is clear — he will declare a national emergency and solve the problem himself."

Does Hannity possess some pre-knowledge of Trump's 1:30 p.m. address from the Rose Garden? Was declaring a national emergency part of their pillow talk last night? We'll know in minutes.

***

Update, post-Rose Garden extravaganza, which was anything but rosy:

Ann Coulter is going to be some kind of pissed. Trump caved — as he had to (in lieu of declaring an emergency), given Nancy Pelosi's superior strategy, strength, and determination. By agreeing to reopen government in exchange for mere "talks" — in other words, no imminent wall funding — his base will be as irate as Coulter.

And without his hardest-core supporters — the only Americans to whom Trump has ever reached out — what is he left with? Nothing, not a damn thing, in terms of a populist power structure beneath him.

Last November, Trump was crippled. Today, Speaker Pelosi finished him off — paradoxically, by his own, incompetent hand. Fascinating.

Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 25, 2019

The lure of "Game of Thorns" hackery

A great new book just out, “Game of Thorns,” by Doug Wead, Presidential Historian and best selling author. The book covers the campaign of 2016, and what could be more exciting than that?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2019

Mr. Wead may be a lot of things — Bill Press once called him "scum," and no less than Bill O'Reilly said he was "the lowest form of debris in the country" — but a qualified presidential historian he most decidedly is not. The son of an Assemblies of God preacher, Wead is a high school graduate of Canyonville Christian Academy and a nongraduate of Central Bible College of Scripture-thumping southwest Missouri. He holds honorary doctorates from Southwest Baptist and Oral Roberts "universities." If Wead acquired any knowledge but that Earth is 6,000 years old from any of these institutions of lower learning, well, that would be the miracle of accreditation. (To be clear, it's not that one cannot autodidactically become a consummate historian — Gore Vidal, for instance, although ultimately mad, was a keen observer of things past — but as for one who is so narrowly, biblically grounded? Come on.)

Another miracle would be that Trump has actually read the book. The man can't even abide the briefest of written briefings, let alone a 416-page monograph sandwiched between two hard covers.

One friendly, lay reviewer unwittingly writes that though Game of Thorns is a book presumably about the 2016 election, Wead focuses on the "scandals involving the Clintons including Tyson Foods, Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Vince Foster, Chinagate, Pardongate, and all the sexual assault charges plus Monica Lewinsky." Another reviewer similarly observes that "its power is its summary of the Clinton family history of corruption that has characterized their entire public life. It is shocking. It covers decades and lays bare the ruthlessness and greed of two power mad politicians who figured out early that politics is the pipeline to Fort Knox." Yet another writes that Game of Thorns — again, a volume purportedly about the 2016 election — "confirmed my suspicions" about the wicked "Clinton Machine," which is its singular purpose.

Nevertheless, my hat goes off to Mr. Wead, who had the good sense to grasp that writing ahistorical trash for Manichean rubes is an immensely profitable pastime. Hacks are almost always better off than trained professionals.

Tolerating the intolerable

"The Trump administration is the end result of [a] 40-year [conservative] con job" about the splendiferousness of the excessively wealthy, writes WaPo's Helaine Olen.

From President Reagan sitting agog at self-made millionaires — as though every American of average intelligence and substandard opportunity can acquire similar fortunes — to Trump's extemporaneous comforting of multimillionaire-buffoon Wilbur Ross, who has failed to "really quite understand why" unpaid government workers are seeking food-bank relief — something the excessively wealthy wouldn't abide, believes Wilbur, given their instructive culture of self-reliance — the American myth of the superior monied class has been preached by same for a sickening, devastating four decades.

The myth has now reached its apotheosis; unimaginable is that the cultish praise of the superrich could ever get more sickening. Which leads Ms. Olen to further write: We are all but out of words to describe the offensiveness of the Trump administration.

Such is the burden of political commentary these days — from the Times editorial page to the humble Carpentariat: Describing the Trump administration's ineffable offensiveness is an endless sine qua non of political writing, even though fresh variations on the theme are increasingly grueling to pull off. Although each day of Trumpism brings a new horror, each day is also but a horrifying continuation of the day, the week, the wretched year before.

Is it newsworthy — that is, commentary-worthy — that presidential daughter-in-law Lara Trump has asked federal employees to financially "sacrifice" for "a mythical wall designed to combat a mythical problem"? asks Olen. Not really, she answers. "In fact, the Trump administration has asked many Americans for financial sacrifices time and time again." Medicaid work requirements, for example — albeit most Medicaid recipients already work. Is it really news, or newsworthy, that more and more Americans are going without health insurance, since Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been slashing away at Obamacare for two years?

What of consumer protection? In the way of current political events, hardly sensational is that Republicans are, once again, decimating the much-needed regulation of vulturous lenders. Hardly sensational as well is that Trump & Republican Allies have permanently eviscerated anything close to reasonable tax rates on the superrich and their multibillion-dollar corporations, "while reserving," notes Olen, "a few sun-setting crumbs for the vast majority of the population." And as certain that Trump is an ignorant rabble-rouser and fearmonger is that Republicans, because of their outrageous deficit creations on behalf of the supremely comfortable, are again calling for the urgent knifing of entitlements for the needy.

These are the musings of Ms. Olen, a thousand other commentators, and myself. "We are all but out of words to describe the offensiveness of the Trump administration" — we work on an infinitely looping treadmill of ghastly familiarities — yet somehow we conjure a few new words of appalled consternation each day.

My final words today are something of an aside. I ask for your sympathy for this not-too-devilish commentator. I chose this poisonous profession freely, so perhaps my request is presumptuous. But have some heart. I wake each morning knowing that whatever happened just hours ago, pretty much the same bloody thing has happened repeatedly for either two years or 40. And yet I must think of a way to remark on it with some freshness. It ain't always easy. Indeed, it can be downright oppressive.

Roger Stone gets hammered

What happened this morning was what everyone knew would happen some morning. So, within minutes of Roger Stone's arrest by the FBI, the NY Times published the "news" at some length, which it most assuredly had written weeks ago.

Aside from committing obstruction, making false statements to Congress and witness tampering, Stone made The Hart Mistake: "He sometimes seemed to taunt American law enforcement agencies," writes the Times, "daring them to find hard evidence to link him to the Russian meddling campaign."

The special counsel's office has obliged him.

5. During the summer of 2016, STONE spoke to senior Trump Campaign officials about Organization 1 [Wikileaks] and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign. STONE was contacted by senior Trump Campaign officials to inquire about future releases by Organization 1.

6. By in or around early August 2016, STONE was claiming both publicly and privately to have communicated with Organization 1. By in or around mid-August 2016, Organization 1 made a public statement denying direct communication with STONE. Thereafter, STONE said that his communication with Organization 1 had occurred through a person STONE described as a "mutual friend," "go-between," and "intermediary." STONE also continued to communicate with members of the Trump Campaign about Organization 1 and its intended future releases.

Robert Mueller has obtained corroborating testimony from three senior Trump campaign officials; Stone had bragged to them about his connection to Wikileaks. "One of them told investigators that Mr. Stone not only seemed to predict WikiLeaks’ actions, but also that he took credit afterward for the timing of its disclosures that damaged Hillary Clinton’s candidacy." Astonishingly, he did the same on social media and in various interviews — until, that is, he saw the righteous hammer of Bob Mueller coming down.

Like other Trumpian scoundrels, Stone has charged the special counsel's office with conducting fishing expeditions — inquiries into activities unrelated to the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia. What will nail Stone as well as the campaign, however, is the collusion pertinence of that which was learned in 2018: that, during the 2016 campaign, Stone had communicated on Twitter with the Russian intelligence operative, Guccifer 2.0, which had stolen Democratic emails and then forwarded them to WikiLeaks.

Stone fancies himself a James Bond type, a doer of clandestine deeds, a master of clever intrigue who always escapes fatal danger, just in the nick of time. His self-image may be somewhat damaged, though, when his Nixon tattoo is replaced by a prison number.