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NYT Piece on Trump’s Lies re: Mexico, Boy Scout phone calls

The anecdotes, both of which Mr. Trump told over the last week, were similar in that they appeared to be efforts to showcase broad support for the president when his White House has been mired in turmoil. But they also had another thing in common, the White House conceded on Wednesday: Neither was true.

Those Calls to Trump? White House Admits They Didn’t Happen Julie Hirschfeld Davis, August 2, 2017 New York Times

I could do without the closing paragraphs on Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson's storytelling embellishments. It feels like an attempt to protect against accusations of bias by saying that other presidents have lied in similar circumstances. If you took a few rhetorical episodes in isolation, perhaps they'd be comparable. But when it comes to discussing the frequency and scope of Trump's lies, as the article does in earlier paragraphs, Trump is truly without precedent.

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Learning as he goes

Trump’s changed views appear to be more of a reflection of the president’s ignorance. The president was widely mocked for his claim that “nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.” It is true that many people recognized that, but equally apparent that Trump did not. As is becoming clear, he was a blank slate on a range of other issues as well. David A. Graham, "All the President's Flip-Flops," The Atlantic

To Trump's credit, it's not unreasonable to receive new information, incorporate that into one's understanding of things, and then change your position. But his behavior also underlines the trouble with putting someone with no government experience into the White House.

As John Oliver has noted, politicians like to portray themselves as outsiders to the world of Washington, a land demonized to the rest of America as a bubble insensitive to the needs of real Americans. The outsider's claim is that everything inside is a mess, they're more in touch with the people, and they'll go in there and fix everything.

As evident by the examples in Graham's article, this isn't quite what's happened. The government is a large beaurocracy that has to be managed, and there's a wide array of national and international institutions that serve important roles. This is not to say that these things are all perfect as they are, but it's important to know how they work even if your objective is to tear everything apart. You need to understand the constraints and the intricacies of the problems that you're trying to fix. As recent presidents go, Trump is as bona fide a Washington outsider as we've gotten, but that does not by necessity bring with it the rosy outcomes often promised by more seasoned politicians that falsely take on the outsider mantle.

I imagine Trump will grind his way up the learning curve, and perhaps on the other side of that, he might be able to chart a course for how he'll change things. But it seems like for the immediate present, he'll slowly figure out more educated (ideally, better) positions compared to those he advocated on the campaign trail, and if the trend follows the examples noted in Graham's article, on many issues he may end up close to continuing the Obama administration's policies. In my opinion, that's not a terrible outcome, but I'd much prefer it if things weren't in the hands of someone who's only now learning how to steer the ship.

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Baner Year for Stacks of Paper Next to Podiums.

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Elizabeth Warren

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Mike Pence’s Damn E-Mails

“Pence’s own account was compromised in June when a hacker sent a counterfeit email to his contacts claiming Pence he and his wife had been attacked on their way back to their hotel in the Philippines, losing their money, bank cards and mobile phone. In response, Pence sent an email to those who had received the fake communication apologizing for any inconvenience. He also set up a new AOL account.”

from Tony Cook at the IndyStar

More than one lapse of judgment in this story.

It’s certainly hypocritical for Pence to have come down so hard on Hillary Clinton for her own e-mail scandal, given his own e-mail habits. But I don’t believe that accusations of hypocrisy are an effective way to oppose the Trump administration, particularly in this case. I assume ardent Trump supporters would claim that Hillary’s transgressions were worse, and perhaps even middle of the road Republicans might greet the news with a shrug.

At a broad level of comparison, both Clinton and Pence made government information vulnerable in a way that they shouldn’t have. However, public perception of the technologies involved may decrease the likelihood that Pence’s e-mail scandal will dog him in quite the same way.

The IndyStar article quotes Justin Cappos, a computer security professor at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering:

“It’s one thing to have an AOL account and use it to send birthday cards to grandkids...But it’s another thing to use it to send and receive messages that are sensitive and could negatively impact people if that information is public.”

This comports to a popular perception of AOL users: that they tend to be older, and not in touch with the latest computing trends*. It is likely that an average American knows someone with an AOL e-mail account, perhaps someone that even fits this characterization (fair or not); it is less likely that an average American knows someone with a private e-mail server in their basement. Such a thing is, to put it mildly, uncommon.

Clinton’s e-mail scandal stuck to her because it supported the negative characterization of her as secretive and untrustworthy. It also prompted people to imagine a technical apparatus that they likely would have never encountered in their day to day lives. Pence’s scandal is less likely to cause him lasting trouble because it doesn’t reinforce a similar narrative about him, and because the technology involved is popularly associated with a lack of technical prowess or ability. It would be easier for him to characterize any transgression as a mistake.

If e-mails surface that further support the characterization of Pence as anti-LGBT and anti-women, then the story will be much more likely to stick around.

* A quick search for AOL e-mail jokes turned up many results, including this quip by Conan O’Brien regarding the hack of now-former CIA Director John Brennan’s AOL account.

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Trump’s team nixed ethics course for White House staff 

President Donald Trump’s team rejected a course for senior White House staff, cabinet nominees and other political appointees that would have provided training on leadership, ethics and management, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

From Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey at Politico. Further down in that piece:

The Trump team has said it was determined to not spend all of its transition funds, and it returned millions to the government. To some Republicans, the program could be seen as wasteful.

There’s wasteful and then there’s wasteful. It might be good optics to return a bunch of cash and say “we’re so efficient, we don’t need this.” A fixed dollar amount delivered in the present is easy to conceptualize and applaud. But dollars saved or spent over time are harder to quantify. If the administration did not implement a substitute for this training, then the costs to American taxpayers may be in excess of what was saved.

The botched roll-out of the executive order on immigration likely cost some appreciable amount of taxpayer dollars, not to mention causing disruption to work productivity of people detained and workers who had to devote their attention to the crisis rather than their regular duties. As the administration intends to put a new version of the ban into place, the entirety of the original implementation attempt could be considered a waste*. Additionally, future dollars, political effort, and energy may all be spent dealing with the fallout of White House ethics violations and mismanagement to come.

This is not to argue that a training program would have obviated all such issues that could arise. Only that one could have provided a floor-level baseline of competence for an administration whose rocky start suggests it was in dire need of it.

* Note: money questions aside, the idea of the ban itself is poorly reasoned, xenophobic, racist, and inhumane.

(Billy Madison screencap via screeninsults.com)

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Vanishing CPAC’ers

From Cristina Marcos at The Hill.com:

President Trump falsely claimed during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday that lines to get in stretched back “six blocks.”

It was a statement at odds with the quiet scene outside the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center where CPAC is taking place.

There were no lines getting into the Gaylord within the hour before Trump began speaking Friday morning.

Facts are facts. But as a thought exercise:

If The Hill is right, then Trump has decided to once again lie about a pretty easily verifiable state of things.

If Trump is right, then The Hill has decided to report his comments and then actively discredit itself by lying about the absence of lines.

If they're both right, HOLY SHIT SOMEONE JUST KIDNAPPED 6 BLOCKS' WORTH OF PEOPLE.

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Stephen K. Bannon and Apocalyptic Race Wars

The “Judeo-Christian West” was at war, he said, but didn’t seem to understand it yet.

“There is a major war brewing, a war that’s already global,” Bannon said at the Vatican in 2014, at a time when the Islamic State was gaining territory. “Every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is — and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it — will be a day where you will rue that we didn’t act.”

Bannon has given few details about the mechanics of the war he thinks the West should fight. But he has been clear that it is urgent enough to take priority over other rivalries and worries.

from a WaPo January 31, 2017 article by Frances Stead Sellers and David A. Fahrenthold ‘Why let ’em in?’ Understanding Bannon’s worldview and the policies that follow.

This caught my attention because it reminded me of another article-- Graeme Wood’s Atlantic piece What ISIS Really Wants, in which ISIS supporter Musa Cerantonio discusses ISIS’s belief in a fated apocalyptic battle between the armies of Islam and Rome. Not quite the same war as Bannon’s (ISIS’s hopes on that front were likely dimmed when the prophesied battle site was recaptured in October), but the Christians vs. Muslims conflict lines and the vibe of an apocalyptic war to end all wars vibe are both there.

Similarly, a quick google search of “apocalyptic race war” led me to the Helter Skelter race war that Charles Manson attempted to catalyze. It also reminded me of the film In Bruges, in which, during a drug and alcohol fueled late night chat, the character Jimmy predicts a forthcoming war between “the whites” and “the blacks” (Colin Farrell’s character Ray then picks at Jimmy’s theory to comic effect).

Actual wars across religious and ethnic dividing lines have taken place countless times in human history. But prophesy of a climactic religious or ethnic war seems often to be touted by minds that are either delusional, or are using the prophesied war as justification for horrific violence. In the cases of Manson and ISIS, the effects are catastrophic, as the oracles attempt to turn their prediction into reality.

It is troubling to say the least that a similar voice is directing American policy.

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"I dare you!” “Ok!”

Trump calls for voter fraud investigation, perhaps instigated by Jake Tapper of CNN calling him out on the voter fraud lie yesterday. I imagine two outcomes:

1. The investigation will fabricate evidence of widespread voter fraud.

The Washington Post, and likely other news outlets, have debunked the voter fraud claim time and time again. It is beyond unlikely that such a massive fraud actually exists. To prove Trump’s claim true, evidence would need to be fabricated.

This seems unlikely. This administration's penchant for brazen lying is remarkable, but attempting to fabricate enough evidence to reach the conclusion that millions of ineligible to vote persons voted is a bit far-fetched.

Of course, what was also once considered far-fetched: Donald Trump becoming president.

2. Investigation will conclude that no substantial voter fraud occurred, but more measures should be taken to ensure the integrity of the vote going forward.

CNN’s article discusses "systemic efforts to distort the voter rolls in recent years.” While an investigation might not produce evidence of millions of persons participating in voter fraud, it might still make recommendations to make voter fraud even more unlikely.

The phantom menace of voter fraud (in this case, an actual immaterial phantom, not a Lord of the Sith) could be used to further restrict the vote of minorities and Democrat leaning voters. This might help counter the electorate’s evolutionary trend (of note, not the only evolutionary trend opposed by prominent GOP’ers).

Another angle to this is to consider how easily Trump can be manipulated by the media. Already SNL’s Alec Baldwin Trump sketches seem made to get under his skin. The possible causal relationship between Tapper’s comments yesterday and Trump’s comments today highlight a way that the media could more directly influence Trump’s focus and actions, for better or worse.

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Wed. 1/25, 5:44 - 6:14 a.m.

Movie version of rogue Badlands twitter account episode: A park ranger and wacky tourist sidekick begin sending their missives from the visitor’s center. Then, a news story about it airs on TV, they look at each other, an armed guard looks at the climate change facts on the screen, then looks at them, then they flee the building, chased by other rangers, and then, during a moment’s respite, they stop short at a bridge. “Where else can we go?” the tourist asks. The ranger’s head tilts up, revealing determined eyes beneath the ranger hat’s broad brim. “The only place we can...into the park.” They bolt ahead into the wilderness, living off the land, and tweeting out their outrageous, rebellious claims like “Ocean acidity has increased 30% since the industrial revolution,” and “Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years.”

For a few brief hours on Tuesday, the internet’s hero was a National Park account that had gone rogue and was tweeting facts about climate change.

It would seem silly, were it not for the fact that one of the administration’s goals appears to be increasing ignorance and pliability in the American public. Following the fuss about the National Park Service tweets this past weekend, and gag orders on government scientists, a park tweeting scientific information about climate change seemed like a bright light in the darkness.

The most illuminating contrast I can think of is, on the one hand, a Park Service twitter account posting facts about climate change, and on the other, the White House press secretary standing behind the podium “using repeatedly debunked citations for Trump’s voter fraud claim.”

A park is tweeting about science, the White House press secretary is propagating repeatedly disproven lies to the American public.

The administration wants to be the sole arbiter of what the American public believes to be true.

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Day 1

I thought it might be healthy to occasionally take up to 30 minutes to write about things I’m concerned or upset about, particularly related to the Trump administration. Despite what feels like a dark time, through the lens of my Facebook feed, it seems like there’s a tremendous amount of positive energy out there. People are donating to causes they believe in that will need more support than ever these next four years. They are starting podcasts and Facebook groups to encourage dialogue and action. Today people around the world will take to the streets to make their voices heard.

But despite this tremendous positive energy, yesterday I still found myself feeling overwhelmed. Given the state of things, concern, despair, and anxiety are great motivators towards taking action, and making change in the world. But after action’s been taken, at least what small bits of it I feel capable of offering, the concern, despair, and anxiety still remain. I need a place to put those feelings and energies so that, while I’m sitting at my computer at work, the thought “it’s still true” doesn’t pop into my mind and then plague my thoughts and internet searching all day. And I’m limiting the time I spend on each entry to 30 minutes, because otherwise I can sit here for hours.

It took me 24 minutes to write the past two paragraphs, so as quickly as I can manage, here are a few quick hits on things that were sticking in my head from yesterday.

The crowd photos. It’s amusing, but I wouldn’t dwell on this. Trump bragged that he would have record setting crowds. He didn’t. I do relish in Trump bragging a prediction and that not coming true (qualification-- not necessarily in terms of policy, but in terms of self-aggrandizing how great he is, how bigly it’ll be, etc.). And a really petty part of me hopes that inside he is deeply disappointed. But it also doesn’t really matter, and Trump’s proven himself more than capable of distorting the reality that he sees to fit what he wants.  

Time’s up; will have to pick this up again tomorrow.